PaganCentric

If I’ve been amazed by anything resulting from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, it’s been the persistent anger of Far Right-Wing Christians to any suggestion that the ecological disaster that’s been created by BP’s stunning recklessness is a serious problem. Most of the Christians I have talked to have stuck their heads in the sand, preferring to continue to believe that there’s nothing Mankind can do to seriously damage the planet. Their God simply wouldn’t allow it. So they wind up spouting incomprehensible bull like “the Earth is perfectly capable of healing itself without our help”.

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[I felt compelled to share this article from the New York Times, about a loud Nigerian preacher, Helen Ukpabio, who is waging a war against witchcraft. Keep in mind as you read this that the actions of Helen Ukpabio are not ancient history. ~ Claire]

At home in Nigeria, the Pentecostal preacher Helen Ukpabio draws thousands to her revival meetings. Last August, when she had herself consecrated Christendom’s first “lady apostle,” Nigerian politicians and Nollywood actors attended the ceremony. Her books and DVDs, which explain how Satan possesses children, are widely known.

So well-known, in fact, that Ms. Ukpabio’s critics say her teachings have contributed to the torture or abandonment of thousands of Nigerian children — including infants and toddlers — suspected of being witches and warlocks. Her culpability is a central contention of “Saving Africa’s Witch Children,” a documentary that made its American debut Wednesday on HBO2.

Those disturbed by the needless immiseration of innocent children should beware. “Saving Africa’s Witch Children” follows Gary Foxcroft, founder of the charity Stepping Stones Nigeria, as he travels the rural state of Akwa Ibom, rescuing children abused during horrific “exorcisms” — splashed with acid, buried alive, dipped in fire — or abandoned roadside, cast out of their villages because some itinerant preacher called them possessed.

Their fellow villagers have often seen DVDs of “End of the Wicked,” Ms. Ukpabio’s bloody 1999 movie purporting to show how the devil captures children’s souls. And some have read her book “Unveiling the Mysteries of Witchcraft,” where she confidently writes that “if a child under the age of 2 screams in the night, cries and is always feverish with deteriorating health, he or she is a servant of Satan.”

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[This sounds like pre-school stuff from kids, not something adults would come up with. A pox upon their houses, I say. ~ Claire]

From Advocate.com:

To prevent Constance McMillen from bringing a female date to her prom, the teen was sent to a “fake prom” while the rest of her class partied at a secret location at an event organized by parents.

McMillen tells The Advocate that a parent-organized prom happened behind her back — she and her date were sent to a Friday night event at a country club in Fulton, Miss., that attracted only five other students. Her school principal and teachers served as chaperones, but clearly there wasn’t much to keep an eye on.

“They had two proms and I was only invited to one of them,” McMillen says. “The one that I went to had seven people there, and everyone went to the other one I wasn’t invited to.”

Last week McMillen asked one of the students organizing the prom for details about the event, and was directed to the country club. “It hurts my feelings,” McMillen says.

Two students with learning difficulties were among the seven people at the country club event, McMillen recalls. “They had the time of their lives,” McMillen says. “That’s the one good thing that come out of this, [these kids] didn’t have to worry about people making fun of them [at their prom].”

In March, after the Itawamba County School District refused to allow McMillen to bring a female date to the prom, the district canceled the event altogether. McMillen and her lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union challenged that decision in court, and a judge ruled the district could not bar McMillen and her date.

The judge declined to force the school district to hold the prom because a parent-sponsored, private prom was being organized — and the understanding was that McMillen and her date were invited to that event. But Hampton says McMillen was never invited and organizers made it very difficult for her to find information on the time and location. That prom was later mysteriously canceled, with the Friday night event at the country club officially replacing it.

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[I posted this in 2009, but discovered that it's been getting such a response this year that I thought I'd re-post it. ~ Claire]

Ever one to ruin the fun, I couldn’t let today go by without making a few comments about Saint Patrick and the annual holiday that’s held in his honor. Most of the people I know will be wearing green in some form today, thinking of all things Irish, drinking green beer, and possibly honoring that ancient Irish tradition of getting drunk and fighting. In other words, Saint Patrick’s day is a good excuse for partying, and few people will put any more thought into it than that. That’s fine. It’s a secular holiday in the United States, even if the day is named after a Catholic bishop and missionary, and so it should all be taken with a grain of salt.

If most people know anything about Saint Patrick, it’s that his one claim to fame is that he drove the snakes from Ireland. What most people don’t realize is that the snake is a Pagan symbol, and that the snakes referred to in the Saint Patrick mythos are not meant in the literal sense, but refer to Pagans; i.e., Saint Patrick drove the Pagans (specifically, the Druids) out of Ireland. So what is celebrated on Saint Patrick’s Day with drinking and much cavorting is, ironically, the spread of Christianity throughout Ireland and the subjugation and conversion of the Druids.

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There are a number of issues which come to mind when I think about the following story. Foremost is the dismissive attitude of the author. He starts off his story by pointing out that the placement of a Christian cross in a Pagan worship area is “hardly destructive behavior”. That immediately made me think of the reactions one would get here in Asheville if someone went around erecting pentacles at Baptist churches.

Then in the second paragraph he uses a phrase which always knots my brow. He desrcibes Tech. Sgt. Brandon Longcrier as “a self-described pagan”. That’s a dismissive phrase which suggests there’s something wrong with being Pagan. I often wonder why these same people don’t refer to the subjects of their stories as “a self-described Christian” or “a self-described Jew”.

My point is that the issue at the heart of the story is the disrespect of a sacred Pagan space by Christians. That intolerance, at the core of why this is an issue to begin with, is self-evident in the dismissive attitude of the author in regard to the Pagans in this story. That is what most Pagans face on a daily basis.

A good friend once told me that the best way to understand an issue is to simply reverse the principals. If you’re a Christian and you don’t understand why this is such a big deal, imagine how you would feel if someone erected a large wooden pentacle in front of your church. What messages do you think those responsible would be trying to send you?

- Claire Mulkieran

Cross Placed at Air Force Pagan Circle
By Joshua Rhett Miller
Friday, February 05, 2010

A large wooden cross was placed at an Air Force Academy worship area for pagans and other Earth-centered religions, prompting an investigation by academy officials, though some caution that it’s hardly “destructive behavior.”

Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, said an Air ForceAcademy staffer spotted the cross — erected with railroad ties — lying against a rock at a worship area for pagan groups at the academy in Colorado Springs, Colo., on Jan. 17.

Tech. Sgt. Brandon Longcrier, a self-described pagan who sponsors the group that worships there, said the incident was similar to someone leaving a pentagram or a pagan symbol at the academy’s chapel altar and claimed he and others are victim of a hate crime. In an e-mail to Weinstein’s group, Longcrier said his group had been “thrown under the bus by the system we trusted” and that the “hate crime” has been ignored.

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[The following was  taken from an excellent article by Joe Kernan in the Warwick Beacon. - Claire]

In a recent “special report,” Costa Mesa, California’s conservative Citizens for Excellence in Education proclaims Halloween nothing less than anti-Christian, according to a story in the Los Angeles Times.

“When the roots of this holiday are traced,” the report contends, “nothing but deadly evil is unearthed.”

In places all over the country, schools are replacing their Halloween parties with “fall festivals” because of parental concerns about the holiday’s religious roots.

“There is a kind of amazing concern for the demonic world among Christians these days,” says Newton Malony, a psychology professor at the evangelical Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena who was quoted in the Times story. “A lot of people believe very strongly that there are demons, and to participate in Halloween is to encourage the demons.”

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Five women were paraded naked, beaten and forced to eat human excrement by villagers after being branded as witches in India’s Jharkhand state. Local police said the victims were Muslim widows who had been labelled as witches by a local cleric. The incident occurred on Sunday in a remote village in Deoghar district.

Correspondents say the abuse of women who are branded as witches is common, but rare footage of the incident has caused outrage across India.

Police went to Pattharghatia village after being informed about the incident by a group of villagers.

“On Sunday morning the victims were taken to a playground where hundreds had assembled to watch the ghastly incident,” deputy inspector general of police Murari Lal Meena told the BBC.

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[This is from Fox News, so you  just know it must be true. *wink* - Claire]

A new book by a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush includes a report that White House officials did not want to give the Presidential Medal of Freedom to author J.K. Rowling because her writing “encouraged witchcraft.”

According to Think Progress, author Matt Latimer in his book “Speechless: Tales of a White House Survivor” writes that the award became very politicized. He states, “This was the same sort of narrow thinking that led people in the White House to actually object to giving the author J.K. Rowling a presidential medal because the Harry Potter books encouraged witchcraft.”

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Now, I’m not a big Harry Potter fan, but neither am I a hater. If a kid shows up on my doorstep on Halloween dressed as Harry Potter, it won’t offend me any more than if he showed up dressed as a Hassidic Jew carrying a calculator and a bag of gold coins. I’m able to differentiate between what is fantasy (despite prejudiced undertones) and what is reality.

The truly depressing part of the Bush Administration, in my mind, was that we were being ruled by an Evangelical Christian who didn’t believe that certain Americans had a right to practice their religion. We were being ruled by a president who was part of a Right-Wing, Ultra-Christian ideology that believes that J.K. Rowling got together with the Freemasons and the Illuminati and hatched this nefarious plan to convert all of the Christian children in the United States into diabolical, baby killing, pre-marital sex practicing heathens. Is anyone really surprised that the Bush Administration objected to giving an award to J.K. Rowling? We all know that a reasoned sense of Reality was not George W. Bush’s strong point.

I came across an article to bothered me. The Reading Pagans And Witches organization is holding the Celebrating Earth Spirituality Festival today in Stoudtburg Village, in Adamstown, Pennsylvania. Needless to say, there are zealots rushing forth to denounce it. A dozen or so Christian groups and churches are trying to organize a “wall of prayer” around the village.

James Horning, executive director of Crossfire Youth Ministries in nearby Eprhata, Pennsylvania, said, “We are asking the Christians in the community to come out and make a circle around the entire facility and stand there for one hour and pray on behalf of the community, and then go home. No signs, no shouting, no protests, just a visible sign that we disapprove … of the whole underlying theme.”

Those wacky Christians. They do so hate competition, don’t they?

- Claire

Some Shops Shun A Pagan Festival
By Ron Todt
Associated Press

ADAMSTOWN, Pa. | In the rolling hills of deeply religious rural Pennsylvania sits Stoudtburg Village, a tiny hamlet modeled on a German town. On weekends, tourists come here to visit shops on the ground floors of closely set three-story houses painted bright colors on pedestrian-only streets.

But this weekend, plans for a nature-worshipping group of modern pagans and witches to hold a festival in this picturesque section of Adamstown are getting a mixed reception, with some shop owners welcoming the visitors but others saying they plan to close.

“My personal feeling is that it’s not something that I’d want to have anything to do with,” said Jane Lesher, standing Friday amid the yarn creations of her shop The Soxy Lady, which will close Saturday. “I don’t see how it’s going to benefit the village, especially if it’s going to leave a bad taste in the community’s mouth.”

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References

• Reading Pagans And Witches
• Stoudtburg Village
• Crossfire Youth Ministries

A recent story on an Internet news web site titled Independent Mail reported on August 19, 2009 that a Williamston, South Carolina man faces six counts of third-degree sexual exploitation of a minor and one count of unlawful neglect of a child. Williamston Police Chief Richard Inman said Scott Darrell Starnes, 32, of Edgewood St. Wednesday turned himself in to the Williamston Police Department.

Why is this mentioned on a Pagan themed web site? I mean, child abuse of any kind is simply inexcusable. But why do I mention it here? Well, this all came to my attention for no other reason than that Starne’s wife said he is a “male-witch”. From the tone of the story, that one fact alone seems to explain the sexual exploitation and the unlawful neglect. Why, if he’s a witch, the clearly he must be a child molester, performing dark arts in the family’s basement.

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