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- Reports that the U.S. Army had appointed chaplains to witches
(they prefer Wiccans) turned out
not to be true, but the army, along with several courts, has
recognized them as a religion.
There are supposed to be somewhere around fifty thousand adherents
of the cult, which has a
special appeal to teenage girls.
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- Congressman Bob Barr is among those who think the army is
overreaching on the tolerance front. Andrew Stuttaford writes
in National Review: "Citing an image of George Washington
at prayer, the Congressman managed to suggest that witchcraft
was somehow un-American. He could not be more wrong. For if ever
a religion was tailor-made for a contemporary America in full
flight from the Enlightenment and the Founding Fathers, it is
Wicca." Stuttaford notes that Wicca was invented in the
1950s by a retired British civil servant, Gerald Gardner, who
had a reported interest in nudism and flagellation.
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- The doctrine, so to speak, patches together bits and pieces
of J. R. R. Tolkien, with practitioners
communicating in Hobbitspeak and going on about the olde worlde
magick of Athanes, Stangs,
Runes, Summerland, and scrying-glass.
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- In its American version, Wicca has taken a fiercely feminist
turn, with instant victim status certified by its very own holocaust,
the old European "burning times." Stuttaford expects
that Wiccans will soon be making the standard victim claims about
discrimination, hate crimes, and the need for affirmative action
for Wiccans as "the old witch's cackle is replaced with
the litigant's whine." The military is a special case and
it has doubtful competence to make decisions about what its members
say is their religion. An inquiry elicited a long Department
of Defense document that, in circuitous bureaucratese, indicates
that the Wiccans will not be getting chaplains any time soon.
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- For more general legal purposes, the First Amendment provides
little guidance. It guarantees that
the federal government will not establish a national religion
and will not interfere with what the states do about religion.
Aside from a relatively small number of people putting their
souls in peril-a risk freely indulged in various ways by most
Americans-I expect the Wiccans do not warrant a prominent place
on our list of things to worry about.
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- They are prime candidates for one of those little newspaper
squibs ten years from now, under the title "Where are they
now?" Dennis Prager says he is embarrassed, as a Jew and
as an American. Since 1853, the baccalaureate service at Duke
University, which is associated with the United Methodist Church,
has included giving to each participating graduate a copy of
the Bible, meaning the Old and New Testaments. Last year, Jewish
faculty and students objected, claiming it is
offensive to Jewish students to offer them a book that contains
the New Testament.
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- Prager writes: "To summarize the situation in even simpler
terms: Duke Jewish faculty and students
and Jewish institutions at Duke object to Jewish students participating
in a service where Duke offers a gift of a Bible that contains
their own Jewish Bible and also the New Testament; where any
participant is free not to take that Bible; at a service that
is entirely voluntary; in a university that is private and affiliated
with the Methodist Church. One of the best words to describe
this attitude is actually a Hebrew/Yiddish one-chutzpah. Another
word might be ingratitude.
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- We American Jews are probably the most fortunate Jews in
Jewish history. We live the freest, most economically secure
lives in Jewish history in a country that not merely tolerates
our religion, but has always honored it. And who made such a
country possible? Men and women, nearly all of whom were Christian,
who regarded Judeo-Christian values as the basis of this society,
even as many of them fell short of these values. In our specific
case, it was not Jews who made Duke University, it was Christians,
indeed a specific Christian church.
Instead of being grateful to the tradition that created their
country and their university, some Duke Jewish faculty and students
have decided that they are offended by it." Prager continues:
"The Jews of Duke have undermined the Judeo-Christian and
Western cultural foundations of American culture and of their
university. And for what? So that Jewish students not hold a
Bible containing Christian scriptures. How sad. Apparently, Multiculturalism
and Tolerance don't apply to Christians." In the tradition
of clear thinking and firm adherence to principle for which academic
leadership is noted, Duke has responded to the protest by deciding
that Bibles will no longer be handed out but will be stacked
in a separate room where students who are interested in that
sort of thing may take one. [ http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0001/public.html
]
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