=== Waco / Branch Davidians
1. Waco Jury Hear Audio Tapes
2. Tapes of Davidians ruled admissible
3. Government seeks end to gunfire claim

=== Ho No Hana Sanpogyo
4. Cult foots bill for family's splurge

=== Falun Gong
5. Deported pregnant Falun Gong member tries to re-enter Hong Kong

=== Scientology
6. Sect Commissioner issues warning about Scientology
7. Crusade or Shadowboxing?
8. The Old Master of Mad Valley

=== Unification Church
9. Lithuania orders Moon followers to stop religious activities in Lithuania

=== Jehovah's Witnesses
10. Jehovah's Witnesses Cap Convention With Baptism

=== Islam
11. Egyptian author charged with offending Islam gets suspended sentence
12. 'Jihad U' is just down the road from the CIA
13. Muslim cult members rounded up (Al Ma'unah)
14. Islamic Threat Haunts Malaysia
15. Healing a Bitter Legacy (Nation of Islam)
16. Assad's Muslim Sect Rose With Him (Alawites)
17. Pork-Eating Ex-Muslims Condemned

=== Hinduism
18. Churchman bans yoga class
19. Christians converted to Hinduism
20. The Irish Swami

=== Catholicism
21. Conservative Ohio Protestant group decries Catholics' 'false gospel'
22. Pope gunman accuses Vatican of being 'enemy' of God
23. Eastern Orthodox, Catholic Churches begin talks on reconciliation

=== Paganism / Witchcraft
24. Back from a spell ...

=== Hate Groups / Hate Crimes
25. White Supremacist's Trial Underway (Buford Furrow)
26. A year after rampage, monitors keeping an eye on hate group (World
Church of the Creator)
27. The Columbus Dispatch, July 8, 2000

=== Other News
28. Korean Doomsday Cult Sentenced (Chunjonhoe)
29. Korean Doomsday Cult Members Suspected in $134 Mln Fraud
Case (Chunjonhoe)
30. Ex-BA air hostess feared kidnapped by Japanese cult
31. Woman held in alleged abduction of daughter
32. Cult Members Nabbed in S. Philippines (Democratic Brotherhood Crusader
Divine Healing)
33. Ex-worker admits he spent ministry's money
34. 'I can raise the dead' says priest
35. Holy Smoke! Legalise the weed, say church officials
36. Prayer circle stretches for miles across meadow (Rainbow Family)

=== Human Rights / Death Penalty
37. US Lawyers Leader Seeks Death Penalty Moratorium

=== Noted
38. Cleric sees sexuality as 'trigger issue' for church
39. Holocaust teaches FBI agents morality
40. Atheist Services Full Of Familiar Elements (Church of Freethought)
41. Prayer practitioners borrow some techniques from eastern meditation

=== Books
42. Writers tap power of occult
43. Lord of the Rings Creates Early (Very Early) Buzz


=== Waco / Branch Davidians

1. Waco Jury Hear Audio Tapes
AOL/AP, July 10, 2000
http://my.aol.com/news/story.tmpl?
table=n&cat=01&id=0007100804616986
[Story no longer online? Read this]
WACO, Texas (AP) - Unidentified Branch Davidians were heard asking ''start the fire?'' and ''should we light the fire?'' in recordings played Monday in the $675 million wrongful-death trial against the government.

U.S. District Judge Walter Smith, a panel of five jurors and attorneys listened to nearly an hour of mostly unintelligible conversations leading to April 19, 1993, when the compound burned to the ground.

Some 80 sect members, including leader David Koresh, died from either gunshots or fire that day.

The excerpts were presented in audio and transcript form as the wrongful death trial filed by surviving Branch Davidians and family members entered its fourth week. They contend the government used excessive force against the sect and contributed to the blaze.

''Let's keep that fire going,'' a male voice said on the final day of the siege as tanks rumbled in the background.

Federal agents were heard warning sect members of an impending tear-gassing operation and urged them to surrender the morning of April 19. On the same excerpt, a male voice was heard asking, ''Should we light the package?''

A day earlier, an unidentified male said, ''you always wanted to be a charcoal briquette ... There's nothing like a good fire to bring us to the earth.''
(...)

The audio clips, government attorneys say, help prove that suicidal Davidians, not federal agents, caused the three fires that consumed the rickety wood complex.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


2. Tapes of Davidians ruled admissible
Dallas Morning News/AP, July 10, 2000
http://dallasnews.com/latestnews/109269_waco.html
[Story no longer online? Read this]
(...) The recordings are proof that suicidal Davidians, not federal agents, caused the April 19, 1993, fire that consumed the rickety wood complex after a 51-day siege, the government said in a motion filed Friday seeking to introduce the tapes into evidence.

Attorneys for sect family members and survivors suing the government argued that jurors in the case should not hear the recordings because the voices have not been identified and therefore do not prove sect members started the blaze.

In a motion filed last month, they argued that introducing the tapes amounted to hearsay because of their anonymous nature. ''Absent voice authentication, the tapes are not admissible for any purpose,'' said the plaintiffs' motion.

U.S. District Judge Walter S. Smith overruled the motion. ''I don't think it matters who was talking. These are adult Branch Davidians who were talking, who were making admissions against interest to say the very least,'' Smith said.

The decision came as the $675 million wrongful-death trial entered its fourth week.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


3. Government seeks end to gunfire claim
Dallas Morning News, July 9, 2000
http://dallasnews.com/texas_southwest/
108856_waco_09tex.ART.html
[Story no longer online? Read this]
WACO - Government lawyers again have asked a federal judge to throw out a claim of government gunfire at the end of the Branch Davidian siege, renewing their argument that the charge springs from faulty science and can be disproved with basic mathematical analysis.

Their pleading comes just weeks after U.S. District Judge Walter S. Smith told both sides in the Branch Davidian wrongful-death case that he might dismiss the issue without allowing it to go to a full trial.

Judge Smith said last month that he was persuaded to consider the dismissal by a May report rejecting the gunfire claim. That report, written by his court-appointed expert, British-based Vector Data Research, concluded that flashes on the Waco video came not from gunfire but from sunlight or heat from tank engines reflecting off ground debris.

Study called flawed
Lawyers for the sect filed a detailed challenge to the Vector report late last month. They argued that the study was too flawed to resolve whether gunfire caused repeated flashes on an FBI forward-looking infrared, or FLIR, videotape recorded on the final day of the 1993 standoff.

Government lawyers filed their own brief late Friday afternoon, arguing that ''gunfire can be ruled out mathematically as the source of 90 percent of the flashes ... and therefore the court can independently evaluate the FLIR tape without the assistance of the Vector report.''
(...)

Judge Smith decided to sever the April 19 gunfire issue from the case last month before the opening of the sect's wrongful-death trial. At the time, he told lawyers for both sides that he wanted to hear personally from the chief analyst assigned by Vector to study the original FBI video and data from a March infrared field test ordered by the court to help resolve the gunfire issue.

Conflicting testimony
The company's Waco report has been under fire since two of the three analysts involved in the study were deposed in May. The two analysts gave testimony that conflicted significantly with the company's original May report to Judge Smith.

Neither side in the lawsuit has questioned a third Vector employee who served as chief analyst for the court-ordered study. He underwent prostate surgery last spring and cannot travel to the United States until late July. His unavailability and his importance to the Vector study were Judge Smith's principal reasons for deciding last month to delay consideration of the gunfire issue.

But after severing the issue, Judge Smith announced five days before the start of the Davidian trial that he was considering dismissing it outright. The government's Friday brief argued that Judge Smith could use simple mathematical analysis and ''independently evaluate the FLIR tape without the assistance of the Vector report.''
(...)

Mr. Caddell said the government's latest brief on the gunfire issue fails to address a report he filed with the court last month from a retired CIA imagery analyst. The analyst found that personnel could be seen in the Waco video in three areas near the front and rear of the compound just before it burned.

Other lawyers for the sect filed an additional report late last month from a New Jersey infrared expert, who wrote that the camera's controls could have been manually manipulated to make people less visible and that the flashes on the video looked more like gunshots than anything found in nature.

But ''most revealing,'' Mr. Caddell said, was the government's dismissal of the Vector Data Research report. ''They are disassociating themselves from Vector,'' he said. ''That speaks volumes about how Vector has been discredited.''

That could have implications for the ongoing investigation by Waco special counsel John C. Danforth. Judge Smith chose Vector last year to supervise an infrared field test and prepare a written analysis of the Waco video after they were recommended by Mr. Danforth's office.

Mr. Danforth's office is also using the firm to help prepare its own evaluation of government actions in the 1993 tragedy.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Ho No Hana Sanpogyo

4. Cult foots bill for family's splurge
Asahi News (Japan), July 11, 2000
http://www.asahi.com/english/asahi/
0711/asahi071104.html
[Story no longer online? Read this]
The family of former cult leader Hogen Fukunaga spent 1.83 billion yen of the 95 billion yen the Ho no Hana Sanpogyo foot cult swindled from its followers, police sources said Monday.

The sources said police have managed to account for nearly all of the 95 billion yen in revenue the cult collected between 1987 and 1999. The group was recognized as a religious organization in 1987.

Tokyo prosecutors indicted 14 cult staff members on charges of fraud at the Tokyo District Court on Monday, having wrapped up their investigation of the cult. A total of 19 cult members have been arrested.

The cult gathered 85 billion yen from followers in the form of training fees and from sales of hanging scrolls and other expensive cult items. It raised an additional 10 billon yen from its 24 affiliates, the sources said.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Falun Gong

5. Deported pregnant Falun Gong member tries to re-enter Hong Kong
BBC Monitoring/Hong Kong iMail
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/pages/newsreal/
Story.nsp?story_id=11939182&ID=newsreal
&scategory=AP+Top+Headlines
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Deported Falun Gong sect member Fang Minqing [Wendy Fang Min-ching] tried to get back into the territory yesterday - just two days after being returned to San Francisco.

The five-months pregnant Ms Fang was denied entry at Chek Lap Kok for the second time in a fortnight and escorted on to a flight back to Taipei, her last port of call.

Meanwhile, it has been revealed that the Immigration Department took Ms Fang to see the Buddha Statue on Lantau just before her first deportation on Saturday [8th July].

A source told 'Sing Tao Daily', the sister newspaper of 'Hong Kong iMail', that the favour was granted after Ms Fang promised to end her 11-day protest and leave the territory as soon as she had seen the statue.
(...)

''As Ms Fang is carrying a Chinese passport, she must obtain a visa to enter Hong Kong but failed to do so,'' a Security Bureau spokeswoman said.

''Although she gave 'transit' as the reason for landing, she was not allowed entry because her final destination, mainland China, rejected her entry twice in May.''

The spokeswoman reiterated that the refusal was based purely on immigration policy and had nothing to do with Ms Fang's membership of a religious sect banned on the mainland.
(...)

On 28th June, Ms Fang was one of three Falun Gong members denied entry. They were all hoping to visit the Lantau Buddha for a religious exercise on 1st July.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Scientology

6. Sect Commissioner issues warning about Scientology
Berliner Morgenpost (Germany), July 6, 2000
Translation: CISAR
http://cisar.org/000706b.htm
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Steglitz - Thomas Gandow, Evangelical Church sect commissioner, has issued a warning at a public CDU discussion event that the Scientology association is a ''new form of political extremism.''
(...)

He said that Scientology was to be regarded more as a ''totalitarian organization'' which operated in ''the area of trade politics and in the psycho-political area'' and which had as a goal the regency over as many areas of life as possible.
(...)

The church representative also expressed self criticism, ''The Church has be accused, not unjustly, of often speaking up too late,'' said Gandow. He said that society would have to be alerted to Scientology in a timely manner. ''Therefore I advise everyone here not to say that things can't be that bad,'' the sect commissioner appealed.

Gandow described the accusation by the U.S. government that Germany was violating freedom of religion as ''absurd.'' ''Religious freedom does not just mean that you can get into a religion, you also have to be able to get out of it again.'' He said that was not always the case with the Scientologists.

''Scientologists want key positions''
Steglitz CDU Representative and attorney Bettina Wehrisch in involved with ''Scientology and Labor law.'' Frank Thadeusz spoke with her about the risks are for companies who are exposed to the psycho-sect.

BM:
Mrs. Wehrisch, you have warned people of the attempts by Scientologists to infiltrate businesses. How could something like that happen?

Bettina Wehrisch: There are two possibilities. For one, the Scientologists try to recruit new members in meetings which are disguised as continuing education courses. The other way is that Scientologists get into companies to sound things out as employees. There they shoot for the key positions, such as the personnel department, where contact to as many staff as possible is guaranteed.

How can companies protect themselves?

Wehrisch:
Company management can require course providers to sign a statement to verify that they do not use L. Ron Hubbard's techniques. In addition, the award of contracts for this alleged training can be contested at any time. Also, in political, public and religious work arrangements, employers can also ask individual workers about membership in Scientology in their recruitment and placement meetings. What is interesting is that Scientologists are allowed to deny their membership in response to the question ''Are you a Scientologist?'' Nevertheless one can ask them whether they use the techniques of Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard, and, according to the standards of their own teaching, they may not lie to that.

By doing that, is one discriminating against members of Scientology?

Wehrisch:
No, because they do not belong to a religious or weltanschauung community. That was decided by the Federal Labor Court (BAG). Scientology's goal is to obtain money and power.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


7. Crusade or Shadowboxing?
c't (Germany), July 7, 2000
Translation: CISAR
http://cisar.org/000707a.htm
[Story no longer online? Read this]
In the American pre-election campaign, ''Executive Software'' founder Craig Jensen is drumming up votes for Republican congressional representatives in the fundamentalist Right and accuses the Federal Republic of putting obstacles in place to damage his business. Here at home, the CDU/CSU opposition is moving the administration to be more stringent against the Scientology conspiracy.

The corporation of professed Scientologist Jensen is the producer of the defragmentation program integrated into Windows 2000. The apparently close cooperation with Microsoft also opens the doors for Executive Software to have a full version of the ''Diskeeper'' defragmenter to be configured into Windows NT, 9x and 2000 remotely from networked systems. The side-effects of the corporation which is managed according to Scientology policies in Windows 2000 [1] has become a reason for concerned users, government agencies among them, to ask for an investigation by the Cologne Federal Office for Security in Information Technology (BSI).

The BSI, in the scope of its legal capacity of consultation, is now supposed to check whether Windows 2000 generally proves to have holes in security by which it would possible that transfers or counterfeits of files could occur which were not intended by users. In order to clarify the technical facts of the matter, the experts in Cologne have long been negotiating with Microsoft over the extent of access to the source code, as well as over the type of tests and the form in which the results would be permitted to be made public. At the time this article went to press, an agreement had not yet been reached, which means no results are available. Besides that, the office can only make a recommendation, if it is positive, it would serve as a type of a seal of approval, but market limitations or restriction of implementing the software is not associated with the technical review.

The second point of attack is the so-called ''sect filter'' - a security clause written by the Federal Ministry of Commerce (BMWi) in September 1998 as an attachment to the federal policy on award of contracts. According to it, companies which perform schooling or consultation in public service must sign a statement that they do not employ the training, management or organization techniques of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, in which people are psychologically manipulated or put under pressure. This clause also is valid exclusively for the public sector and does not entail any associated effects for the private economy.

At the same time the U.S. House of Representatives foreign affairs committee, which consists mostly of Republicans, took that regulation in the middle of June as a reason to offer a forum for Executive Software chairman Craig Jensen (''I am a living example of the American dream come true''), in the hearings on alleged discrimination against religious minorities in western Europe, to complain about persecution of his brothers in faith by German agencies and about an alleged embargo against the product of his firm. [2].

He was provided with the opportunity he wanted for his reproach by Clinton's Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky. In her ''Annual Report on Discrimination in Foreign Government Procurement,'' she censured the security clause, which is also required in similar forms by several state governments like Bavaria, Berlin and Hamburg, as an impermissible non-tariff trade restriction: ''At least one major U.S. provider has been subjected to a qualification process which far exceeds that which was demanded from its competitors,'' said the report. [These are non-literal quotes which have been translated from English to German back to English... trans.] And continued, ''The executive office of the Trade Representative, after the requirements of the sect filter were brought to its attention, made the German government aware of its objection and is continuing to put pressure on the Germans to lift this discriminatory politic.''

Official reaction to these procedures could not be obtained from the federal government; the inquiry by c't to that effect is still unanswered. The BMWi only verified that the text of the security clause was presently being reviewed by an interministerial work group in order to make it legally ''watertight'' in the event that those affected by it should appeal to the Federal Constitutional Court - which Scientology has so far avoided.

In the middle of all this, the CDU/CSU faction is preparing a Minor Inquiry for the German Parliament. In the request for information, which consists of over 20 questions, it would like to know, among other things, what legal possibilities the federal administration sees to stop ''infiltration of the German economy'' by Scientology members, whether it would consider tightening up the security clause and how it would like to prevent the award of public contracts to corporations directly controlled by Scientology through the ''World Institute of Scientology Enterprises'' (WISE), as well as to ''such firms which use the management techniques developed by Scientology and/or the totalitarian personnel training methods marketed by Scientology trainers.''

Another item in the inquiry is aimed directly at Microsoft's refusal so far to have its source code reviewed: ''How does the federal government expect to implement data security and prevent damage to German business if software products which are related to security on the German market do not have a safety mechanism built in against illegal surveillance of customers by intelligence agencies?''

In asking that, the opposition has put its finger on the Achilles heel of state procurement politics. Because if Microsoft does not give in to the BSI's demands to reveal its source code, there is no realistic alternative in the short run for the software from Redmond. Aware that he has his hand indirectly on the end of a long lever as a provider to Microsoft, Jensen joyfully pointed out the awkward situation to the committee: doing without Windows 2000 would be ''a 50 billion dollar blow to the German economy,'' said Jensen, ''simply because of the inefficiency of the systems which they would have to install instead of this one.'' (cp)

References:
[1] Hans-Peter Göhring: Windows 2000 droht ein Bann, c't 25/99, Seite 58
[2] www.house.gov/international_relations/full/relminor/relminor.html
[3] http://www.innenministerium.bayern.de/scientology/ broschuere_verfassungsfeindliche_bestrebung/inhaltsverzeichnis.htm

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Scientology
Science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard founded the ''Church of Scientology'' in 1954. Hubbard accumulated a unique world picture from his experiences with spiritism in Pasadena with the Ordo Templi Orientis, a sect of adherents of English Satanist Alistair Crowley, and from a mixture of pseudo-scientific science fiction, popular psychology and satanism, which he published in a book in 1950. According to Hubbard's concepts, the spiritual infiltration of humanity by the ''Psychs'' using psychiatric methods could only be stopped by Scientology's occupation of key positions in society with its own obedient followers.

When German district attorneys and Constitutional Security agents began to investigate Scientology because of indices present of endeavors being taken against the Constitution [3], the organization launched a human rights campaign which peaked with a letter to Chancellor Helmut Kohl, which was signed by non-members like Dustin Hoffman and Oliver Stone, besides professed Scientologists like John Travolta.

In 1995, the Federal Labor Court decided that Scientology was not to be regarded as a religious community of believers, but as a commercial association which used the designation of ''church'' solely as a protective cloak to pursue commercial interests. In doing that, it invokes Hubbard policies which include, ''Make money, make more money - have other people work to make money.'' Even in the USA, Scientology did not succeed in bullying the Internal Revenue Service into giving it tax-exemption as a religious community until 1993, and then under suspicious circumstances.

There would be no lack of piquancy if the United States would now impute the Federal Republic of Germany with ideologically motivated ''non-tariff trade restrictions.'' Its own anti-communism is today being raged upon the small Caribbean island of Cuba, against which they carried out a genuine trade embargo for forty years - which was also carried out against companies from other countries which wanted to invest there.
[...entire item...]

* The report listed under reference 3 above is also available in English:
What is Scientology?
Bavarian State Ministry of the Interior
http://www.innenministerium.bayern.de/english/scientology/ekeltsch.html

For information regarding the Scientology - IRS agreement, see:
http://www.xenu.net/archive/IRS/

8. The Old Master of Mad Valley
Evening Standard/This is London (England), July 10, 2000
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/
dynamic/visitors/review.html?in_review_id=
297946&in_review_text_id=242411
[Story no longer online? Read this]
(...) Then there's Anthony Christian himself - extraordinary artist and self-proclaimed genius, who is this week having his first London exhibition for 28 years.

Back in the Seventies he was a celebrated portrait painter and something of a Brit Art star, with glowing writeups in Vogue. Then he dropped off the map, going first to Bali and then India, where he became a virtual recluse with his art materials and a succession of wives for company.
(...)

A child prodigy, he was making copies of Old Masters at the age of 10.
(...)

By his late teens, he realised he could use his amazing technical facility to make a living as a portrait painter and was a figure in both hip and aristocratic circles, painting everyone from Julie Christie and Gore Vidal to Terence Stamp and Lord Mountbatten.
(...)

He told me one incident among many that had put him off portraits was when the Scientology founder L Ron Hubbard asked him to ''paint me in a way that people can worship me''.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Unification Church

9. Lithuania orders Moon followers to stop religious activities in Lithuania
BBC Monitoring/Baltic news agency BNS, June 28, 2000
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/pages/newsreal/
Story.nsp?story_id=11613443&ID=newsreal
&scategory=AP+Top+Headlines
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Vilnius, 28th June: The Lithuanian Justice Ministry has instructed the Collegiate Association for the Research of the Principle to discontinue its religious activities in Lithuania because they contradict their own bylaws and violate the country's law on public organizations.

The Justice Ministry said that the association's bylaws do not express any religious aims of the organization or its relation to the Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon.

However, the information available to the ministry suggests that the Collegiate Association for the Research of the Principle operates in Lithuania as part of the world movement headed by Moon.

The Justice Ministry said that events organized by the association in Lithuania were aimed at recruiting young people who later become members of the religious community of the Unification Church.

According to the bylaws of the Collegiate Association for the Research of the Principle, the main goal of he organization is promotion of university student activity to ensure world peace, development of friendship and cooperation among students of different countries. The ministry ordered the association to present by 15th August 2000 a document on the cessation of its activities in the Baltic state.

The Lithuanian Justice Ministry does not have the number of people enrolled in the activities of the Collegiate Association for the Research of the Principle and the Unification Church of Moon.
[...entire item...]


=== Jehovah's Witnesses

10. Jehovah's Witnesses Cap Convention With Baptism
Omaha World-Herald, July 9, 2000
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/pages/newsreal/
Story.nsp?story_id=11927690&ID=newsreal
&scategory=AP+Top+Headlines
[Story no longer online? Read this]
About 7,650 Jehovah's Witnesses from Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and South Dakota met in Lincoln on Saturday for the second day of their three-day district convention.
(...)

The Lincoln District meeting is one of 181 district conventions that will be held in 63 U.S. cities from May through September.

The denomination says it has 5.9 million members in 234 countries. More than 1 million members are in the United States. Its 89,900 congregations work under the direction of a central governing body in Brooklyn, N.Y.
(...)

The convention also drew Andrei Zorine, 21, a college student from Siberia who is working at an Easter Seals camp in Des Moines this summer.

Zorine is an example of the denomination's worldwide reach.

Russia already has more than 100,000 Witnesses, he said. The ranks there continue to grow ''because we talk to people,'' Zorine said.

As denominations go, Jehovah's Witnesses are relatively young at 128 years. Like another fast-growing group, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, it originated in the United States.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]

* Theologically, the Jehovah's Witnesses movement is a cult of Christianity
http://www.apologeticsindex.org/j02.html

=== Islam

11. Egyptian author charged with offending Islam gets suspended sentence
Nando Times/AP, July 8, 2000
http://www.nandotimes.com/noframes/story/
0,2107,500225948-500324868-501839198-0,00.html
[Story no longer online? Read this]
An Egyptian author was sentenced Saturday to a suspended six-month jail term for writing books that offend Islam.

Salah-Eddine Mohsen's sentence is lenient; a conviction for offending religion usually carries a sentence of up to five years in prison.

Mohsen was indicted, among other things, for writing that the Quran, Islam's holy book, was outdated. But during the trial he told the court that he was a believer and that he did not mean to offend Islam or negate its basic tenets.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


12. 'Jihad U' is just down the road from the CIA
Toledo Blade, July 9, 2000 (Opinion)
http://www.toledoblade.com/editorial/hussain/0g09huss.htm
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Recently the New York Times Magazine carried a cover story, ''Jihad U,'' about a religious school located in northwestern Pakistan. The school, according to the article, is a hot bed of militant Islamic fundamentalism. It is also the spiritual center of gravity for the Taliban leadership of Afghanistan. There are hundreds of similar schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

How did a religious school in Pakistan become the training ground for the Taliban of Afghanistan? The answer lies not in the devastated Afghan countryside or in Pakistan but in Langley, Va., home of the Central Intelligence Agency.

To understand the Taliban phenomenon we need to rewind to the early days of Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

The United States was caught off guard when the Soviet forces entered Afghanistan in 1979. Though an indigenous Islamic resistance movement had arisen, it had no chance of succeeding on its own. America, for its own strategic reasons, was eager to help but needed a common link that the mujahideen or the freedom fighters could identify with.

That common link between America and the hapless mujahideen turned out to be religion. From that point on, the struggle was between the abode of the believers and that of the nonbelievers. Once inside the abode of the faithful the West became a full partner in jihad against the Soviet infidels.

The CIA and Pakistan's army trained and equipped mujahideen. Armed with the latest American weapons and burning with religious zeal, they took on a superpower and defeated it. And then the same mujahideen turned on each other. The Taliban was the creation of the United States with active support of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia as an alternative to the warring mujahideen.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


13. Muslim cult members rounded up
Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), July 10, 2000
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0007/10/text/world04.html
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Kuala Lumpur: Malaysian authorities have arrested 24 suspected followers of an extremist Muslim cult in a nationwide sweep, days after an armed confrontation with the military in a jungle camp.

Bankers, computer systems analysts and teachers are among those reported detained since Friday, and police said investigations would continue.

Twenty-seven members of the Al-Ma'unah - Brotherhood of Inner Power - surrendered on Thursday after a four-day stand-off with 1,000 troops and police at their jungle hideout.

The cultists, led by several ex-military men, raided two armouries in northern Malaysia on July 2, stealing more than 100 assault rifles, rocket launchers and light machine-guns. Before surrendering, they tortured and killed two of four hostages.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]

* About Al Ma'unah
http://www.apologeticsindex.org/a60.html
[Story no longer online? Read this]


14. Islamic Threat Haunts Malaysia
Industry Watch/Associated Press. July 10, 2000
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/pages/newsreal/
Story.nsp?story_id=11900960&ID=newsreal
&scategory=AP+Top+Headlines
[Story no longer online? Read this]
(...) Police said the group was an Islamic cult called Al-Ma'unah, or Brotherhood of Inner Power, which espouses Jihad, or Holy War. Members, who includes active and former military men, disguised themselves as army officers and stole more than 100 assault rifles, grenade launchers and light machine guns July 2 from armories.
(...)

Their violence may not herald the onset of an Islamic uprising in Malaysia, where more than half of the 22 million people are Muslim.

But experts say it could push the government to review its attitude toward many of the Islamic groupings, some of which are at the forefront of the legal opposition.

''The government has been saying that the great problem in the country is Islamic fundamentalism,'' said Bruce Gale of the Singapore-based Political and Risk Consultancy. ''Now they will hold this up as an example.''

Islamic groups are experiencing a surge in popularity since Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad in 1998 sacked his popular deputy, Anwar Ibrahim, who got his political training an Islamic student movement in the late 1970s.
(...)

The Islamic upsurge comes as Malaysia's neighbor to the south and east, predominantly Muslim Indonesia, has been rocked by insurgent Islamic radicals fighting a Christian minority. And west of Malaysia, mostly Roman Catholic Philippines combats separatist movements in the Muslim-majority province of Mindanao.
(...)

Gale said many Malays had turned toward Islamic groups because of growing cynicism with Mahathir's 19-year rule, which, the PAS and other groups allege, has spawned corruption and dishonesty. The party says this leads Malays to un-Islamic ways of Western-style entertainment and drinking.

The worry is that a crackdown could lead to a backlash and alienate Muslims, especially in the rural areas where people are conservative and ritualistic but also feel relatively left out of Malaysia's extraordinary economic growth over the past few decades.

In 1985, 14 people were killed by security forces in Memali village in northern Malaysia when police attacked a group of shadowy Muslim clerics and local villagers moved in to shield them. Four policemen were also killed.

In the 1990s, the government banned a group called Al Arqam, which preached revivalism, and arrested its leader. There was no violence.

Many think the present crisis will not have wider repercussions.

''They are probably just an isolated group. They have own leaders giving orders and ideas,'' said Abu Bakar of the Institute Kefahaman Islam Malaysia, a Kuala Lumpur-based religious think tank.

If that's the case, he said, no government crackdown on Islamic groups would be imminent and the authorities would deal with it as a criminal problem.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


15. Healing a Bitter Legacy
Los Angeles Times, July 8, 2000
http://www.latimes.com/news/state/20000708/t000064237.html
[Story no longer online? Read this]
The place was Masjid Omar near USC. The speaker was Lydia Camarillo of the Democratic National Convention Committee. The topic was Muslim Americans and politics.

But the day's biggest story centered on the participants: For the first time since African American Muslims were divided into two competing and sometimes hostile forces 25 years ago, members of Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam and W.D. Mohammed's Muslim American Society came together this week to co-sponsor an event in Los Angeles. Unity efforts will get another boost today when both sides hold a family picnic in Los Angeles.

The rapprochement is bringing healing to a bitter legacy of separation that began with the 1975 death of Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad, who preached a doctrine of race-based separatism and taught that God was incarnate in the person of his teacher, W. Fard Muhammad. His son and successor, Warith Deen, quickly disavowed those doctrines and moved his flock to embrace orthodox Islam--which offers a message of universal brotherhood and holds that there is no God but Allah and that the prophet Muhammad was his last messenger.

In 1977, Farrakhan reestablished the Nation and reembraced the doctrines of Elijah Muhammad.

The chaotic split pitted families and friends against each other in a sometimes violent struggle over questions ranging from the nature of God to the best political path for African Americans. Since Farrakhan and Mohammed officially pledged in February to work together, however, that turbulent past is, slowly and carefully, being put to rest as both sides move toward Muslim unity.

''There are people in both communities who are still somewhat resistant to unity, but it's going to happen with or without them,'' said Najee Ali, a Muslim activist with Project Islamic HOPE who was a leading initiator of the Los Angeles rapprochement. ''We're family now.''

Hopes of More Political Clout
Ali said the combined forces will strengthen the political clout of African American Muslims, whose numbers are not well-documented and are usually estimated at anywhere between 500,000 and 2.5 million. The Rev. Tony Muhammad, the Nation's western regional minister, envisions joint projects in economic development and social programs--even a ''Muslimtown'' of prosperous businesses and peaceful neighborhoods free from crime, drugs and dysfunction.
(...)

Despite the headiness, both sides say the very source of the split--differences in Islamic theology and practice--is not yet fully resolved.

When Farrakhan embraced Mohammed at his Savior's Day convention in Chicago earlier this year, orthodox Muslims were led to believe that the Nation of Islam leader had finally disavowed what they view as heretical doctrines: that W. Fard Muhammad was Allah incarnate and that Elijah Muhammad was a divine messenger.

But Tony Muhammad, based in Los Angeles, said this week that the Nation hasn't changed its doctrines. ''We believe that Master Fard is the greatest manifestation of Allah that we know today,'' he said. Told that orthodox Muslims don't believe that humans can be divine, he said: ''We beg to differ.''

He also said that members believe Elijah Muhammad was a ''messenger of God,'' which differs from the orthodox belief that the prophet Muhammad was God's final messenger.

The process of reconciliation may take time, but both sides say their goodwill and genuine desire for unity will ultimately prevail.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


16. Assad's Muslim Sect Rose With Him
AOL/AP, July 11, 2000
http://my.aol.com/news/story.tmpl?
table=n&cat=01&id=0007110121623394
[Story no longer online? Read this]
QARDAHA, Syria (AP) - The Alawite Muslims of Syria were once marginalized in religion, economics and politics. Then a young Alawite named Hafez Assad rose to power, and things changed dramatically in such places as his hometown of Qardaha.

Since Assad's death on June 10, Alawites who may have feared backlash from Syria's Sunni Muslim majority are somewhat reassured to see another of their clan - his son Bashar - ascending to power.
(...)

Historically, Alawites were concentrated in mountainous northwest Syria. Nationwide, they are about 15 percent of the overwhelmingly Sunni population in this country of 17 million people.
(...)

Alawites form an offshoot of Shiite Islam and are found in Lebanon and Turkey as well as Syria. They have long suffered from charges of religious heresy, neglect by governments and the political and economic dominance of members of the mainstream Sunni Muslim faith.

The secretive faith - the name indicates followers of Ali, son-in-law of Islam's 7th century Prophet Mohammed - draws on astrology and Christianity as well as Islam. It is believed to date to the 9th century.
(...)

Hafez Assad was shrewd enough to build a diverse power base, courting other minorities like Shiites, Christians and Druze and never neglecting the Sunni majority, particularly the powerful Sunni merchant class.
(...)

The beginnings of change for Alawites and other minorities preceded Hafez Assad's presidency, dating to the 1963 rise to power of the Socialist Arab Baath party.
(...)

Resentment of the Alawites' improved fortunes is expressed only privately in Sunni-dominated urban centers like Damascus, Homs and Aleppo, where Sunnis complain that Alawites are promoted ahead of them in the civil service or that their migration to the cities to work has created crowding and inflated housing prices.

Such resentment - believed to have been one of the causes of a rebellion by militant Muslims that was crushed by Hafez Assad in the 1980s - is among the challenges the younger Assad will have to deal with in order to stay in power.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


17. Pork-Eating Ex-Muslims Condemned
New Vision/Africa News Online (Uganda), July 9, 2000
http://www.africanews.org/east/uganda/
stories/20000709/20000709_feat9.html
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Kampala - Muslims Friday held prayers condemning and cursing a pastor who donned an Islamic tunic and slaughtered a pig in Masaka claiming the religion allows pork eating.

The prayers follow a picture in Bukedde on Tuesday showing men in Islamic caps skinning a pig. There has been wide condemnation of Peter Mulinde's act and utterances.

At Kibuli Mosque, Sheikh Sulaiman Kasule sermon spent about 20 minutes praying to Allah to punish Pastor Peter Mulinde and his colleagues for defaming Islam and Muslims.

''May Allah turn their faces into those of pigs and dogs. The strong arm of Allah will punish and reward them for insulting and blaspheming our religion,'' prayed Kasule.
(...)

Islam forbids pork eating and rearing pigs. Islam also discourages apostates.

In strict Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia, an apostate faces a death penalty.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Hinduism

18. Churchman bans yoga class
Telegraph (England), July 8, 2000
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?
ac=000647321007942&rtmo=VPuZkjwx&atmo=99999999
&pg=/et/00/7/8/nyoga08.html
[Story no longer online? Read this]
A fitness instructor was forced to abandon her weekly yoga class at a church hall after its minister said the exercise was ''opposed to Christianity and completely unacceptable''.

Ann Clifford, 50, who has been teaching aerobics and yoga to the over-50s since last September, was told by Albert Wright that she had to find a new venue for her class in Chew Magna, Somerset, because the exercise was ''a false religion''. He quoted a dictionary reference to yoga which linked it to Hinduism, ''a religion believing in reincarnation and the worship of several gods''.

He said: ''It is quite incompatible with, and opposed to, Christianity. For these reasons alone, there can be no question of such a practice being permitted in any part of the Baptist Church premises.'' The decision to evict Mrs Clifford came after the minister discovered that she had ''radically'' changed the content of her class to give older participants, the eldest of whom is 85, a gentler form of exercise, such as practising deep breathing.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


19. Christians converted to Hinduism
BBC, July 10, 2000
http://news6.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/
south%5Fasia/newsid%5F827000/827297.stm
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Hindu leaders in the northeast Indian state of Assam say they have converted seven Christian families back to Hinduism.

It is believed to be the first such conversion in the northeast and the Hindu leaders say they plan to convert dozens more.

Leaders from the Hindu Vaishnavite group say the families who were converted to Christianity a decade or so ago asked to be made Hindus again.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


20. The Irish Swami
Pioneer Planet, July 8, 2000
http://www.pioneerplanet.com/seven-days/3/
living/docs/031952.htm
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Justin O'Brien has become a swami, a spiritual leader in an ancient Eastern philosophy known as Bharati, and he thinks he might be the first or the only Irish swami in the world.
(...)

O'Brien, 67, has taken a religious name, Swami Jaidev, which means God's Victory in Sanskrit, the language that undergirds his philosophy. His ordination into the world of swamis culminates a lifelong search for the essence of mysticism.

A graduate of Catholic schools and the University of Notre Dame, O'Brien joined a Dominican Catholic monastery in Berkeley, Calif., after military service and a three-year stint as a stockbroker.
(...)

O'Brien went into the monastery hoping to discover a mystical path.

''I couldn't find it,'' O'Brien said. ''So I made a list and I went around to every monk. I did interviews, and they all told me to relax -- they patronized me. I was very disappointed, and I became a rebel. So they decided to throw me out. They voted me out of the monastery.''

But that was the push O'Brien needed to move beyond the religion of his childhood. In the next few years, he earned degrees in religious studies and completed a doctorate at Nijmegen University in the Netherlands. He also fell in love with Theresa King and married. And he met and became a devoted follower of Swami Rama, a well-known leader of the Bharati philosophy in the United States.

King says her 33-year association with O'Brien has revealed a man of many gifts.

''He's highly intuitive, and he is a healer,'' King said. ''He's been blessed with quite a bit. Swami Rama gave him powers. I also think he was born with a couple of talents and then when he met Swami Rama, those talents and powers were boosted.''

Swami Rama, an Eastern mystic and founder of the Himalayan International Institute in Honesdale, Pa., became well known in religious and philosophical circles when he was tested by physicians and scientists for supernatural powers. O'Brien, who has written extensively on the topic, says the results of those tests proved that Swami Rama could drastically alter his heart beat and blood pressure.

''He stopped his heart by making it beat three-hundred times a minute which stopped the process that moves the blood through the brain. They also put him on a bio-feedback device, and he fell asleep and yet he was completely aware of his surroundings.

''When they asked what happened he said, 'My body went to sleep, but my mind stayed awake,' '' O'Brien said. ''He wanted to show that the mind truly is something beyond the brain.

''They also asked him about cancer,'' O'Brien said. ''Swami Rama said, 'What do you see.' A mole popped up on his arm and then another on his other arm. One was benign, and the other was malignant. Then he made them disappear and he did that 22 times.''
(...)

In 1988, at the invitation of Charles Bates, another teacher and devotee of Swami Rama, O'Brien and King moved to St. Paul to resume their teaching mission. O'Brien became a professor at the College of St. Catherine and an adjunct teacher at St. Mary's College. King began creating a publishing business, Yes Publishers International, that develops books on self transformation of the body, mind and spirit.

In time the three friends -- O'Brien, Bates and King -- initiated the Alpha Institute that offers classes in Hatha yoga, wellness, meditation and spirituality.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Catholicism

21. Conservative Ohio Protestant group decries Catholics' 'false gospel'
Columbus Dispatch, July 7, 2000
http://www.dispatch.com/news/newsfea00/jul00/340872.html
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Members of Ohio Bible Fellowship churches make no apologies for their beliefs.

But while their conservative doctrines -- such as a recent proclamation that the Roman Catholic Church is heretical -- may be too much for some, members insist they don't hate anyone.
(...)

''We don't hate Catholics,'' O'Brien said. ''But we hate the system that was begun in the first century and has continued and gained strength, which we think is very misleading. It's not according to Scripture.''

The fellowship, founded in 1968, is a collection of 15 churches around Ohio, with a total membership of about 1,500. It includes four churches in central Ohio: Calvary, Westerville, Greencastle Community Bible Church in Carroll in Fairfield County and Troy Chapel Community Church in Delaware.

Fellowship conferences are held several times a year. Among the business conducted is consideration of resolutions.

Delegates at this spring's conference passed a resolution that commits fellowship churches to ''stand against the false gospel of the Roman Catholic Church and warn others of its errors.''

It says that ''the pope is an anti-Christ and that the Roman Catholic Church is a cult which teaches heresy.''

Foxx pointed out that the resolution refers to the pope as ''an'' anti-Christ, not necessarily equating him with Satan.

But Pope John Paul II ''heads a church that in our view is leading millions of people right into hell through false doctrine,'' he said.
(...)

The resolution was passed, in part, to show support for officials at Bob Jones University in South Carolina, who earlier this year were attacked over their beliefs, which some consider to be anti-Catholic.
(...)

The fellowship's chief disagreement with the Catholic Church is over the means of salvation. The same dispute was central to the Protestant Reformation of the 1500s.

The issue is whether a person is saved by faith alone, which the fellowship says is the scripturally correct view, or a combination of faith, good works and the sacraments, a view maintained by the Catholic Church.

Foxx, a graduate of Bob Jones, contends that the fellowship's view is true to the Reformation spirit.
(...)

But the Rev. Don Huber, professor of American church history at Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Bexley, disagreed, and said mainline churches are guilty of betraying the Reformation ''only if you understand the Reformation as unchanging and unchangeable tradition.''

''If you understand it that way, in other words if you're a literalist about that epoch in history as well as a literalist about the Bible, then you can never change anything,'' he said.

Huber said referring to the pope as anti-Christ was common during the Reformation's battles, in which Martin Luther played a key role.

''My own take on it, of course, is that what Luther and others said was said in the heat of battle,'' he said.

Over time, Huber said, most Protestants have backed off that language.

But even in some mainline Protestant denominations, such as the smaller Wisconsin and Missouri synods of Lutheranism, the papacy is still seen today as anti-Christ, based on Scripture.

The Rev. John Ashbrook, fellowship president, said the fellowship may agree with Catholics on some issues, such as opposing abortion, but the biblical command not to associate with unbelievers keeps them from acting in concert.

''On many things like that there may be a common position taken,'' said Ashbrook, pastor emeritus of Bible Community Church in Mentor. ''But we don't take it together. I don't have to join a Right to Life march to be against abortion.''

He said the fellowship's positions are ''based on biblical truth, not on the basis of political correctness.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


22. Pope gunman accuses Vatican of being 'enemy' of God
CNN/AP, July 10, 2000
http://www.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/meast/
07/10/pope.gunman.ap/index.html
[Story no longer online? Read this]
ITANBUL, Turkey (AP) -- In an outburst in a Turkish court, the gunman who shot Pope John Paul II accused the Vatican on Monday of being the ''enemy of God and humanity'' and said he had launched ''a cultural war'' against the Holy See.

Mehmet Ali Agca went on trial in Istanbul for the armed robbery of a soda factory, the theft of a car he used to escape the scene and the robbery of a jewelry store, all in 1979.

Italy pardoned Agca and extradited him to Turkey in mid-June after he had served almost 20 years for the 1981 shooting of the pope.

The Vatican had been instrumental in Agca's pardon. At that time, the gunman had said through a lawyer that he was grateful to the pope and the Vatican.

As he was being led out of court, Agca shouted, ''The Vatican is the enemy of God, it is the enemy of humanity!''

''I will make the Vatican empire -- the enemy of humanity -- feel remorse,'' he said. ''I have launched a cultural war against the Vatican.''

Later, Agca's lawyer distributed a handwritten statement from the Turk accusing the Vatican of ''changing'' the secrets of Fatima and of orchestrating the 1981 assassination attempt against the pope.

''My Catholic brothers, I love you, why do you not abandon a Vatican which arranges the assassination of its own pope?'' the statement said. The gunman wanted to read out the statement in court but the judge would not allow him to do so.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


23. Eastern Orthodox, Catholic Churches begin talks on reconciliation
Nando Times/AP, July 8, 2000
http://www.nandotimes.com/noframes/story/
0,2107,500225867-500324695-501838364-0,00.html
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Tey worship differently, take Holy Communion differently, and cross themselves differently. Yet leaders of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches are looking for common ground during 10 days of talks that start Sunday.

Full reconciliation -- the ultimate goal of the international dialogue -- is unlikely at this meeting, the first in the Western Hemisphere, organizers say.

But some consider bringing together delegates of two faiths split by a 946-year-old disagreement a victory.

Eventually, the churches could resolve even their ancient dispute over the pope's jurisdiction, said the Rev. Robert Stephanopoulos, dean of the Greek Orthodox Cathedral in New York and a veteran of ecumenical meetings.

''It could happen rather quickly in one respect, but when I say rather quickly, we're still talking against the background of a thousand years,'' he said.

Instead, organizers hope these talks -- in English, French, Greek and Russian -- will break an impasse that has diverted the discussion away from theological issues and mired it in emotional arguments over property rights and proselytizing.
(...)

The Emmitsburg meeting is the eighth in a series of theological dialogues begun in 1979 between the churches representing the world's one billion Catholics and 228 million Orthodox. They split in 1054 in a disagreement over papal infallibility and interpretation of their creed.

The churches have many common doctrines -- beliefs in the Eucharist, the Holy Trinity, baptism and confession, for example -- but markedly different trappings. Orthodox services are entirely sung or chanted; Catholic services are mostly spoken. Communion bread is offered on spoons in Orthodox churches, by hand in a Catholic Mass. Catholics cross themselves from left to right; Orthodox from right to left.

The dialogues have produced three statements of agreement on shared beliefs.

But at a 1990 meeting in Germany, the discussion turned to issues triggered by the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Long-suppressed Catholic congregations in parts of Ukraine and Romania demanded the return of buildings that were given to Orthodox groups by communist leaders who had regarded the Orthodox as less of a threat.

Some Orthodox leaders feared the revived Eastern Rite Catholics wanted to convert Orthodox members to Catholicism, a role Catholic missionaries had played in centuries past.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Paganism / Witchcraft

24. Back from a spell ...
The Age/Guardian (Australia), July 4, 2000
http://www.theage.com.au/news/20000704/A49211-2000Jul3.html
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Something most irregular is occurring in the world of pentagrams and pointy hats. After 2000 years of persecution and bad publicity, witches have finally been rehabilitated as icons of female power.

Don't believe me? Switch on the television and there's Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Sabrina the Teenage Witch and the sisters of Charmed acting as unofficial pagan ambassadors. Visit the newage section of any bookstore and behold how the shelves are crammed with dozens of glossy tomes devoted to spells and magic.

On the Internet, ecovens and Wicca mailing lists are a growth area.

It is a curious phenomenon, this resurgence of interest in the dark arts, particularly among otherwise rational, 21st-century women. Is it a quest to reconnect with an authentic, intuitive inner goddess or another manifestation of an innate sense of powerlessness?
(...)

Kate West heads the Hearth of Hecate, a coven in Norfolk, in the UK, with 20 members. She believes women are embracing ''the craft'' in droves, not because they need miracle spells but because they want to form more profound links with nature and their own unconscious. ''Ultimately, it's about the belief that you can change the world around you - that's a nurturing, female concept. It is also liberating to accept that there is a goddess protecting us and our Earth.''
(...)

Now she is writing a handbook for young witches for the post-Harry Potter market, offering stepbystep guidance to becoming a witch. ''There are a lot of misconceptions. People think magic will solve all their problems and it won't. Most of my work is used in healing. I do 10 to 12 spells per month but I don't charge.
(...)

West is adamant that the vast majority of witches use their power to good ends. Even her own principles have their limits, however. ''I'm not ashamed to say I often cast spells to find a parking space in a hurry.''

West claims not to have read Harry Potter, probably the real source of the current boom in bewitchment. ''I'm not sure if Harry Potter is a good thing,'' says Sally Taylor, a thirdgeneration witch who has read the books. ''It makes magic seem too simplistic.''

Taylor should know; she previously ran a school for witches, the Kent College of Magic and Metaphysics, which sounds suspiciously like the Hogwarts School of J.K. Rowling's fiction. ''There are fake covens around, people with plastic bats nailed to their doors - we've got a real bat cave here. There's a lot of hypocrisy, too, particularly when dealing with kids. Most children are taught their first spell at the age of three - blow out the candles and make a wish. Then it's all stamped out of them.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Hate Groups / Hate Crimes

25. White Supremacist's Trial Underway
AOL/AP, July 10, 2000
http://my.aol.com/news/story.tmpl?
table=n&cat=01&id=0007101042620431
[Story no longer online? Read this]
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Lawyers for white supremacist Buford O. Furrow moved Monday to dismiss numerous charges against him, claiming legal flaws in his indictment on hate-crime allegations in a shooting at a Jewish community center.

Among the claims in six separate defense motions is an argument that the North Valley Jewish Community Center does not fall within legal definitions of places covered by civil rights hate crime statutes.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


26. A year after rampage, monitors keeping an eye on hate group
Philadelphia Inquirer, July 4, 2000
http://web.philly.com/content/inquirer/
2000/07/04/national/HATE04.htm
[Story no longer online? Read this]
CHICAGO - Two organizations monitoring the World Church of the Creator agree that the white supremacist group should be watched but disagree on how much it has grown in the year since it garnered national attention after a murderous, three-day rampage by one of its members.

The Center for the New Community, a Chicago-area organization advising on how hate groups can be fought, issued a 22-page report last week contending that the group ''has seen an 85 percent growth'' in chapters over the last year, with its largest increase coming in prisons and among women.

But a researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., who has monitored the group and its leader, Matthew Hale, said the World Church, based in East Peoria, Ill., had probably not grown much beyond the 200 members it had before 21-year-old Benjamin Nathaniel Smith's crimes last July Fourth weekend left two dead and nine wounded.

Both centers agree that Smith's violence, which included the random slayings of Ricky Byrdsong, a black former Northwestern basketball coach, and Won Soon Yoon, a Korea-born graduate student at Indiana University, and which ended when Smith killed himself, gave the organization and Hale, 28, the kind of national notoriety such fringe groups crave.

''Matt Hale was on everything from the cover of Newsweek to the Today show,'' said Mark Potok, editor of the law center's Intelligence Report, a periodical tracking hate groups. ''Have they grown as a consequence? Probably. Almost inevitably when something happens to bring them national attention, groups like this get new members.''

But while Potok accepts that Hale's group may have increased its ''contact points'' across the country, he cautions that can mean as little as ''a member or possible member receiving one of the group's publications.''

''The World Church of the Creator is not an exploding, grassroots hate organization,'' he said.

Devin Burghart, author of the Chicago center's report, said there was little way to extrapolate ''contact points'' into solid membership numbers. But Burghart said he was particularly concerned that Hale's recruits were ''a new breed of young white supremacists'' who were violence prone and ''willing to kill or die for a warped notion of racial purity.''

The World Church of the Creator claims 76 chapters in 25 states, including Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and five other countries, up from 41 chapters a year ago, Burghart's report says. He also said the group was growing in U.S. prisons by promoting a publication aimed at prisoners.

But Potok said groups such as Hale's were notorious for exaggerating their membership and influence.

''At the time of the Ben Smith rampage, Hale gave different numbers when asked about his group's membership,'' Potok said. ''He claimed everything from 7,000 to 30,000 members.''

The best indication of its membership comes from a receipt obtained by the law center when the World Church mailed its newspaper to 203 people in mid-1999, before the Smith murders. Since that time, Potok said, indications are that the membership has not grown substantially.

''Fundamentally, it is a group that revolves around Matt Hale, some of his buddies and former girlfriends,'' he said. ''It's basically a cult of the individual.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


27. The Columbus Dispatch, July 8, 2000
http://www.dispatch.com/news/newsfea00/
jul00/341709.html
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Chastity Bumgardner thought everything had been arranged.

She would return to southern Ohio, where she grew up, and get married next Saturday. She and her new husband would spend a week visiting relatives in Pike County and then go back home to Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

But there was a hitch to getting hitched -- she's white, and her fiance is black. That was unacceptable to the pastor of the Pleasant Valley Community Church in Jasper, where the nuptials had been scheduled. When he found out, he forbade the use of the building.
(...)

The pastor, the Rev. Donald Ellis, confirmed that he prohibited the use of the church after learning that Bumgardner's fiance, Henry Lawrence, is black. The pastor refused to say why.

''The Columbus Dispatch ain't got nothing to do with this,'' Ellis said. ''This is my church.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]

* Actually, the Church belongs not to Mr. Ellis, but to Jesus Christ:

(Colossians 1:18 NIV) And he is the head of the body, the church; he is
the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything
he might have the supremacy.

=== Other News

28. Korean Doomsday Cult Sentenced
AOL/AP, July 11, 2000
http://my.aol.com/news/story.tmpl?
table=n&cat=0106&id=0007111135646030
[Story no longer online? Read this]
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - A South Korean court sentenced two leaders of a doomsday cult to 10 years in prison each Tuesday on charges of swindling followers out of millions of dollars.

Mo Haeng-ryong, 66, founder and head of the indigenous Chunjonhoe, or Heaven's Gathering, and his wife, Park Kui-dal, 52, were found guilty of fraud in Seoul District Criminal Court.

A dozen other cult leaders were given prison terms of up to six years on the same charges.
(...)

The cult, which incorporates Confucianism elements, urged followers to donate all their money, saying the world would end on Feb. 19 when it lost all its spiritual energy, prosecutors said.

With doomsday approaching, the cult leaders were preparing to flee the country with much of the money, prosecutors said.

The total amount of money scammed by the cult is estimated at $35 million.
(...)

The cult was established in 1985 by Mo and his wife, who claimed they were given an order from heaven to build a holy shrine, called Daerachun, or big spiritual heaven, at Hongchun. The cult claims 150,000 members.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


29. Korean Doomsday Cult Members Suspected in $134 Mln Fraud Case
AOL/Bloomberg, July 10, 2000
http://my.aol.com/news/story.tmpl?
table=n&cat=01&id=0007100508584871
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Seoul, July 10 (Bloomberg) -- Korean prosecutors arrested 42 members of a doomsday cult, including leader Mo Haeng Ryong and his wife Park Kui Dal, on allegations they may have stolen as much as 150 billion won ($134 million) in the nation's biggest fraud case involving a religious group.

Prosecutors are looking for an additional 113 members of the cult known as Chonjonhoe, established in 1985 by Mo and his wife, who gathered disciples after deifying themselves.
(...)

Prosecutors said the cult swindled funds over the last 10 years from at least 5,000 financial institutions nationwide under their followers' names.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


30. Ex-BA air hostess feared kidnapped by Japanese cult
The Telegraph (England), July 10, 2000
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?
ac=000647321007942&rtmo=V6qDSgsK&atmo=99999999
&pg=/et/00/7/10/wkid10.html
[Story no longer online? Read this]
A former British Airways air hostess may have been kidnapped by a shadowy Japanese cult, it emerged last night.
(...)

One theory was that the 21-year-old may have fallen victim to one of the myriad secretive and violent Japanese cults. Threats were also made in the phone call that Miss Blackman, who went missing more than a week ago, might be forced into prostitution.
(...)

The next day, Miss Phillips received the threatening phone call. A close friend, who did not want to be named, said: ''The man said she could not talk to Lucie and that she was starting a new life with him, that she had lots of debts and he was going to force her to pay them off.

''He said she was going to join his 'newly-risen religion', which is what the Japanese call a cult. We fear she is being held against her will and could be forced into prostitution.
(...)

Japanese cults have been known to target pretty Western women in order to use them to attract men to their sects. Once people join, it is often very difficult for families to get them back, even after legal recourse. Sects such as the Aum Shinrikyo, responsible for killing 12 people during a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo underground in 1995, have resorted to violence to keep their members.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


31. Woman held in alleged abduction of daughter
San Diego Union-Tribune, July 8, 2000
http://www.uniontrib.com/news/uniontrib/
sat/metro/news_3m8kidnap.html
[Story no longer online? Read this]
CHULA VISTA -- Arizona authorities arrested a Los Angeles woman early yesterday after she allegedly kidnapped her 19-year-old daughter Thursday night from Southwestern College, Chula Vista police said.

Dream Dennis-Young, 47, was among several people taken into custody at a highway checkpoint shortly after midnight by Yuma County sheriff's deputies after her daughter, Dream Young, began screaming that she had been abducted, said Chula Vista Detective Sgt. John Stewart.
(...)

Police said Young and her boyfriend, Justin Gutzmer, had just left classes at Southwestern College on Thursday night when they were assaulted by several men who beat Gutzmer and forced Young into a van where her mother was waiting.
(...)

Stewart said Young had several restraining orders against her mother. She was carrying copies of them with her when she was abducted.

Thursday's incident apparently was the second time in two weeks that Dennis-Young had tried to abduct her daughter, Stewart said. San Diego police confirmed an unsuccessful attempt to kidnap Young as she and Gutzmer were leaving the San Diego Christian Center.

''The mother apparently believes her daughter's involved in a cult and can't make decisions for herself,'' Stewart said. ''There's no evidence that any cult is involved.''

Chula Vista police Lt. Mike Becker said Dennis-Young phoned police about a year ago and said her daughter was being held against her will. Officers then found Young, who told them she had chosen to live with her boyfriend and his family.

The family dispute seems to center on Young's mother not wanting her to live with Gutzmer, Becker said.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


32. Cult Members Nabbed in S. Philippines
Xinhua News Agency, July 7, 2000
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/pages/newsreal/
Story.nsp?story_id=11921863&ID=newsreal
&scategory=AP+Top+Headlines
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Police arrested four members of a Christian cult Tuesday night for desecrating graves in a public cemetery in the southern Philippine city of Cagayan de Oro, a TV report said Friday afternoon.

The suspects are reportedly members of the Democratic Brotherhood Crusader Divine Healing-Haring Bakal, a Christian cult based in Davao City, the country's leading news channel ABS-CBN said.

The suspects were caught by local policemen removing the kneecaps from the skeletons in two graves at a public cemetery in Cagayan de Oro, capital city of Misamis Oriental province.

Found in their possession were forty two kneecaps, amulets and several small bottles of oil, ABS-CBN added.
[...entire item...]


33. Ex-worker admits he spent ministry's money
Dallas Morning News/AP, July 10, 2000
http://dallasnews.com/texas_southwest/
109136_lajimmy_10tex..html
[Story no longer online? Read this]
BATON ROUGE, La. - A former fund-raiser for Jimmy Swaggart Ministries admits spending $769,000 of the ministry's money on women around the country last year.

John J. Clouser, who earned $30,000 as the ministry's director of development and planned giving, posed as a rich entrepreneur to meet women with expensive tastes, prosecutors said.
(...)

Mr. Clouser, 34, pleaded guilty last week in state court to money laundering and bank fraud. He entered best-interest pleas to two counts of theft and to one count of obstruction of justice.

A best-interest plea is similar to a guilty plea, but means Mr. Clouser doesn't agree with the prosecution's version of events.

Prosecutors agreed to recommend a 20-year cap on Mr. Clouser's prison time when state District Judge Bonnie Jackson sentences him in September.

Mr. Clouser handled money the ministry held in trust and money paid to the ministry for rental and sale of property, Mr. Pethke said.
(...)

Mr. Clouser already has been sentenced in U.S. District Court to 57 months in prison and ordered to repay Swaggart Ministries $841,563, including interest, in the same scheme. He pleaded guilty to one count of money laundering in the federal case, assistant U.S. Attorney Ian Hipwell said.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


34. 'I can raise the dead' says priest
News 24/SAPA (South Africa), July 5, 2000
http://news.24.com/News24/South_Africa/
0,1113,2-7_879455,00.html
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Pietermaritzburg - A man who considered himself to be head of the priests in a religious organisation told the Pietermaritzburg District Court on Tuesday that he had powers to bring dead people back to life.

Reynold Siphiwe Mthethwa , 46, of the ''12 Apostles Church in Christ'' organisation, and his fiance, Boniswa Mhlontlo, 35, are charged with murdering three-year-old Stephanie Mkhize in Ashdown in April.

Mthethwa told the court that the problems suffered by Stephanie's family members were caused by ''demon spirits'' and that he was told by the Holy Spirit how to treat such problems.

The treatment, he said, would include the use of prayer and sometimes water would be drunk to remove ''whatever is inside'' or an enema would be applied.

The investigating officer Detective Sergeant Swami Pillay told the court on Monday that huge quantities of water were fed to the eight member Mkhize family, who were also given enemas.

Mthethwa refused to comment on Pillay's testimony that salt and vinegar had been put in to the eyes and ears of one family member, Edward Mkhize, as part of the ritual.
(...)

According to Pillay, Stephanie's death was due to asphyxia from the inhalation of blood and fluid.

When asked whether it was possible that he would continue such behaviour if released on bail, Mthethwa said: ''I'm controlled by God. I do what God tells me.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


35. Holy Smoke! Legalise the weed, say church officials
The Jamaica Gleaner, July 6, 2000
http://dev.go-jamaica.com/gleaner/
20000706/News/News2.html
[Story no longer online? Read this]
At least one prominent official of the Jamaican Christian community has called for the legalisation of drugs -- starting with marijuana -- and he has received cautious support from other religious leaders.

The widely respected Rev. Oliver Daley of the United Church in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, says it's illogical, hypocritical, and oppressive to regard ganja as an illegal substance while the jury is still out on whether it's addictive or dangerous.

At the same time, he notes, it is perfectly legal to smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol, both of which are not only addictive, but ''natural born killers''.

He emphasises that neither he nor the church is suddenly condoning the use of drugs, and notes that the drug trade is the single greatest threat to the fabric of society.

He argues, however, that we cannot legislate morality. Not everything that is a sin should also logically be a crime, he adds.

Adultery, for example, is a sin but the Reverend says it would be impractical to make it illegal, a lesson that the church has learnt over the years, and a lesson the politicians need to learn now about drugs.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


36. Prayer circle stretches for miles across meadow
The Billings Gazette, July 5, 2000
http://www.billingsgazette.com/region/
20000705_r3rainbo.html
[Story no longer online? Read this]
JACKSON (AP) - After a morning of silent reflection, thousands of members of the Rainbow Family gathered in a huge circle in a mountain meadow Tuesday to pray for peace and Mother Earth.
(...)

Every July Fourth since 1972, Rainbow Family members have gathered somewhere on National Forest lands for a noontime prayer.

This year the Forest Service estimates that about 22,000 have made their way to the Big Hole Valley in southwestern Montana for the annual event.
(...)

''People come from all over the world to be here,'' said Rued, who is attending his fifth gathering.

''People come here for healing. It comes in a variety of ways,'' he said. ''For many, it's a spiritual healing, but whatever you might need you can find here.''
(...)

Paul Siegler of Boulder, Colo., who has attended several other Rainbow gatherings, said the gatherings are a sign of hope.

''I see so many people willing to get together and get along,'' he says. ''People here are willing to live outside the dominant paradigm - the one of mass consumption, isolation, and a disconnected society.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Human Rights / Death Penalty

37. US Lawyers Leader Seeks Death Penalty Moratorium
AOL/Reuters, July 10, 2000
http://my.aol.com/news/story.tmpl?
table=n&cat=01&id=0007100304606961
[Story no longer online? Read this]
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The incoming president of the American Bar Association urged lawyers on Monday to work for a suspension of the death penalty in their states until it can be shown to be imposed fairly.

Martha Barnett said she was a ''reluctant supporter'' of the death penalty but no defendant should be executed until there was a guarantee he or she had received adequate legal representation and the sentence was not a result of racial discrimination.
(...)

Earlier this year Illinois Gov. George Ryan became the first governor to declare a moratorium on executions, citing concerns about 13 innocent persons who had been sent to death row in that state.

Although the ABA does not have a policy on the death penalty in general, it does oppose executions of defendants who were mentally retarded or juveniles when the crimes were committed.

In 1997 the ABA's policy making body voted to support a moratorium on the death penalty and it wrote to President Clinton in May asking for a suspension of the death penalty on the federal level.

However, Barnett said she planned to take the ABA's position further by pushing lawyers to take action in their individual states.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Noted

38. Cleric sees sexuality as 'trigger issue' for church
Denver Rocky Mountain News, July 10, 2000
http://insidedenver.com/news/0708prof3.shtml
[Story no longer online? Read this]
If you wonder what sexual freedom has to do with 16th century church indulgences, just look up the Rev. Richard Kew.

The affable, English-born Kew is one of the many observers padding around the outskirts of the Episcopal Church Convention.

A cheerful traditionalist and author, Kew, 54, believes the flood of gay rights issues at this year's convention signals a historic, make-or-break moment in Christianity.

''I believe we are in the middle of a major reconfiguration of Western Christianity,'' he says, ''and the trigger issue is sexuality, just as indulgences were a reflection of the dysfunction of the medieval church.''

He refers to the Roman Catholic Church clergy's scandalous foray into selling indulgences in the 16th century - popularly known as buying ''time off'' in Purgatory, where souls were believed to languish before being allowed to enter heaven.

That issue fueled Martin Luther's break with the Catholic Church in 1517.

Today, Kew argues that the dysfunction is the church's willingness to expand sexual freedoms, a concession to a secular, post-modern world.

He believes the church should return to the traditional Christian teaching that sex belongs only between a man and a woman in marriage.

''The issue will divide the church and break up this denomination,'' he predicts.

He adds that as conservative congregations begin to break away and try to take their church property with them, ''I can see us squandering our assets fighting each other instead of being God's witness in the world.''

Kew even hazards a time frame: ''I don't have a schismatic bone in my body, but I really do think, for the Episcopal Church as we know it, this is its last General Convention.''
[...entire item...]


39. Holocaust teaches FBI agents morality
Seattle Post-Intelligencer/Scripps Howard News Service, July 6, 2000
http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/national/fbi06.shtml
[Story no longer online? Read this]
WASHINGTON -- To show beginning FBI agents the ''horror and evil'' of a national police force that doesn't protect civil rights, the bureau's trainees are for the first time focusing on the role played by Hitler's police during the Holocaust.

''We do this early on in their training for a very simple purpose; to remind them of the horror and evil which can result from . . . law enforcement abandoning its mission to protect people and becoming the engine of oppression,'' said FBI Director Louis Freeh.

Three FBI classes already have undertaken the training segment, and it will become a standard step in the development of agents, bureau officials said.

Under the program, agent trainees spend a Saturday early in their training program at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, taking a tour that emphasizes the function of German police in the 1930s and 1940s. After that, they participate in discussion groups and write an essay on what they saw.

''Much of the Holocaust was perpetrated or supported by trained professionals who were 'doing their job,''' said Sara Bloomfield, museum director. ''The museum's program with the FBI challenges law enforcement agents to examine the moral dimensions of their professions.''

The program was the brainchild of Freeh, who then approached the Holocaust museum staff and Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League, about instituting the training.
(...)

The training is not explicitly put into the context of recent controversial FBI operations, such as the siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. But Foxman and Higginbotham said the segment could lead to agents questioning whether such an operation was moral.

''The FBI today is a thinking organization,'' said Higginbotham. ''There is a respect for private dissent. But after that, there is a public duty to support decisions of superiors, as long as they are not violating the law.''

Foxman said, ''There is always that delicate balance between obeying one's own morality and being a disciplined law enforcement official. Where is that line? The important thing is to raise the questions and discuss them.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


40. Atheist Services Full Of Familiar Elements
Dallas Morning Post, July 8, 2000
http://195.7.48.75/release/new/dallas/
morning/dallasreligion/p1s2m.htm
[Story no longer online? Read this]
IRVING - When four former Catholic altar boys started an atheist ''church'' here a few years ago, they didn't think they were doing anything special. They just wanted a place where they and other nonbelievers could gather for fellowship, just as other churchgoers do.

But five years later, the North Texas Church of Freethought - nicknamed the ''church for the unchurched'' - has become a model for other atheist congregations, sparking interest in similar ventures around Texas, the nation and the world. ''It's an idea that I had for many years,'' said Dr. Tim Gorski, one of the four founders of the group, which is believed to be the nation's largest atheist congregation. ''I had no idea it would get to be as successful as it's become.'' How successful? About 40 people attended the first service in Irving's Wilson World Hotel in 1995. The church now boasts a membership of 150 and is raising money toward owning its own building.
(...)

Freethought co-founder and executive director Mike Sullivan said that although the philosophy of atheism is obviously not new, the possibility of having a ''church of unbelievers'' is. He said that modern-day technology is responsible for the growth and interest that the North Texas group has inspired. ''I don't think a project such as ours would have been possible without the Internet,'' Mr. Sullivan said, who estimated that the group gets 200 ''hits'' per day on its homepage (church.freethought.org). ''The Inter-net spreads knowledge and information so quickly.'' Houston's Freethought Church was formed, for example, after its organizers found the North Texas group's Web page.
(...)

Mr. Sullivan said atheists find belief in God - the God Christians, Jews and Muslims worship - unreasonable. ''The beauty of this church is that the entire world of human ideas is open to us,'' Mr. Sullivan said. ''We are not limited by one thought or belief.'' Mr. Sullivan and Dr. Gorski said they understand that for many people, the idea of atheists going to ''church'' is a foreign concept. But they said nonbelievers share a need for fellowship. ''I think we missed church,'' Dr. Gorski said. ''We missed the chance to get together and fellowship.
(...)

A recent service began with a performance by two cellists, followed by a couple singing a folk song - no hymns, remember - and then a spoof on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Dr. Gorski spoke to the casually dressed group about the theory of freethought, telling them, among other things, that ''real freethought is thought'' and that ''freethinkers understand that nothing we think is beyond question.'' He also told them about freethought ''heroes'' who lived centuries ago.

Meanwhile, in a room across the hall, Dr. Gorski's wife, Deborah Boak, was instructing the children's Sunday school class. ''There are two things we try to do,'' Ms. Boak said ''Establish critical thinking skills, and the other part is moral thinking. We probably share 90 percent of what other churches think [about right and wrong]. We believe that once you make a commitment to do what is right, you don't need a god hanging over you to force you to do it. The people here are comfortable believing you can be a good person and lead a good life.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


41. Prayer practitioners borrow some techniques from eastern meditation
Asheville Citizen-Times, July 9, 2000
http://www.citizen-times.com/cgi-bin/story.cgi?
news&20000709_n11.txt
[Story no longer online? Read this]
ASHEVILLE - Baptists, Catholics, Episcopalians and other believers can find common ground next weekend in the interior silence of centering prayer - a relatively new contemplative practice with ancient roots, which is finding adherents across Christian denominations nationwide.

''God isn't a denomination,'' said Tom Turner, a Baptist spiritual director associated with the Advent Spirituality Center at Mars Hill College. ''Centering prayer calls us all beyond those boundaries that are useful in some ways, but that limit the quest for union with God. Centering prayer has more to do with God than with us.''

''Centering prayer is practicing the presence of God,'' explained the Rev. Francis Cancro of St. Eugene Catholic Church.

Abbot Thomas Keating, one of the Trappist monks who developed centering prayer a quarter century ago, will explain and explore its practice with ecumenical audiences next weekend in Mars Hill and Asheville.
(...)

Centering prayer comes out of a rich Christian heritage of contemplative prayer dating to the Desert Fathers, and through the medieval mystics St. John of the Cross, St. Theresa of Avila, and the anonymous author of ''The Cloud of Unknowing.'' In the 1970s, when Eastern forms of meditation were finding adherents across the United States, three monks at St. Joseph's Abbey in Massachusetts - Keating, William Meninger and Basil Pennington - distilled these traditions into a simple but distinctly Christian method.
(...)

Centering prayer borrows some techniques from Buddhist and other eastern meditation practices - sitting quietly for at least 20 minutes at a time, letting conscious thoughts come and go, refocusing attention on a sacred word or phrase.

Cancro, for instance, recites a version of the Orthodox ''Jesus Prayer'' - ''Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner'' - timing the phrases with the inhalation and exhalation of his breath. ''The image for me is to climb in the lap of God and for God to climb into my lap, to be engulfed by that experience.''

The Rev. Jane Smith of Grace Episcopal repeats the word ''holy'' to herself, settling into the silence. ''Even during a hectic day, it's like I'm on another plane just a few minutes into centering prayer,'' said Smith. ''Those little red boats keep coming, but I don't get on.''

In workshops, Keating refers to stray thoughts as little boats floating along the river of consciousness, according to Haywood. The point of centering prayer is not to make the mind go blank, but to simply let thoughts drift by, unattached. ''We don't ever get to the stage when the boats don't show up, but we don't have to get in them,'' explained Haywood.

''The techniques are similar to Buddhist practices, but the difference is in the story, that union with God that's so much a part of the Christian narrative,'' added Turner.
(...)

Many Baptists are open to enriching their spirituality with ideas from other churches and faiths. ''I was raised in the Baptist tradition, but as I've added years, I've had spiritual hungers fed by the wider Christian family and even through some understanding of Eastern practices,'' said the Rev. Jerry Jarrell, associate pastor at Mars Hill First Baptist Church.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Books

42. Writers tap power of occult
Industry Watch/Chicago Sun-Times, July 6, 2000
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/pages/newsreal/
Story.nsp?story_id=11918475&ID=newsreal
&scategory=AP+Top+Headlines
[Story no longer online? Read this]
J.K. Rowling, whose next Harry Potter book arrives in stores Saturday, is not the only best-selling children's author to put the occult at the center of her writing.

Philip Pullman, whose Northern Lights has won him great acclaim and large sales, is another writer alert to the expansive power of magic in children's literature. Both are drawing on a tradition that stretches back to J.R.R. Tolkien and further, into the mist-shrouded origins of northern European literature.
(...)

On one level the attraction is clear: pure escapism and the fantasy of power denied in the ordinary world. On another it is more mysterious, posing the question of why magical narratives have proved so popular with children and young adults. Is there something freakish in the appeal of stories such as Rowling's, or should she be commended for a valuable contribution not just to children's books but to literature in general?

Witches probably make more regular appearances in such stories, but wizards are more finely grained, with a moral hinterland that leaves witches gasping.

In Tolkien's Lord of the Rings-a book that constantly tops best- ever lists-Gandalf, the longbeard wizard who guides the hobbits in their search for the Ring, is just such a cross-hatched figure. He is knowing but not all-knowing; powerful but, at the same time, fatally flawed. His transformative abilities are predicated on their not being overused or abused.

This is a common feature of the cultural presentation of ''white'' magic and also, one supposes, a submerged version of the parable of the talents: Don't waste your wizardry. Hogwarts in the Potter stories flags up this aspect of sorcery simply by being a school.

Sex and magic are inextricably tangled on the cult television series ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer,'' with the confusing world of adolescence finding symbolic equivalents in the arcana of demonology. These work on many levels. Buffy kills vampires, but her true love was a good vampire, unreliable and difficult to integrate into ordinary society.
(...)

The upcoming Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is rumored to be the first of the Potter books in which sex makes an appearance. As Harry, Hermione and friends enter adolescence, it will be interesting to see how Rowling stacks up the layers of sexual and magical identity.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


43. Lord of the Rings Creates Early (Very Early) Buzz
Fox, July 7, 2000
http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/070700/tolkien_riley.sml
[Story no longer online? Read this]
(...) Afull year and a half before the release of the first part in a big budget, live action version of the classic fantasy tale, fans are buzzing at a level not seen since George Lucas was busy crafting Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace.

Filming for all three parts - The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King - is now halfway complete under the direction of New Zealander Peter Jackson (Heavenly Creatures, The Frighteners).

Dozens of Web sites are shadowing the production's every move and are brimming with bootleg photos of set locales and character sketches. Hundreds more sites are devoted to Tolkien's world in general.
(...)

A behind-the-scenes preview clip released in April on the films' official site (lordoftherings.net) was watched by 1.7 million people in its first day - more than the million that watched the popular Phantom Menace trailer on its first day, according to independent tracking numbers cited by New Line. It continued to stomp Star Wars after the first week and month, the studio said.

''This staggering number validates New Line's investment in The Lord of the Rings,'' Joe Nimziki, the distributor's president of theatrical marketing said at the time. ''To outpace Star Wars by such a large margin is a great indication of the popularity of this franchise.''

To be sure, there's no Harry Potter-style mania just yet. But by the time the films actually come out, the brewing excitement could easily boil over into a serious frenzy - and a major money-maker.
(...)

Tolkien's story of hobbits, wizards, elves, dwarves et al. and their struggle against the dark lord Sauron ranks among the 20th century's most beloved works of literature. The books, first published in 1954 and 1955, have sold more than 50 million copies and have been translated into 25 languages. College philosophy courses analyze their meaning.

Yet for all their enduring popularity, attempts to tell the stories of the mythical world cinematically have not been well received.
(...)

This new effort, with an estimated $120 million budget, seems poised to get the job done.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]

* Lord of the Rings
http://www.lordoftherings.net
[Story no longer online? Read this]