"During the service, the Rt. Rev. J. Jon Bruno, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, issued a statement of apology to the Hindu religious community for centuries-old acts of religious discrimination by Christians, including attempts to convert them. The bishop also said he was committed to renouncing 'proselytizing' of Hindus," reported the LA Times.

In other words, in this service what had hitherto been referred to as the Lord's Great Commission was formally denounced as imperialism by the Bishop of Los Angeles and essentially declared anathema.

Bishop Bruno's statement was read by the Bishop Suffragan of the Diocese, the Rt. Rev. Chester Talton. The Rev. Karen MacQueen, associate priest at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Pomona, who had studied Hinduism in India, was the celebrant and preacher for the ecumenical event. Bishop Bruno was unable to attend due to a recent death in the family.

The Bishop's liturgy of renunciation was enacted in a twofold ritual. The first was an ecumenical rendition of the sacred service of Puja, where participants share in the light of God. In the opening procession Rev. MacQueen carried an icon of Jesus and placed it before the altar, then anointed the icon with sacramental Chandana, or sandalwood paste, while a guest choir chanted the many names of God, "beseeching the Deity to come and abide in the image" (see http://www.hinduismtoday.com/archives/1998/12/1998-12-24.shtml). Jesus' light was thus "switched on" and he was welcomed to the sacred Pantheon.

No doubt the English speaking congregation did not realize that they were participating in a Hindu sacramental rite or that they were ritually lowering Jesus from his position in the Christian creed and making him equal to a thousand Hindu gods. Or maybe they did. Nowadays Christian sacrilege is very cutting edge, especially in Los Angeles. In some Christian circles sacrilege is what defines being progressive. We can picture today's high brow Episcopalian thinking himself to be "above that sort of thing". Such feelings of superiority come so easily and are very intoxicating.

The second part of the ritual of renunciation was "open communion", partaken by Hindus and Christians together as a revelation of the "beloved community". Once considered the commemoration of the death of Jesus Christ for those who trusted in his atoning death, the Eucharist has lately been reinvented as the Sacrament of Inclusion. Very chic. Jesus really has nothing to do with the meaning of this Sacrament. Just as his Great Commission has been decommissioned for its association with Western imperialism, so too has the memory of his saving death been cleansed from Christian memory for being "unkind". Perhaps his new status as a representative of divine light, now ritually enacted, will help reinstate his preeminence in the Church.

This is how today's progressives apologize for the political embarrassment that is part and parcel of their self-consciousness: by ritually dethroning their own gods. In St. John's Cathedral near downtown Los Angeles Jesus was ritually demoted from his status as Lord of heaven and earth to that of tribal deity -- the god of the Christian community.

The line between politics and religion has never been so fine. Political statements are believed to confer spiritual effects, and vice versa. For example, the placing of a crucifix in a vat of urine a few years ago in New York was not really "art" as its supporters insisted. It was a political sacrament, atoning for the perceived sins of the artist and the community of which he was a part. Much to the chagrin of the millions of Indian nationals who have embraced the Christian gospel and seen their conversion as a liberation from demons and dumb idols, this same Faith is now forcefully renounced by the next generations of those who brought it. In the Marxist narrative of history the only possible meaning of Christian mission to the Indian subcontinent was to facilitate British imperialism. Marx, after all, is the one authoritative text of Western Christendom. Today's American Anglicans bear the stain of the same original sin -- imperialism -- and it must be atoned. The Son of God must be handed over again.

Christians in the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles have demonstrated a new gospel: in a word, Appeasement. This word has far more meaning than the Neville Chamberlain-like denial of an impending military threat -- though it incorporates that as well. Appeasement is the psychology of those who wish to retain a privileged or "safe" position in a waning status quo. They would like time to stand still, and they desperately hope it will, while they crucify their gods, sell out their children's futures, and otherwise minimize their losses.

The psychology of Appeasement goes beyond Chamberlain and the many public figures who are alleged to be bear his image. Appeasement means pleasing the right people, those who represent some threat, and deliberately offending others who pose no threat and can be counted on not to retaliate. It is self-protection, pure and simple, and it is anything but courageous. In an activist mode Appeasement is passive-aggressive, manipulative, and deceptive. It sets up symbolic confrontations in such a way that my group appears vindicated in comparison with some other group, usually my neighbors or former associates or fellow church members on the other side of the aisle. None of these are an actual threat to me, but the vandals at the gates of my consciousness might be persuaded that they are. If I can bait these unsavory outsiders with my charged rhetoric, they might attack those other people and leave me alone.

Appeasers believe they can assuage the vandals by contemptuously tossing them trinkets. For example, Katharine Jefferts Schori thinks she will always be part of the elite. It is a sort of birthright. She will always be a tenured professor or the CEO of a prestigious corporation that doesn't need to compete in order to retain its status and power. She can tell her own tribe it doesn't need to succeed, doesn't even need to reproduce itself, even while the rest of the world multiplies exponentially. She believes the little people of the world will always hold her in awe. As she once said in an interview after a two week trip to Mexico, "My heart is brown." Presumably she can be brown or white or whatever suits her, and then change back when it doesn't. I don't think she's aware that the people she was talking about can't. Still she believed she was elevating them with her meaningless comment. No doubt they'll think she's one of them when she flies over in her private jet -- if she remembers to wave.

The "vandals" are those our consciences tell us we have wronged, who would have every reason to be angry and who now upset our consciences. Maybe we have wronged them. If so we need to repent. But appeasers do not repent. That would mean giving up what has accrued to them through the very systemic injustices they so loudly decry -- money, power, position, historical pre-eminence. Instead they "apologize" and say nice things, usually in a condescending tone which they themselves never notice. They point the finger at anyone two inches to the right of themselves on the political spectrum and imagine that others will take the bait -- will assume that those on the right are really the ones to blame and are somehow different from those on the left, even though both share the same disproportionately large piece of pie. Appeasers don't believe the "little people" are smart enough to know pure symbolism when they see it, and they believe they can be bought.

An apology, particularly a political apology, is an act of expediency, a form of damage control, and a roundabout means for achieving an agenda after a setback. Repentance is fundamentally different. Repentance gives up what it illicitly took with an added measure on top (like the added 20 per cent in Leviticus 6). If someone is going in the wrong direction, he stops and turns around. He doesn't just put up some kind of sign and keep going along the same road. Jon Bruno may have apologized for his embarrassing connections with imperialism, but he did so for his own sake. He never offered to resign the high office he occupies, which could not have come to him except by the same imperialist allocation of power. He renounces imperialism in the abstract only, but guards his share of the fruit of it. Keep in mind, it is his conscience, not mine, that tells him he is milking a corrupt system. He ought to renounce either the radical analysis that accuses his conscience (falsely, in my view) and holds him hostage, or else be true to his conscience and renounce the "erroneous" Faith that has wrought so much destruction in the world particularly through its institutions of power.

One of the high points of the service at the Cathedral was the comment by one of the Hindu leaders present. "The modern religious man must expand his understanding and love of religions and their practices," exclaimed Swami Sarvadevananda of Vedanta Society of Southern California. This is good Hindu polytheism, where all religions are essentially the same, or perhaps all religions are really one religion. It costs Hindus nothing to add Jesus to the pantheon.

Coming from a Christian such a view constitutes a renunciation of the Great Commission and the very premise of the message of Jesus: the kingdom of heaven is at hand; repent and believe the gospel. It reduces the message of the Incarnation to a myth -- heartwarming to those who grew up with it, but historically empty. The gospel is not politically correct precisely because it is not a message of personal or political expediency. It is admittedly a confrontational message, but the task of the preacher is to present it as being in the best interests of the person hearing it. If the Christian is sincere, he will show a respect for other religions just as he shows respect for other people. Christians have not always done this, and plenty of people have good reason to be skeptical of them now. But to reduce the Great Commission to imperialism as a ruse to avoid confrontation is an abdication of the apostolic office, not to mention a denial of the Faith. It is also a terrible accusation of the many thousands of missionaries who have brought the Faith to others around the world and served them faithfully, many at the cost of their lives.

The proclamation that all religions are created equal is a dominant theme of the Appeasement gospel, but it rings hollow. No one who says it can believe it if he takes any religion as being more than an artsy diversion. Such a spiritual aesthetic was very much in evidence at St. John's Cathedral, as demonstrated in the following comment by an attendee: "There was something so holy -- so much symbolism and so many opportunities for meditation." So many intoxicating moments. But if all religions are the same, even though they make mutually exclusive claims, then all are equally irrelevant and unnecessary, except as a diversion. Salvation in any one of these schemes is at best a benign illusion, one with no future in modern man, as Sigmund Freud famously observed.

Appeasers know deep down that they have no future, that the clock is running and their days are numbered. Hence Appeasement is a "last generation" gospel. In Los Angeles the Great Commission has been formally decommissioned, with sanctions threatened against those who disrupt the good feeling of the present status quo. This is the equivalent to forced sterilization. I alluded earlier to one of Bishop Schori's recent interviews where she praised Episcopalians for their failure to reproduce themselves biologically as well as spiritually, as if this were a sign of evolutionary success. You may recall what she said about Catholics and Mormons who reproduce like lab animals (not her exact words, but close to her exact meaning), proving themselves to be lower on the cultural food chain than Episcopalians. And yet they are surviving and Episcopalians are not. What would Darwin say?

It seems Episcopalians cannot in conscience commend the faith that is in them. They cannot say, like Paul to the Philippian jailor, "Here's what you need to be saved." By their word and example they commend a faith that nobody needs. If Bishop Bruno has renounced the proselytizing of Hindus, who can he justify proselytizing? Can he justify proselytizing his own children, or theirs? The message is loud and clear: whatever the gospel of Jesus Christ is, you don't need it.

The purpose of Bruno's gospel is not to save anyone or even tempt anyone with becoming a Christian, but to impress the right people that he is the right sort of person and thus to atone for the sins of sexism, racism, imperialism, and whatever else plagues the conscience of today's intellectuals. In other words, his gospel is a gospel of Appeasement. Keep the vandals at the gates and leave me in peace.

You may have noticed that the gospel of Appeasement has no martyrs. I thought about this after the ball dropped in Times Square on New Year's Eve this year and John Lennon's "Imagine" was hymned to a global TV audience. One line from the familiar song stood out: "Nothing to kill or die for." That's supposed to be a message of peace, but really it's the voice of Appeasement. Please leave me alone in my sheltered domain to enjoy my slice of pie. If you do I will sing you a song (and collect fabulous royalties). It reminded me of a contrasting remark by the late Dr. Martin Luther King, who died before he could benefit from Lennon's ethereal hymnody: "If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live." Ironically, Lennon died for nothing after all, while King died for the very something he had also lived for and that brought life to millions.

"The world cannot afford for us to repeat the errors of our past, in which we sought to dominate rather than to serve." Who is "we", Bishop Bruno? Is this perhaps a Freudian slip, as when the Pharisees witnessed against themselves that they were sons of those who murdered the prophets? Those who cash in the Faith for cheap moral capital and then make token payments to further an agenda also witness against themselves. It is your analysis, Bishop, and no one else's that calls you a son of imperialism.

Who or what are you seeking to dominate?

---The Rev. Canon J. Gary L'Hommedieu is Canon for Pastoral Care at the Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando, Florida, and a regular columnist for VirtueOnline