I hated shop class. (Restrain your shock, please.) But I might have hated it less if one of the projects had been a Wiccan altar. Not that I’d even heard of Wicca back then. But I lived in a small town where the only two acceptable religions were Christianity and beer. I would’ve been into it for the shock value. And, frankly, to build something more intriguing than a birdhouse. Like Hank Hill says, birds already have houses – they’re called “nests.”

But a teen in Guthrie Center, Iowa wasn’t in it for the shock value: he’s Wiccan, and wanted to build an altar as an honest-to-Goddess project. That didn’t sit well with Guthrie Center High School shop teacher Dale Halferty, who told the kid to build a birdhouse or some such bullshit instead. Halferty’s now on paid leave while the school aims a fire hose at the ensuing controversy.

State and federal law are clear: students have a right to introduce their religion into school assignments. So Halferty’s on the losing end of this issue. To his credit, he also prevented a Christian student from building a cross – so, kudos for consistency. Unfortunately, Halferty’s motives for creating a secular shop class are, shall we say, less than open-minded:

His viewpoint: “We as Christians don’t get to have our say during school time, so why should he?”

…

“It scares me. I’m a Christian,” he said. “This witchcraft stuff – it’s terrible for our kids. It takes kids away from what they know, and leads them to a dark and violent life. We spend millions of tax dollars trying to save kids from that.”

We DO? There’s a federal anti-Witchcraft program?? Dammit, Obama, I knew you were keeping secrets from me!!

Halferty’s only half the issue. The Wiccan student apparently has infuriated his Christian brethren at the school. At least 70 of these Bob Barr wanna-bes signed a petition saying that witchcraft had no place at Guthrie Center High. Apparently, while everyone in this school takes shop, some students are allowed to pass on History and Civics.

Major-ass religious tolerance kudos, however, go to School Superintendent Steve Smith. He’s not only sticking by the law, but striving to re-educate students (and his wayward shop teacher) about Wicca, which he acknowledges is nonviolent and based on the worship of a sacred Mother Earth. If only we had more administrators like Smith running our nation’s schools.

The teen at the center of this controversy has remained nameless. Which is too bad. He deserves a salute for standing up for his beliefs. When Halferty told him he could build an altar so long as he didn’t bring any religious symbols into shop class, the young adult defied him, and clung to his First Amendment rights to bring a book on Wicca into the classroom. That’s when Halferty lost it, and forbade the project outright. It can be frightening to stand up to authority figures. Congrats, my friend – you done good.

As for Halferty, his attitude from the start has been one of intolerance and bigotry. (His reaction when his student told him about the Wiccan faith: “Ah, you’re kidding, right?”) I’m voting for Superintendent Smith and Principal Gerald Thomas to read him the riot act, send him to diversity training, and order him to keep his disdain to himself. As an American, Halferty has every right to his own beliefs; as a teacher, he has no call demonizing those of his students.

Uncategorized high school, iowa, paganism, religion, religious liberty, spirituality, wicca, witchcraft

You’ve gotta love divorce. Short of war and banking, no other institution excels at bringing out the worst in human nature. But add religion to divorce? Hooboy! Now you’re cookin’! That’s like throwing gasoline on a nuclear holocaust!

The awesome Dahlia Lithwick, writing for Slate, recaps the battle between Joseph Reyes and Rebecca Shapiro. It started when Shapiro, who’s Jewish, obtained a temporary restraining order against her pending ex-husband to forbid him from raising their daughter Ela as Catholic. No transubstantiated wafers for you, kid. (Then again, no Bill Donohue either – so there’s upside.) That didn’t sit well with Reyes, who had converted to Judaism when he married Shapiro, but now claims that he did so “under duress.” With camera crew in tow, he took Ela to a Catholic mass.

Ka-BOOOOOM!!!

As a divorcing dad, I’m sympathetic to Reyes. But the dude is being something of a butthead. He’s told reporters that his ex-wife-in-waiting isn’t really Jewish because she doesn’t keep a kosher home. Furthermore, he contends that by teaching his daughter a form of Christianity, he’s actually raising her in a “radicalized Judaism.” In his eyes, being Catholic makes him something of a Super-Jew. Smooth move, brother. There’s no better way to get the Jewish community on your good side than by pissing off every Jewish person in the United States.

And what’s this nonsense about converting to Judaism “under pressure”? That’s just man-code for “It was easier to cave to my wife than to grow a pair.” Blaming your ex for your lack of spine is a Dick Move.

Both parents deserve to be smacked with a wet mackerel for being more childish than their child. So Ela Reyes grows up in two different faiths. What’s the danger? That she’ll grow up well-rounded and well-informed about the practices of two of the world’s most prominent religions? That she’ll be in a position to make her own choices about religion when she’s an adult? The horror! Forget eternal salvation, Ela’s soul is already in Hell: the Hell of bitter parents. Thank goodness Ela is only 3 years old. Even so, her parents are leaving a permanent media trail she’s free to unearth as she grows up. Reyes and Shapiro are doing more harm to their child with their highly publicized, bitter divorce proceedings than they’ll ever do by raising her in dueling faiths.

As for the courts, they need to butt out. As Lithwick notes, that’s part of the problem – many of them do, but some of them don’t. Like it or not, the parents have rights here that go beyond considerations of “the best interests of the child.” Court intervention in this dispute will only end up prejudicing one faith over the other. More importantly, the court will be acting as a surrogate parent. And the last thing Ela Reyes needs right now is a third parent.

Uncategorized catholicism, judaism, religion, religious tolerance, spirituality

If you want proof that people who label themselves as “skeptics” are as subject to confirmation bias as the rest of us, look no further than a new study by Japanese researcher Satoshi Kanazawa “proving” that atheists and liberals have higher IQs than the religious. I’ve seen this story pimped across the blogosphere by skeptics and atheists in typical “ha ha ha” fashion, even though the IQ difference found by the study – six to 10 points – is laughably small.

Josh Schrei at HuffPo rips the study to shreds. Schrei finds plenty of problems with its methodology – chief being that it focused exclusively on Americans, among whom liberalism, godlessness, and higher education are highly correlated. Would Kanazawa have obtained the same results if he’d drawn his samples from India or Saudi Arabia, where the educated are also highly religious?

Then there’s Kanazawa, who interpreted his own study’s results to mean that belief in God – or Goddess, or any sort of Deity or supra-dimension – is driven by “paranoia.” Which is nothing but the author’s own prejudice shining through. It seems prejudice and Kanazawa go hand in hand. In 2006, the scientific community gave him a tongue-lashing when he argued that Africa suffers from poverty and high infant mortality because Africans are stupid.

It’s not just the spiritually minded like Schrei who are dismissing Kanazawa. P.Z. Myers is also quick enough to realize that there’s no “there” there:

Seriously? Show me the error bars on those measurements. Show me the reliability of IQ as a measure of actual, you know, intelligence. Show me that a 6 point IQ difference matters at all in your interactions with other people, even if it were real.

Thing is, while this study is crap, Kanazawa gained some insta-cred because he echoed the feelings of most atheists and skeptics about the religious: that they’re motivated by primitive fears about life and death. Even the astute Michael Shermer echoed a variant of this argument in his book Why We Believe. That’s prejudice, pure and simple. I could count on one hand the number of people who are Christian because they were scared shitless by a Jack Chick tract. Most converted because their lives were in shambles, and religion provided a structure they otherwise lacked. The same is doubly true for more modern religions such as Paganism. I don’t know a single Pagan who adopted their religion out of paranoia and fear. Faith provides people a deeper meaning and connection to the world that they find missing in secular worldviews.

Why is that so hard for otherwise intelligent atheists to understand?

Uncategorized atheism, paganism, religion, satoshi kanazawa, spirituality

My opinion splits three ways on Pastor Mark Driscoll. On some days, I’m convinced that he believes the crap that flows out of his mouth. On other days, I think he’s little more than a showman and a performance artist, a la Ann Coulter, who’s more skilled at self-promotion that teaching any species of spiritual truth. And then there are days like today when I don’t give a damn whether he believes it or not, because it’s vile and dangerous either way.

Driscoll, who runs Mars Hill Church here in Seattle, has made a name for himself by making intolerance hip. He’s a misogynistic, gay-hating Calvinist bully. He’s blamed Ted Haggard’s homosexuality on an ugly wife who doesn’t clean. Once he threatened, from the pulpit, to go “Old Testament” on a couple of guys he’d recently fired.

Now, in his latest tour de force, Driscoll is jumping on the “Avatar is a tool of godless liberalism” bandwagon. Only, in traditional Driscoll “Look at MEEEEEE!” fashion, he’s decided to kick it up a notch (BAM!) by slagging it as Pagan and Satanic:

He denounced its “demonic paganism,” but also a message that “primitive is good and advanced is bad.” He resented its portrayal of a “false Jesus” and a “false heaven,” but also the idea of “connecting, literally, with trees and animals and beasts and birds.”

…

“['Avatar'] is new age, satanic, demonic paganism, and people are just stunned by the visuals,” he said. “Well, the visuals are amazing because Satan wants you to emotionally connect with a lie.”

Now, I hate James Cameron as much as the next fan of good film. But I channel that anger in constructive ways – e.g., rooting for his ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow to kick his ass. I don’t go accusing his special effects laboratory of being in league with the Prince of Darkness. I may be an ignorant blogger, but I’m pretty sure the visuals in Avatar have more to do with this newfangled thing called “computer-generated imagery” than with the Devil.

Although, a deal with the Devil would explain the success of Titanic…

I’ll admit, I’m more up in arms than I might usually be because Driscoll is attacking my own faith. And I’m peeved that someone who seems constitutionally incapable of recognizing the beauty in faiths other than his own has a throng of followers in the Emerald City. Seriously, dude – you live in a modern, scientific, multicultural society. Get a grip on your own smallness. Just because your faith is 2,000 years old doesn’t mean your attitude has to be ancient.

I’ve written about how all religions and spiritual traditions contain lovely ideas that can shape and guide human behavior. Like any system of thought, a religion can be used for either good or ill – for lifting people up, or for dividing and conquering them. Sadly, America is full of the latter. And the execrable Driscoll is aiming to be christened the latest Conquistador.

(H/t Mamikaze)

Uncategorized avatar, christianity, church, james cameron, mark driscoll, mars hill, paganism, religion, seattle, spirituality

Parenting often drags us into the gray areas of life in a free society. Take discipline: is spanking a valid punishment, or is it child abuse? The debate rages. What isn’t debatable is the parenting advice of Michael and Debi Pearl, harder-than-hard-line fundamentalist “Christians” who enjoin parents to use the same techniques that “the Amish use to train their stubborn mules” – namely, a healthy roll of quarter-inch supply line from Home Depot. The Pearls are advocates of child abuse, instructing parents to whip and flog until their kids’ cries become a “wounded, submissive whimper.”

Their “program” is cruel. It’s inhumane. And it’s killed at least two kids. Four-year-old Sean Paddock died when his mother, following the Pearls’ advice, suffocated him to death in a swaddle of blankets. And Kevin and Elizabeth Schatz face murder charges for the death of their 7-year-old adoptive daughter Lydia, whom they beat with quarter-inch supply line so badly that her organs failed.

I can’t help but point out here that the Schatzes are two heterosexuals, supposedly anointed by God to be superior caregivers over a couple of depraved lesbians. Yet the lesbian couple had to fight for adoption rights, while the Schatzes were probably given a toaster and a year of free checking along with their kid. Paging Dan Savage…

But back to the Pearls. I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that these evil hell-spawn are not representative of conservative Christians, and that many in that community are horrified by what this couple advocates. Christian blogger Quiet Garden has one of the best dismantlings of the Pearls I’ve ever read anywhere. (QG, my apologies in advance for sending my readers to you – I know we’re talking oil & water here.) There’s also the amazing TulipGirl, who has been dogging these monsters for years.

As QG notes, the Pearls are disingenuous. Their Web site sports Q&A questions like, “When is it abuse?” – but then turns around and proclaims that “there is no number [of licks with the switch] that can be given,” and that a “proper” spanking leaves a kid “without breath to complain.” While pretending that they don’t advocate child abuse, the Pearls constantly advise parents to push their kids’ punishment until their little spirits are broken. Is it little wonder that their bodies break alongside their spirits?

IMO, The Pearls sit at the upper boundary of the First Amendment. Part of me is galled and enraged that you can buy a manual on child abuse from Amazon.com. But you can also order a how-to manual on domestic terrorism, and the ravings of history’s worst mass murderer. My more rational side is glad that all of these works are readily available. The best way to nurture radicalism is to force it underground. Evil abhors sunlight. And with the murder of Lydia Schatz, the sun is shining brightly on the Pearls, and the sick tactics they advocate for bringing children to heel.

That said, everything the Pearls advocate is abuse. Even owning a book by these people should be enough to trigger a social worker visit. If you know anyone who follows their philosophy, keep an eye out for their poor kids – and make sure you have the phone number for Child Protective Services in your state at hand. You’re going to need it.

Uncategorized children, christianity, dan savage, first amendment, kids, lydia schatz, michael and debi pearl, parenting, quiet garden, religion, spirituality, to train up a child

Poor M.D. Nalapat. The UNESCO Peace Chair India’s Manipal University has surely penned what he believes is a bitchin’ defense of Islam’s treatment of women against its detractors. And maybe it is…in India. But something gets lost in translation when an American reads it. After announcing that “the Koran espouses a gentle, moderate philosophy” that doesn’t enslave women, Nalapat says:

It is therefore ironic that many Western commentators regard as “pure Islam” the Kharijite practices followed by groups such as the Taliban, who claim that Islam legitimizes their policy of forcing women indoors except when absolutely necessary; wearing a chador that covers even the face; depriving women and girls of access to education and employment; making them in effect the chattels of their menfolk. Contrast this with the example of the Prophet Muhammad, who did not hesitate to serve as the employee of a woman, and who gave considerable freedom to the womenfolk in his care.

“The womenfolk in his care”? In other words, these women were chattel – but extremely well-treated chattel.

But oh, it gets worse. How does the Koran suggest you deal with adultery, for example?

Consider these lines: “As for those from whom you apprehend infidelity, admonish them, then refuse to share their beds, and finally [if such admonitions do not cause a change in behavior] hit them [gently]. Then, if they obey you, take no further action against them.” Contrast this gentle directive with the stoning to death practiced by those who claim to be following “pure” Islam, but in fact are deviating entirely from the word of God as revealed to the Prophet Muhammad.

You’ll notice that “gently” is an editorial insertion. And hey, who can argue that a gentle beating is a step up from being stoned to death by your own village? This reminds me of how the so-called “Middle Way” of Buddhist enlightenment still enjoins you to give up sex, booze, and garlic. (I’m down with the booze. But forsake sex and garlic? You might as well shoot me where I stand.) So what are you supposed to do if the “gentle” beating fails? Bring out the stones? And what constitutes a gentle beating, anyway? Perhaps it’s of a piece with the parental stylings of Michael and Debbi Pearl, the fundamentalist parenting “experts” who command that you switch your children until their cries become a “wounded, submissive whimper.” Hey, perhaps the Pearls have found their home in the wrong religion!

Polygamy and soft beatings: the New Wave of Islamic feminism? Goddess help us.

Uncategorized afghanistan, feminism, india, islam, religion, spirituality, women

Wow, how did I miss this one? You’ll remember that the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado recently approved a worship place for Pagans. Well, some Christian smartass went and placed a cross smack in the middle of it. The Academy swiftly condemned the action as an act of religious intolerance, and Tech. Sgt. Brandon Longcrier, the site’s sponsor, decried it as a “hate crime.”

“Hate crime” strikes me as melodramatic. It’s a cross, not a slaughtered calf. Poor taste? Without a doubt. Meant to intimidate? Probably. But it’s not like the site was trashed, or relics sacred to Pagan practice desecrated. Yeah, yeah – Christian cadets would have called it a “hate crime” if someone had left a pentacle on a Christian altar. So what? It’s not a hate crime. It’s a dumb prank. Referring to a cross as a “hate crime” does nothing but encourage overblown rhetoric on both sides of this debate.

But since we’re speaking of overblown rhetoric and hate crimes, let’s check out Bob Barr’s editorial in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about the Academy’s Pagan site. Ed Brayton of Dispatches from the Culture Wars had spoken with Barr two years ago about the former Congressman’s attempts to get Wicca banned from the military. At that time, Barr repudiated his former bigotry. Now Brayton is pissed at Barr’s AJC op-ed, which is as close-minded as you can get without receiving an actual lobotomy. Barr wrote:

The site, apparently sacred to pagans, consists of an inner and an outer circle of large stones. I’m sorry, but this truly is hilarious. Don’t get me wrong, if someone “has little or no religion and delights in sensual pleasures and material goods,” which is the definition of a “pagan,” then I say live and let live.

But I have to tell you, if I were in the Air Force and was being commanded by an officer who practices hedonism as a religion (another part of the definition of “pagan”), and who dances around a circle of stones in the woods carrying a lighted candle, I would be more than a little worried about following him into battle.

I love how Barr proves that he’s not only a bigot, but an intellectually lazy one. In the 20+ years he’s been railing against Wiccans and Pagans, he hasn’t bothered himself to find out what they worship. When Definition Time rolls around, he quotes definition 2 of “pagan” verbatim from Merriam-Webster.com, conveniently ignoring the other two definitions – not to mention an Internet’s worth of information he could use to edjumacate himself.

Ladies and gentleman, your 2008 Libertarian candidate for President of the United States. Boy, I’m glad the Libs chose him to defend our freedoms.

Uncategorized air force, bob barr, christianity, ed brayton, libertarianism, paganism, religion, spirituality, wicca

In an ideal America, neither the states nor the federal government would prejudice one religion above any other. But we live in the other America – the one where adherents to non-Christian faiths have had to fight like hell for accommodation. That fight goes on in California, where Rev. Patrick McCollum, an ordained Wiccan Priest, is challenging the state’s “Five Faiths” policy, which limits paid clergy at the state’s correctional institutions to representatives of Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Islamic and Native American traditions. Rev. McCollum has served since 1997 as unpaid clergy to the state’s 2,000 incarcerated Wiccans and Pagans. Beyond the issue of equal pay, Rev. McCollum has accused staff at the prison of that giving him that ol’ time religious discrimination:

A staff member of the California Dept. of Corrections put McCollum in a confined space, attacked the Wiccan faith while telling McCollum that he, the officer, had been “bathed in the blood of Jesus.”  Later, in the spirit of Jesus and truth fundamentalist style, he claimed in front of other correctional officers to have seen videos of McCollum killing children and drinking blood.  These officers then told inmates of these allegations, leaving McCollum’s life in danger.

The case is currently with the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. My old Internet friend Jason Pitzl-Waters at The Wild Hunt Weblog has kept close track of the McCollum case. Americans United (bless their hearts) recently chipped in its own amicus brief in defense of Rev. McCollum and against California’s discriminatory practice. Since no good deed goes unpunished (and because the Goddess has a wicked sense of humor), the AU brief was followed by an amicus from Wallbuilders, a right-wing organization that promotes putting America back on a “Christian foundation.” Because the Founding Fathers were all Christian, goddammit, and may the team with the most Founding Fathers WIN! Wallbuilders not only argued that Rev. McCollum had no right to be on the California Corrections payroll, but neither did anyone who professed a non-monotheistic religion.

“There are, of course, references to ‘heathens’ and ‘pagans’ among the writings of the Framers,” the group states, “but there is no indication that those belief systems, including polytheism, are considered ‘religion.’”

Which would mean, of course, that California would have a Four Faiths policy, since most Native American traditions are polytheistic or animistic. (Though there are exceptions – e.g., the Iroquois.) It’s a good thing the US Air Force paid these yahoos no mind.

AU dismisses the brief out of hand as “a joke.” Pagan luminary/elder Starhawk has also weighed in with her hefty two cents. I’ll let you guess whose side she’s on.

Beyond being pure legal tripe, the WallBuilders brief is comical because it demands that we organize society with all the world-knowledge of an 18th-century American colonist. We live in an industrial, scientific age. We possess a deeper knowledge of the physical world than our Founders thought possible. Our once-isolated societies are interconnected; we’re as aware of the faith of a Vajrayana Buddhist from Tibet as we are of our own Christian traditions. And hundreds of new faiths have sprung up since the days of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. These men never lived to know Joseph Smith, let alone L. Ron Hubbard and Gerald Gardner. We face a diversity of belief and a quandary of conviction that were unknown in their time.

The world has change radically since 1776. I’m keeping my fingers crossed (and, yes, saying a prayer) that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals bitch-slaps the Wallbuilders brief back a couple hundred years, where it belongs.

Uncategorized americans united, christianity, paganism, patrick mccollum, religion, spirituality, the wild hunt, wallbuilders, wiccan

I love Valentine’s Day. Screw the “overly commercialized” routine – I love spending money, and I love spending it on the people I love.

Sometimes, we in the West take that for granted. We decry yet another holiday that exhorts us to spend money as a way to express an affection we ought to share daily. There’s a truth-grain there. Even I, a creature of commerce, couldn’t help shake my head when I noticed that both Target and Toys ‘R Us had small islands of Easter candy established. I picture management itching for the morning of February 15th, when the seasonal shelves will explode in an Eastergasm of fake grass and Cadbury Creme Eggs, as retailers aim to squeeze out a small sales spike amidst the rubble of our shit economy.

Things are different in Pakistan, though, where giving your sweetheart a box of chocolates means putting your life at risk. The AFP chronicles the travails of the young Heloises and Abelards of Peshawar, where continued bombings, rampant inflation, and violent Islamists put a damper on affaires de cœur. The young use text messaging to keep their expressions of love under wraps. Flowers and chocolates are out of the question for girls and boys with strict conservative parents, who view the Western holiday as depraved.

The romantics are countered by radical Muslims, who are attempting to re-christen Valentine’s Day as “Modesty Day.” And the religious thugs of the militant group Lashkar-e-Islam warned Pakistanis to keep their hearts off of their sleeves, “or they’ll be responsible for the consequences.” Valentine’s Day hatred is rampant throughout the region, and isn’t isolated to Islam. In 2003, members of the Hindu fundamentalist sect Shiv Sena raided stores and set fire to Hallmark cards to show their disdain for the Day of Lust.

Fuck  modesty – and Lashkar-e-Islam and Shiv Sena to boot. You go, young lovers. Ain’t nothin’ more romantic than forbidden love. Be safe. In the immortal words of Sergeant Phil Esterhaus: “Let’s be careful out there.”

Uncategorized hinduism, islam, love, pakistan, religion, romance, shiv sena, spirituality, valentine's day

Okay, check it. You live in Singapore, which is paradoxically authoritarian yet religiously diverse. Over 42% of the country counts itself as Buddhist, with Islam coming in second. You’d think it would be a boner move to demonize the nation’s majority religion by calling it rubbish and trickery, and claiming that Jesus “redeemed” Buddha on his deathbed.

You might think this…unless you were Rony Tan. The Christian pastor of Lighthouse Evangelical Church in Singapore became famous this week after a video of him disparaging Buddhism circulated far and wide on the Intertubes. The footage, originally provided to the Temasek Review, sparked such an uproar that the country’s Internal Security Department called Tan to its office and gave him an official dressing-down. A former head of the Singapore ISD proclaimed, “Pastor Tan should thank his God to be let off so lightly.”

The videos themselves are in English, though tedious. Akaskee has a summary of the sermon, which he portrays as a stage-managed assault on Buddhism, with Tan bringing in vapid ex-adherents so that he could mock their former beliefs.

I’ve no idea why this story fascinates me. On the one hand, as an American, I grimace at a government official calling in a private citizen for an ass-chewing. Tan’s an asshole, but dammit, that’s his right. On the other hand…well, Tan’s an asshole. There’s something pleasant in watching his attempt to bring dogmatic, winner-take-all Christianity into the land of Shakyamuni sink like a lead weight. In America, extremist Christians feel free to sputter such nonsense to their parishioners with nary a thought as to the blowback. Ideally, such comments would be as anathema as racism.

This story makes me ponder the inherent tension in our First Amendment: how does a society shape an atmosphere of both free exchange and tolerance? There are days I hate living in a country where the religious majority – which believes stories of a man who rose from the dead and turned water into wine – feels free to mock and belittle the “silly” beliefs of others. But I’d also hate to live in a nation where the title of this post was illegal.

Uncategorized buddhism, christianity, faith, religion, rony tan, singapore, spirituality