Court Upholds Religious Rights of (Minority Religion) Prisoners

Good news on the court case Cutter v. Wilkinson which I first mentioned back in November:

“The Supreme Court today upheld the right of prisoners to practice religion behind bars, even if their observances are rooted in atypical beliefs like polytheism, Satanism and white supremacy. In a unanimous ruling, the court supported the rights of prisoners by upholding a five-year-old federal law directing states to relieve “substantial burdens” on inmates’ religious practices unless a regulation serves a “compelling state interest.”…In arguing the case before the justices in March, the Bush administration’s acting solicitor general, Paul D. Clement, said that the government “follows the best of our traditions” when it relieves burdens on religious practice for all religions, not just “majoritarian” ones.

This is a major victory in establishing the rights of modern Pagans. We can hope that this will clear the way for easier access to Pagan clergy who do prison ministry, and to publications and publishers who want to donate religious materials to minority faiths.

Image of the Week

The Goddess of Democracy (Tiananmen Square)

Book Talk

The National Catholic Reporter plugs a new book by longtime NCR contributor and famous feminist theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether. The book “Goddesses and the Divine Feminine, A Western Religious History” examines the history of sacred female imagery in Western culture.

“In the 1950s NCR columnist Rosemary Ruether began to study goddesses of the ancient Near East and Greece. At the time, she was introduced to theories that ancient societies had originally been matriarchal and had ?fallen? into patriarchy. In the 1970s she developed a class for the Harvard Divinity School based on a thesis, popular among feminists, that the archaeological discovery of figurines depicting female forms was proof of such woman-dominated societies. To her surprise, the students in the class — almost all of them feminist women — did not think the figurines expressed a positive view of women at all but thought that the fat, faceless, large-breasted female forms were exploitative and repellent. Their reaction, says Ruether, ‘made me aware that both of these responses are projections from our modern context and that neither view may have much to do with what the creators of these images actually had in mind.’“

Also interesting is this synopsis from the publishers:

“Rosemary Radford Ruether begins her exploration of the divine feminine with an analysis of prehistoric archaeology that challenges the popular idea that, until their overthrow by male-dominated monotheism, many ancient societies were matriarchal in structure, governed by a feminine divinity and existing in harmony with nature. For Ruether, the historical evidence suggests the reality about these societies is much more complex. She goes on to consider key myths and rituals from Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian, and Anatolian cultures; to examine the relationships among gender, deity, and nature in the Hebrew religion; and to discuss the development of Mariology and female mysticism in medieval Catholicism, and the continuation of Wisdom mysticism in Protestanism. She also gives a provocative analysis of the meeting of Aztec and Christian female symbols in Mexico and of today’s neo-pagan movements in the United States.”

You can read the first chapter online. I am interested in reading her chaper on modern Paganism. The last chapter of her book according the table of contents is called “The Return of the Goddess”.

Quote of the Day

“There is a massive process of de-Christianization which harms women most of all. The Church prays for women and preaches the doctrine of the sacrament of matrimony which cannot change to follow the fashions or ideological currents of today which are, sad to say, neo-pagan.” – Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani, Archbishop of Lima and Primate of Argentina

Can’t you see how goddess religion harms women! If it isn’t about being married, barefoot and pregnant then it is a danger to the female, or should I say a danger to the control the church has over women.

Burning Man Evolves

Pagans have often argued about the next steps in our growth. Churches? Temples? Buying land? Paid clergy? How do we create infrastructure and opportunity for our massive growth in the last twenty years? How do we cope with our aging community leaders? How do we focus our good works to the best effect? I think many of these questions are being explored right now by the artists and free-thinkers who power the culture of Burning Man.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the community (now twenty years old) is deciding what the future of the community will be as it becomes larger, older, and more responsive to the cities the participants live in.

“Burning Man is maturing into much more than an annual escape from the mind-numbing structure of daily life. The retreat has evolved into a multimillion-dollar business that spans the globe; a charitable foundation that gives away hundreds of thousands of dollars; and most important, a year-round counterculture movement with a spiritual quest to keep the Burning Man experience alive every day.”

This counter-cultural movement is becoming something much bigger than a retreat for creatives. It is endorsing a mandate for change and growth.

“With the help of the Internet and an organization that sponsors charities, artists and ecological cleanups, Burning Man acolytes have begun spreading the movement’s principles by forming regional Burning Man collectives. These groups of free thinkers seek to reinvigorate art, education, the environment, even business ethics, in their communities.”

Some Burning Man related projects include supporting schools with festival revenue, encouraging Burning Man-inspired entrepreneurs, starting a think-tank, and the building of “temples” and public improvement projects in poor and underdeveloped neighborhoods close to home. It takes the festival mindset of creating a better society for a week to taking those learned values home and creating a better society in your back-yard.

What if Pagan festivals created a regional network that kept participants hooked in and inspired? Abandoned the “stuff” economy we have created around our family of faiths and instead encouraged modern Pagans to spend their dollars on positive infrastructure that grows our communities and reaches out to those in need. What if we were not evangelical about our faith(s) but about the culture of values we share. What if half of the local get-togethers at bars and coffee-shops we hold were replaced by well-publicized public events run by Pagans? We keep talking about how creative we are, yet I see us get stuck by aping the traditional progress of “mainstream” faiths. Maybe we should instead look at alternate growing patterns. Maybe we should be paying attention to Burning Man.

Mountain Climbing As Devotional

Found a quote from one of the current group trying to climb to the summit of Mt. Everest. Jon Gangdal, the expedition’s consultant, and one of Norway?s most experienced Himalayan climbers said in a statement before leaving:

“I am still in love with the goddess of earth”

At 29,029 ft, it becomes quite an impressive devotional.

Before Allah, Al-’Uzza

The Chicago Tribune reports on a traveling exhibit (currently in Michigan) focusing on the lost city of Petra (home to the Nabataens) in what is now Southern Jordan. I found the section on the pre-Christian/Muslim religions in the area very informative.

“As archaeological and written evidence reveals, it drew upon the religious traditions of many surrounding regions?north Arabia, Edom, Syria and Egypt. All were strongly influenced by the Greeks, whose cultural presence dominated the eastern Mediterranean. State religion centered on the worship of two deities, a supreme god and goddess. At Petra, they were called Dushara and al-’Uzza, while in other parts of Nabataea they were known by different names but shared the same general characteristics. Dushara was the universal god of Heaven, equated with the Greek god Zeus. Al-’Uzza was the goddess of abundance and fertility, later identified with the Greco-Roman deity Aphrodite/Venus…Much about Nabataean religion remains unknown, yet what is clear is its enduring strength; it persisted for centuries after the advent of Christianity.”

A Venus/al-’Uzza bust from Petra

I like learning more about the Pagan past of the Middle-East, often tagged the “cradle of monotheism”. We often over-emphasize the Pagan past of Europe or Egypt and forget that the majority of religious expression was at one point “Pagan” by todays standards. Michael York argues that paganism is the “root-religion” that all other faiths offshoot or counter-develop from. That to really understand the prominent faiths of today, we must examine where they truly came from. As modern Pagans it is important that we are ever aware of our theological heritage and history.