"It's never wise to satirize the Episcopal church..."

Mark Steyn points out that the parody-to-reality cycle is now down to 4 years, boding ill for the Onion, Scrappleface, and anyone else in the satire business. How do you mock an institution in which this happens?

Shortly after noon on Fridays, the Rev. Ann Holmes Redding ties on a black headscarf, preparing to pray with her Muslim group on First Hill.

On Sunday mornings, Redding puts on the white collar of an Episcopal priest.

She does both, she says, because she's Christian and Muslim.

Well, no, she isn't. If she's a muslim, she doesn't believe that Jesus was the Christ, the savior, anointed of God, the lamb of God sent to bear the sins of the world. If she's a Christian, she, at least theoretically, does. (She may, I suppose, be Episcopalian and muslim, but that's not the same...) There may be common beliefs, similar ideas about certain things, but at their hearts, the two faiths are fundamentally incompatible. Minors and senior citizens pay the same discount rates at the movie theater, but they aren't the same age, no matter how "young at heart" the octogenarian, or "mature for his age" the adolescent.

And the stunning logic with which she defends her position! "I am both Muslim and Christian, just like I'm both an American of African descent and a woman. I'm 100 percent both." This woman obviously never got the concepts of set-theory and mutual exclusivity...


(And it is my goal in life to, just once, write a line as good as Steyn's - "With the benefit of hindsight, it should have been obvious that the first female imam would be an Episcopalian...")