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This was followed by a link to the page with the "Women's Eucharist" listed as the second of nine resources. The "Women's Worship Resources" (not "Dialogue Resources") page of the Office of Women's Ministries has toned down its description of the rites, but still urges readers to "use them for … gathering communities of worship."

David Roseberry, rector of Christ Church in Plano, Texas, one of the country's largest Episcopal churches, said he got much the same story when he phoned Office of Women's Ministries director Margaret Rose yesterday. In an e-mail to theologian Kendall Harmon, he recounts:

Her statement was this: "It is my personal theology that the clarity of who we are as Episcopalians is often enhanced by our engagement with things that are Other … and this is clearly Other."

I told her that the liturgy was non-Christian, non-biblical and did not represent her hopes for spreading the love of Jesus. … I told her that anything that promotes the earth as Mother is Pagan and non-Christian and non-biblical. She honestly seemed surprised by the statement … as surprised as she appears to be over the flurry of interest in the web page.

She also mentioned that the Windsor Report was out and that it encouraged this kind of dialogue and conversation, recognizing that we live in a pluralistic society. I asked her if she was authorized to open up a dialogue with a Pagan religion as a function of the ecumenical office of the Episcopal Church. She said that there were many staff people (herself among them) that represent the Episcopal Church in all kinds of dialogues with the National Council of Churches.

I asked her if her office would disavow the liturgy and disassociate themselves from it. She felt that the liturgy itself was a helpful tool in helping us to understand people of other faiths. She might, she said, put up a Muslim liturgy to engender the kind of debate and discussion that we are having about the Druid liturgy … .

That "other faiths" comment is important, because a key question—if not the key question—is how the Episcopal Church leadership (Rose included) views this liturgy and the church's relationship to it. Is it of a different faith? By promoting it, has the Episcopal Church itself become a non-Christian faith? Rose doesn't seem clear about whether this liturgy is ecumenical (of the church) or of "another faith." Perhaps she's confused because the ceremony directly references the Old Testament. But is offering sacrifices to ancient Canaanite idols antithetical to Christianity or not?

Scripture seems awfully clear on this point. "What pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God," Paul told the church at Corinth. "I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he?"

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October (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48