Guess what: You can’t be a Muslim and a Christian and a priest at the same time after all

Here is some more background to her story and St. Marks, the church where she served. A few choice quotes:

In a tremor atop Capitol Hill, but felt throughout Seattle’s faith community, two women priests and an arts administrator have been severed from the staff at St. Mark’s Cathedral.

The Lenten shake-up in what St. Mark’s Dean Robert Taylor described as a “magnificent team” resulted from a budget shortfall at the Episcopal cathedral. The Revs. Janet Campbell and Ann Holmes Redding left the staff Sunday, just two weeks before Easter.

Redding was director of faith formation and in charge of preparing those who will be baptized, confirmed and received into the church at the Easter Vigil service on Holy Saturday.

In carefully worded e-mails, Campbell and Redding declined to discuss their departure from the cathedral staff. “I’m sure you’ll understand when I say that I am not at liberty to answer any questions about the staff layoffs,” Campbell wrote.

“Out of concern for the St. Mark’s community, I must decline to make any comment,” Redding wrote.

I don’t know as if this move was a “tremor.” Perhaps it was more than budget cuts that made it an easy decision to lay her off. They may have been having trouble with her religious “outlook” and didn’t want to make it a public issue.

A building once foreclosed, and used for storage by the military during World War II, St. Mark’s has emerged as one of the 10 most-attended Episcopal churches in America. About 1,500 people find their way to the “Holy Box” each Sunday.

Several of the country’s big Episcopal congregations are conservative: Christ Church in Plano, Texas, and Truro Church in Fairfax, Va., have severed their ties to the American church after the installation of a non-celibate gay, the Rt. Rev. Eugene Robinson, as Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire.

St. Mark’s is a citadel of religious liberalism. A protégé of South Africa’s Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Taylor is himself gay. He has been the chairman of a King County task force on elimination of homelessness.

The cathedral hosts same-sex commitment ceremonies and is home to a weekly Eucharist co-sponsored with Integrity, the gay-lesbian ministry of the Episcopal Church. St. Mark’s is currently hosting (just below the dean’s window) the Tent City homeless encampment.

Given its role in the community, the cathedral rests on surprisingly slender financial foundations.

Its principal support comes from pledges by 621 families and individuals. The cathedral has 135 new so-called “pledging units” this year, but at least 140 families or households who pledged last year have not renewed their financial support.

“We were at 653 pledging households last year. We have not heard from about 100 households who pledged last year or the year before, this apart from people who have moved away or died,” said Taylor.

So we have a church with very high attendance numbers, yet donations and financial support is dropping. Sounds like they try to minister to the “least” in society, but have wandered away from Scripture and are losing the people who donate most of the funding.

If you are ever in Seattle and driving north on I-5, just past downtown, St Marks is the on the hill to the east with the large circular rose window facing Lake Union.

Mallard T. Drake on July 6, 2007 at 12:52 PM