fayfreethinkers.com

For Gods and Country

The Army Chaplain Who Wanted to Switch to Wicca? Transfer Denied.

Washington Post
Monday, February 19, 2007; Page C01

SCHERTZ, Tex.

The night wind pushes Don Larsen's green robe against his lanky frame. A circle of torches lights his face.

A year ago, he was a Pentecostal Christian minister at Camp Anaconda, the largest U.S. support base in Iraq. He sent home reports on the number of "decisions" -- soldiers committing their lives to Christ -- that he inspired in the base's Freedom Chapel.

On July 6, he applied to become the first Wiccan chaplain in the U.S. armed forces, setting off an extraordinary chain of events. By year's end, his superiors not only denied his request but also withdrew him from Iraq and removed him from the chaplain corps, despite an unblemished service record.

So much for faith-based program equality.

Faith is so important to the GOP--as long as it's their faith.

Quote of the day:

"If people today are ignorant enough to believe that "God" intervenes to determine the outcome of ball games [and they are], can you imagine how much more ignorant people were in biblical times? That ignorance is indicated in the number of times that biblical writers attributed events of their time to the intervention of their god Yahweh, yet many people in our more enlightened times believe that those writers were right in saying such things as Yahweh fought with Israel in different military battles.

With all of the suffering that goes on in the world, such as the atrocities that happen daily in Iraq and Darfur, if "God" really does intervene to determine who wins a superbowl game, he deserves our contempt rather than respect."

--Farrell Till

The R version of religious freedom is why we have a constitutional amendment prohibiting a state religion. Nothing has changed in 400 years - the "Pilgrims" didn't come over here for religious freedom, they had that in Holland. They came over here because they were xenophobes (once their kids started speaking Dutch, that was it - they were out of there). Once here, they set up an english-speaking only theocrasy - nonbelievers were heretics and executed (except for the ones who escaped and started their own english-speaking only theocrasy over the mountain - that's why there are so many "New England" states).

As to wicca, it's become a rather generic name for an egalitarian polytheistic religion using european male and female god names (and ritual, as far as anyone can determine). There could be nothing more threatening to a male-dominated hierarchical association (like the military or the GOP) than an organization that is egalitarian AND polytheistic AND has female gods.

Barbara wrote:Once here, they ["Pilgrims"] set up an english-speaking only theocrasy - nonbelievers were heretics and executed (except for the ones who escaped and started their own english-speaking only theocrasy over the mountain...

With the honorable exceptions of Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, and a handful of others. "Rogue's Island" was relatively tolerant. So were the Quaker colonies.

Those three - Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, and William Penn - were pretty much the exceptions that prove the rule. Even further south, the catholics "settled" Maryland, while the protestants (church of England variety along the coast and baptist-types in the hills) were in Virginia. The only reason Georgia didn't have a religious preference is that it was a penal colony and a debtor is a debtor is a debtor. And even the ones who were religiously more or less "tolerant" weren't especially ethnically (language or skin color), and their version of gender equality was pretty much the now-disdained "separate but equal" (yeah, sure it might work if it WERE equal, but it never was and still isn't).