I can see that around the web plenty of people are confounded - aghast, even - that conservatives would have a problem with Kevin Thew Forrester, the Buddhist bishop-elect of Northern Michigan. Even Ruth Gledhill, in a column that reads more like a biography Forrester himself would submit to Wikipedia than a serious inquiry into his theology and qualifications for office, seems to be pleading for Forrester’s election to be approved.
The harumphing of our Worthy Opponents is predictable, and little explanation need be given as to why they are harumphing. Ruth’s article, on the other hand, is a glimpse into the kind of go-along-to-get-along thinking that has characterized so much of the Anglican “moderate” camp for… well, some would say for the last 450 years, but I’ll just go with the last 30 or 40. For some it is the mindset of, “Gee, I don’t know Forrester personally, so I can’t say with empirical certainty that he is a heretic, so far be it from me to judge the mind of the man on Matters as Deep as This.” In Ruth’s case it is gauzy memories of an Anglican priest father who took meditation seriously, memories transposed fondly onto Forrester in the hope, I suppose, that he will turn out not to be who he clearly is, which is someone who would be bishop of a Christian church yet not a proclaimer of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Now, I am a Ruth fan, but I have watched with dismay her steady drift to the left in this debate, and I have to call her out on the reasoning she’s using to support the approval of Forrester’s election. It amounts to the observation that certain meditative techniques used by Zen Buddhists can be used beneficially in Christian prayer. Whether this is true has never been at issue - it is true, and few conservatives will deny it or even have much of a problem with it. But in offering this as one of her reasons why Forrester’s election should be approved, she misses entirely the core of the problem with Forrester, his theology, his worship, all the way down to the mechanics of his nomination process and eventual election at Northern Michigan’s diocesan convention.
We’ve thoroughly documented the broad incompatibilities between Buddhism and Christianity, and no, trying to sneak through using the “Hey it’s cool because it’s only Zen Buddhism” excuse won’t wash. The bottom line is that Forrester has embraced something foreign and contradictory - call it a faith, call it a philosophy, call it what you will but it is not Christianity - that denies Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Whether there are overlapping philosophies or practices between Christianity and Buddhism is beside the point - we know that there are, just as there are between Christianity and many other faiths. What Ruth seems not to want to address is the glaring discrepancy between what one must embrace to be plausibly described as a Zen Buddhist, and what one must embrace to be plausibly described as a Christian, and the fact that Forrester claims to reconcile these irreconcilable things. Forrester’s protests aside, he can more than plausibly be described as a Zen Buddhist. The same cannot be said of his description as a Christian. One simply cannot embrace the doctrines of Buddhism - Zen or any other flavor - and simultaneously embrace the doctrines of Christianity, yet Forrester claims to do just that.
To put as simply as I know how, one cannot simultaneously assert that Buddhism, which denies the divinity of Jesus Christ, is true… and that Christianity, defined by the proposition that Jesus Christ is divine, is also true. It is a contradiction and an incoherence of a type that insults not just the intelligence of thinking Christians, but Christ Himself.
We’ve also documented the problems with Forrester’s nomination process, in which the diocese formed a committee that included Forrester as a member, and then put forth Forrester himself as the only candidate. If this had been done by a conservative diocese, there would be howls of derisive liberal laughter almost certainly followed by “inquiries” of an official and unpleasant type from 815.
We’ve also shown how Forrester revises the liturgy to a such a degree that it fails to meet not just the standards of orthodox Christianity, but Christianity of any recognizable form.
So in light of the copious evidence that Forrester is not simply a devout Christian who takes seriously some meditative practices that have something in common with Zen Buddhism, but a man who very clearly embraces something - whatever it is called by him or his apologists - that is antithetical to Christianity, Ruth’s piece on Forrester is all the more distressing.
Then there is the matter of exactly what, if anything, Forrester went through in his “lay ordination.” If, as Forrester claims on the one hand, he is walking the path of Buddhism and Christianity together, and then on the other hand claims:
I am not a Buddhist, or a Buddhist priest. I am someone who as a Christian is very grateful for having been taught by the Zen community how to sit.
...
“Lay ordination” has a different meaning in Buddhist practice than in the Christian tradition. The essence of this welcoming ceremony, which included no oaths, was my resolve to use the practice of meditation as a path to awakening to the truth of the reality of human suffering.
...then we are faced with a few questions that put Forrester in a difficult position.
Kevin Thew Forrester, right, and Shoken
Winecoff, Abbot of Ryumonji Zen
monastery in Iowa.
1. If he is not a Buddhist, then why is there article after article by him and about him, in the mainstream media and his own diocesan newsletter, detailing his adherence to and affection for it? (For that matter, why didn’t Ruth detect this flagrant contradiction, point it out, and ask for an explanation that actually makes sense?)
2. If he is not a Buddhist, then what was the point of “lay ordination”? While I don’t buy his insistence that lay ordination “has a different meaning in Buddhist practice than in the Christian tradition” such that it renders the comparisons nonsensical, I’m willing to accept it for the sake of argument. But even when I do, I come to the unavoidable conclusion that this is like claiming that just because one has undergone “ordination as a deacon” in the Baptist church, one is not really a Baptist. For Baptists, “ordination as a deacon” is similar to the blessing given in church to new members of the vestry. It is not remotely the same as the conferring of orders as Anglicans understand it. But the difference is of no consequence when it comes to the religious identity of the person involved in the ceremony: One does not get ordained as a Baptist deacon unless one is… a Baptist. Similarly, one does not get ordained as a Buddhist - lay or otherwise - unless one is, well… a Buddhist.
3. Now that Forrester’s election as bishop is shining a brighter light on the absurdity of claiming to be both a Christian and a Buddhist, he wants to backpedal on just how much of a Buddhist he really is. “I am not a Buddhist,” he says flatly. But everywhere we look, we find him happily doing all the things that Buddhists do: He writes articles about the wonders of Buddhism… he gives seminars and hosts retreats focused entirely on Buddhism… he receives Zen Buddhist “lay ordination”... his own bishop describes him as “walking the path of Buddhism and Christianity together.” But Kevin Thew Forrester either is, or is not, a Buddhist. If he is, then he is not a Christian. If that’s the case, then not only is he unfit to be a priest, never mind bishop, but he is trying to deceive Christians about what he truly believes. If he is not a Buddhist, then he is betraying all the Buddhists who have mentored him, as well as all those he has mentored himself.
Either way, it is hard to conclude anything other than Kevin Thew Forrester is trying to deceive Christians, or Buddhists, or both, in his bid to become the next bishop of Northern Michigan. The list of reasons his election should not be approved already includes syncretism, false teaching, and what is generously described as a “flawed” (and perhaps corrupt) nomination process. Is it fair to say that we can also add the character defects of betrayal and deliberate deceit?
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