Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me

You read some things and you think, no way. But not only are they out there. There's lots of them out there. From Chalcedon. What is syncretism?

How Can a Christian Priest Be a Muslim?
Lee Duigon

Thou shalt have no other gods before me … for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God. —Exodus 20:3, 5

You would think that when an ordained Christian minister or priest publicly professes belief in a non-Christian religion, and publicly practices it, some degree of church discipline would be in order. Depending on the circumstances, the addled cleric might be subject to a formal rebuke and an exhortation to repent, or defrocked, or even excommunicated...

Rev. Dr. Ann Holmes Redding, now a congregant at St. Clement’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, made national news recently by revealing that she also worships as a Muslim at Al-Islam Center, in the same city, and has been doing so for almost a year...

Rev. Redding told The Episcopal Voice (June 2007, “On being Christian and Muslim”) that the Christian doctrine of Jesus Christ as the only begotten Son of God “is not literal,” and likened the affirmations of the Christian creeds to “fraternity hazing—you have to say these words in order to be part of the club.”...

Redding cites her “early exposure to interfaith relationships” (Episcopal Voice) as a factor in her decision to follow two religions simultaneously: baptized by an African Methodist Episcopal minister, Sunday school at an Episcopal church, Unitarian youth group, etc. She said she was introduced to Muslim prayer practice in 2006 and immediately “knew she had been wrestling with a call to Islam” (Episcopal Voice). “I was following Jesus and he led me into Islam,” she said...

In the Footsteps of Jeroboam

Syncretism, defined by R. J. Rushdoony (citing the dictionary) as “egregious compromise in religion or philosophy,” is the operative word here. Redding’s Voice interview is a muddle of feelings, confused thinking, and false theology. For instance, she finds irresistible the Muslim practice of praying five times a day—as if there were anything keeping a Christian from praying five times daily or more.

As Rushdoony writes, syncretism “is destructive of the human mind, of rationality … [One who has embraced syncretism] has lost the capacity for clear thinking.” “If a man believes that orthodox Christianity can be reconciled and united, or live in peace with, modernism, humanism, Mohammedanism, or Buddhism, that man is a syncretist, not a Christian. A syncretist has always abandoned his original position, even though he refuses to acknowledge this fact.”

Syncretism has been around for a long time, and is always offensive to God. Almost 3,000 years ago, Jeroboam I, the first king of northern Israel, installed golden idols at Bethel and at Dan because, “It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem: behold thy gods, O Israel …” (1 Kings 12:28). This fusion of Judaism and paganism, initiated by Jeroboam, “made Israel to sin” (1 Kings 15:34).

“Interfaith” is simply another name for syncretism: trying to combine all or several contradictory religions into “one path that leads to God.”...
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