Episcopal Church's Office of Women's Ministries removes pagan ritual from website
"We have been astounded and grateful for the number of people who have taken an interest in The Office of Women's Ministries of the Episcopal Church through Christianity Today's recent weblog," begins a press release from that office today. "We profoundly regret that Christianity Today did not contact us before making claims such as, 'leaders of the Episcopal Church USA are promoting pagan rites to pagan deities.'"

Let's get one thing out of the way. Here's what we've repeatedly said, and this message is linked at the end of every Weblog posting: "Weblog is a compilation of articles, and therefore doesn't involve any original reporting, nor does it necessarily strive to separate hard news from opinion."

And Weblog stands by its "claim." Leaders is appropriate, since this appeared on the Episcopal Church USA (ECUSA) website, not some random priest's personal site or a message board somewhere. Promoting is accurate, since the Episcopal News Service sent out a dispatch Monday highlighting "worship resources that are currently available to be downloaded and used by all." This news release was on all three home pages of the ECUSA site. As for "pagan rites to pagan deities," see the Weblog.

It's all been a big misunderstanding, says the Women's Ministries release:

The material questioned in Olsen's article, "A Women's Eucharist: A Celebration of the Divine Feminine" was sent to us in good faith in response to our recent call for resources. We regret we did not realize that the material was copyright protected. Proper notifications were not included by mistake and so the ...