O-kay.

The latest from the Church of England…(not that we RC’s have much of anything to brag about…)

AN ANGLICAN CLERIC who converted to Hinduism has had his permission to officiate as a priest in the Ely diocese renewed for three years.

The cleric, the Revd David Hart, aged 52, now lives in India, where he carries out Hindu priestly duties in the temple in his village of Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.

Mr Hart, who has taken the Hindu name Ananda, blesses the daily congregation of about 60 with fire that has previously been offered to Nagar, the snake god. The ritual, he said, was normally performed only by Hindu priests.

Mr Hart is also the international secretary of the World Congress of Faiths, and in April this year published a book about his conversion to Hinduism.*

He has also been an Anglican priest since 1984, and owns a house in the diocese of Ely. In July, he had his permission to officiate renewed for another three years by the diocesan bishop, Dr Anthony Russell. The certificate arrived with a personal letter from the Bishop.

On Tuesday, the Bishop reported that he had not known about Mr Hart’s conversion to Hinduism when giving him permission to officiate. He said he had been sent a letter from a fellow bishop confirming that Mr Hart was a “safe” person to whom permission could be given.

The Bishop’s lay chaplain, Dr Bridget Nichols, said that the news was “a complete revelation to us”. “The first time we had heard that David Hart had converted to be a Hindu was yesterday,” she said. This was despite Mr Hart’s book, and an article in the Leicester Mercury in July.

Times UK religion reporter Ruth Gledhill blogs on the story, and in the comments, Mr. Hart himself responds to objections:

(I think. I’m just going to assume it’s him and not an imposter…)

Thanks for your article…but one of the commentators does accuse you of some double standards here in your questioning of my dual commitment with your own practice of Zen…and what on earth evidence does Alistair McBay have that I was always ‘doubtfully Anglican’….IF he is also one he should recall Elizabeth I’s view that the Anglican compromise was NOT dogmatic…all that was provided was a liturgy and a building to worship in: ‘we do not make windows into men’s souls’. Following the Elizabethan settlement, I am still, Mr McBay, an Anglican Full of Conviction on the rightness of Her Majesty’s words…

(To clarify, the initial sentence in the comment refers to Gledhill’s recent attendance at a Zen Buddhist retreat, which she’s in the process of blogging.)

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