» Continued from Part 1

=== Other News
23. Expert: US Open To Bioterrorism
24. Briton offers reward for daughter missing in Japan
25. Maharishi eyes Colony project
26. A shadow of a school: Polygamists Heed Call; Enrollments Drop
27. Atheists to distribute book covers; Grand Prairie school district had
already permitted Ten Commandments
28. Jesus is coming ... or maybe not
29. Arcane psychic ordinance criticized

=== UFOs
30. UFO Skywatcher Keeps Watching the Skies over Phoenix
31. UFO secrets on-line

=== Death Penalty / US Human Rights Violations
32. More juveniles facing execution
33. Georgia and Florida postpone executions of mentally ill inmates

=== Noted
34. Whatever happened to the lost tribes of Israel?
35. Fighting words/ Evangelical Christians divided over the notion of trading
warlike terms for more positive metaphors
36. Mouse ministers
37. Ancient beliefs still alive in Georgia (Voodoo - part 1)
38. Seeking the root of knowledge (Voodoo - part 2)


=== Other News

23. Expert: US Open To Bioterrorism
The Associated Press, Aug. 22, 2000
http://my.aol.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
WASHINGTON (AP) - Advances in technology make the United States more vulnerable to bioterrorism than to nuclear attack, a leading expert in defending against biological weapons said Tuesday.

Dr. Tara O'Toole, deputy director of Johns Hopkins University's Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies, suggested devoting $30 billion over the next 10 years to prepare health care systems to detect, track, respond and contain epidemics that would be triggered by biological weapons.

The Department of Health and Human Services says it is spending $278 million this fiscal year to prepare for bioterrorism.

``The likelihood of a biological weapon being used is a lot higher than a missile coming across the Pacific,'' O'Toole said. ``And yet we are spending a lot more on missile defense than we are on biological systems.''
(...)

Public health experts have warned for several years that bioterrorism, the release of deadly bacteria or viruses, is a growing threat. While the government knows how to respond to chemical spills or bombings, bioterrorism could be the ultimate sneak attack: no one would know it had happened until sick people began arriving at hospitals.

It's not a theoretical risk. In 1985, a cult sickened 750 people by poisoning salad bars in Oregon with the food-poisoning germ salmonella. In 1995, experts say Japanese doomsday cultists tried but failed to release botulism toxin and anthrax in Tokyo. The same cult later released nerve gas into a subway and killed 12 people and made thousands sick.

On the Net: Center for Strategic and International Studies: http://www.csis.org
[Story no longer online? Read this]
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


24. Briton offers reward for daughter missing in Japan
Reuters, Aug. 22, 2000
http://my.aol.com/news/story.tmpl?table=n&cat=01&id=0008220611285269
[Story no longer online? Read this]
TOKYO, Aug 22 (Reuters) - The father of a young British woman missing in Tokyo for nearly two months said on Tuesday he was settling in for the long haul, announcing he would split his time between Japan and England.

Timothy Blackman, visibly drained by the ordeal of waiting in Tokyo for news on the search for his daughter, Lucie, also offered a reward for information about her and said he was seeking to start a fund to finance his efforts to find the former stewardess.
(...)

Blackman has previously rejected suggestions that Lucie had joined a religious cult or that debt problems could have landed her in trouble with the Japanese underworld.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


25. Maharishi eyes Colony project
Dallas Business Journal, May 8, 2000
http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2000/05/08/story1.html
[Story no longer online? Read this]
THE COLONY -- An investment group established by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a meditation guru who once inspired the Beatles, is apparently hoping that a mixed-use development in The Colony will hasten its plan to establish ''heaven on earth.''

Jenkens & Gilchrist, a Dallas-based law firm, has submitted a zoning change application on behalf of the Maharishi Global Development Fund for 329 acres at the southeast corner of Plano Parkway and State Highway 121. The property is currently zoned for planned development, split into various tracts for a business park and general retail and multifamily uses.
(...)

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is credited with bringing transcendental meditation, or ''TM,'' to the world in the 1960s. Transcendental meditation is a meditative technique in which a ''mantra'' is chanted that aims to nourish creativity and well-being. Today the yogi is said to have 4 million worldwide followers, a global network of meditation centers and universities, his own 24-hour TV channel in Holland and the Maharishi Global Development Fund, which is based in New York City.
(...)

The fund's goal is to help eradicate the world's problems by constructing buildings that follow the ancient principles of ''Vedic'' architecture and planning, beginning with projects in the world's 1,000 largest cities. Vedic, or Hindu, principles use the stars and planets to govern the orientation of buildings and the placement and proportion of their rooms.

Ultimately, the group says its goal is to ''create heaven on earth.'' It plans to do that by first creating satellite cities around the larger cities.
(...)

The fund's guidelines call for local management of its projects. Specifically, they are to be managed by ''well-established local construction companies, guided by Maharishi Global Construction, local banks, a reputable law firm and nationally recognized companies for promoting and advertising the building projects.''

One of the group's most ambitious developments is a $1.6 billion, pyramid-shaped structure planned for Sao Paulo, Brazil. At 1,622 feet, the Brazilian skyscraper would be the world's tallest building.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


26. A shadow of a school: Polygamists Heed Call; Enrollments Drop
Salt Lake Tribune, Aug. 22, 2000
http://www.sltrib.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
HILDALE, Utah -- First-year Principal Max Tolman wondered if he would have a job after the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints told followers in July to stop associating with apostates and outsiders, quit their jobs and pull their children from public schools.

Most of the children at Phelps Elementary in Hildale, as well as other area schools, come from polygamous families.

Overnight, enrollment at the K-8 school, tucked under the Vermillion Cliffs of the Arizona Strip, dropped from nearly 300 students to 60. The school lost seven of its 12 teachers.

But when the doors opened Monday, Tolman and his colleagues got a pleasant surprise -- 94 students showed up for classes.
(...)

In addition to Phelps Elementary, three schools in neighboring Colorado City, Ariz., are grappling with declines in student enrollment in the wake of the fundamentalist church's move to insulate itself from outsiders. In fact, the junior high school in Colorado City was closed this week because of a lack of students.

The Utah-Arizona border is indistinguishable in these towns, both founded by polygamists. But the growing schism between fundamentalist church members and other polygamists is not.

Five years ago, one group of polygamous families broke ranks with the fundamentalist church.

That dissension, coupled with the group's reportedly growing sense that the earth is facing its last days, may be the impetus for the edict issued this summer by the faith's leader, Warren Jeffs.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


27. Atheists to distribute book covers; Grand Prairie school district had already permitted Ten Commandments
Star Telegram, Aug. 22, 2000
[URL removed because it currently refers to inappropriate content]/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
GRAND PRAIRIE -- An atheist group spurred by the school district's recent decision to allow book covers printed with the Ten Commandments in schools received approval from the district yesterday to distribute covers.

Superintendent David Barbosa said he followed board policy in giving the Metroplex Atheists permission to distribute the covers. The policy states that each school shall designate an area where non-school materials approved by the district can be distributed.
(...)

The book covers, which are dominated by a message from missing atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair and include quotations from U.S. presidents about religion and separation of church and state, will be distributed beginning today or tomorrow, said Shelly Hattan of Metroplex Atheists.

School board President Norris ''Stretch'' Rideaux said he doesn't approve of the atheist book covers, but it appears that the covers meet criteria set in board policy for non-school publications, such as not being obscene or sexually inappropriate.

''Personally, I don't approve of having atheist book covers in our schools, but I have to accept it because it's in our policy,'' Rideaux said.

Hattan, who lives in Watauga, said the group, which has about 15 active members, plans to distribute the covers in all Grand Prairie schools.

''Where there's a Ten Commandment book cover, we'll put ours,'' she said.

About 20,000 covers bearing the biblical commands were distributed last week by Grand Prairie resident Karen Wiegman, who led the effort to place the covers in schools.

Wiegman, who attends First Church of the Nazarene in Grand Prairie, said last week that she has no objections to atheists, Druids or worshippers of Satan putting book covers in the schools.
(...)

Dick Hogan of the American Atheists Inc., the parent organization of the Metroplex Atheists, said the group was initially told by the district that it could not distribute the covers because ''they were derogatory toward Christianity.''

''Our position is that this is a separation of church and state issue,'' Hogan said. ''It's our position that no book cover should be in the schools. They have created such a gray area by introducing these book covers.''

Rideaux said the district anticipated that an atheist group would want to put its book covers in the schools after the district in June allowed the distribution of book covers with the Ten Commandments.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


28. Jesus is coming ... or maybe not
Daily Mail & Guardian (South Africa), Aug. 21, 2000
http://www.mg.co.za/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
For the second time this year, the world did not end as they had hoped. But the 70 members of the Church of God, an Umtata-based cult, remain undeterred and continue to prepare for imminent rapture and the return of Jesus Christ, an event that they predicted would happen on the last day of the 1900s, and then on July 31.

The cult was established and is still led by Nokulunga Fiphaza, a middle-aged, overbearing woman, who worked as a nurse at a clinic in Port Elizabeth and was a lay preacher at the Motherwell branch of the Apostolic Faith Church before her ''ordainment''.

She believes herself to be a God-ordained prophet named Noah and Abraham. To start the cult, she claims to have engaged in three fasting spells lasting for 40, then 30 and finally 20 days.

She commands fearful loyalty from her followers, some of whom have donated their worldly belongings to her cause. Her earlier attempts to establish similar groups were met with rejection by communities in places like Queenstown and Empindweni, which the current group left for its base at Mandela Park.
(...)

The group exudes a humble and industrious work ethic. Their commune consists of not more than 10 rooms.
(...)

When the Mail & Guardian visited this week, three men in their middle to late 30s were in attendance.
(...)

All three refused to divulge any information. They were enforcing a directive issued by Fiphaza not to talk to the media due to the gross misrepresentation they claim to have suffered.

Later on, Sisize Nokwali, unknowingly overstepped the directive and explained the inner workings of the cult.

In Nokwali, Fiphaza has a willing and able assistant: a well-built, immaculate man in his early 30s - a charismatic and gifted orator who, like Fiphaza herself, claims to get visions from God. He is a teacher by profession and speaks with remarkable conviction.

Nokwali's doctrine is biblical, but essentially conspiracy theory. For instance, he believes that the use of animal motifs in the new South African notes - compared to Jan van Riebeck's face under the old order - is a sign of the beast described in Revelations as preceding the end of the world.
(...)

Nokwali strongly denies media reports that the church set the day of the second coming at July 31. The locals maintain this is the case. On one occasion, they say, the prediction was made to an audience that included Nambitha Stofile, the wife of Eastern Cape Premier Reverend Makhenkesi Stofile.

Nokwali does insist that the end is close enough to render long-term planning futile. Since 1997, for example, no birth has been reported at the commune, owing to a ban on sexual activity, even between married couples.

The 70 members range in age from five to 75, most unemployed even before they joined the cult. Families are split up with mothers, fathers and their children all living in separate quarters, since Fiphaza believes family ties to be unnecessary as individuals can only share their souls with God. They live on a strict regimen that consists of fasting spells that last between 20 and 30 days for the leaders and up to two weeks for members.

On some days, for up to five times a day, starting at 5am and ending at 6pm, they writhe and convulse to the strains of their cacophonic signature tune.

None of the children attend school.

''This is because we do not want our children to mix with people who have not prepared themselves,'' says Nokwali, who teaches at the nearby Dalubuhle Junior Secondary School.

So effective has been the food-deprived dogma that the neatly dressed, Bible-clutching followers describe life at the commune as ''wonderful'' and deem school to be ''satanic'' and ''teaching fornication''.

Nokwali says all workers - perhaps five in the entire settlement - donate a tenth of their salaries and any other money received to the church to sustain the group.

Not so, says a former cult member who spoke on condition of anonymity. The employed few donate every cent of their earnings. She recounts, with a tinge of regret, her one-year stint at the commune. She was chased away in June 1997, soon after she and her husband had resigned from their jobs.

The problem started when Fiphaza declared all marriages that took place after 1990 to be null and void - an instruction from God - and accused her of witchcraft, then expelled her with Nokwali's wife - a development Nokwali does not discuss.
(...)

The locals give eyewitness accounts of how, at certain times, the cult greets natural phenomena such as heavy rain clouds or a cloudless, starry night with paranoia, enthusiastically performing prayer rituals, believing the moment of truth to have finally arrived.
(...)

''These prosperity cults thrive because they respond to an economic reality. Members say to themselves, 'if heaven is portrayed as blissful, we would rather be there [sooner] than remain on Earth','' says Reverend Lehlohonolo Bookholane, a lecturer in the department of religious studies at the University of Transkei.

Bookholane places the cult in the same league as institutions like the Rhema Church and the recent headline-making pyramid scheme Miracle 2000, which entice with a promise of improved economic circumstances.

He believes that the cult offers a viable escape route from the economic hardships the members face.

A concern he raises is the economic benefit that accrues to the leader and a selected few around her. He does not rule out the possibility that a scenario like this could have a tragic end, such as mass suicide.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


29. Arcane psychic ordinance criticized
Denver Post, Aug. 22, 2000
http://www.denverpost.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Maybe they could have peeked into the future and seen this coming.

But the owners of three shops along Colfax Avenue all say they were blindsided when undercover police officers stormed into their stores over the past few weeks, demanding to know if anyone was practicing fortune telling, clairvoyance or palmistry.

The owners say the officers were waving copies of the city's 27-year-old ordinance forbidding fortune telling, and threatened to arrest violators.
(...)

Although police found no violations, the action brings back a decades-long controversy over Denver's psychic ordinance - similar to laws struck down in two other cities.

''If I were king of the world, it would be good to have these ordinances to protect people from fraud,'' said Dana Roper, city attorney for Lincoln, Neb. ''But in a free society with free speech, I don't know how you're going to be able to legally defend such an ordinance.''
(...)

But if federal courts in the Milwaukee and Lincoln cases are right, such ordinances were unconstitutional and violate free speech.
''I'm the first person to say I strongly believe in the right to speak freely,'' said Jan Sopowicz, Milwaukee assistant city attorney. ''On the other hand, there is a lengthy history of astrologists defrauding people. One of the major problems in this issue is that it's hard to prove fraud. People are sometimes embarrassed that they were taken by astrologists.'' Karen Harrison, owner of Isis books and gifts, 5701 E. Colfax Ave., concedes that some people overcharge for services or take advantage of people.

''There are people who prey upon other people, pretending to have knowledge or abilities they don't have,'' Harrison said. ''You'll hear the person say something like, ''You have been cursed, and if you buy candles and cards from me for $1,000, I can take this curse off of you.' That's a sham. Sometimes when people are in a bad spot in their lives, and they need some help or something to talk to, they'll go to someone who may prey upon them.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== UFOs

30. UFO Skywatcher Keeps Watching the Skies over Phoenix
12 News (Phoenix), Aug. 17, 2000
http://www.12news.com/12_News/story.html?StoryID=3343
[Story no longer online? Read this]
The recent red light sightings over the east valley is causing many to break out their telescopes and look to the sky for answers. Our Dean Acosta caught up with one ''Skywatcher'' who goes to his roof top every night with hopes of a close encounter.
(...)

''It appears to be a bona fide UFO,'' says UFO investigator Tom King. He prefers to call himself a ''Skywatcher.'' Others prefer to call him crazy.

''I don't care. They're ignorant of the truth. We were brought up to believe we're alone in the world.''

Tom's not alone in his beliefs. He has UFO trackers all over the valley.

''Sometimes there's up to 10 or more people. It's become a block party situation.''

They've been tracking the red lights since July. Tom and his crew even have their own website, UFOVideo.com and broadcast the sightings live over the Internet.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


31. UFO secrets on-line
PC Format, Aug. 10, 2000
http://www.pcformat.co.uk/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
There's nothing like the grainy image of a badly photostatted government document with the word ''secret'' stamped on it, to make a UFO conspiracist's heart beat faster. Thanks to the NSA's UFO Documents Web site, these people now have more of this material to peruse than ever.

The documents in question - which aren't all that terribly exciting, by the way - were actually released two years ago by the US's National Security Agency, apparently in the hope that they would quell suspicions that the Agency harboured secret information about UFOs. Inevitably, they only served to fuel the fire.
(...)

''The fact that they're releasing this stuff and it's so blacked out, the theories just flurry,'' says John Greenwald, who has collected UFO documents from government agencies for more than five years. We didn't actually notice anything blacked out in any of the documents we downloaded from the NSA's site, to tell the truth. But then, we did get bored of reading the things pretty quickly.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]

* UFO documents
http://nsa.gov/docs/efoia/released/ufo.html

=== Death Penalty / US Human Rights Violations

32. More juveniles facing execution
The Spokesman Review, Aug. 22, 2000
http://www.spokane.net/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
If the state of Georgia electrocutes Alexander Williams on Thursday, as planned, five men who committed murder when they were 17 will have been put to death this year in the United States. That is more than in any year since 1954, when six teen-agers were executed in Florida and Georgia.
(...)

The practice of condemning teen-agers reflects the complexity of attitudes about capital punishment in the United States. While 23 of the 38 states that have the death penalty permit the execution of youthful offenders, only a handful have actually carried out such executions since the death penalty was reinstated. Half of all condemned youthful offenders are in Texas and Alabama.
(...)

But even many prosecutors who support the death penalty, as well as national organizations that are neutral on the issue, are expressing concern about sentencing to death those who were, according to most laws, still children when they committed their crimes. The United States is one of only seven countries in the world that permit such executions, according to the State Department. Language prohibiting the practice is in the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, which only the United States and Somalia have not ratified.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]

* The publisher of Apologetics Index is a member of Amnesty International, and
considers the willful killing of a human being to be murder. He especially
deplores the death penalty practices of the United States of America, which
has a severely flawed justice system.

33. Georgia and Florida postpone executions of mentally ill inmates
CNN, Aug. 22, 2000
http://www.cnn.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
ATLANTA -- A mentally ill inmate in Georgia and another in Florida were granted stays of execution Tuesday, though their illnesses did not figure prominently among the reasons they were granted temporary reprieves.

The Georgia Supreme Court stayed the execution of a mentally ill man who raped and killed a girl when he was 17 years old.

The indefinite stay came 48 hours before Alexander Williams , now 32, was to be electrocuted. Williams, a paranoid schizophrenic, was convicted of the abduction, rape and murder of 16-year-old Aleta Carol Bunch in Augusta, Georgia, in 1986. He was sentenced to die that same year.

A concurring opinion Tuesday by Justice P. Harris Hines indicated that Williams' age or mental illness were not factors in the court deciding to issue a stay.

He wrote that since the court is reviewing, in a separate case, whether the electric chair constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, it should issue a stay in the Williams case.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Noted

34. Whatever happened to the lost tribes of Israel?
Reuters, Aug. 22, 2000
http://my.aol.com/news/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
DIMONA, Israel (Reuters) - Living in the shadow of Israel's nuclear reactor, Dimona's Black Hebrews are polygamous vegans who believe they are descended from a lost Israelite tribe.

The community of African Americans who moved to Israel from the United States in 1969 calls the enclave in the desert town of Dimona the Kingdom of Yah. They say they are the descendants of an ancient Jewish tribe forced into exile in West Africa and taken to the Americas as slaves centuries ago.

Their white-robed spokesman who calls himself Ahmadiel Ben-Yehuda says songs about Zion and the Jordan River sung by African slaves as they worked in the fields are evidence of their Israelite roots.

Most scholars dismiss the cult's claims as far-fetched and say the proof to support their belief is tenuous at best. But even if the Black Hebrews' claims are based on nothing more than myths, the fact remains that 2,700 years after the 10 tribes of Israel were taken into exile and vanished, their fate remains one of history's most intriguing mysteries.
(...)

Rabbi Eliyahu Avichail has been hunting for the lost tribes for decades.
(...)

Not content just to study Isaiah's prophesies, Avichail is trying to fulfil them by bringing people he believes to be from the lost tribes back to Judaism and the Holy Land.

One of Avichail's biggest success stories is the Shinlung people from the Myanmar-Indian border who believe they are the Israelite tribe of Menashe. He has already helped around 500 of them move to Israel and convert to Judaism.
(...)

But Rivka Gonen, an archeologist and curator of Jewish ethnography at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, believes the 10 tribes have disappeared for good. She says it is inconceivable that people exiled thousands of years ago would have retained any semblance of their Jewish heritage.

Gonen said that even in the Bible it says the 10 tribes were conquered because they were not practicing Jewish customs and worshipped idols, and there is no reason to expect they kept Jewish rituals in exile when they did not do so at home.

``Wherever you find a tribe claiming they belong to the 10 lost tribes, you always find the fingerprints of Christian missionaries or romantics who came with the Bible, and when they found vague similarities of names and customs they immediately saw it as proof,'' Gonen said.

She says the methods used to trace the lost tribes is not at all scientific either anthropologically or linguistically as many languages have words that sound similar and rituals like circumcision are not uniquely Jewish.

Many of the theories border on the absurd, she said, like British Israelites who claim the British people are from the 10 tribes or those who say the Danes are the lost tribe of Dan.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


35. Fighting words/ Evangelical Christians divided over the notion of trading warlike terms for more positive metaphors
The Gazette, Aug. 19, 2000
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
To many evangelical Christians, missionary work is war - a battle of God versus Satan for the souls of the world.

The terms ''conquer,'' ''advance,'' ''enemy'' and ''beachhead'' - some pulled from the Bible, others rooted in the secular realm - have been part of their lexicon for years.

But in the past decade, a split has developed in the mission movement about the use of such military lingo.

One side wants to trade warlike language for positive metaphors, reasoning that rapidly changing technologies mean the entire world - not just missionaries - are exposed to their words.

Overuse of military images, they say, has endangered local people they're trying to help and leaves well-meaning mission groups open to enemies' criticism.

On the other side are advocates of ''spiritual warfare,'' many of whom are based in Colorado Springs.

They believe they are engaged in a biblically mandated battle against demonic forces that are preventing the Gospel from spreading. The criticism of warfare language, some feel, is aimed at them.

Among the local institutions built on the warfare model are the two-year-old, $5.5 million World Prayer Center in north Colorado Springs and an organization called the Generals of Intercession, whose founders closed a recent newsletter with the words, ''Yours in Heavenly Combat.''

The long-simmering debate took an important turn in June, when 31 representatives of evangelical mission groups signed a statement calling for the immediate halt to the ''inappropriate'' use of warfare terminology.

The statement came at the end of a three-day meeting at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., a leading evangelical seminary that has a satellite campus in Colorado Springs.
(...)

The statement notes that its signers are not ashamed of the Gospel. They acknowledge ''there is indeed a battle underway - between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Satan.''

The Bible has its share of military imagery. The Second Epistle of Paul to Timothy, for instance, calls man to be a ''good soldier'' of Jesus Christ. Other examples abound.

But warlike language has become increasingly dangerous in mission work, according to the statement signed at Fuller:

'''Warfare' metaphors and terminology, while biblical in the cosmic/spiritual sense, have been much misused in Christian mission communications.

''They have become increasingly counterproductive to mission work, sometimes endangering the lives of local believers, and are being used by opponents of the church to indict and impede its work.''

The statement instead urges the use of more peaceful words and images, including ''blessing, healing, inviting, sowing and reaping, fishing, restoring family relationships, becoming reconcilers, peacemakers and ambassadors.''

The signers included leaders of two large umbrella groups - the Evangelical Fellowship of Mission Agencies and the Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association - as well as representatives of the Southern Baptist Convention, the Association of Vineyard Churches and the World Evangelical Fellowship.

Among those who signed the statement was Luis Bush, international Director of the Colorado Springs-based AD2000 & Beyond Movement, a network of mission organizations.
(...)

Though military terms have pervaded missionary work for decades, the practice of spiritual warfare is relatively new.

One of the movement's leaders is C. Peter Wagner, a former Fuller professor who now heads Global Harvest Ministries in Colorado Springs.

Wagner wrote several books in the 1990s called the ''Prayer Warrior'' series, part of a mushrooming industry of books and conferences on spiritual warfare.

He also co-founded the World Prayer Center here with New Life Church pastor Ted Haggard.

The center, off Colorado Highway 83 North, processes prayer requests received by fax, e-mail and phone and farms them out for global prayer.

The mission is to introduce Christianity to ''lost'' people in nations where other religions dominate.

In general, spiritual warfare is a concentrated form of prayer that its advocates believe can cast demons out of people, counter New Age and other ''occult'' faiths and confront geographic areas that are under Satan's control.

Those beliefs sometimes are grounded in Pentecostalism, which stresses ''spiritual gifts'' such as prophesy and speaking in tongues.

Wagner said the signers of the Fuller statement generally don't subscribe to those beliefs.

''They've developed some sort of pacifist paradigm I can't track with,'' said Wagner, who's also on the board of Generals of Intercession, which is staging three conferences this summer and fall on spiritual warfare.

Wagner took aim at the portion of the statement that asserted military terminology is counterproductive.

''That's a direct statement against me and others who track with me,'' Wagner said.

''There is no empirical evidence whatsoever this has been a hindrance to mission work on a broad scale. It's just the opposite. Warfare has rocketed mission work.''

Wagner said the fastest church growth is in countries where spiritual warfare is practiced.

Pierson said there's no evidence of that. Much of the growth has been in charismatic or Pentecostal churches, he said, but that may or may not involve spiritual warfare.

Pierson said the statement wasn't meant to attack Wagner or challenge spiritual warfare's legitimacy. It's the use of the language that's at issue.

He said most missionaries wouldn't go as far as Wagner with the warfare approach.

Wagner says the mission groups that signed the Fuller statement represent an old approach to mission work that dominated in the 1970s and 1980s.

Those who subscribe to spiritual warfare will continue to use the military lingo, he said.

But even at the World Prayer Center, the use of warfare terminology has softened, said Derrick Trimble, director of research and strategic communication at Global Harvest Ministries, which helped get the center up and running.

A shift began to occur after Global Harvest and other groups did humanitarian work in Turkey last year after a devastating earthquake hit the country, Trimble said.

The volunteers recognized they were in a predominantly Muslim nation where images of the Crusades still linger, he said.

At a large prayer event last fall in Turkey that was organized primarily by Wagner and Haggard, Trimble said the use of any military terms was strictly prohibited.

But that isn't to say the spiritual warfare movement that blossomed in Colorado Springs is putting its guns away.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


36. Mouse ministers
Spokesman Review, Aug. 19, 2000
http://www.spokane.net/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
In most denominations, becoming ordained requires special training through a seminary or Bible college. But there are churches on the Internet that will ordain anyone with the click of a button -- no training or background check required, no questions asked. Even pets can be ordained on some sites.
(...)

Just how easy it is to get ordained online varies from site to site. Some, such as www.ordination.org and www.awarinst.com, charge hundreds of dollars for a correspondence course. The tests, though, are usually ''open book'' and very simple.

Other sites require people to fill out a brief questionnaire and pay some sort of monthly membership fee. Additional sites, such as www.pulc.com, offer ordination certificates for a modest fee of about $20. Still other sites offer free ordination to anyone, but make their money by selling various certificates and products.

One of the online churches that offers free ordination is the Universal Life Church based in Modesto, Calif. It has been around since 1959 and conducted its business through the mail before going online a few years ago.

An ordination form on the church's Web site (located at www.ulc.org, with a slightly different version at www.ulc.org/ulc) asks only for a name, e-mail address and mailing address.

A click on the submit button generates an instant response. The 14-page e-mail, which devotes most of its space to pitches for products, starts off by noting, ''The Universal Life Church of Modesto, California, has informed the ULC Monastery in Tucson, Arizona that your application for ordination has been received and approved with pride.''

The e-mail continues by giving the news that ULC ministers can grant absolution for sins. ''I notify you that you have the formal authorization by the Universal Life Church to forgive the sins of others -- as well as your own as a religious rite.''

The products listed in the e-mail include certificates, handbooks, ''how to'' guides for marriage ceremonies, and various degrees such as doctor of divinity, doctor of universal life, doctor of immortality and a Ph.d. in religion. There is also a Certificate of Sainthood that sells for $5.

Newly ordained ministers also can select special titles for themselves for an additional fee. In addition to common titles like cardinal, deacon, brother and priest, there are also more unusual titles, such as colonel, dervish, flying missionary, wizard, angel, Bible historian, apostle of humility, disciple, saintly healer, spiritual warrior, goddess, and universal philosopher of absolute reality.

Similar products are also available through the Progressive Universal Life Church (www.pulc.com) and World Christianship Ministries (www.wcm.org). Both sites require only minimal information before granting ordination.

Brother Daniel Zimmerman of the ULC Monastery in Arizona defended his church and its work during a 90-minute phone interview.

The church has ordained about 20 million people since it began, said Zimmerman, the ULC's spokesman. That figure includes the 400,000 who have been ordained over the Internet since the church's Web site was launched five years ago.

''People don't understand what ordination is,'' he said. ''Ordination doesn't mean a damn thing other than you get to do weddings.''
(...)

Zimmerman is the first to admit that the ULC has had its problems over the years. ''During the '80s the church was used majorly as a tax dodge movement in the United States,'' he said. ''It's true, there was abuse and fraud going on in massive amounts, for which we paid for.''

The ULC reached a settlement with the IRS last year and was required to pay a fine of $3.5 million, said Zimmerman. They solved their fraud problem by changing the church's corporate structure. The church now tells its ministers that they are responsible for all tax issues.
(...)

Another lawsuit against the church's founder, the Rev. Kirby Hensley, involved the legality of the ULC issuing doctor of divinity degrees. The court ruled that they were honorary and legal, said Zimmerman. ''It is an honorary degree, whether it's granted by Harvard or Yale. That became the biggest money maker of the Universal Life Church.''

One assertion made by Zimmerman and repeated numerous times in ULC e-mails and on the church's Web site is that the ordination is legal in all 50 states and allows its ministers to perform marriage ceremonies. A check of Washington and Idaho state law appears to indicate that is true.

The Washington state attorney general's office provided a 1958 opinion on who may perform marriages. The opinion quotes various state laws that remain unchanged today, including one that states that all marriages performed ''before or in any religious organization or congregation'' are valid.

The opinion comes to this conclusion: ''We believe that a rather broad and liberal interpretation should be accorded the term `religious organization.' The lack of conformity with established religious belief and institutions would appear to be of no significance here.''
(...)

But while Zimmerman vigorously defends the ULC's methods and motivation, others have a far different view about the church.

University of Virginia sociology professor Jeffrey Hadden maintains a Web site dedicated to researching various religious movements (www.religiousmovements.org). The site includes profiles of dozens of religions and has gained recognition for researching and describing religions objectively.

A profile on Universal Life Church was completed in 1997, stating: ''The focus of the ULC is not on beliefs of its members, but on monetary advancement and the availability and usefulness of becoming a tax-exempt ordained minister.

''Nothing about the ULC helps define itself as a credible, functioning religious organization.''
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* Jeffrey K. Hadden is a cult apologist. The ULC entry at his site was written by one of his students (Stephanie M. Krebs).

37. Ancient beliefs still alive in Georgia
(First of two parts)
Macon Telegraph, Aug. 20, 2000
http://www.macontelegraph.com/
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When drug agents kicked in the door of Minnie Pearl Thomas' trailer at 5 a.m. on March 12, 1999, in the tiny community of Allentown, they walked into an eerie scene.

On the dresser in her dimly lit bedroom they found an altar. On the altar burned several candles. And on the candles were fastened written notes, asking for the spirits' help with love, money and protection from the law.

The agents were not surprised. They knew that Thomas had been to a root doctor.

It was root work. Since the earliest days of settlers and slaves in this country, the practice, which is akin to voodoo, has flourished in the South. Even in the year 2000, when modern technology has superseded the old ways and Southern culture is becoming more homogenized, root work still thrives out of view from mainstream society.
(...)

From wiretaps and other investigative techniques, the agents knew that Thomas had buried a dead chicken on her property to protect her from harm.

''Minnie Pearl believed in it so much, she hid her dope outside where everyone could see it,'' Chatman said. ''The people (nearby) believed in it, too. They wouldn't mess with her stuff.''

The Ocmulgee Drug Task Force agents in Operation Four Corners had had cause to wonder whether Thomas' root work might have some hidden potency.

''Some of the things we tried to do didn't work. The mojo was on us,'' said Jeff Duncan, a Milledgeville police officer attached to the task force.

Wilkinson County sheriff's investigator Heath Bache explained that mysterious glitches nearly derailed the investigation. Batteries died in two-way radios. Video cameras quit working. While doing surveillance one day on a drug deal across usually deserted train tracks, the agents got a surprise.

''A train came through right in the middle of a deal,'' Bache said. ''Working that case, it had me wondering. Because everything that could go wrong did go wrong. She was a strange bird.''

But apparently her roots weren't strong enough to head off trouble.

Thomas, 44, also known as The Queen Pin, was a longtime drug dealer, responsible for moving four or five ounces of crack each week through the little town where Wilkinson, Twiggs, Bleckley and Laurens counties come together, said Wesley Nunn, a GBI agent who coordinates the task force. Thomas was convicted last month in U.S. District Court in Macon and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Among the others sentenced in the case was a 35-year-old ex-preacher named Sam Rozier from Dublin. After pleading guilty in May to assisting Thomas in her drug trade, Rozier is now serving an 18-month sentence at the US Penitentiary in Atlanta.
(...)

The agents never identified Thomas' root doctor, but suspected it was someone operating in Toomsboro or Hawkinsville.

It could have been one of many root doctors. Experts say practitioners of the ancient tradition are still scattered throughout the South.

The root doctors offer to help their clients in supernatural ways - often at steep prices.

Root work is a blend of West African religion, herbal folklore and Christian beliefs mingled together to make a uniquely Southern stew. In its most sincere form, root work taps into an ancient belief that everything in creation - every rock and every blade of grass - is filled with with spiritual significance. A practitioner with knowledge of the spirit world can tap into its power.

It's like voodoo, but different, too.

''What is commonly called voodoo is a blend of traditional West African religion with Christianity,'' said professor Richard Persico, a social anthropologist at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro. Persico specializes in rural Georgia and has interviewed several root doctors in his field work.

Voodoo, he said, is a corruption of an African word, Voudun, the word for ''spirit.'' The voodoo practice came to America in chains, as slaves from different tribes were forced together, mixing their own beliefs with those of the slave masters. Those who came through the Caribbean developed a cosmology in which Yoruba gods took on the identities of Catholic saints.

That strain of voodoo, as well as others with a Catholic flavor, are more prevalent along the Caribbean coasts and as far south as Brazil, Persico said.

But on the Georgia-Carolina coast, where Protestant European settlers took control, the religion took a slightly different flavor. It became known as root work, a reference perhaps to the importance of herbal medicine in folklore.

''There's a lot of blend of Native American and African religion and herbalism, as Indians and Africans were enslaved together,'' Persico said. ''Religion, magic and healing were all part of the same package.

''What they all have in common is the notion that supernatural power can be invested in things.''

In Georgia and South Carolina, Persico said, root work is still strongest in the coastal islands where the isolated Gullah people maintained closer ties to African tradition than did most African-Americans further inland.

But all over the South, where whites and blacks shared a common culture and developed a kind of intimacy even through the days of slavery and segregation, traces of root tradition spread.
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38. Seeking the root of knowledge
(Second of two parts)
Macon Telegraph, Aug. 21, 2000
http://www.macontelegraph.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
In a small patch of woods not far from Shurling Drive in northeast Macon, a slender man is making his way among the trees, shrubs and weeds.

Dressed in green work pants, a red-and-white-plaid cotton shirt and bright, multi-colored beret, he carries a light mattock and scans the ground.

He is a root doctor.

Monroe Jackson, sometimes known as Dr. I. Root, is searching for the plants whose names and uses he learned some 60 years ago.
(...)

He works as a healer, a diviner of knowledge and a remover of evil influences.

In that work, he makes use of plants both for their herbal and spiritual properties.

In the world of Dr. I. Root, there is no distinction between the two.

All things are imbued with spirit.
(...)

Harriett Whipple, a biology professor at Georgia College & State University in Milledgeville, has gone through the woods with Jackson and confirmed he has extensive, if somewhat unorthodox, field knowledge.
(...)

He wears a necklace of beads, holding a carved pendant in the shape of a head. ''Everything on my necklace would relate to something on earth,'' he said. The colors red and black on his necklace are for Ellegua, a spirit that opens and closes doors. ''If he opens a door, no one can close it,'' he said.

Yellow and green are for Orunla, a spirit of peace, happiness and long life.
(...)

On one point he was unequivocal: ''Voodoo is real. Ain't no ifs, ands or buts about it.''

He acknowledges that many people regard it as superstition.

''That don't make it not true,'' he said. ''They got a right to their opinion. I'm not saying I'm right 100 percent, but I believe I'm right 98 percent, and I know 101 percent that the Almighty controls it all. We know that something is going on that is more powerful than human men.''
(...)

Jackson also said people who mess with roots must understand there is a good and an evil side to them.

''When you boil it all down, it comes down to good and evil,'' he said. ''It's just which one you want to control you. You can be the good person or you can be the evil person.
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