--- In [email protected], "Daria Akers" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Ellen, > Why are you surprised? There are many many many things you do not know.
#### Easy now, granddaughter! > There have been many articles about the rise of Neo-Paganism in the US > prison system lately, including in the post. > Do you think that museums about the Underground Railroad or slavery should > just "let it go" too? How about the Holocaust museum? The whole Salem, MA > thing is a very interesting study of mass hysteria and mob behavior. There > are lessons to be learned from it. As George Santayana said "Those who > cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it". However most Wiccans I > know don't consider this a "bonding" place since no one actually was a > witch. There have be other times and places where witches have been killed > for their beliefs. > Daria #### Most Wiccans wouldn't much identify with the current Salem scene either... #### Re Pagan chaplaincy - I'm on an e-list for pagan prison ministry, and it has a membership of 88, mostly Americans.....and I know of quite a few other people who aren't on the list. #### Prisoners tend to get interested in various things, including religion, and in Canada anyone who is incarcerated, and therefore in the care of the government, retains the right to practice any religion s/he wants (including their own notion of something) and, where feasible, the institutional chaplains are obliged to try to find some outside people of the same persuasion to visit them, if a request is made. (In this province, a long frustrating search for a Rasta guy finally resulted in locating someone who occasionally takes a break from his taxi job to go visit in prison. No, they don't get to have their sacrament.) (Well, actually they do, them and the rest of the prison population. But unofficially.) I understand the religious thing is true in the U.S., but since each state has its own scene (our over-two-years inmates are part of a centralized federal system, so things are more consistent), this is not always adhered to. But I have an amusing (appalling?) article somewhere that maybe I'll post in the Files. The main point was illustrated by some skinhead in - no doubt - California who declared himself Jewish so he could have a somewhat better diet (kosher food has to be prepared or sent in separately, so tends to be better than mass-produced "line" food). The rabbi visiting that prison objected. But according to law, the rabbi cannot pronounce on who's Jewish and who isn't (to his indignation) - that is entirely up to the inmate. And so with any notion of religion. Though not all prisons understand or accept this...it'll take some lawsuits and maybe a very bizarre case for the Supremes. (Our Canadian Supremes have ruled in a similar way and this also involved Jews - only real ones this time, and not inmates. A condo association in Montreal objected to the succoth (??something like that) huts the Orthodox people were constructing on their balconies for some holy day or other, and the condo got a rabbi, of the reformish end of the spectrum, to say these huts are not truly essential to Jewish practice and many people don't do this. Our Supreme Court ruled that if the practitioners say it's essential to them, then what they say goes. Religious 'authority' lies with the individual and not with a rabbi or mullah or minister or whatever.) We Pagans think this is very cool, because it reflects the sort of thing we think and do in our own multi-varied practices. But of course it means we're faced with dealing with lotsa nutbars in the prison. (We can pick and choose what nutbars we'll deal with, fortunately.)
