Anglican/Episcopal Church Officially Promotes Idol Worship
Pastor Dale Morgan
Weblog: Anglican/Episcopal Church Officially Promotes Idol Worship*
*"Women's Eucharist" calls for worship of pagan deities specifically
condemned in Scripture.*
Compiled by Ted Olsen
Imagine for one moment that you're a leader in the Anglican/Episcopal
Church USA. You know that within the next few days, a global commission
is going to release a report on how the global Anglican Communion should
respond to your church, and is likely to be critical of the ordination
of an actively homosexual man as bishop. You know, and have said
yourself, that the debate isn't just about sexuality: It's about how one
views the Bible. And you know that all eyes will be on your denomination
over the next few weeks. What do you do?
What the real leaders of the Anglican/Episcopal Church did was to take an
action that makes ordaining a homosexual man as a bishop almost a
non-issue. They started promoting the worship of pagan deities.
This is not a joke nor an overstatement. In all truth and seriousness,
leaders of the Anglican/Episcopal Church USA are promoting pagan rites to
pagan deities. And not just any new pagan deities: The
Anglican/Episcopal Church USA, though its Office of Women's Ministries,
is actually promoting the worship of idols specifically condemned in
Scripture.
"A Women's Eucharist: A Celebration of the Divine Feminine" is taken
almost completely (without attribution) from a rite from Tuatha de
Brighid, "a Clan of modern Druids … who believe in the
interconnectedness of all faiths." But who cares where it's from? Look
at what it says. Here's how it begins.
We gather around a low table, covered with a woven cloth or shawl. A
candle, a bowl or vase of flowers, a large shallow bowl filled with
salted water, a chalice of sweet red wine, a cup of milk mixed with
honey, and a plate of raisin cakes are placed on the table.
You might be wondering: What's with the raisin cakes? Is it just
Communion wafers with raisins? No.
The plate of raisin cakes is raised and a woman says,
"Mother God, our ancient sisters called you Queen of Heaven and baked
these cakes in your honor in defiance of their brothers and husbands who
would not see your feminine face. We offer you these cakes, made with
our own hands; filled with the grain of life—scattered and gathered into
one loaf, then broken and shared among many. We offer these cakes and
enjoy them too. They are rich with the sweetness of fruit, fertile with
the ripeness of grain, sweetened with the power of love. May we also be
signs of your love and abundance."
The plate is passed and each woman takes and eats a cake.
So those raisin cakes have a historical reference: Those "brothers and
husbands" banned them. Sound familiar? It's a reference to Hosea 3:1:
And the LORD said to me, "Go again, love a woman who is loved by another
man and is an adulteress, even as the LORD loves the children of Israel,
though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins."
Now there are other biblical references to raisin cakes, but this is the
only reference (except possibly this one) to them having any kind of
role in worship.
Many scholars believe they were offerings to the goddess Asherah, the
female counterpart to Baal, but in this context it may be more directly
tied to Ishtar/Ashtoreth/Astarte, the "Queen of Heaven."
"Our ancient sisters called you Queen of Heaven," says the
Anglican/Episcopal liturgy. That's a reference to Jeremiah. And not a
happy one. In Jeremiah 7, God complains, "The children gather wood, the
fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the
queen of heaven. And they pour out drink offerings to other gods, to
provoke me to anger." The liturgy's reference to defiant women
worshipping the Queen of Heaven with cakes comes directly from Jeremiah 44:
Then all the men who knew that their wives had made offerings to other
gods, and all the women who stood by, a great assembly, all the people
who lived in Pathros in the land of Egypt, answered Jeremiah: "As for
the word that you have spoken to us in the name of the LORD, we will not
listen to you. But we will do everything that we have vowed, make
offerings to the queen of heaven and pour out drink offerings to her, as
we did, both we and our fathers, our kings and our officials, in the
cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. For then we had plenty
of food, and prospered, and saw no disaster. But since we left off
making offerings to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings
to her, we have lacked everything and have been consumed by the sword
and by famine." And the women said, "When we made offerings to the queen
of heaven and poured out drink offerings to her, was it without our
husbands' approval that we made cakes for her bearing her image and
poured out drink offerings to her?"
In other words, it wasn't their brothers and husbands that the women
were defying: It was God.
And now Anglican/Episcopal Church leaders want you to do the same. Defy
God. Worship pagan deities. There is no other possible reading of this
"Eucharistic" text.
It should be noted that the pagan rite isn't on some hidden page in the
deep recesses of the Anglican/Episcopal Church's web site. The site is
actually promoting this. The main pages of the web site (there are
three: one for members, another for visitors, and a third for leaders)
all link to an Episcopal News Service article on the "The Women's
Liturgy Project." The article says, in part:
The Office of Women's Ministries is working towards creating a resource
to be used by women, men, parishes, dioceses, small groups, within the
context of a Sunday morning service, or any other appropriate setting
where the honoring of a woman's life passages and experiences beckons a
liturgical response. These can include, but are not limited to,
liturgies/rites pertaining to: menstruation, menopause, conception,
pregnancy, any form of pregnancy loss, childbirth, forms of leave
taking, and many others. … There is already a working section on the
Women's Ministries website that contains worship resources that are
currently available to be downloaded and used by all.
Go to that worship resources page, and there are only nine offerings,
the second of which is the "Women's Eucharist." Another troubling entry
is the Liturgy for Divorce, which includes this theology:
While the couple have promised in good faith to love until parted by
death, in some marriages the love between a wife and a husband comes to
an end sooner. Love dies, and when that happens we recognize that the
bonds of marriage, based on love, also may be ended . God calls us to
right relationships based on love, compassion, mutuality, and justice.
Whenever any of these elements is absent from a marital relationship,
then that partnership no longer reflects the intentionality of God.
Such a view of love and marriage is profoundly unbiblical, but at least
there's no prayer to fertility goddesses. (Commenters over Midwest
Conservative Journal are discussing both rituals.)
The Anglican Primate of Nigeria, Peter Akinola, has been explaining that
the difference between his church and the Anglican/Episcopal Church USA
isn't your standard intradenominational infighting. The Episcopal Church
(along with other western churches, he says), isn't even Christian any
more. Instead, he says, it's "embroiled in a new religion which we
cannot associate ourselves with."
One would have thought that the Anglican/Episcopal Church USA might have
argued whether it was really practicing a different religion. Instead,
their challenge to Akinola's statement might be that it's not new at
all: Their idolatry has been around since Old Testament times.