Weblog: Beyond the Episcopal Church's Pagan Eucharist
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Compiled by Ted Olsen | posted 10/01/2004 12:00AM
Guess what's no longer linked on the Episcopal Church USA's page for Women's Worship Resources? Both items highlighted in yesterday's Weblog: "A Women's Eucharist: A Celebration of the Divine Feminine" and the "Liturgy for Divorce." You can actually still read both, but they're now orphan pages, apparently unlinked from within the Episcopal Church website. (Though Weblog should add that they're now linked from just about every conservative Anglican weblog in the country.) One of those liturgies remaining is a "Station of the Cross," which includes these lines from Jesus:
I do not want to die
I was not born for this to die a shameful, lonely death.
This was not my calling.
Yet, it is not death itself that I reject.
I die because all creatures die
though it is very hard to leave this world I love;
And even harder still to die like this
because my love was not received.
New, however, is an introduction to the worship resources:
This resource section is intended to provide a space for women to share their voices with one another. It is a work-in-progress and its shape will continue to emerge as we move forward. These are not official liturgies of the Episcopal Churchrather, they are a gathering of voices. Our hope with this section is to simply begin a conversation around women and our liturgical tradition as it is now. Please use them for study, dialogue, questions, ponderings, and gathering communities of worship.
These are liturgies, litanies, rituals, rites, prayers, and morefor women, by women (mostly). They are an offering to open the awareness of the many voices and needs that exist among people in the church as we all strive to find expressions of our life, love and faith in God. Some are reciprocal responses to liturgies that currently exist, others are created in reply to aspects of women's and men's lives that are left unrecognized in our life of worship.
This is a grassroots, organic, interactive process in which we want to help lift up the voices of women who are creating liturgies, rituals, and rites for one another and their communities.
That's quite a bit different from yesterday's language, which said that the resources, including the "Women's Eucharist," are "currently available to be downloaded and used by all."
That said, phrases like "a gathering of voices" and "begin a conversation" are very common in the Episcopal Church, and are usually used when it's about to do something very unorthodox.
But in this case, we're not talking about something that's merely unorthodox, or even heresy. We're talking about pagan worship of Old Testament idols. We're talking about a mock Eucharist, the center of Christian worship, that directly references a biblical text about idolatryand stands proudly, "defiantly," with the idolaters.
It goes without saying that such a ceremony is incompatible with Christian worship. But if you need Scripture to know for sure, start with Deut. 12. If you're really in doubt about whether they're compatible, however, you probably won't be swayed by Scripture.
And here's where we need to make an important correction to yesterday's Weblog. Yesterday, we said that the "Women's Eucharist" (how we hate even to call it that) was "taken almost completely (without attribution) from a rite from Tuatha de Brighid, 'a Clan of modern Druids
who believe in the interconnectedness of all faiths.'"
Yes, it was taken from Tuatha de Brighidbut it wasn't plagiarized. As it turns out, the Episcopalian rector who submitted the ceremony to the Episcopal Church's website is the same woman who wrote it for the neo-pagan site. In her Episcopalian life, she goes by the name Glyn Ruppe-Melnyk. For her neo-pagan stuff, she's Glispa. Folks over at Titus One Nine, the weblog of theologian Kendall Harmon, put the links together. One explains: