-Caveat Lector-
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Wednesday, March 17, 1999 2:34 PM
Subject: AANEWS for Wednesday, March 17, 1999
from: AMERICAN ATHEISTS
subject: AANEWS for March 17, 1999
A M E R I C A N A T H E I S T S
AANEWS
#543 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 3/17/99
http://www.atheists.org
ftp.atheists.org/pub/atheists/
http://www.americanatheist.org
---------------------------------------------
A Service of AMERICAN ATHEISTS
"For Reason and the First Amendment"
----------------------------------------------
In This Issue...
* New Mexico RFRA -- done deal?
* Helms protesting state-sponsored voodoo, population control
* American Atheists National Convention, April 2-4, 1999
* TheistWatch -- straying congregations worry priests, rabbis, ministers
* Resources
* About this list...
<snip
**
HELMS FLAP OVER VOODOO TARGETING POPULATION PROGRAM?
For once, North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms is angry that government
money is being used to promote religious ritual. Helms usually
supports religion- in-government programs including efforts to
reinstate prayer and Bible verse recitation in public schools. Now,
he is sounding the alarm on capitol hill about money channeled through
the U.S. Agency for International Development which purportedly
encourages witchcraft -- voodoo -- in Haiti.
There's a catch, though; Helms, in a letter sent last month to
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, says that the AID money is
"funding program that endorse or legitimize what amounts to
witchcraft," and singled out a $295,000 grant to the International
Planned Parenthood Federal in Haiti. AID official says that money is
used for "partners and implementing organization (which) use this
important social network (voodoo ceremonies) as the medium for
disseminating health sector messages and information." Senator Helms
is an outspoken opponent of abortion rights, or efforts to use birth
control technology to restrain population growth.
But the AID response seemed to contradict a statement issued by James
P. Rubin, State department spokesman. Quoted in the Washington
Times, Rubin said, "While some traditional practitioners may have
participated in voodoo ceremonies, USAID funding has not been used to
support those practices."
The Times said reported that the International Planned Parenthood
Federation affiliate in Haiti, PROFAMI, did receive the $295,000
grant. And Helms cited an exchange in the Senate Foreign Relation
Committee between members and AID officials, where the Agency was
asked about the money, and a 1995 IPPF Annual Report. That document
says that the federation undertook "a campaign to reach voodoo
followers with sexual and reproductive health information ... by
performing short song-prayers about STDs (sexually transmitted
diseases) and the benefits of family planning during voodoo
ceremonies."
UNICEF Using Voodoo
Indeed, a link from the IPPF web site to UNICEF, the United Nation's
outreach focused on children, and the World Health Organization
reveals an interesting side to the work of both of those agencies. A
UNICEF Information Feature notes, "In West Africa, where Voodoo is a
thriving cultural force, Voodoo practitioners, known as fetishists,
play a strong role in traditional health care. Both UNICEF and the
World Health Organization are exploring ways to cooperate with Voodoo
practitioners and other traditional healers to exchange knowledge and
boost participation in primary health campaigns..."
The article goes on to note, "Since 1990, the World Health
Organization has worked on a five-year plan to promote the use of
traditional medicine and increase exchanges of information and
understanding between healers and their counterparts in traditional
medicine..."
Among the "healers" cited is PayMeWell, a witchdoctor in Monrovia,
Liberia. "A celebrity of sorts, he says that he can fly, use
clairvoyance and summon people to his presence by beating two bones on
a drum made from the skin of a freshly killed guinea pig... (his)
curative powers are legendary..."
Helms Betrays Real Target
But Senator Helms may very well be using voodoo and witchcraft as a
ruse to strike at his real target -- population restraint and birth
control. In his letter to Secretary Albright, the North Carolina
solon blasted the AID grant saying, "If there were prizes given for
'the most outrageous foreign aid programs' this would be in line for
first place." Helms agreed to a transfusion of funding for AID
recently, though, but only with the stipulations that none of the
money go to any affiliate of the International Planned Parenthood
Federation, or to any group using voodoo.
The IPPF defends its alliance with voodoo practitioners in Africa,
Haiti and elsewhere, noting the scarcity of trained doctors and
nurses. At present, AID health and family planning programs provide
child, maternal and reproductive health services to more than half of
Haiti's population.
<snip>
**
THEISTWATCH SHORT SHOTS
Worth quoting from the Washington Spectator -- Alan Wolfe, author of
"One Nation After All," on the growing disenchantment within religious
right ranks of working through the political process. Recall that
following the acquittal of President Clinton on a battery of
impeachment charges, Paul Weyrich excoriated the nation saying that it
has lost its sense of moral probity. Similar sentiments are voiced by
other religious right gurus, including William Bennett in his latest
written panegyric, "The Death of Outrage." Assessing Weyrich's call
for Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals to abandon the
political process in favor of home schooling, building more churches
and withdrawing from secular culture, Wolfe opines, "the right-wing
moralists are saying that 'Americans are too sinful to be trusted with
liberty.'"
It's a sentiment that a growing cohort of the religious seem to agree
on. Pope John Paul II, with the fall of "godless communism," has now
found a new target in the form of globalization, consumerism and
materialist culture. Church prelates in Poland, for instance, have
supported laws cracking down on free expression, abortion rights, and
even the right of business to remain open on Sunday. The "materialism
of the West" has replaced Mao, Lenin and Stalin as the bogeymen.
Ultimately, for religion anything that smacks of secularism and the
notion of individual self-determination must be subordinated to the
authority of the church. Wolfe is right; for the clerics, Americans
are too "sinful" to enjoy too much liberty.
**
Despite all of the hype, surveys of church attendance fail to confirm
the expectation that the fin de siecle would see a sudden resurgence
in religiosity -- a fundamentalist "revival" comparable to the Great
Awakening in the nineteenth century. Membership in the mainstream
denominations is stagnant or declining, and the only growth on the
religious landscape is occurring in the ranks of fundamentalist,
evangelical and Pentecostal sects. Simply put, "empty pew syndrome"
continues to plague the church.
It also affects America's Jewish community, where there is heightened
angst over the tendency of young Jews to marry outside their faith, or
ignore the call to services. So, the Foundation for Jewish Camping,
Inc. is making its first grant of $200,000 to invigorate some of the
nation's 100 Jewish summer camps, and sponsor open house events at
synagogues under the aegis of "Shabbat Across America." Noted the
March 12 edition of the Washington Times: "Both the Shabbat outreach
and camp efforts are attempts to reverse assimilation trends in the
United States, which the National Jewish Outreach Program has called
the 'J2K Problem' -- the specter of Jewish non-affiliation in the next
century. The problems happens to be that nearly two-thirds of
American Jews do not identify themselves as practicing religious,
while 1 million Jews under the age of 18 (54%) aren't being raised in
the faith. 52% marry outside of the faith.
Let's hope that Christians, Muslims, Hindus and others follow this
example.
**
Despite the standing of ROE v. WADE presumably guaranteeing the right
of American women to safe and legal abortion services, the religious
right is gradually winning the war against this practice. Depressed
in part by a growing climate of terrorism and intimidation, the number
of abortion providers in the U.S. has shrunk to its lowest point
since 1973 according to a recent study released by the Alan Guttmacher
Institute.
26% of pregnancies now end in abortion. Even with legal abortion
services, however, that number displays a crying need for better
information about birth control, as well as better access to the
technology.
Other findings:
- Nearly one-third of women in America live in counties which do not
have abortion providers. Part of the reason for this is the sheer
cost of operating clinics, especially when local and state governments
often do all they can to literally regulate them out of business.
Other contributing factors include the drop in hospitals which provide
abortion services because of corporate mergers and managed care, and
the takeover by Roman Catholic corporations which are consolidating
their grip on the health care industry.
- Fewer hospital residency programs are training doctors in how to
perform even first-trimester abortions. Currently, only 12% of
obstetrics-gynecology programs have this sort of instructions, and
even fewer provide training for second-trimester procedures.
- According to a spokesperson for Medical Students for Choice, the
climate of terrorism directed against doctors who perform abortions is
keeping many new physicians away from clinics. Since 1993, there have
been seven murders and 16 attempted homicides directed at abortion
doctors. According to the National Abortion Federation, there have
been an additional 400 stalking incidents involving clinics.
-- Although the 26% figure for abortion-terminated pregnancies seems
high, it is down slightly from the 30% record of just a few years ago.
In addition, the birth rate for unmarried women of child bearing age
is now at its lowest level since 1990.
-- The Guttmacher study confirms what pro-choice groups have been
saying about the so-called "partial birth" abortion -- that it is a
rarely employed procedure. In 1996, 14 facilities performed 650 late
trimester abortions. Anti-choice groups, however, have been claiming
that thousands or even tens of thousands of these "partial birth"
procedures were being carried out each year.
**
RESOURCES FROM AMERICAN ATHEISTS...
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articles from the current or back issues, as well as special web-only
features. Visit us at http://www.americanatheist.org
* If you are a current member of American Atheists, sign up for our
e-mail discussion group, aachat. We have over 120 participants who
discuss topics such as Atheism, religion, First Amendment issues and
lots more! Contact Margie Wait, the Moderator, through
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