[Thew] Forrester, who is 51 and has been an Episcopal priest since 1994, insists Zen Buddhism is compatible with his faith. “It’s not a matter of holding two faiths. There’s one faith and it’s Christianity,” he told a local Michigan newspaper. “The gift is that that faith is deepened by my meditative practice and I’m eternally grateful to Zen Buddhism for teaching me that practice and receiving me as an Episcopal priest.” Forrester insists that his faith allows him to be “open to receive the truth and the beauty and goodness, and the wisdom from the other religious traditions of the world, and to be in dialogue with them.”
The diocese to which Forrester has been elected bishop has only 27 churches, has lost 30 percent of its membership, and now has fewer than 2000 souls, fewer than 700 of whom actively attend church. But consent to his election by the Episcopal Church will elevate him in the global Anglican communion, whose more than 800 bishops preside over nearly 80 million communicants. An Anglican bishop in Nigeria or Sudan may preside over many tens of thousands of members and arduously commute, sometimes by bicycle, across many hundreds of miles of dirt roads. Small, liberal, and affluent dioceses in the U.S. can afford to be more esoteric in their selection of bishops, who have fewer responsibilities.
[blockquote]She insisted Zen Buddhism could be “practiced without detriment to doctrine” and there are “a number of bishops” in the Episcopal Church who “engage in and have experience of Buddhist practices of mediation.[/blockquote] No names mentioned here but she is probably correct. I’m not sure if their Christology would be as heterodox as KTF though.


Thinking about it, it’s possibly accurate to say that KTF’s Buddhism has not interfered with his Christianity. Indeed, it’s likely the causality ran the other way; that his multiple Christian heresies are what led him to Buddhism.
Either one doctrine or the other but not both!!
The only reason Mr. Forrester is having difficulty with consents is the existence of articles such as this. Had this lunacy not been exposed by orthodox bloggers, especially those at Stand Firm, this simply would have happened. In reading some of the surprisingly orthodox statements of otherwise less-than-orthodox bishops as they explain their unwillingness to consent, one can’t help but wondering if perhaps the public amazement that a “church” could consider such a thing made them think about where they’ve taken the Episcopal Church. The rumored direction to bishops from 815 to stay quiet about their votes suggests they also understand the disinfecting power of sunlight, and don’t like it one bit.
Genpo Forrester’s problem is not simply that he received Zen Jukai, which is a small matter compared to his willingness to revise established Christian doctrine, as abundantly shown in the texts of not only his sermons and other writings but in his self-concocted Baptism rite, which is of extremely dubious validity. As well, he revises the Buddhism he encounters with equal verve, perverting its doctrines also to make them palatable to his rather minimal understanding of Zen. I know several TEC and Roman Catholic priests who have studied with Buddhist teachers, but none of them shows such a degree of ignorance and disrespect for Christianity and Buddhism that Kevin Forrester has displayed in his various public statements and writings.
#5…. I think you are right, and not only with the case of the Buddhist Bishop. It’s also almost certainly the case with, for example, the Druid TEC Priest and the Muslim TEC priestess.
There simply has not been a single case that I know of in the last 7 years where any kind of critical or restraining action has been taken by a moderate TEC bishop against a heretical priest — and where the action was not preceded by a period of huge exposure by the orthodox blogosphere first. Only when it becomes a colossal embarrassment and gets taken up the mainstream press do any moderate bishops step forward to do anything.
Of course, it might be in one or more of those cases that the timing is pure coincidence. MAYBE the moderate bishop was planning all along to do something, and would have done so even if no conservatives had said anything. Maybe. What seems certain is there is is no documented evidence that this has happened, not even once.
My apologies… in my last post I meant to reference RomeAnglican #4. Not post #5.
Unfortunately, the article – which is fine – ends sloppily. Druidism, Islam and the practices of Zen are different. As Briedenthal noted, the issue is not practices (I’m sure a Christian could worship in the woods, or pray kneeling 5x a day toward Jerusalem, or engage using zen prayer), but confusion about the person of Jesus.
#6 – Jon – your complaint is fascinating, but the fact is that bishops rarely ask priests about what they believe. Parishioners rarely ask priests what they believe. And priests rarely ask parishioners what they believe. There are a lot of expectations, perhaps, and presumptions. It’s not like bishops have priests on their GPS trackers and are monitoring their newsletters for heresies.
Hey JW…. thanks for saying that:
“the issue is not practices (I’m sure a Christian could worship in the woods, or pray kneeling 5x a day toward Jerusalem, or engage using zen prayer), but confusion about the person of Jesus.”
Absolutely right. Those who have been defending Forrester have used this tactic and it is dishonest.
Regarding your other point… I apologize if I was unclear. An analogy might help. Suppose we have a city where some white collar crime is going on. Officially the moderate mainline officials (mayor, city council, DA, chief of police, etc.) all decry it. But there is criticism made by some dissident groups that some or many of these moderate pillars of the community are actually sympathetic to the white collar criminals — and the reason why they are so rarely found out and punished is that there is a desire on the part of the city’s leading lights NOT to know, to avert their eyes so to speak.
Now suppose one more thing. Suppose that somebody does a bit of detective work and discovers that 100% of the time — no exceptions — it is always this dissident citizen group who has to do all the work at discovering the criminal, building a case against him, contacting the newspapers to publish the results, and 100% of the time it is only when the newspaper publicity gets so horribly embarrassing for the mayor or chief of police or city councilman that if they wait one more day to say something it will seem virtually certain that they tacitly approve — only then do they step forward and say something. It would make any reasonable person a bit skeptical about the purity of their motices, yes?
So what I am saying is that if we had ANY documented cases of moderate bishops even once responding earlier than the very last acceptable moment, that would be encouraging. And indeed I’d love to know about these cases — I would actually love to be mistaken here. But I simply don’t know of any.