Monday, October 31, 2011
Jesus' name ruled 'unconstitutional'
Judge says prayers to Christ 'do violence to America's pluralistic, inclusive values'
A board of county commissioners in North Carolina is asking the Supreme Court for help: Its members don't believe they should have to forbid volunteers from mentioning the name of Jesus in prayers offered before their meetings.
But the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State are standing by their victory in a U.S. circuit court decision that states even "a solitary reference to Jesus Christ" in invocations before the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners' meetings could do "violence to the pluralistic and inclusive values that are a defining feature of American public life."
Furthermore, wrote Judge James Harvie Wilkinson III in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals majority opinion, legislative invocations offered in Jesus' name are inherently "sectarian" and thus should be censored lest they make some attendees feel "uncomfortable, unwelcome and unwilling to participate in … public affairs."
But the board disagrees, and with the help of the Alliance Defense Fund is asking the Supreme Court to trump Wilkinson's ruling.
"America's founders opened public meetings with prayer; this county simply wants to allow its citizens to do the same," said ADF Senior Counsel David Cortman in a statement. "We trust the U.S. Supreme Court will want to review this case because of the long history in America of offering prayers before public meetings. Public officials shouldn't be coerced into censoring the prayers of those invited to offer them just because secularist groups don't like people praying according to their own conscience."
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Calif. University Introduces First U.S. Multi-Faith School of Theology
Claremont Lincoln University, a graduate school in California, is the first in the United States to bring together Christians, Jews and Muslims in the same classrooms to educate the future leaders of churches, synagogues and mosques.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/education/july-dec11/religioused_10-25.html____________________________________________________________
TESTING THE FAITH
Christian church teams up with high priestess of Isis
Famous denomination welcoming paganism with guided meditations
 High priestess Loreon Vigne of Isis Oasis |
A Protestant church in California is coming under fire from some Christians over its upcoming conference featuring "guided meditations" by a high priestess of the pagan fertility goddess Isis.
The fifth annual "Faith and Feminism Conference" taking place Nov. 11–13 is being hosted by the Ebenezer Lutheran Church in San Francisco, which bills itself as "herchurch."
Among the scheduled participants is Loreon Vigne, high priestess of Isis Oasis – a temple, retreat and animal sanctuary Vigne founded in 1978 in Geyserville, Calif.
"I personally see Isis as Mother Nature," Vigne told WND, "and that she encompasses everything with her wings. She's a winged goddess. She encompasses any other goddess from any culture."
Vigne, who plans to bring several other priestesses to the conference, will conduct prayers, songs and meditation.
"Guided meditation is where the audience closes their eyes and you take them on a little journey," she explained. "I've taken people to their past lives in Egypt, as [that culture] had all the secrets. They're the ones that knew. Their main concept is to know thyself, know thy heart, know thy soul and know thy purpose."
 A depiction of the Egyptian goddess Isis and her son Horus |
She says the belief system is based on the ancient Egyptian concept of balance, with 42 laws that are actually 42 ideals.
"It's kind of like a Ten Commandments, but all done in a positive concept," she said. "'I shalt not kill,' [is rendered as] 'I honor all lives as sacred.'"
Besides honoring the goddess, the staff of Isis Oasis also provides massage therapy along with tarot and astrology readings, according to its website.
But the San Francisco event blending non-existent, heathen deities with the Christian faith is leaving some outraged.
"You can't make this stuff up!" exclaimed Dan Skogen of Marion, Iowa, who describes himself as a Lutheran fed up with the "constant mockery of God's word" by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, or ELCA, which boasts some 4.2 million members in 10,000 congregations.
"God tells us in Exodus 20:3 'You shall have no other gods before me.' Yet this ELCA church brings followers of other gods in to speak and teach at their conference!"
Skogen said the ELCA leadership "accepts and promotes the thought that salvation is secured even for people who do not have faith in Christ."
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-Missygirl*
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