8.18.2008
(Pagan) News of Note
My semi-regular round-up of articles, essays, and opinions of note for discerning Pagans and Heathens.
West African Vodun is taking an important step towards modernization as Togo passes new laws (with the blessing of the Vodun divinities) that forbids pressing young girls into the service of the priesthood after their initiation as adepts.
"After a three-year campaign, rights groups claimed victory over a way of life that they said cut the girls off from their own families, sometimes involved ritual scarring -- and occasionally led to sexual abuse. But it took some intense lobbying of political and religious authorities in this small west African state -- and, it would seem, the voodoo divinities -- to get there ... Voodoo priests say that several hundred young girls are baptised every year as voodoo adepts, or voodoosi, after lengthy initiation rites of between three months and two years. Under the old system, instead of rejoining their families after these ceremonies, they had to stay at voodoo convents to serve the gods."
Under the new laws, it is a five-year prison sentence for anyone to take a child away from their family environment. This is a major shift in attitudes in one of the few countries where Vodun is still a major social and political power (60% of Togolese people are adherents of Vodun).
Speaking of Vodun, Speaking of Faith's blog takes you behind the scenes of their recent episode on Vodou.
"About two years ago, Patrick Bellegarde-Smith wrote us a brief e-mail asking if we had produced shows on “African and African-derived traditional religions” and recommended several volumes that he’d edited on Haitian Vodou, Cuban Santeria, Brazilian Candomble, and Umbanda. Our former associate producer Jessica Nordell called him asking for suggestions for people that he thought could speak about Vodou intimately. He was forthcoming and recommended many voices, including Claudine Michel. But we quickly realized that he was that voice — a Haitian aristocrat who was not only a scholar of the tradition but a practitioner who discovered Vodou in his early adulthood. We found his personal story about rediscovering his heritage and the spirit of the people of his country utterly captivating."
Check out SOF's archive of programs for a wealth of programming of interest to our faith communities.
In a town like Salem, even the cops are psychic!
"A retired Salem cop who swapped his badge for a crystal ball is still sleuthing - with backup from his friends from beyond the grave. Professional psychic medium Chuck Bergman, 57, spent 32 years pounding the beat in the Witch City, but says that since retiring five years ago he is finding old habits die hard. Initially skeptical of his “gift,” Bergman says he is now channeling the spirits to help police and desperate families find missing loved ones from coast to coast."
Forget "Medium", I want to see a police procedural set in Salem with a psychic cop! Maybe CSI: Salem? Forensics and Witchcraft, I'd watch it.
The Modesto Bee interviews a group of atheists about their struggles for tolerance and respect, including a self-described Pagan atheist.
"Shawna Amaral, a 22-year-old Modesto caregiver, said her parents and grandparents were Christians who never went to church or read the Bible when she was growing up. "They were too busy," she said. "Since nobody was there to teach me basic religion, I just came to believe that I can't believe in a god or a higher power or anything. "When I was 16 or 17, I discovered paganism, an earth-based religion. You don't have to believe in in a god or goddess, so I still consider myself an atheist in that way." Amaral said she lived in Alabama for a couple of years. When she told people she was an atheist, 'they'd call me a devil worshipper and said I'd go to hell. I'd laugh at them and ask how I could go to hell if I didn't believe in it to begin with.'"
I wonder if she has read Frederick Lamond's "Religion without Beliefs"?
While an American Indian spiritual leader hasn't been invited to the opening interfaith service at the Democratic National Convention, a gathering of Ute tribal leaders will be on hand for a "grand welcoming" ceremony.
"Colorado's first residents will offer the first official welcome to the Democratic National Convention in Denver Aug. 23, when Southern Ute, Ute Mountain Ute and Northern Ute tribal leaders and other Indian notables in full regalia will lead the pageantry of a grand entry before officials address some 13,000 media representatives. "It's the right thing to do, since they were the first people in the state of Colorado," said Holly Arnold Kinney, co-chair of the entertainment committee for the media event at Elitch Gardens near the Pepsi Center. The Ute Mountain and Southern Ute tribes are the only sovereign nations currently in Colorado, once considered home by the Northern Utes and many other tribes."
Interesting that Native Americans performing dances and songs tied to their indigenous faith traditions will be handled by the entertainment committee, while representatives from "mainstream" religions are organized by the head of the Democratic Party's Faith in Action initiative.
In a final note, the News Virginian reminds us that homeschooling comes in more flavors than right-wing Christian.
“For some reason, it’s gotten into the mindset of the public that homeschoolers are right-wing Christians,” said Ann Cameron Siegal, a homeschool mother and a volunteer for The Organization of Virginia Homeschoolers. “Obviously, there are people under that label, but there are also Jewish homeschoolers, Muslim homeschoolers and pagan homeschoolers; it ranges from far left to far right. If there is any unifying thing, it is the idea of freedom – freedom to pursue education, much like people did in the Colonial period, to the depth and breadth of what you want to do.”
My wife's youngest daughter was homeschooled, and is entering college this year as a sophomore. I'm proud to say I had a hand in her homeschooling, and there was nothing particularly Christian about it.
That is all I have for now, have a great day!
Labels: American Indian, atheism, Democratic National Convention, interfaith, Native American, Pagan News of Note, Paganism, psychics, Salem, Speaking of Faith, Vodou, Voodoo
8.17.2008
The Christian Presidency
Any illusion one might have had that the race for America's chief executive is a secular affair was thoroughly shattered yesterday at the Saddleback Civil Forum on The Presidency. Evangelical superstar Rick "Purpose Driven Life" Warren got the two candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain, to sit down individually in his church, submit to his questions, and expound on concerns most important to evangelical Christians.
"Now you've made no doubt about your faith in Jesus Christ, what does that mean to you? What does it mean to you to trust in Christ and what does it mean on a daily basis?"
The fact that several questions in the "civil" forum sounded more like a job interview for the pastor of a Christian church didn't escape the notice of the Rev. C. Welton Gaddy, president of Interfaith Alliance.
"Some of the questions Pastor Warren posed crossed the line and promoted the fiction that the American people are electing a pastor-in-chief, rather than a commander-in-chief. Questions like 'What does it mean to trust in Christ?' create a religious test for public office and should have no place in the political discourse for a secular office. America is the most religiously diverse country in the world, and Christianity is only one of those faith traditions. Millions of voters who tuned in tonight will feel disenfranchised by some of the questions posed in this forum."
Despite admonitions from interfaith activists, I doubt that the intense wooing of evangelicals will stop. With recent Presidential races being so evenly split, the "freestyle evangelicals" are portrayed as king-makers. Alienate them at your peril, and certainly don't be anything other than Christian if you hope to win. It is little wonder that this year's Democratic National Convention will commence with an interfaith service organized by a Pentecostal preacher, a first for the party, and a move that has troubled atheist and secular organizations.
"Democratic National Convention's Aug. 24 interfaith service in Denver is supposed to be about unity. But to a Washington, D.C., coalition that supports nontheistic views, it's about division. The Secular Coalition Group, a lobbying organization for church-and-state separation, is pushing to get an atheist on the speaker list, and contends the service is divisive because it alienates nonreligious Democrats at a time when the party needs to unite to support the presumptive nominee, Sen. Barack Obama."
It should be interesting to see how this will be resolved. Because if the party isn't ready to navigate a compromise between secularists and the monotheist (and token Buddhist "participant") interfaith club, what will they do when Hindu, Pagan, Native, and Afro-Caribbean faiths start asking for a place at the interfaith podium? The post-Christian era is upon us, and the longer the two major political parties court 25% of America's religious adherents to the near-exclusion of nearly everyone else, the sooner they experience irrelevance as that demographic becomes just one voice in a cacophony of faiths and philosophies.
Labels: atheism, Christianity, Democratic National Convention, interfaith, Paganism, politics, Presidential election, secularism
8.07.2008
A Secular Symbol of Death
Is the Christian cross a secular symbol? That is the current opinion of Utah state officials and U.S. District Judge David Sam. This peculiar notion was reached in 2007, after local atheists challenged the placement of metal crosses along the highway to honor state highway patrol officers who died in the line of duty. Now American's United, along with the Anti-Defamation League, the Hindu American Foundation, The Interfaith Alliance, and the Union for Reform Judaism, are challenging this ruling.
I don't know how anyone could think this was religious!
"U.S. District Judge David Sam ruled in November of 2007 that the cross is a “secular symbol of death” and held that Utah officials and the Utah Highway Patrol Association can continue to erect the 12-foot crosses. Americans United is asking the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn the lower court ruling. The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director, said he is offended by the claim that the cross is merely a secular symbol. “The cross is the preeminent symbol of Christianity,” said Lynn ... In its brief, AU points out that the cross has been tied to Christianity for many centuries. “In upholding the display of roadside crosses on public land throughout the State of Utah, the district court embraced the State’s characterization of the cross the clearest and most universally recognized marker of Christianity as nothing more than a ‘secular symbol of death,’” asserts the brief. 'This conclusion is historically inaccurate, blind to contemporary realities, and offensive to believers and nonbelievers alike.'"
Officials contend that the cross is secular, not religious, and it is being used regardless of the personal religious persuasion of the fallen officer. So atheist, Mormon, Pagan, Jewish or Hindu cops would all get the giant "non-religious" cross as a memorial.
The idea that the cross is "secular" ties into the larger notion that Christian religious expression and tradition, due to its size and ubiquity, is "normal" and ultimately beneficial. The corollary is that non-Christian religious expressions or traditions are "abnormal" and considered suspect. But popularity and tradition doesn't remove religious context from a religious symbol, instead it subtly reinforces that faith's dominance and "right" to utter ubiquity. If the cross was truly secular, we wouldn't have 39 different emblems of belief for military markers and headstones, nor would minority religions fight to have their own symbols added to that list.
There is no "secular symbol of death", any more than there is a "secular symbol of life", because a truly secular culture allows groups and individuals to choose and adapt their own symbols and instill them with meaning. When governments and judges start telling us which religious symbols are "secular", we enter into a hierarchy of signs, where the faith(s) with the strongest cultural hold gains official sanction in all but name. Undermining the idea that government should make no law "respecting an establishment of religion".
Labels: atheism, AU, Christianity, cross, law, litigation, Religious Freedom, Utah
8.04.2008
Conventional, Unconventional, Alternative
UK technology site TechWorld investigates the recent controversy over the Birmingham City Council blocking access to atheist and Pagan sites, while allowing normal access to "mainstream" religions like Christianity, Hinduism, and Judaism. Bryan Betts interviews a spokesman from Bluecoat Software, who allegedly provides the council's filtering service, and uncovers a general arbitrary cluelessness concerning the categorization of religions.
"The problem is that it lists organised religions such as Christianity, Islam and Judaism in one group, while relegating less mainstream - but recognised and perfectly legal - faiths such as Wicca and Paganism to an "Alternative Spirituality/Occult" group. Rather oddly, it lists atheism both in the latter group and under Politics. And a company spokesperson couldn't explain what the difference is between "unconventional religious or quasireligious subjects" (listed under Religion) and " alternative religions" (listed as Alternative Spirituality/Occult)."
You can read a run-down of Bluecoat's filter categories, here. The dirty little secret of the web filtering business is that the categories are mostly cribbed from conservative Christian-backed programs and services. These programs are then sold to schools, libraries, and government institutions, which can lead to controversy and litigation once individuals realize the bias inherent in the filter.
"Alternative Spirituality/Occult: Sites that promote and provide information on religions such as Wicca, Witchcraft or Satanism. Occult practices, atheistic views, voodoo rituals or any other form of mysticism are represented here. Includes sites that endorse or offer methods, means of instruction, or other resources to affect or influence real events through the use of spells, incantations, curses and magic powers. This category includes sites which discuss or deal with paranormal or unexplained events."
The National Secular Society, who calls the current filtering scheme "slightly deranged", is hoping that the negative publicity will be enough to change their filter policy, though they will take the matter to court if they have to. In the meantime, followers of "conventional", "unconventional", and "quasi-religious" faiths will have full access to the web, while the "alternative/occult" adherents will be treated as second-class citizens by a government agency. Something, no doubt, will have to give soon.
Labels: atheism, discrimination, Internet, occult, Paganism, UK
7.29.2008
Protecting Adults from the Occult (and Atheists)
In England, the Birmingham City Council is coming under fire for a new web-filtering policy that blocks access to atheist and Pagan sites, but allows free access to mainstream Christian, Islam, and Hindu web sites.
"The authority's Bluecoat Software computer system allows staff to look at websites relating to Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and other religions but blocks sites to do with "witchcraft or Satanism" and "occult practices, atheistic views, voodoo rituals or any other form of mysticism". Under the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003, it is unlawful to discriminate against workers because of their religion or belief, which includes atheism."
Bluecoat Software manufactures K9 Web Protection, which, like other cyber-nanny programs, is designed to protect children from "unwanted" Internet content. Some of these programs have an "occult/cult" option which blocks sites that Christian parents might find troubling. It looks like Bluecoat and the Birmingham City Council may have decided that their employees were children as well, or simply didn't care what got filtered so long as they can easily "monitor internet usage".
"We are currently implementing new internet monitoring software to make the control of internet access easier to manage. The aim of this is to provide greater control for individual line managers to monitor internet usage, and for departments, such as trading standards and child protection, to gain access, if needed, to certain sites for business reasons."
The National Secular Society has called the new filtering software "discriminatory", and said that they would "consider legal action" if steps aren't taken to correct the issue.
"National Secular Society president Terry Sanderson said the city council's rules also discriminated against people who practise witchcraft, which is also classed as a legitimate belief. He said the society would initially contact the council and ask for the policy to be changed, and otherwise pursue legal action. He said he believed he would have a "very strong case". Mr Sanderson said: "It is discriminatory not only against atheists but they also are banning access to sites to do with witchcraft. "Witchcraft these days is called Wicca, which is an actual legitimate and recognised religion."
A "very strong case" indeed considering the fact that this is a government-run facility, and beholding to stringent anti-discrimination policies. Either all access to religious sites need to be banned, or the infantilizing software must go.
Labels: atheism, discrimination, Internet, occult, Paganism, UK
11.04.2007
Freud, meet Tiresias
For those of you who enjoyed earlier installments of Cannongate's "The Myths" series, which retells ancient myths and stories for a modern audience (including Margaret Atwood's brilliant "The Penelopiad", and Jeanette Winterson's moving "Weight"), a new installment, "Where Three Roads Meet", has been released that focuses on the story of Oedipus. But author and former Jungian psychotherapist Salley Vickers approaches the story from a very unique angle.
"Where Three Roads Meet takes the form of a dialogue between the dying Freud, sitting in his Hampstead study, and a mysterious guest who has wandered in from the heath, who doesn't seem to be visible to anyone else, and who is eventually revealed to be Tiresias, the blind seer who witnessed the original tragedy. Or is Freud's mind wandering? Thoughout the dialogue, the sunshine of civilised conversation is undercut by the darkest shadows of the mind. Freud has just narrowly escaped the clutches of the Nazis and the mouth cancer for which he takes morphine is to kill him in a matter of months. Tiresias, the ancient spirit who talks to the birds on the heath, and who seems to appear when his auditor most needs distraction from pain, nevertheless evokes all the horror of an ancient crime, and of those dark, irrational forces known as the gods. It's a thoroughly creepy story."
According to Vickers, part of her inspiration is her long-time frustration with Sigmund Freud's interpretation of Oedipus (which formed the basis of his Oedipus complex), a reading that she believes is incomplete.
"Oedipus is a central myth for psychoanalysts. When I came to train, obviously we talked about it and I thought, Freud's not read it correctly! Oedipus is an adult man when he falls in love with Jocasta, he's not a child. Secondly, Freud didn't take any account of the actions of the parents, Laios and Jocasta. They set out to murder their child. That seems to be a very interesting feature of this myth. So I think it was inevitable that in doing this book I would try and explain it to Freud. I've been dying to do that for years."
The author intends "Where Three Roads Meet" to be a Socratic dialogue in which two very different views of reality are explored. The rationalistic atheism of Freud, and the advocate for unseen forces Tiresias, who was both cursed and gifted by the gods. "Where the Three Roads Meet" sounds like an interesting read for lovers of myth, and for those interested in exploring an exchange between atheism and polytheism.
Labels: atheism, books, Cannongate, Freud, Myth, Polytheism, Salley Vickers, Where Three Roads Meet
10.10.2007
Are Our Pagan Troops in Danger?
The Pew Forum has posted a report from the Religious News Service on Atheist soldiers in the military. The report talks about recent litigation filed by Army Spc. Jeremy Hall, an atheist who claims his religious freedoms have been trampled, and the threats of "fragging" (friendly-fire killings) that have come in the wake of his actions.
"What most soldiers do not get, however, are threats of "fragging" -- military slang for death by friendly fire -- because of their beliefs. That's what Army Spc. Jeremy Hall, 22, said happened to him after he organized a meeting of atheists at his base in Iraq in August. The threats came after Hall filed suit last month against the Department of Defense and Maj. Freddy Welborn. Hall said Welborn told a group of atheists that their unbelief was disgracing their country, and threatened to bar Hall's re-enlistment. Since the threats, the Army has assigned a bodyguard to Hall for protection from his colleagues in arms."
According to some sources on the ground in Iraq, anyone who doesn't toe the conservative Christian line are harassed, denied basic rights, and threatened. This includes Pagan soldiers serving overseas.
Pagan soldiers at a nighttime ceremony. Photo: UMPA
"Master Sgt. Kathleen Johnson, 40, a career soldier from north Florida who enlisted in 1985, said many soldiers do worry about invisible things and pressure others to do the same ... Johnson said she has been threatened with failing a mandatory course if she didn't bow her head during prayer. One military chaplain bragged to her about how he had stalled some Wiccan soldiers when they asked for a place to gather until they finally just gave up."
Are our Pagan troops in danger? Not just from road-side bombs and terror attacks, but from Christian members of their own military if they decide to get too "uppity" and advocate for equal treatment? While I'm sure some Christian commanding officers are fair and treat their troops justly, there is also an ominous pattern of resistance developing to non-Christian forms of belief in the military. People have been warning for some time that conservative Christian groups have been slowly taking over the military, are we now starting to see the bitter fruits of that project?
Labels: atheism, law, Military, Military Religious Freedom Foundation, Paganism, Religious Freedom, Wicca
9.20.2007
Onward Christian Soldiers?
Two major stories this past year in the Pagan world have been the fight over getting the Pentacle approved for military gravestones and markers, and the (so far unsuccessful) struggle over the approval of a Pagan military chaplain. In both cases accusations have been made that there is a unspoken bias against non-Christians in our military, and in the case of some religious groups, outright hostility. Now the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, seeking to prove claims of religious bias, has filed a lawsuit on behalf of U.S. Army Specialist Jeremy Hall.
"A U.S. Army soldier who unsuccessfully tried to hold a meeting for atheists and other non-Christians is suing Defense Secretary Robert Gates and an Army major, saying his right to religious freedom was violated. The lawsuit filed Monday in federal court alleges a pattern of practices that discriminate against non-Christians in the military. According to the filing, Spec. Jeremy Hall received permission to distribute flyers around his base in Iraq for a meeting of atheists and non-Christians. When he tried to convene the meeting, Hall says, Maj. Paul Welborne stepped in, threatening to file military charges against Hall and block his reenlistment."
I think it is key here to look at the language that the MRFF is using. While Hall is an atheist, they are specifically including "non-Christians" in this mix, which includes Pagans, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and any other "non-Christian" faith. Allowing them to file numerous lawsuits (which they threaten to do), and draw on much larger body of evidence.
"Since he launched his watchdog organization nearly two years ago, Weinstein's web site has been bombarded by over 5,000 active duty and retired soldiers, many of whom served or serve in Iraq, who pleaded for the Foundation's help as they were pressured by their commanding officers to convert to Christianity, or face other consequences."
Which raises the question, how soon before the MRFF subpoenas evidence relating to the alleged anti-Pagan documents from the VA, or material relating to Don Larsen's convenient "catch-22" that effectively blocked him from being approved as the first Pagan chaplain. Will Pagan issues within the military get wrapped up in the MRFF's larger struggle?
Labels: atheism, Chaplaincy, law, litigation, Military, Military Religious Freedom Foundation, Paganism, Religion, Religious Freedom, Veteran Pentacle Quest
6.29.2007
Not Ready for Pagans and Atheists?
In December of last year, I reported that a UU Pagan group in Albemarle County, Virginia generated some controversy when they took advantage of new school board rules that allowed the distribution of religious-themed flyers to school children.
"Some local Pagans who attend Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church, a Unitarian-Universalist congregation in Charlottesville, decided to take advantage of the new forum as well. They created a one-page flier advertising a Dec. 9 event celebrating the December holidays with a Pagan twist and used the backpack system to invite the entire school community...The flier invites people to 'an educational program for children of all ages (and their adults), where we'll explore the traditions of December and their origins, followed by a Pagan ritual to celebrate Yule.'"
This was all a result of threatened litigation brought by the late Jerry Falwell's Liberty Counsel, when the school refused to allow the distribution of Bible camp literature.
"A letter from the Jerry Falwell-linked Liberty Counsel has prompted the Albemarle County School Board to change its policy. The Board will now allow religious organizations to send home fliers with school children in backpack mail."
But all this "religious freedom" at school isn't going down too well. Pagans were bad enough, but then the atheists got involved!
"The county began allowing religious activity fliers but promised to revisit the issue in a year. And over the past school year, a Pagan flier in December and one for the atheist-oriented Camp Quest this spring sparked more controversy. Superintendent Pam Moran told the School Board her email inbox shut down when a national organization -- Vision America headquartered in Lufkin, Texas -- got wind of the "beyond belief" Camp Quest fliers and flooded her with messages protesting school-abetted "atheistic indoctrination." Technicians had to work over the weekend to get her email back up and running."
So now the Albemarle School Board, not wanting to find out who will try to distribute literature next, has banned all non-school related flyers from their "backpack mail" system. A situation that their teaching staff seems to have preferred all along.
"In the end, distributing religious and nonreligious materials through the schools was miring teachers, principals, administrators, and the Albemarle School Board in controversy. And a majority of School Board members wants to eliminate any fliers that aren't school- or government-related at its June 28 meeting ... 'Last year, 16 out of 16 elementary principals recommended we not do this,' admits Friedman. 'We did not listen.'"
The irony here is that conservative Christians are the ones who pushed for the distribution of religious material at the school, and then complained so loudly about "atheist indoctrination" once other groups took advantage of the system that it had to be ended. So who wants "religious freedom"? It certainly isn't the conservative Christians, who seem to only want freedom if it's their religion.
Labels: Albemarle School Board, atheism, Jerry Falwell, Paganism, Religious Freedom, Unitarian-Universalism, Virginia
