The First Openly Muslim Priest

At On the Square, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross on living in a difficult age for satirists

The day before the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops voted to confirm the church’s first openly gay bishop in the late summer of 2003, conservative humor website ScrappleFace satirized the move with a piece entitled Episcopal Church Appoints First Openly-Muslim Bishop. It was a fine example of reductio ad absurdum humor: If the Episcopal Church sacrificed a long-held moral doctrine, would it next have a bishop of another faith? The point worked as humor, but would not work as argument precisely because the possibility seemed absurd. Yet less than four years later, the Episcopal Church has been faced (albeit briefly) with its first openly Muslim priest. [12 pp. pdf] (p. 9)...