Posted 9:32 AM by Robert

Episcopal Church Appoints First Openly-Muslim Bishop, by Scott Ott

Bishops in the Episcopal Church today approved the election of the first openly-Muslim bishop in the church's history.The Islamic cleric, who rejects the deity of Jesus Christ, received an overwhelming majority of the vote.A spokesman for the Episcopal Church said the move demonstrates, "Our church is open to all people, regardless of their beliefs, or whether they accept the teachings of the Bible."The election of the Muslim bishop comes as the church stands ready to approve its first homosexual Bishop, V. Gene Robinson. Later today, the bishops plan to vote on the election of the church's first openly-atheist bishop.

Last of the true believers, By John Lloyd

When the former foreign secretary Robin Cook died, he was given a service in St Giles Cathedral, in his native Edinburgh, one of the historic worshipping places of the Church of Scotland. The former Episcopalian Primate of Scotland and Bishop of Edinburgh, Richard Holloway, took the service. He smiled broadly as he described it - "Here was I, an agnostic Anglican, taking the service in a Presbyterian church, for a dead atheist politician. And I thought that was just marvellous." ... Holloway had long been seen as a man living and ministering at the very edge of where religion meets benign disbelief. He publishes a slim volume of reflections most years; the latest is an effort at reconciliation of the human with what he calls "the massive indifference of the universe". ... Holloway's vision is what Christianity in Britain tends to become: a repository of presumed goodness and wisdom which has no, or at best a very distant, God, but owes a lot to Him.... He is in a line of doubting prelates: infamous in the 1960s was another Anglican bishop, John Robinson, whose book, Honest to God, sought the same "Out There" space as Holloway. Since this was at a time when it was still thought important that bishops believe in God, it provoked a storm of controversy because of its insistence that God had (perhaps) become unnecessary.