» Part 1

=== Other News
19. Family fearful (Jason Lee)
20. Wife's death 'God's will' (Jason Lee)
21. Arrest in 1989 murder
22. Spiritualist Chopra Tirelessly Tangles With Courts
23. Book on Christ's 'desires' provokes unholy furore
24. ACLU files suit over Haywood County mind-readers

=== Religious Freedom

25. Activists criticize China's rule over religion as U.S. panel
gathers evidence
26. Pagan student ordered to cover up pentagram while at school

=== Noted
27. Science and religion contemplate 'the end'
28. Celtic spirituality explored
29. Religion, Politics and the Exception of America


=== Other News

19. Family fearful
Calgary Sun (Canada), Mar. 18, 2000
http://www.canoe.ca/CalgaryNews/05_n1.html
Parents of one of Jacob's chosen disciples are battling to keep their son
out of his grasp, even as the self-confessed Calgary prophet sat in court
yesterday.

Jason Samuel Lee, 30, -- who calls himself Jacob after the Biblical
character -- was in Calgary provincial court, charged in relation to the
death of his wife, Eda, who fasted to death during a religious cleansing.

Parents of another of Jacob's followers are scared their son may return to
his religious leader after the justice system takes its course -- and they'll
be helpless to stop it.

Historically, they know previous religious mind-control cult cases like Waco
and Jonestown ended in the deaths of followers.

Jacob lived in the home of their son and his wife and two children, and
persuaded them to sell their business and all their possessions and hand him
all their cash.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


20. Wife's death 'God's will'
Calgary Herald (Canada), Mar. 17, 2000
http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/stories/000317/3773355.html
A self-described prophet who claims God speaks to him says he's at peace with
the death of his wife, who starved on a remote mountainside during a quest
for spiritual enlightenment.

''People die,'' 30-year-old Jason Lee, who calls himself Jacob after the
biblical character, told the Herald Thursday. ''Everybody is going to die
sometime, somehow. I feel that if God had wanted her to live that he would
have sustained her long enough for me to give her water. I feel very much at
peace with it.''
(...)

The man -- who denies that he is a cult leader and was recruiting disciples
into his faith -- now faces charges of improperly disposing of a human body
for leaving his wife's remains on a mountain near Canmore.
(...)

The couple gave up all their worldly possessions and began preaching their
take on the word of the Lord to anyone who would listen shortly after their
excommunication from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1997.
They were put out of the church, Jacob said, after he challenged church
officials on their interpretation of the Bible and Book of Mormon.
(...)

He, along with his wife, learned the scriptures inside out, but soon became
disillusioned with the Mormon faith. ''The more I studied, the more I found
they weren't actually teaching what was in their own scriptures and I ended
up showing them that,'' he argued.

Living by their interpretation of the scripture became their mission, and the
couple began travelling North America to preach the gospel.
(...)

Eda's friends and family are shocked at the circumstances that led to her
death. They are also concerned for the couple's 18-month-old son. Joseph is
now in the custody of Jacob's mother, Marilyn Leigh.
(...)

''Eda was not stupid. She didn't just get duped, she was just totally
exploited,'' the friend said. ''I knew after a couple of months that she would
either have to leave him or she would be dead.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


21. Arrest in 1989 murder
The Telegraph (UK), Mar. 17, 2000
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et
?
ac=000140326706927&rtmo=Q0OSkQHR&atmo
=Q0OSkQHR&pg=/et/00/3/17/ntip17.html
A man was arrested yesterday on suspicion of having murdered a baby found on
a rubbish tip on 1 Dec, 1989.

The unidentified boy, aged about 14 months, was found by a council worker in
Millom, Cumbria. The body was so badly burnt that a pathologist was unable to
determine the cause of death. Police investigated the possibility that he had
been the victim of a Satanic ritual. They checked on 6,000 boys aged between
one and three.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


22. Spiritualist Chopra Tirelessly Tangles With Courts
Detroit News, Mar. 17, 2000
http://detnews.com/2000/religion/0003/18/03180010.htm
(...) Deepak Chopra, the New Age superstar and best-selling author who
preaches the value of cosmic harmony and inner tranquillity, is at war with
San Diego's judicial system.
(...)

''I look at these people as hyenas after my blood and marrow just because they
think I have money,'' said Chopra, whose yearly income has been estimated at
$15 million.
(...)

During six years of litigation, four judges have become so infuriated at the
hardball and accusatory tactics of Chopra's lawyers in five different cases
that they voluntarily recused themselves.

''In my more than 30 years as a trial lawyer and as a Superior Court judge, I
have never witnessed such misleading, manipulative, distorted, deceptive,
vitriolic action by any lawyer or law firm,'' Superior Court Judge John
Einhorn told a Chopra lawyer before bowing out.

Chopra's lawyers have complained to the FBI, the California Supreme Court and
the state Commission on Judicial Performance about the judges.

Chopra wrote to California Gov. Gray Davis about the jurist he sees as his
major nemesis, Superior Court Judge Judith McConnell: ''I feel impotent and
paralyzed because (of) the cronyism and corruption in the San Diego judicial
system.''

Chopra's complaint comes as McConnell is under consideration by Davis for
appointment to a state Court of Appeal post in San Diego. When Davis hosted
the California Governor's Conference for Women in October in Long Beach,
Chopra was a featured speaker.
(...)

Chopra and his attorneys insist that McConnell, by ruling against Chopra, is
trying to curry favor with the law firm to gain its backing for her
prospective promotion.
(...)

Chopra's lawyers say he views the fight as a quest to bring the truth to
light. He has already spent far more in legal fees than settling the cases
would have cost him.

''I think Deepak is being used by God to expose the corruption in the San
Diego judicial system,'' said Carla DiMare of Boston-based Flynn, Sheridan,
Tabb & Stillman.

Hardly a week goes by that one or more of the cases is not before one court
or another, with Chopra winning some rounds, losing others, but always
pressing on.

''The reason that this litigation has gone on so long is that neither Deepak
Chopra or his lawyers know when to quit,'' said lawyer James Huston, of Gray,
Cary. ''Every time a ruling goes against them their response is that this
shows the conspiracy is broader and deeper than they imagined.''
(...)

Chopra, who usually preaches the danger of holding ''toxic emotions,'' says he
has only begun to fight.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


23. Book on Christ's 'desires' provokes unholy furore
South China Morning Post, Mar. 17, 2000
http://www.scmp.com/News/World/Article/FullText_asp_ArticleID-20000317032641588.asp
(...) Now Greek writer Mimis Androulakis has been dubbed the ''biggest
blasphemer in Christendom''.

Androulakis' audacity to fictionalise the possible sexual longings of Jesus
Christ has aroused such passion in Greece that a court has ruled the book be
banned as the only means of preventing ''outbreaks of violence''.

The injunction - to be enforced in the court's jurisdiction in northern
Greece - has pitched freedom-of-expression advocates and an embarrassed Greek
Government against Christian zealots and black-robed priests.

Opponents have taken particular exception to passages that allude to a
''sexual'' attraction between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, the prostitute he
brought into the Christian fold. Jesus' life is not the stuff of ''copy'' for
unchristian novelists, they say.

''Mimis Androulakis is the last hole in the Devil's flute,'' said Giorgos
Markoulatos, who heads the Greek Orthodox Salvation Movement, which has
staged public burnings of the publication.
(...)

On hearing of the ban, thousands flocked to buy the book which, thanks to the
unholy row, is now in its 13th edition, with more than 35,000 copies sold.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


24. ACLU files suit over Haywood County mind-readers
Asheville Citizen-Times, Mar. 17, 2000
http://www.citizen-times.com/cgi-bin/story.cgi?
20000317_n5.txt&n
The American Civil Liberties Union is suing the Haywood County sheriff for
running a mind-reader out of town last year.

In a lawsuit filed in Superior Court this week, the ACLU and psychic shop
operators Larry and Dorothy Somers allege that Sheriff Tom Alexander and Sgt.
Jeff Haynes used an obscure 49-year-old state law that prohibits the practice
of phrenology, palmistry, fortune telling or clairvoyance - except in
connection with schools or church socials - to shut down a psychic reading
business.

The couple had secured a valid business license from the county tax office
before opening, the complaint contends.
(...)

Steve Clarke, a criminal law expert with the Institute of Government in
Chapel Hill, says the psychics shouldn't have been ordered to close down.
''This law worries me,'' he said. ''It comes seriously close to regulating
religion. We are allowed to have free thoughts and whatever beliefs that we
want and to exercise them to others as long as we don't hurt people in a
criminal way.''

Clarke said if the sheriff's department was worried about a scam, it should
have used another law.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Religious Freedom

25. Activists criticize China's rule over religion as U.S. panel gathers
evidence
Sacramento Bee/AP, Mar. 17, 2000
http://www.sacbee.com/news/calreport/calrep_story.cgi?N72.HTML
Chinese activists and dissidents say religious freedom in China is being
endangered ''to an unprecedented degree'' since the government began targeting
groups it considers cults.
(...)

''The scope of suppression by force ... is getting bigger and bigger,'' former
Chinese political prisoner Wei Jingsheng told the U.S. Commission on
International Religious Freedom.

The panel has been gathering evidence on religious issues in China, Russia
and Sudan since June and will present its first report to Congress by May 1.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


26. Pagan student ordered to cover up pentagram while at school
South Bend Tribune/AP, Mar. 15, 2000
http://www.southbendtribune.com/stories/2000/03/15/
local.20000315-sbt-MICH-D6-Pagan_student_ordere.sto
A high school student who follows a pagan religion says school officials
infringed on her religious freedom by ordering her to cover up two pentagrams
she wore to school.

Freshman Irma Patton was sent home Friday from Clark High School for
repeatedly refusing to remove or place tape over her pentagram ring and
button. School officials insist pentagrams are gang symbols.

Patton, who returned to school Monday with tape covering her ring and a coat
covering her button, believes her religious rights were trampled.

But school administrators said they have students' best interests in mind
because the five-pointed stars Patton wears could be interpreted as a gang
symbol worn by members of Chicago's Latin Kings gang.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Noted

27. Science and religion contemplate 'the end'
Philadelphia Inquirer, Mar. 18, 2000
http://www.phillynews.com/inquirer/2000
/Mar/18/national/CHUR18.htm
Long before the increasing dialogue between science and religion made
magazine covers, as it did with Newsweek a couple of summers ago, the Center
of Theological Inquiry in Princeton was posing, in the words of its director,
Wallace Allston, the question of ''how we can talk in a scientifically
oriented world about God as acting in the world.''

The Christian center's approach involved gathering top-flight scientists and
theologians for what Allston calls ''conversations.'' Papers derived from those
conversations are published periodically.

The latest compendium, The End of the World and the Ends of God, considers
end-time beliefs, or what theologians call eschatology. It will be the
subject of a public conference next Saturday in Princeton.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


28. Celtic spirituality explored
Daily Southtown, Mar. 17, 2000
http://www.dailysouthtown.com/southtown/dsnews/171nd3.htm
(...) At workshops, lectures, masses and retreats across the Chicago area,
men and women of all ages and creeds are exploring Celtic spirituality.

Buoyed by the 1990s renaissance of Irish art, film, music and literature and
the popularity of such Gaelophilic endeavors as ''Riverdance'' and ''Angela's
Ashes,'' interest in how pre-Christian peoples from Ireland, Scotland, Wales,
Cornwall, Brittany and the Isle of Man understood and related to the divine
is on the rise.
(...)

''We don't just want to explore history,'' said Bob Kolatorowicz, director of
St. Pat's Center for Celtic Spirituality. ''We're really trying to find a way
in which the values that are present in Celtic spirituality can influence
contemporary lives and how it can be a source for contemporary spirituality.''

Kolatorowicz said church officials hope the center will grow to host regular
workshops, lectures and retreats as well as to build a library of Celtic
spirituality resources where scholars can come to study.

Celtic spirituality is a way of relating to the divine that emphasizes
finding the beauty of God in creation and in others. The Celts were a
communal people who valued the spoken word, imagination and pilgrimage to
sacred places. All of those elements shaped their unique spirituality.

Mary Durkin, a theologian and member of the St. Pat's committee that fostered
the center, said Celtic spirituality has a broad appeal for contemporary
people searching for a kind of spiritual salve.

''Celtic spirituality points you, from my perspective, to look at things and
see not just the thing but the divine in the thing,'' Durkin said. ''Celtic
spirituality encourages you to look beyond.''
(...)

When Patrick introduced Christianity to the Celts in the fifth century A.D.,
it was not much of a leap for the pre-Christian clansman who worshipped
mythic heroes and warriors to embrace Christ and the saints, said Shanley,
who taught Celtic studies at St. Xavier University on Chicago's Southwest
Side for 15 years.

''It in a sense was very similar to what they believed in their own paganism.
Patrick saw the good in this paganism,'' and included Celtic ideology and
symbols, such as the sun — which is at the center of the Celtic Christian
cross — and the shamrock to create the unique tradition that is Celtic
Christianity, he said.
(...)

Pamela Smith of Lansing, an Episcopalian, attended Shanley's lecture at the
Carmelite center after several years of reading about and exploring Celtic
spirituality on her own.

''What draws me to it is that there is sacred in the ordinary and that just
the way we live our lives is praise and blessing,'' Smith said. ''Celtic
spirituality is something that can be expressed personally. It's not
something that is separate, it's something that is integral to my life.''

Janice Travers, 76, a Protestant who earned a graduate degree in theology 10
years ago, said she has long been interested in Celtic spirituality because
of the integral role nature plays in it.
(...)

''The whole idea of seeing God in everything, reverence for the spirit in all
things, the searching for God in all things'' is attractive to many Catholics,
Sister Teresa said.
(...)

Some Christians are wary of Celtic spirituality because of its pagan
beginnings. But what was pagan grew into a distinct, rich form of
Christianity, Shanley said.

''I think we've always gotten the Roman interpretation, that these were
barbarians, pagans and worshipped pagan gods. To some extent that's true, but
the Jews also worshipped pagan gods before Abraham. There's a parallel,'' he
said.

''One lady called me up to ask if (Celtic spirituality) was New Age,'' he said.
''I don't know what New Age is but I suspect it's anything that they (critics)
don't like.''

As she reflected on why Celtic spirituality has grown so popular,
particularly among Irish-American Catholics, Durkin remembered something the
Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, said.

''You don't have to leave your own roots, you can find it within them,'' Durkin
recalled.

''Celtic spirituality says something about Catholicism. You don't have to run
off to India or someplace else,'' she said. ''You can perhaps better understand
your faith by looking at some of the suggestions that maybe trees say
something about the majesty of God.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


29. Religion, Politics and the Exception of America
IntellectualCapital.com, Mar. 16, 2000
http://www.intellectualcapital.com/issues/issue355/item8807.asp
(...) When the candidate went on a fortnight crusade against the leaders of
the religious right, he rediscovered what political scientists have called
American Exceptionalism. The United States is like the rest of the world in
many ways. And in many ways, it is not.

It is not a mistake to see the fading of the clerics in Iran in the same
light as the rebellion of Japanese youngsters. As countries modernize, they
grow less traditional -- and especially, less traditionally religious or
moral. In Pakistan, for instance, fully 90% of those asked to rate the
importance of God in their lives mark 10 on a 10-point scale. In Japan, only
5% make this choice, according to the World Values Survey.

There is every indication this same kind of cultural change is occurring in
the United States. Traditional authority in this country is taking a beating.
Old-line religions are losing faith and following as people concoct their own
amalgamations of spirituality: church on Sunday (though less and less) and
Yoga classes during the week.
(...)

Those are the trends everywhere. But as the University of Michigan’s Ronald
Inglehart and Wayne Baker wrote in a recent paper based on surveys conducted
in 65 nations, the United States is different from other countries, and it is
especially different in terms of religion.

Inglehart and Baker argue that the United States has “levels of religiosity
and national pride comparable to those found in developing countries.” The
United States, the political scientists say, “is a deviant case, having a
much more traditional value system than any other advanced industrial
society.”

Simply, Virginia isn’t Sweden, and Californians aren’t the same as the Dutch.
We are more akin to poor Pakistan when it comes to our religious faith than
industrial brother Japan. This is still the United States, and we carry all
the religious hang-ups and nightmares that have been a part of our culture
for 400 years.
[...more...]