20050531-1056

Lots and lots of non-news in my scan today. I am starting to think that I have once again exhausted my ability to be significantly interested in national or world events. Still, a few things did catch my eye. Why is it that people get this idea that you must prioritize the world's problems and ignore anything that is not at the top of that stack? Just because China and North Korea are worse than we are, is that reason to ignore evidence of persecution of faith and Christianity here? Some attacking Mr. David Limbaugh's book Persecution seem to think so.1 In the afore-referenced interview, Mr. Limbaugh presents an interesting idea that I have no ability to evaluate: that the systematic persecution of the Faith and of the Jewish people in Germany, and in other societies, was presaged by the types of miss-characterization that Christians suffer now. Certainly Germany started slow, but is this a fair charge to make? I do not know.

Still, it is worth noting that we are slowly but surely eroding our understanding of "Freedom of Religion." From the suppression of displays of faith in public, we now move to sheltering our children from religions that a judge deems not "mainstream."2 This is a ruling that I cannot but find sympathy for. The rise of Wiccans and others calling themselves witches is disturbing. It makes me wonder how much of the talk of the "Black Church" in Mr. Neil Stephenson's "Baroque Cycle" is historical, something I was and am not otherwise inclined to give him much credence in. Still, as in the case of the New Mexico church that wanted to use the hallucinogenic tea in their services, I cannot but find this sort of suppression unacceptable. No government official should have the right to define what is and is not a religion, what does and does not deserve First Amendment protection. I am not sure how cults should be treated, such bodies that mimic religion present a thorny question for law. I know, instinctively, however, that this sort of action can only spell ill for the Church.