[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.”<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n