The Right Reverend John Bryson Chane, DD, Episcopal Bishop of Washington and Dean of the Washington National Cathedral, last week preached a televised Christmas sermon that was so breathtakingly brimful of theological confusion and pandering dhimmitude that I am breathless as I type this.
Rapt in wonder at the miraculous works of God, Chane asks a series of rhetorical questions: "And what was God thinking . . . when the Angel Gabriel was sent by God to reveal the Law to Moses? And what was God thinking . . . when the Angel Gabriel was sent by God to reveal the sacred Quran to the prophet Muhammad? And what was God thinking . . . when the Angel Gabriel was sent by God to reveal the birth of Jesus Christ, the Son of God?"
Chane continues: "Were these just random acts of association and coincidence or was the Angel Gabriel who appears as the named messenger of God in the Jewish Old Testament, the Christian New Testament Gospels, and the Quran of Islam, really the same miraculous messenger of God who proclaimed to a then emerging religious, global community and to us this morning that we are ALL children of the living God? And as such we are called to acknowledge that as Christians, Jews and Muslims we share a common God and the same divine messenger. And that as children of the same God, we are now called to cooperatively work together to make the world a haven for harmony, peace, equality and justice for the greatest and least among us."
Gee, that all sounds swell. Put me down for harmony, peace, equality, and justice too. But I am left wondering if Bishop Chane has actually read the Qur'an that he acknowledges as a divine revelation. While he calls Jesus the "Son of God" in this sermon, is he aware that the book he calls "the sacred Qur'an" in practically the same breath doesn't exactly approve of those who call Jesus the Son of God? "The Christians say: The Messiah is the son of Allah. That is their saying with their mouths. They imitate the saying of those who disbelieved of old. Allah (Himself) fighteth against them. How perverse are they!" (Sura 9:30). It's unlikely that anyone who really believes that that verse was revealed by God would take kindly to Chane's calling Jesus "the Son of God." Meanwhile, by affirming both, Chane has demonstrated that he himself most likely doesn't believe in much of anything.
Chane has also entangled himself in an absurdity. In his view, evidently, although his god was busy sending the Angel Gabriel to do a lot of revealing, this deity wasn't much interested in making sure his revelations were internally consistent or, therefore, particularly revelatory by any standard. In doing so, and by attempting to pander to Jews, Christians, and Muslims in one fell swoop, he has managed to make statements offensive to each group.
This kind of silliness is not a viable road to the genuine harmony, peace, equality, and justice that Chane longs for. Instead, it's the road to dhimmitude: now that he has publicly affirmed Muhammad as a prophet, Chane could easily be pressed by Muslims to discard what may remain of his Christian faith — or else accept dhimmi subservience in the name of the peace he covets. For nothing is more certain than the fact that his generosity will not be reciprocated. Many Muslim apologists make skillful use of the fashionable language of tolerance by saying that they affirm Jesus as a prophet, and why can't Christians do the same for Muhammad. But if Chane thinks this is real tolerance and that he is reciprocating, he is much mistaken, as the cases are not in fact equivalent: the Jesus that Muslims affirm has little in common with the Jesus of Christianity, and for Christians to affirm Muhammad as a prophet would be tantamount to their renouncing Christianity — since Muhammad's revelation demands adherence to propositions that are directly opposed to Christianity.
Meanwhile, anyone — Muslims as well as Jews, Christians, and others — seeking real peace would do better to seek it with integrity, not with shallow and empty-headed pandering such as that of Bishop Chane. In other words, not by constructing a fantasy world of fictional harmony, but by forthrightly acknowledging differences and looking squarely at what must be done to make genuine peaceful coexistence possible. The explicit renunciation of violent jihad theology would be a good place to start for the New Year. (Thanks to Shirley W. Madany for bringing this sermon to my attention.)
My Uncle died recently and I attended his funeral service at an Episcopal Church. This was my first vistit.
I was deeply impressed with the liturgical service, the beautiful architecture, and the beauty around me. The Book of Common Prayer is a masterpiece.
To think idiots like the Right Reverend John Bryson Chane comprise its leadership is sickening. I suppose if our instutitions are rotting at the top and bottom we little chance defend ourselves agaist the Islamofascists - in the long run.
It is almost unbelievable that a Bishop of the Episcopal Church could make the absurd statement that the Angel Gabriel revealed the Law to Moses. Go look it up in the Book of Exodus and see for yourself. After making Himself manifest to the entire people gathered at the foot of Mt. Sinai, God Himself revealed every detail of the Law to Moses. God Himself personally gave the instruction book for life on earth to Moses, without any intermediary. The idea that the Angel Gabriel was involved in this transmission is simply not supported by Scripture. Don't Episcopal Bishops read the Bible? Doesn't the Episcopal Church accept the Bible as the Word of God? The most common phrase in the first five Books of the Bible is "the Lord spoke to Moses, saying...." That's right; not an Angel, not a spirit, not a dream, not a vision: just the plain statement, "the Lord spoke to Moses..."
One can only conclude that the Bishop deliberately introduced this fanciful image in order to advance his merging the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religions into a syncretic new-agey feel-good faith.
But we don't need to make up stories about the Angel Gabriel in order to understand that we are all children of one Father, and that despite our religious differences, united in a common Brotherhood.
We know that from the Book of Genesis, which tells us that all mankind sprang from the union of one Adam and one Eve.
Quaere: How does one recall a bishop, or possibly sue him for theological malpractice? He strikes me as one more of the boys (and girls) up to his neck in the interfaith racket,where actual doctrinal differences are ignored. In the case of Islam, those differences are dangerous, even deadly, for all non-Muslims. The Hindu polytheist may seemingly be far distant from one's "fellow monotheist" the Muslim -- but the real division is between Islam, which in doctrine and practice has been unremittingly aggressive and hostile ("It is the duty of Islam to dominate, and not to be dominated")toward all other religions -- Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Buddhism (which was wiped out of India by the Muslim invasion), Confucians, and so on. When will a sufficient number of non-Muslims realize what threatens all of them, as 1350 years of history amply demonstrate the working out of both Jihad and what logically follows upon it (death, conversion, or dhimmitude)? This year? In 10 years, when the Muslim population of western Europe has swollen still more? When, precisely? And when will both non-Muslim polities, and peoples, create those conditions (including a total ban on Muslim migration to Infidel states-- there is no obligation for non-Muslim civilization to commit suicide, after all)-- but on other, less formal, means of making life unattractive for Muslims in Infidel countries (private economic boycotts, refusal of building permits to mosques, and the thousand ways to inhibit and constrict the growth of Islam)? This is a matter of self-defense. The argument that "demography is destiny" has already lead to the asphyxiation of Christianity throughout the Arab Muslim world (except for Maronites and Copts); it will likely lead to the ultimate disappareance of Israel, and of any non-Muslim presence in the Holy Land, unless there is forceful removal of Muslims from that area (and why should one shirk from contemplating what has been an element of statecraft, and survival, since time began -- cf. the removal of 3.5 million Germans from the Sudetenland by the "tolerant" Czech government post-WW II. The war of self-defense against the Jihad (and not merely the "violent Jihad") must proceed on the same levels -- economic, propagandistic, and demographic - as the Jihadis themselves employ. Military combat is only one portion of that defense. It is a war to be fought in every way, using every tool possible. But it begins with self-education, with learning both the doctrine of Islam, expressed in Qur'an and hadith, and studyhiang how that doctrine worked out in all the lands of Muslim conquest, from Spain to the Gobi Desert.
Scrappleface says:
"Episcopal Church Splits Over
Ordination of Openly-Christian Bishop
-- Narrow-minded cleric calls Jesus “the only way”"