192 lines
9.5 KiB
Plaintext
192 lines
9.5 KiB
Plaintext
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The Witching Hour
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By Joan Connell
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Mercury News Religion & Ethics Editor
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San Jose Mercury News - Sat. Oct. 20 1990
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As Halloween approaches, fundamentalists march
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to the Bay Area to begin a crusade against
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the devil and thousands of pagans and goddess
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worshippers prepare for the onslaught
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*********************************************
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A peaceful prayer crusade? Or just another witch hunt?
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The term "holy war" will take on a whoe new meaning in San Francisco on
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Halloween, as Pentecostal Christans and goddess-worshipping pagans square off
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to prove who's holier than thou.
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Texas telvangelist Larry Lea is mustering 10,000 Christian soldiers in
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San Francisco's Civic Auditorium Halloween night, to do battle with the
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forces of Satan. And memberso fhte normally low-key pagan community in the
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Bay Area - practitioners of Wicca, nature religions and New Age
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spiritualism - have launched a counter offensive, claiming Lea's spritual
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warfare interferes with their constitutional right to practive their
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religion.
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Lea, a protege of Oral Roberts and former pastor of the Church of the
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Rock in Dallas, has made a name for himself among Pentecostal and chrismatic
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Chrstians for a tendency to preach in Army fatigues and hand out "prayer
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army dog tags" to his followers. He is a proponent of "spiritual warfare" -
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using prawer to exorcise demons.
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Last month with the backing of 500 pastors of Bay Area churches, Lea
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announced a three-day San Francisco crusade to "reverse the curse" of
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Halloween and march through the city to convert those they consider
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possessed by Satan: drug addicts, gay people, the secually promiscuous,
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believers in New Age religionists and Wiccans, those spell-casting,
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goddess-worshipping filks commonly called witches.
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"These are not just kids having fun," Lea said at the time. "There
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is actual worship of the devil."
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Janet Christian, spokeswoman for the Bay Area Pagan Assemblies, an
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organization of Wiccans and nature-worshippers in the South Bay, is outraged.
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"We're goddess worshippers: Witches don't have anything to do with
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Satan. Who do these people think they are?" asks Christian, who's group
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is sponsoring a Witches' Ball at the Palo Alto Hyatt tonight, an open-to-all
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costume party designed to build bridges of understanding between the
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practitioners of Wicca and the community at large.
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"What if we brought some big-name witch to town on Christmas day to
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do a ritual outside their churches? We's never do that to them," Christian
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says. "Why are they doing this to us?"
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Planning for trouble
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Christian's group has taken defensive action in the pending holy war,
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hiring security police to keep out any Bible-wielding Christian soldiers.
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But other pagan groups are on the offensive, planning counterdemonstrations
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outside the Civic Auditorium and threatening guerrilla actions to disrupt
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Lea's crusade.
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"Larry Lea's going to find out that there are more of us than he can
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handle," ways Eric Pryor, high priest of the New Earth Temple, a San
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Francisco group of Wiccans and other pagans. Pryor is marshalling a show
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of spiritual force at 3 p.m. Tuesday in Civic Center Park, calling together
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New Age religionists, Hindus, Buddhists, humanists and other non-mainstream
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faiths to form a prayer circle to counteract the Lea crusade.
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Pryor, who says he has repeatedly challenged Lea to public debate but
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never received an answer, has called off the annual Hallow Mass ritual at
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his temple Halloween night to attend Lea's crusade in disguise, disrupt the
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service and force a confrontation.
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"We're not a bunch of uneducated dingbats running around in robes
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waving wands," Pryor says. "We're intellegent, purposeful people who have
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chosen a particular spiritual path. We have a right in this country to
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practice any religion we choose." No reliable statistics exist on the
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number of practicing pagans in the Bay Area, but estimates range from
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30,000 to 50,000.
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Lea, who arrived in San Francisco Wednesday to prepare for the crusade
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says he was surprised by the intensity of the pagan backlash, which has not
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been evident in similar campains in Anaheim, Miami, Chicago and Philadelphia.
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Entreaties from several religious denominations to avoid confrontation -
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including the Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco - convinced Lea to
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cancel plans for his spiritual warriors to march through the cith on
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Halloween night. Instead, Lea says, they will keep a low profile inside the
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Civic Auditorium.
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The right to disagree
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"I love people. I love all people. I think we have been misinterpreted;
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we don't want to be seen as confrontational," Lea says. "Every person
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has the right to believe what they want to believe. But I have the freedom
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to stand up and say they're wrong. To me, there are only two kinds of people
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in the world: Those who have found Christ and those who haven't found him yet."
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The Rev. Dick Bernall, pastor of Jubilee Christian Center in San Jose
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is disappointed that the prayer warriors will not be a visible presence on
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the streets of San Francisco. Many of Jubilee's 5,000 congregants are expected
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to take part in the Lea crusade. Bernal's not a complete spoilsport about
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Halloween: Jubilee kids might not go trick-or-treating, but they do get to
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dress up as Bible characters for a party at church.
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"Larry and I are beginning to look like a couple of wackos," says Bernal.
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"The misconception is that we're a bunch of narrow-minded goody-two-shoes.
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San Francisco's a city where everybody has parades; I wanted our people
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to be a presence, too. We weren't going to call down fire on anybody; it
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was not going to be a confrontation, just a little show of force.
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"But the war on Satan will go on - inside the auditorium. There won't
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be any pussy-footing around," Bernal promises. "There'll be singing,
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preaching and speaking in tongues. It'll be wall-to-wall spiritual warfare."
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Bernal, a former ironworker and self-described hell-raiser who says
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he was born-again a dozen years ago, has gained some fame himself as a
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televangelist and spiritual warrior.
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After the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, Bernal traveled to
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Beijing and in a much-publicized ceremony, annointed the stones of the
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square with oil to drive the devil out. He also has prayed to cast the
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devil out of several sites in the South Bay, including the San Jose
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Mercury News.
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Bernal says he respects the rights of Wiccans to worship as they
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please.
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"They're sweet, sincere people, who are operating out of ignorance,
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not malice." Bernal says. "I don't condemn these poor people; I want to
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convert them. I was a dope-smoking, LSD taking hippie myself once. Some
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of our greatest pastors today are old, burned-out hippies."
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To Eric Marsh, a 36-year old software engineer from Fremont who is a
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practicing witch, Bernal's attidue demonstrates the stereotypes that are
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inflicted upon Wiccans.
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"Fifty percent of big-city witches are involved in high-tech; 90
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percent are computer literate. That's because people in high technology
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puersuits have innovative and inquiring minds," says Marsh, who
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established a computer bulletin-board network for Wiccans who use the
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technology to keep abreast of a variety of spiritual, philosophical and
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environmental issues.
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What bothers Eric Pryor of San Francisco's New Earth Temple is the
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automatic linkage of Satan and Wicca.
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"Satan is the best friend the church has ever had. Satan's the
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bogyman who has kept them all in business," Pryor says. He adds that the
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members of his temple, who follow a Welsh tradition of Wicca and have been
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very private about their beliefs in the past, are starting to be more
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public.
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"People can come in here anytime and see we don't sacrifice babies,
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we don't worship Satan and we're not lunatics," Pryor says. "And the
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only good thing about this kind of campaign (that Lea is waging) is that
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it makes us open up more and be more accessible."
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Carl Raschke, a sociologist at the University of Denver and a
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specialist on Satanism in America, regards the pending Christian-Pagan
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holy war with a certain amount of amusement.
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"This sounds like the gunfight at the metaphysical OK Corral,"
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Raschke says. "There are Satanists out there: criminal Satanists, who do
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violent things in the name of the devil. There are religious Satanists,
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who dress up in black robes and do strange and essentially harmless
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things. And that's part of the whole, exotic religious flora and fauna
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that is unique to the Bay Area.
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"Doing spiritual battle with Satan is an established tradition going
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back to Jesus himself," Raschke says, adding that most spiritual warfare
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is done quietly, through the power of prayer and laying on of hands.
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"But in the age of TV, there's an impulse to make religion into a
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public spectacle. And the whole thing strikes me as supreme street
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theater. We haven't had a good, crazy religious spectacle since the
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harmonic convergence," Raschke says.
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"And now, on the streets of San Francisco on Halloween night, you'll
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have neo-pagans doing ceremonial magic vs. Pentecostal Christians praying
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up a storm. This is probably better than skinheads bashing Geraldo with
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a chair."
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---
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