[Bill,
February 23, 2009]
No kidding: Episcopal Church elects first Christian-Buddhist Bishop
Check this out: The Diocese of Northern Michigan just announced it has elected its first Buddhist-Christian bishop.
Having been a Buddhist, I also tried the whole, "I can be a Buddhist and a Christian at the same time." Eventually, I realized, no, you really can't ... unless you do some pretty serious intelletual violence to both religions. The closest you can come to integrating them is by making Buddhism the actual religion, and you use Christian symbols and rituals to achieve enlightenment. But to do that, you have to ignore an awful lot of the actual teachings of Christ. So you end up seeing Christ as a teacher, almost a Buddhist master, and re-interpret all Christology in terms of Buddhism, and ignoring or interpreting any of his teachings that contradict Buddhism as an error on Christ's part. It almost works, as long as you can keep the Christian part on a leash.
Problem is, Christ doesn't stay on a leash. If you open yourself up to Him, the gig is up. Then you realize these two religions ultimately contradict one another and you must choose. And in my humble opinion, choosing one way or another is more respectful to adherents of both faiths than trying to pretend these differences don't exist, or trying to synthesize them in a way that implies you've got it figured out better than the practitioners of both religions.
Ultimately, to get all existentialist about it, it's about good and bad faith. It's bad faith to attend a church where you don't believe its tenets. It's bad faith to attempt (and succeed) in taking over an existing church (or diocese) knowing you've re-interpreted the people's beliefs so that you don't really believe what they believe. If you believe something different — a universal church, or some kind of synthesis — have the guts to start your own church.
That's why I've always argued that my problem with Episcopalian pagans is not their beliefs — let that stand or fall with time. It's that they're in the wrong place. They're taking other people's money and churches. They're creating a new religion with rich endowments of people who believed differently. It's bad faith.
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Above, I talked about making Buddhism the religion, using Christian symbols. But what about adding a little Zen to Christian worship? It also works, if you only think about Zen not as a path to Enlightenment, but in the Robert Pirsig sense of a total commitment to quality/excellence or what we in the West might call a deep aesthetic commitment to mindful awareness of incarnated beauty that reflects the glory of God. Particularly, a reference to God reflected in the little details -- seeing the infinite in a blade of grass, as William Blake said. Thing is, it's unnecessary. Zen as I'm discussing here is already well conceptualized in the West. The only reason to refer to it as Zen is because some people influenced by eastern religions might be more comfortable hearing it described that way.
Having been a Buddhist, I also tried the whole, "I can be a Buddhist and a Christian at the same time." Eventually, I realized, no, you really can't ... unless you do some pretty serious intelletual violence to both religions. The closest you can come to integrating them is by making Buddhism the actual religion, and you use Christian symbols and rituals to achieve enlightenment. But to do that, you have to ignore an awful lot of the actual teachings of Christ. So you end up seeing Christ as a teacher, almost a Buddhist master, and re-interpret all Christology in terms of Buddhism, and ignoring or interpreting any of his teachings that contradict Buddhism as an error on Christ's part. It almost works, as long as you can keep the Christian part on a leash.
Problem is, Christ doesn't stay on a leash. If you open yourself up to Him, the gig is up. Then you realize these two religions ultimately contradict one another and you must choose. And in my humble opinion, choosing one way or another is more respectful to adherents of both faiths than trying to pretend these differences don't exist, or trying to synthesize them in a way that implies you've got it figured out better than the practitioners of both religions.
Ultimately, to get all existentialist about it, it's about good and bad faith. It's bad faith to attend a church where you don't believe its tenets. It's bad faith to attempt (and succeed) in taking over an existing church (or diocese) knowing you've re-interpreted the people's beliefs so that you don't really believe what they believe. If you believe something different — a universal church, or some kind of synthesis — have the guts to start your own church.
That's why I've always argued that my problem with Episcopalian pagans is not their beliefs — let that stand or fall with time. It's that they're in the wrong place. They're taking other people's money and churches. They're creating a new religion with rich endowments of people who believed differently. It's bad faith.
###
Above, I talked about making Buddhism the religion, using Christian symbols. But what about adding a little Zen to Christian worship? It also works, if you only think about Zen not as a path to Enlightenment, but in the Robert Pirsig sense of a total commitment to quality/excellence or what we in the West might call a deep aesthetic commitment to mindful awareness of incarnated beauty that reflects the glory of God. Particularly, a reference to God reflected in the little details -- seeing the infinite in a blade of grass, as William Blake said. Thing is, it's unnecessary. Zen as I'm discussing here is already well conceptualized in the West. The only reason to refer to it as Zen is because some people influenced by eastern religions might be more comfortable hearing it described that way.