My comments:
The first part of this piece is
about the labyrinth which may not be of interest if you haven't seen this
push. I characterize the labyrinth as walking around in circles while
change is taking place. Others see it as spiritual. The last part
deals with beliefs that religious leadership on many sides is accepting as being
authentic spirituality. One can get very involved in "spirituality" which
ignores day to day morality while allowing its' followers to feel "spiritually" superior
and connected with a larger community. Morality deals with how we treat
others. "Spirituality" can be an individual person's
ego-centered comfort. This message goes out to a small number of
members of various religious groups. Ask yourselves where your leadership
stands with regard to morality, how you treat others outside of your
group. Every person on this earth is one of God's creations, no matter
where they stand at any point in their lives. Treat them as such.
Jews and Christians, I implore you to fight spiritual views if you are so
inclined while acting under the "Thou shalt not... " commandments yourself
and challenging others to follow the same. While we, small in number
as we are may not be able to influence the future, at least we will be able to
live with ourselves.
=================================================================================
From Lee
Penn
Please forward this as widely as possible (or, you may post it
on your web site), without making any changes to the Christian Challenge
story in this e-mail. It provides an overview of the the growth of New Age
spiritual movements in the Episcopal Chuch in the US (ECUSA), and shows bishops'
support for these movements.
Lee Penn
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lee Penn
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
STRANGE "DIVERSITIES"
(Or, The Episcopal Church Welcomes You)
By Lee Penn
The Christian Challenge
August 1, 2003
STRANGE NEW FORMS OF SPIRITUALITY have gained a foothold
within the Episcopal
Church in the United States (ECUSA) - the Labyrinth-walking
fad, the weird
eclectic spirituality practiced at the Cathedral of St. John
the Divine in New
York City, and the "Creation Spirituality" promoted by Matthew
Fox, the
renegade Dominican whom California Bishop William Swing
received as an Episcopal
priest in 1994.
All these new movements have set up shop in ECUSA with little
organized
resistance, and with the open support of members of the ECUSA
hierarchy. The
leaders of these spiritual ventures all support Bishop Swing's
controversial United
Religions Initiative (URI). ECUSA's theological troubles, in
other words,
extend well beyond the sexual issues that are grabbing today's
headlines.
At the Episcopal General Convention now underway in
Minneapolis, today's
"Morning of Prayer" included several ways to reflect on
"reconciliation,"
including "an outdoor labyrinth."
But Bishop Swing's Grace Cathedral is the center of the
modern-day
Labyrinth-walking fad that has spread through New Age
workshops, mainline Protestant
churches, and Roman Catholic retreat centers and convents. The
leader of this
movement is Lauren Artress, an Episcopal priest who runs
Veriditas - also known
as the Labyrinth Project.
Artress, Canon for Special Ministries at Grace Cathedral, says
that she first
encountered the Labyrinth in January 1991, when she decided to
"return to a
Mystery School seminar with Dr. Jean Houston, an
internationally known
psychologist, author, and scholar whom I studied with in
1985." (In the 1990s,
Houston was best known to the public as the guru who helped
Hillary Clinton contact
the spirit of Eleanor Roosevelt.)
Artress says, "as soon as I set foot into the labyrinth I was
overcome with
an almost violent anxiety"; the next morning, she "awoke,
distressed from a
dream of having a heart attack." Nevertheless, she has devoted
herself since then
to spreading the labyrinth walk as a "spiritual tool" for all
faiths.
Labyrinths were built into some medieval Cathedrals in Western
Europe before
1500, but no documentation survives to show how - or whether -
Catholics used
labyrinths as part of their public liturgies or private
devotions. After
1500, most labyrinths were removed from cathedral floors; the
Chartres labyrinth
is one of the few that has survived from the Middle Ages to
the present day. It
went unused - and was usually covered with chairs for
worshippers - until
Artress began taking pilgrims to Chartres in the
1990s.
Those who resurrect the labyrinth now are making up a new
religious tradition
in ancient costume, as the Neopagans have done since World War
II and as the
Freemasons did after 1717.
The labyrinth movement has long been intertwined with the URI.
Barbara
Hartford, a URI staff member in San Francisco, accompanied
Artress on her first
visit to the Chartres labyrinth in the early 1990s. Artress
also acknowledges
Sally Ackerly, who has been a URI staffer, as one of those who
provided "help in
launching the labyrinth."
Since 1995, labyrinth walks have been common at URI events -
from many of the
URI-sponsored "religious cease fire" events held at the time
of Y2K, to the
most recent URI Global Assembly, held in Rio de Janeiro in the
summer of 2002
(attended by, among others, Canada's Bishop of New
Westminster, Michael Ingham,
who recently oversaw the first same-sex blessing rite in his
diocese).
As promoted by Artress, the labyrinth movement is New Age in
form and
content. In Walking A Sacred Path, her foundational book on
the movement, Artress
says, "The labyrinth introduces us to the idea of a wide and
gracious path. It
redefines the journey to God: from a vertical perspective that
goes from earth
up to heaven to a horizontal perspective in which we are all
walking the path
together."
"When I am in the center of the labyrinth … I pause to honor
and bring into
my being first the mineral consciousness, then the vegetable,
then animal,
human, and angelic. Finally I come to rest in the
consciousness of the Unknown,
which is the mystery, the divine pattern of evolution that is
unfolding." She
continues, "When walking the labyrinth, you can feel that
powerful energies
have been set in motion. The labyrinth functions like a
spiral, creating a vortex
in its center."
With Artress' New Age cosmology comes unorthodox theology - as
shown by the
following lifts from her book:
"The labyrinth is a large, complex spiral circle which is an
ancient symbol
for the Divine Mother, the God within, the Goddess, the Holy
in all of
creation. Matriarchal spirituality celebrates the hidden and
the unseen .… For many of
us the feminine aspect of the Divine has been painfully absent
from our
lives, our spirituality, and our Western culture. The Divine
feminine is often the
missing piece for which both women and men are
searching...
"This Yahweh is supposed to have been the God that created all
of the natural
order, usurping the role of the Mother, the creator of life.
Yahweh, God the
Father, is the only version of the Transcendent God that is
offered in Western
Christianity. He is seen as the first cause of all things, the
God of
history. He is a faraway God whom we do not know personally.
He does not seem to want
to know us, either...
"May we lead a spiritual revolution that includes us all,
relies on inner
wisdom, accepts the guidance of a wisdom tradition, and
recognizes compassion as
its guiding principle. Let us allow the Father and Mother God
to unite in
sacred mystery. Let us build a world community in which all
people have the
opportunity to create meaning in their own lives."
The literature produced by Veriditas (the Labyrinth Project)
since 1995 is as
heterodox as Artress' book. The project's publications
assiduously avoid
providing the specific Christian content that anyone could get
from the Lord's
Prayer, the Creed, the Rosary, the Stations of the Cross (a
Catholic walking
meditation on the Passion of Our Lord), or the Jesus Prayer.
In the Labyrinth
Project newsletters published in between 1996 and 2001, there
is no mention of the
Trinity, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, the Empty Tomb,
God the Father,
or God as Lord and King. The words - and the concepts - of
sin, divine
judgment, heaven, hell, repentance, redemption, and salvation
are likewise absent.
The Project's newsletters rarely mentioned Jesus.
This is no accident; the mission of Veriditas is not to
promote a
specifically Christian use of the labyrinth. Instead, as
Artress said in 1995, "the
labyrinth is a universal devotional tool. Anyone from any
faith can walk it and
find refreshment for the soul and renewal of
spirit."
In 1996, Artress proposed weekend labyrinth retreats as a way
for "all to
find healing, self-knowledge and our soul assignments and to
continue weaving the
Web of Creation." She added that the Labyrinth is "a perfect
spiritual tool
for helping our global community to order chaos in ways that
take us to the
vibrant center of our being. You walk to the center of the
labyrinth and there
at the center you meet the Divine."
In 2000, Artress wrote of the effects of this tool: "I'm
surprised by how
perfect the labyrinth is for our times. It provides a fluid
pattern that allows
the structure between body, mind and spirit to break down.
That is a tremendous
offering at this time, because we are so divided in this
world. The fact that
people who walk the labyrinth can loosen their strictures and
soften their
boundaries is truly amazing."
This all-purpose spiritual tool has the approval of the
highest authorities
in the Episcopal Church. In 1999, 2000, and 2001, Phoebe
Griswold - the wife of
ECUSA' s Presiding Bishop - led labyrinth pilgrimages to
Chartres Cathedral,
under the auspices of the Labyrinth Project; she also
published an article on
the labyrinth of Chartres in the Winter 2001 issue of Anglican
Theological
Review. As of 2001, thirteen Episcopal cathedrals had
labyrinths, "including
St. John the Divine in New York, National Cathedral in
Washington and St.
Mark's in Seattle." Grace Cathedral, San Francisco--the seat
of Bishop Swing--has
two labyrinths. One, a large rug with the labyrinth design, is
inside the
cathedral near the Baptismal font. The other, made of terrazzo
stone and open 24
hours a day, is in the plaza outside the cathedral entrance,
between the
cathedral and the diocesan office.
The labyrinth movement has gained many followers outside the
Episcopal
Church, as well. In early 2003, the San Francisco Chronicle
reported, "Millions of
people have walked 1,800 labyrinths around the country, with
1,100 people
trained specifically to teach others how to walk them. Dozens
of labyrinths have
been built in the Bay Area." Whether they know it or not,
these seekers are
being led toward the "Divine feminine," and away from
God.
-More Weird Spirituality-
If the labyrinth is not to your taste, how about some Egyptian
and Voodoo
gods?
Another New Age Anglican supporter of the URI is the Very Rev.
James Parks
Morton, formerly the dean of the Episcopal Cathedral of St.
John the Divine in
New York City, and now president of the Interfaith Center of
New York.
While at St. John the Divine, Morton said, "The language of
the 'Sacred
Earth' has got to become mainline." Morton acted on this
belief by holding a St.
Francis Day communion service in 1993 that invoked the gods
Yemanja, Ra, Ausar,
and Obatala during a chant just before the bread and wine were
brought to the
altar; the celebrant was then-New York Episcopal Bishop
Richard Grein.
(Yemanja is an Afro-Brazilian goddess of the sea; Ra is the
Egyptian sun god;
Ausar - also known as Osiris and the Green Man - is the
Egyptian god of life and
death; Obatala is the Voodoo "Father of Wisdom.") It was from
the pulpit of
Morton's cathedral in 1979 that James Lovelock first publicly
announced the Gaia
Hypothesis - that the earth as a whole is a living, conscious
organism.
Morton has worked to spread the Green gospel worldwide; he
"co-founded the
National Religious Partnership for the Environment, a group
that has reached
over 53,000 congregations of every faith across America with
the ideas of sacred
ecology and environmental responsibility." He has also been a
board member of
the Earth Charter Project and of Global Green, USA - the
U.S.affiliate of
Gorbachev's Green Cross International. Morton was a
co-chairman of the
Parliamentary Earth Summit, held in 1992 in conjunction with
the UN Conference on
Environment and Development; he filled the same role for the
"Wisdom Keepers II"
conference, held in conjunction with the 1996 UN Conference on
World Settlement.
-OutFoxed-
Last but not least, there are the activities of Matthew Fox, a
former
Dominican priest who was received as an Episcopal priest by
Bishop Swing in December
1994.
In 1995, Swing told the Diocesan Convention, "this year
Matthew Fox and I are
gathering an ecumenical group to create an alternative liturgy
for young
adults." Swing lent $85,000 of diocesan funds to help Fox
establish the
University of Creation Spirituality, and joined former Gov.
Jerry Brown in dedicating
the new university in August 1996.
As of the spring of 2003, the school had about 200 students
enrolled in its
doctor of ministry program. At the 1997 diocesan convention,
Swing praised
Fox's "total exploration of the power of God in the goodness
of creation" at the
University of Creation Spirituality, adding that "The
experiment is worthwhile
and aims at tomorrow and forever."
Fox leads syncretic worship services that are consistent with
the ideology of
the URI, which he also supports. He says, "The Techno Cosmic
Mass (TCM) has
been up and running for five years in Oakland...By altering
the form of worship
through taking in the elements of rave celebrations, three
things happen:
First, new life flows through the ancient liturgical formulas,
and second, ravers
are relieved of the drug aspect of raves and learn they can
get high on
worship itself. Third, the priesthood is not projected so
exclusively onto a single
minister but everyone participates in midwifing the grace of
the event (no
vicarious prayer!). Because everyone dances, everyone offers
the priestly
sacrifice…
"Themes for the Mass, which attracts not only many kinds of
Christians but
also Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Taoists, Jews, pagans and
goddess people, are
chosen consciously," Fox says. "They include: The Green Man;
Imagination,
Dreams and Visions; the Return of the Divine Feminine (where
we dance in the
context of 400 images of the goddess from all the world's
traditions including of
course the Black Madonna and Mary from the West); the
Celebration of the Sacred
Masculine, Gaia (usually on Mother's Day); the African
Diaspora, the Wisdom of
Rumi and the Sufi Tradition, Kabbalah and the Jewish Mystical
Tradition,
Feast of Lights (in December), Celtic Spirituality, Flowers,
Plants and Trees, the
Holiness of Animals, Our Lady of Guadalupe, The Sacredness of
Our Bodies and
more. The themes are of universal attraction just as dancing
is and worship
is. Dancing of course takes us into our lower charkas [sic]
where we literally
connect with the earth and so this kind of worship truly
serves an ecological
era."
Each month, more than 1,200 people attend these services,
which are held in a
former ballroom in Oakland, California. Two observers of
trends in American
religion - one of whom is the San Francisco Chronicle's
religion reporter - say
that Fox's "creation spirituality" has "found an eager
audience among lapsed
Catholics of the baby-boom generation."
Matthew Fox described the Planetary Mass that occurred at
Grace Cathedral on
Reformation Sunday, October 29, 1994. There was a sun altar
and a moon altar,
used in a "Mass" where sin was "renamed:"
"It was like being in a forest, where every direction one
turned there was
beauty and something interesting to behold. This included not
only the singers,
dancers, and rappers … but also the projections on large video
screens, on
television sets, on a huge globe suspended over the beautiful
altars (one a sun
altar, the second a crescent moon altar). On the screens were
hummingbirds
hovering, galaxies spinning, flowers opening, humans marching,
protesting,
embracing and polluting (sin was present and indeed renamed
for us at the Mass).
Life was there in all its panoply of forces, good and not so
good, human and
more than human." Perhaps it's just as well that Fox did not
name the "more than
human," "not so good" forces that attended this service.
Bishop Swing was present at Fox's 1994 rave liturgy, and loved
it. The
bishop said, "the Mass reminds him 'of an experience I had as
a 9-year old boy in
West Virginia, coming to a sense of God through Nature. That
gets so layered
over by generations of study and theology, but this Mass leads
one back toward
that great awe.' Swing...bobbing to the techno-music, says
it's 'so nice to
see the church with a new song and a new language.'" He added:
"The whole
business of having the Eucharist in the context of Nature, and
the planets, and the
unfolding of life is a context that has to happen. This is
probably around the
time of the genesis of liturgies like this, and I'm sure that
there will be
more and more. It's coming … So we brought a lot of people in
their 20s and 30s
who don't go to church, and they were struck by this. I love
it. I think
we're on our way."
Fox's teachings have led other Anglican leaders to greater
sympathy for New
Age beliefs. George Carey, who was Archbishop of Canterbury
from 1991 through
2002, "said he had initially been 'hostile' to New Age ideas
but had come to
appreciate their emphasis on creation and the environment. He
told a conference
on new religious movements at the London School of Economics
that the Church
had much to learn from New Age spirituality. He first thought
New Age was a
muddle of beliefs at odds with mainstream Christianity until
he read Christian
writers such as Matthew Fox on the subject."
Here follow some examples of the theology supported by ECUSA's
Bishop Swing:
--- Fox has said that his theological agenda is to overturn
Christian
doctrine as it has been understood since the first ecumenical
Council at Nicaea:
"What is the rediscovery of the Cosmic Christ if not a
deconstruction of the
'power Christology' that launched the Christian empire in the
Nicean [sic] Council
in the fourth century and an effort to reconnect to the older,
biblical
tradition, of Christ as cosmic wisdom present in all beings?"
--- Fox quotes Shiva, "creator and destroyer of things" and
"lord of the
dance," as saying: "The phallos is identical with me. It draws
my faithful to me
and therefore must be worshipped;" Fox then says, "This is
Cosmic Christ
language."
--- He also identified the Virgin Mary as a goddess: "As far
as the Goddess
tradition goes, for years I've recognized that the Goddess in
the Catholic
tradition was, of course, Mary.…Recently, I taught a class
entitled the 'Goddess
and the City,' about how things were in the 12th century. As
Mary, the Goddess
sat on a throne, ruling the universe with justice and
compassion, as well and
the intellectual and artistic life of the medieval European
city." (Leave it
to a radical ex-Catholic to lend support to the Fundamentalist
canard that
Catholics worship the Theotokos.)
While not (yet) "mainstream," certainly, all of the foregoing
is nonetheless
included in the "diversity" in ECUSA proclaimed by its liberal
leaders.
----------------------------
The foregoing is based on a chapter in a book-length analysis
of the United
Religions Initiative and the New Age movement, to be published
later this year
by the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, a research
organization
that monitors international organizations' activities from a
pro-life, Catholic
perspective.
The sources used in this story include, among others: Lauren
Artress' book
Walking a Sacred Path, newsletters and leaflets issued by the
Labyrinth Project
between 1996 and 2001, documents from the Labyrinth Project
web site
(http://www.gracecathedral.org/labyrinth/index.shtml), the spring 1995 issue of Grace
Cathedral Magazine, articles from the San Francisco Chronicle
about the
Labyrinth movement (Don Lattin, "Leader of labyrinth movement
builds new empire upon
sand," San Francisco Chronicle, May 13, 2001, and Heather
Knight, "The
peaceful path: In troubled times, more people turn to
labyrinths to walk their
worries away," San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 28, 2003), Terry
Mattingly's report on
the St. Francis Day service at the Cathedral of St. John the
Divine in 1993
("Liturgical Dances With Wolves 1993: Ten Years As An
Episcopalian - A Progress
Report," http://tmatt.gospelcom.net/tmatt/freelance/wolves.htm), articles
from the Pacific Church News (the magazine published by the
Episcopal Diocese of
California) from 1996 through 2002, two books by Matthew Fox
(The Coming of
the Cosmic Christ and Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the
Flesh), articles from
1995 issues of Fox's magazine Creation Spirituality, and
Victoria Combe,
"Carey 'has learned' from the New Age," London Telegraph,
April 20, 2001, on-line
at
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/04/20/ncarey20.xml. Another valuable resource on the Labyrinth movement is Mark Tooley,
"Maze
Craze: Labyrinths Latest Fad for Spiritual Seekers,"
Touchstone, September
2000 (on-line at
http://www.touchstonemag.com/docs/issues/13.7docs/13-7pg46.html). A full list of sources is available from the author.
----
Permission to circulate the foregoing electronically is
granted, provided
that there are no changes in the headings or
text.
END
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