Monday, June 18, 2007
HEAD, BETS COVERED
Meet Rev. Ann Holmes Redding - or, as she might otherwise be known, Abu Sybil:
Shortly after noon on Fridays, the Rev. Ann Holmes Redding ties on a black headscarf, preparing to pray with her Muslim group on First Hill.
On Sunday mornings, Redding puts on the white collar of an Episcopal priest.
She does both, she says, because she’s Christian and Muslim.
Christmas ham must be a struggle.
Redding, who until recently was director of faith formation at St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral, has been a priest for more than 20 years. Now she’s ready to tell people that, for the last 15 months, she’s also been a Muslim — drawn to the faith after an introduction to Islamic prayers left her profoundly moved.
The ham deal aside, other theological issues are involved:
“There are tenets of the faiths that are very, very different,” said Kurt Fredrickson, director of the doctor of ministry program at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California ... “I don’t think it’s possible” to be both, Fredrickson said, just like “you can’t be a Republican and a Democrat.”
Redding, who will begin teaching the New Testament as a visiting assistant professor at Seattle University this fall, has a different analogy: “I am both Muslim and Christian, just like I’m both an American of African descent and a woman. I’m 100 percent both.”
Not exactly a parallel analogy, that. One can easily be both an an American of African descent and a woman; it’s a little more difficult to be both an American of African descent and, let’s say, a Swedish bookshelf.
She says she felt an inexplicable call to become Muslim, and to surrender to God — the meaning of the word “Islam.”
“It wasn’t about intellect,” she said.
You don’t say.
(Via Sandi)
UPDATE. “It’s a bit like trying to travel simultaneously along the Pacific Highway and the Hume Highway - not only is it impossible to do both, but you end up in very different destinations!”
UPDATE II. As Mark Steyn reminds us, Scrappleface predicted this four years ago.