I think a person can make this sort of exploration - but as a priest of the church -- just does not work.

I agree. The discipline of the ordination vows includes rooting oneself clearly and explicitly -- in some sense exclusively -- in the truths of a single tradition for the benefit of the ongoing life of the community built around that tradition.

That is not necessarily to dismiss other traditions, but the commitment of Christian priesthood is to view and interpret all else through the structures and practices of Christianity, and the particular tradition by which the priesthood is ordered.

As Jim rightly points out, this is the path that Merton seems to have taken.

And as a pastoral aside, this is the same kind of exclusivity we are called to preserve in the pastoral relationship as priests. . .I cannot be pastor to my best friend or my wife. . . To try to live into both disciplined relationships simultaneously diminishes both. (Though I might learn to be a better husband through my training in pastoral care, and vice versa.)

In the same way, I cannot be committed equally to two faith traditions.

Why not? Why can't two opposing truth claims be approximately correct in nonexclusive ways? Why can't I be committed equally to two, or even three, faith traditions? Surely we are big enough. I know we think we must be exclusive. But must we?

(Ed's: Thanks, Robin. We need your full name if you are going to continue in this conversation.)

"Surely we are big enough."

I don't see how our bigness has anything to do with it. These truths are external to us. It isn't a sign of my largeness of heart or spirit to hold that 2+2=4 and 5.

{Sigh}

This is just sad all around.

I believe, that if Ann Holmes Redding needs 2+2=5, then that's exactly WHO God is, for her. [God exists to make X = Not X, because where else could we go?]

...and at the same time, I also understand why The Church must insist 2+2=4, for it's ordained ministers.

Just sad, period.

JC Fisher

The question should be how much of the Christian narratives Ann Holmes Redding uses. As long as she uses the Prayer Book, her personal encounter with Islam should be irrelevant. I do not have all the facts of this case.

Religion is not a theory or hypothesis but a way of life. There is no possiblity of making a mistake when one prayers. It is not science but poetry. There are no competing truth claims here because religions claim nothing but rather, in a kind of Beatrix Potter way, exhort their members to exert themselves.

Gary Paul Gilbert

Are the two "competing truths" that (a) Jesus was a prophet (but not the son of God), and (b) he was the son of God?

If so, we've had clergy and bishops who've believed the former and not the later. I'd have thought that was more serious.

http://www.projo.com/news/content/MUSLIM_PRIEST_DEFROCKED_04-02-09_3KDTL5R_v16.37896f9.html

“I think Bishop Wolf did the right thing,” Bishop Warner [Olympia] said, while adding that “there is still part of me that hopes there will be a time when we will have ministry centers where all the Abrahamic religions — Jewish, Christian and Muslim — can come together.” Young people today are an “eclectic group,” he said and the Episcopal Church has always been a church for “seekers.”

Must our religion of choice be the winner of a competition? Surely if I am a blind man holding the trunk of an elephant, I can only be informed by another holding the leg, or even the one holding the tail. Our hope lies in inclusiveness, not exclusiveness no matter what the challenges.

It doesn't have to do with winning and losing, it has to do with making certain claims about the nature of divine truth and expecting priests to support them. I would argue that those claims should be minimal because our knowledge is imperfect and we tend to turn cultural bias into divine mandate, but if you make no truth claims, or accomodate all truth claims, you either have nothing to say about the nature of God and the world, or you have so much to say that you cannot speak coherently.

Why I am reminded of this,

http://www.episcopalcafe.com/daily/episcopal_church/orthodox_soteriology.php

We who practice the Christian tradition understand him as our vehicle to the divine. But for us to assume that God could not act in other ways is, I think, to put God in an awfully small box.

It's not really the same thing. We aren't saying she isn't a good person, that she won't be saved, etc. We are saying she can't be an Episcopal priest.

As one who enjoys training in the martial arts, I quickly learned to steer clear of any "master" who told me that he didn't do any particular style but "combined the best of all of them". Why? Because I've met real masters who have studied a single style for more decades than I've been alive who tell me they've only scratched the surface. Learning "the best" of a style only comes through decades of commitment. Therefore any claim to have combined the best of *all* of them is simply that--an empty claim.

The same is true of faith.

We cannot learn the heart of a faith by dabbling in it or experimenting with it over the course of some time. It requires both dedication and commitment. To be a Christian pastor is to embrace the dedication and commitment to walk in that faith. Yes, like Merton we can learn about our tradition in our encounter with others, but the commitment to it and committing to letting it shape us (rather than the other way around) is crucial.

Jim, I wasn't meaning to suggest that, and I was too oblique. I am meaning to suggest that Redding is like Jefferts Schori in saying we put God in too small a box.

If I am wrong, that's where I am wrong -- that she's like our presiding bishop.

Derek makes a point that I believe is on the money, and is fits in with what the presiding bishop said when she used the phrase "our vehicle to the divine." It's analogous to what I do in the study of economics -- if I spent all my time trying to appreciate all points of view I wouldn't have one worth communicating.