“James Arthur Ray walked out of a Camp Verde jail at 11:10 a.m. [2/26], according to Yavapai County Jail Sgt. Dee Huntley. Ray gained his freedom after Yavapai County Superior Court Judge Warren Darrow lowered Ray’s bond Thursday from $5 million to $525,000. Ray has pleaded not guilty to three counts of manslaughter stemming from a sweat lodge ceremony he led near Sedona in October.”

Ray’s bond was lowered after his lawyers argued that he’s broke, and couldn’t afford to pay $5 million dollars. While he’s free until his trial, Ray had to surrender his passport, and is barred from performing any ceremonies that could potentially harm someone. For a pretty thorough round-up of recent Ray-related news, check out Indianz.com.

Summum Heads Back to Court: Almost exactly a year ago, the Supreme Court ruled against the New Age/UFO religion Summum, who wanted the right to place a monument of their Seven Principles in the same park as a Ten Commandments display in Pleasant Grove, UT. But while Summum lost (on a free speech challenge), Supreme Court justices and analysts both opined that the case could very well be re-heard on Establishment Clause grounds, and that’s exactly what Summum is now doing.

“Geoffrey Surtees, a lawyer for Pleasant Grove, argued that the Ten Commandments display in the city’s Pioneer Park conveys a secular historical message, which the U.S. Supreme Court has said is permissible. But Summun’s attorney, Brian Barnard, contended that the monument advances religion and that Pleasant Grove must give other religious messages equal consideration. ”They are a mandate from God, the Judeo-Christian God,” Barnard said of the Ten Commandments.”

A SCOTUS win for Summum here could spark considerable changes concerning religiously-oriented monuments on public lands. If Pleasant Grove wants to avoid another loss, they should take the advice of Justice David Souter and either erect more monuments to give the current one a more secular context, or remove all monuments and make the case moot. If they don’t? Well, get ready to commission all those Pagan monuments you’d like to see.

Conversions for Food? While the recent evangelical Christian attack on Vodou practitioners in Haiti was shocking enough, in its wake Pastor Frank Amedia of Touch Heaven Ministries implied that food aid was ultimately  tied to an expected conversion.

“We would give food to the needy in the short term but if they refused to give up Voodoo, I’m not sure we would continue to support them in the long term because we wouldn’t want to perpetuate that practice. We equate it with witchcraft, which is contrary to the Gospel.”

Contrary to the stance of some extremists, this sort of food-for-converts method is usually frowned on in mainstream evangelical culture. The controversy has prompted evangelical news outlet Christianity Today to do a follow-up, and see if Amedia was quoted out of context. The answer is “sorta-kinda”.

She then expanded her question to ask “Would I continue to help them knowing they were still practicing Voodoo?” I responded that I would show them our love by helping them and that I would hope to become their friend, and then as their friend, that our compassion and love might be the difference to lead them to Christ. She then asked “How long would we continue to supply them?” To that I answered that “I am not sure we could continue to support them in the long term because we would not want to perpetuate that process. We equate [voodoo] with witchcraft, which is contrary to the Gospel.”

So there’s still a cut-off point for charity if you aren’t sporting a Bible, just not an immediate cut-off. The implication that Christian charity is finite for non-Christians has sparked criticism from CT readers, but we’ll have to wait and see if a more organized rebuke of the expectation that your food will buy converts emerges from the evangelical Christian community.

That’s all I have for now, have a great day!

Recently, NPR journalist Margot Adler, long celebrated within the Pagan community for her seminal 1979 book “Drawing Down the Moon”, spent several months devouring 75 vampire-themed novels and noticed that what was collectively striking about them wasn’t their celebration of immortality, but their explorations of morality.

“But what I started noticing as I read all these novels and looked at all the recent television shows featuring vampires is that their near-immortality isn’t the most interesting thing about them. Almost all of these current vampires are struggling to be moral. It’s conventional to talk about vampires as sexual, with their hypnotic powers and their intimate penetrations and their blood-drinking and so forth. But most of these modern vampires are not talking as much about sex as they are about power.”

The fascination with vampires and vampirism, and what that popularity says about our culture, isn’t just isolated to minority faiths. An increasing number of Christian authors and scholars are now exploring the vampire, as detailed by a recent Christianity Today article by Elrena Evans.

“University of Richmond English professor Elisabeth Rose Gruner notes that both Christianity and vampirism equate blood with life. Humans instinctually understand that blood is life-giving. But the blood-drinking aspect of vampirism is a “ghastly parody of Christianity,” Gruner told CT. While the Christian believer attains eternal life by accepting the blood freely shed on his or her behalf, the vampire achieves immortality by sucking the life out of another.”

But while the CT article is interesting, and points to some fascinating Christian perspectives on the vampire, it is sadly marred by the unquestioning inclusion of an “ex-vampire” to warn off those curious teens so in love with sparkly blood-drinkers.

“The fantasy-reality line doesn’t always hold, however, says William Schnoebelen, founder of the Iowa-based apologetics ministry With One Accord. Before coming to Christ, the former Freemason and Wiccan says that he was also a member of a vampire sect: a “full-blown ‘church’ with sacraments and a kind of Mass, a dark reflection of the Catholic liturgy.” Drinking blood was a perverse facsimile of the Lord’s Supper.”

Who is William Schnoebelen? He’s yet another of those Christians who make a living being an “ex”, as in an ex-Wiccan (which automatically makes him an ex-Satanist, and yes he’s yet another admitted but un-convicted baby-sacrificer), an ex-Mason, an ex-Mormon, an ex-Catholic priest, and now, an ex-vampire. He was also, of course, a member of the Illuminati. Duh. Never mind that his claims are misleading at best and clearly fraudulent at worst, never mind that he’s published by the nutty anti-Catholic hate-group Chick Publications, he’s apparently a good source of information for the folks at Christianity Today. I realize that CT, like The Wild Hunt, is a niche publication with an editorial bias towards its own, but I would never try to pass off such a liar and con-man within the Pagan community as a reputable source of information.

Which brings us back to vampires and the morality of power-over. In the vampire subculture there are rules, ethics, and an established equilibrium concerning “feeding” (whether psychic or sanguinary). Relationships are negotiated, and power-over, when given, is only after consent and understanding has been established between parties. There are, naturally, bad actors, but in many ways it is far more moral than the “vampires” who prey on various minority faiths and subcultures, tapping into their vitality in order to generate money and fame (or win souls). The rise of the “moral” vampire, reflects our own negotiations with privilege and power, of being “on top of the food chain”. We continue to be fascinated because we are struggling with curbing our own rapacious desire to dominate and destroy all that has been set before us. To ultimately redeem ourselves (on a societal level) through love, through a connection to something outside our ego-needs.

As famous vampire novelist Anne Rice says in the closing of the Christianity Today article: “They are hunger, injustice, genocide, war. Vampire stories are a relatively safe way to explore human nature.” If we can overcome, or at least negotiate, with our vampiric natures, perhaps we can also find a way towards finding a balance in the world around us.

“The Virginia mother has not told her mother or grandmother that she is a Wiccan. “I have a deep-seated fear that they will say, ‘I can’t be a part of this, you’re raising your kids as evil,’ ” she said. She attends classes about Wicca on Friday nights, and she has yet to caution her older child, a preschooler, not to tell anyone about them.”

But it seems that some are skeptical about how real their fears are, such as Christianity Today blogger Rob Moll.

“Wiccans seem to feel discriminated against, despite the fact that in my local bookstore carries as many shelves of books on the subject as it has shelves for mainstream religions. But, The New York Times reports that Wiccans are afraid of even telling their families about their religious beliefs.”

It seems that Moll hasn’t been paying close attention to the news lately, for he would see that harassment and misconceptions still occur despite the “many shelves of books”. Take for instance the case of Patricia Gardner, an “out” Witch in Cohoes, New York. Gardner recently had her house defaced with anti-Wiccan messages.

“Her openness earned her some recent unwanted attention when someone scrawled a lengthy diatribe on the side of her house that invokes the Lord’s Prayer and calls Gardner an ‘evil witch’ and a ’spook’ while asking God to ‘please move evil away.’ … Gardner said she has lived in her Sargeant Street apartment for more than a year and half with no problems, but that she was targeted at the store she formerly managed. ‘We sold a lot of pagan things, like pagan jewelry,’ she said. ‘Someone came in and saw the jewelry and started calling me a demon-loving, Satan-worshipping baby-eater.’”

Meanwhile in Virginia, a hoax about a “Wiccan festival” including references to an orgy, blood rituals, and animal sacrifices spurred a month-long investigation by a local Sheriff and the FBI of an innocent local couple.

“The ritual was supposedly going to involve animal sacrifices and group sex. With the help of the FBI, Floyd County Sheriff’s Investigator Jeff Dalton has spent the last month researching the two land owners. It turned out they were the victims of this charade.”

How much do you want to bet that the victims of this charade don’t attend the local church? Perhaps their bumper-stickers are a bit too left leaning and “spiritual”? If only these hoaxers and harassers had gone to their local (secular) bookstore and seen the shelves full of Pagan/Wiccan books, this might not have happened. Right?
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