Bishop Elected in Episcopal Church Holds Buddhist Ordination

http://www.theird.org/NETCOMMUNITY/Page.aspx?pid=947&srcid=183

[The Institute on Religion & Democracy] 24 Feb 2009--An Episcopal priest who has received a Buddhist lay ordination has been elected bishop in the Diocese of Northern Michigan. The Rev. Kevin Thew Forrester, who has served in the diocese since 2001, was elected on the first ballot and received 88 percent of the delegate votes.

The results of the election are now sent for consent to all bishops with jurisdiction and standing committees across the Episcopal Church, in what is usually viewed as a rubber-stamp procedure.

Forrester, who has been identified by his former bishop Jim Kelsey as ‘walking the path of Christianity and Zen Buddhism together, is not the first Episcopal clergyman to practice dual faiths. In 2004, Pennsylvania priest Bill Melnyk was revealed to be a druid; while in 2007 Seattle priest Ann Holmes Redding declared that she was simultaneously an Episcopalian and a Muslim. Both Melnyk and Redding were eventually inhibited from priestly duties.