I think we found a winner for the "Idiot of the Year Award"

From The Seattle Times:

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.

Episcopal priest. You don't really have to go any further than that. But it might be interesting:

She does both, she says, because she's Christian and Muslim.

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.

By the way, in the English language a female priest is called a "priestess". Words mean things and priest is masculine gender and priestess is feminine gender.

Her announcement has provoked surprise and bewilderment in many, raising an obvious question: How can someone be both a Christian and a Muslim?

The answer is that you can't. Muslims believe that God is a unitary being, not a trinity. They also believe that God does not beget and is not begotten. Christians, on the other hand, believe that God is a trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They believe that God the Son, the second person of the Trinity assumed a human body and nature when the Holy Spirit, at the command of God the Father, impregnated the Virgin Mary.

You cannot be a Christian and deny the immaculate conception and virgin birth of Christ and you cannot be a Muslim and accept them. Her "I'm a Christian and a Muslim" claim is an insult to people of both faiths who take their scriptures seriously.

As a Christian I am not so much offended by her apostasy as I am by her sheer stupidity.

As much as she loves her church, she has always challenged it. She calls Christianity the "world religion of privilege."

I'm sure the Christians who were coated with tar and set on fire to light Emperor Claudius' garden parties would have agreed. As would the Christians who were sent to the GULAG or Red Chinese prisons. I also know that the Christians living in Islamic countries must see themselves as members of a "religion of privilege".

She has never believed in original sin. And for years she struggled with the nature of Jesus' divinity.

I'm sure she denies original sin and doubts the deity of Christ since those are things that make you a real Christian, and she obviously isn't.

She found a good fit at St. Mark's [I'm sure she did], coming to the flagship of the Episcopal Church in Western Washington in 2001. She was in charge of programs to form and deepen people's faith until March this year when she was one of three employees laid off for budget reasons. The dean of the cathedral said Redding's exploration of Islam had nothing to do with her layoff. [I'm sure it didn't, see the part about St. Mark's being a "good fit"]

There were moments when practicing Islam seemed like coming home.

In Seattle's Episcopal circles, Redding had mixed largely with white people. "To walk into Al-Islam and be reminded that there are more people of color in the world than white people, that in itself is a relief," she said.

Here we get to the crux of the matter. Redding finds her identity as a black person to be of greater importance than her identity as a Christian (not all that surprising since she isn't a Christian). In this she is no different from whites in pseudo-Christian racist cults like Christian Identity or the Aryan Nations. She is no more "saved" than they are and no more destined for Heaven than they are.

Like I say. It isn't so much the apostasy that turns my stomach. It's just the damn stupidity.