Yesterday, the Federal Bureau of Prisons published a proposed rule change in the Federal Register (full text) that permits prison chapel libraries to exclude books, audiotapes and videos that “could incite, promote or otherwise suggest the commission of violence or other criminal activity.” The proposed rule defines this as including material that advocates violence toward particular religious, racial or ethnic groups as well as material that urges overthrow or destruction of the United States.

Seems rather reasonable until you realize that the new rule doesn’t specify who exactly will be making the judgement calls on which literature crosses the line into “advocating violence” or “urging overthrow”. Wouldn’t preconceived notions come into all this if it were up to individual prison librarians or administrators? After all, some have argued that the Bible is rather antisemitic in places and encourages violence. Maybe you think all the Pagan books would be safe, but what if the local decision-maker reads a lot of WorldNetDaily? Or, what if they read Leland’s “Gospel of the Witches” a bit too literally? What about an evangelical who thinks Mormonism is a dangerous cult? It would be somewhat naive to think that only radically violent or racist literature would be weeded out.

If there is going to be a rule to pull dangerous books, there needs to be transparency about how decisions are made, and who those decision-makers are, otherwise we are in danger of pervasive bias entering into the process. Public comments on this rule change are being accepted until March 17th, 2009. If you want to call for more built-in transparency into this process, you can use this online commenting form to (politely) voice your concerns.

The Pagan law enforcement and emergency personnel organization Officers of Avalon is sending out a call for donations to their Avalon Cares Relief Project in order to assist those affected by the recent California wildfires that have destroyed over 1,400 homes, and evacuated nearly a million people.

“As our members are Pagan professionals in the emergency services, we’ve had a lot of people on the ground in the affected areas from the start. I’m starting to get reports on what has been affected and where help might be needed. I encourage you to do the same. If you know any one who has needs as a result of this disaster, please write to us and let us know … Once again, we’re showing the world what Pagans can do. Yet we must stick with it. We need you all to continue to donate what you can. If you can’t donate money, donate your time to volunteer efforts. Do your own fund raising events to help us in this disaster relief effort. Open your doors to the displaced. Give blood. If you’re a Pagan in the emergency services or related fields, join us at Officers of Avalon and help us help Pagans.”

Officers of Avalon has has 501 (c) status (so your donation is tax-deductible), and 100% of the money collected by the Avalon Cares project is going to the relief effort in California. Donation links can be found, here.

For those of you who have been following the story concerning the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ controversial plan to limit religious books for prison libraries to an approved list (currently on hold due to massive protests), some recent information has come to light thanks to a Freedom of Information request put in by one of my readers. According to the FOI document sent to me, there are no records of outside consultants, or fees paid to outside consultants.

“In reference to your request for the names of consultants, fees paid to those consultants, and the invoices related to those fees, there is no information responsive to this request.”

This seems to back up claims by the American Academy of Religion that no members of its organization were involved in making the lists. It also looks very likely that the BOP was “misstating” when it said they relied on experts to make the lists. Which raises the vision of BOP bureaucrats making the lists by doing Google searches. These facts should make for interesting background when the lists return in 2008.

Mary Lefkowitz, professor emerita at Wellesley College, has an editorial up in the L.A. Times endorsing a return to polytheism, specifically, a return to the Greek pantheon.

“The world, as the Greek philosopher Thales wrote, is full of gods, and all deserve respect and honor. Such a generous understanding of the nature of divinity allowed the ancient Greeks and Romans to accept and respect other people’s gods and to admire (rather than despise) other nations for their own notions of piety … Ancient Greek religion gives an account of the world that in many respects is more plausible than that offered by the monotheistic traditions. Greek theology openly discourages blind confidence based on unrealistic hopes that everything will work out in the end. Such healthy skepticism about human intelligence and achievements has never been needed more than it is today.”

I dare say this is a call for a return to traditional values that most Christian conservatives aren’t really expecting!

For those who loved “Pan’s Labyrinth” by Guillermo Del Toro, but thought it was too “cheery”, the acclaimed director is planning to tackle H.P. Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness”, an essential tale in the ever-popular Cthulhu Mythos.

“…it will NOT be next on his list. It is still possible that a studio has finally agreed to a deal … it looks very good that GDT will soon be in monster heaven soon, thanks to Don Murphy’s Angry Films, and Susan Montford, who will be on board as producers, and an as yet unnamed studio. At one point the film was being looked at by Dreamworks/Paramount and Warner Bros., but looks like Universal may be the frontrunner now.”

The film adaptation was co-written by Guillermo del Toro, and a review of it is posted, here.

Finally, in Witch School news, the small town of Rossville, Illinois (the new home-base of Witch School) held a town meeting for those worried by the recent influx of Pagans. But rather than controversy, Robert Kurka, professor of theology and church in culture at Lincoln Christian College in Lincoln called for tolerance and co-existence.

“About 150 people from Rossville, Hoopeston and other parts of the county attended the event that was open to the public. Kurka talked for more than an hour about the history of Wicca religion and the ideas behind it and compared the beliefs to Christian beliefs, showing how the two differ. Kurka encouraged the mostly Christian audience to treat the Wiccans in a Christian way, by welcoming them to the community as they would anyone else.”

This seems to have somewhat surprised the Witch School members in attendance, who no doubt feared an anti-Pagan fire-breather had been sent to rally the faithful.

“It wasn’t what I thought it was going to be. I thought it would be more ‘We have to get rid of these people’ attitude. I was pleased to know it was more friendly,”

So it look like Rossville is coming to terms with its new Pagan neighbors, though it remains to be seen if Rossville will ever become the “Salem of the Midwest” as some hope.

That is all I have for now, have a good day!

“The bureau will begin immediately to return to chapel libraries materials that were removed in June 2007, with the exception of any publications that have been found to be inappropriate, such as material that could be radicalizing or incite violence. The review of all materials in chapel libraries will be completed by the end of January 2008.”

However, the secretly created lists won’t be going away, they have simply decided to leave the libraries intact until their lists are “complete”. While this is a step in the right direction, the essential problem with the lists is still there.

“This is a positive step: it means they are not throwing the baby out with the bath water,” Mr. Moore [director of prison policy oversight at Aleph] said of keeping books on the shelves for now. “But our position is there should not be a list of what should be on the shelves, but what shouldn’t be.”

There is also still no word on who was consulted to make these lists, a fact that should disturb anyone worried about bias and conflicts of interest in the list-making. Elysia Gallo, an acquisitions editor for Llewellyn Worldwide, claims that their company wasn’t consulted in the making of the list, and that they have no idea who was consulted.

“I think I can safely say that publishers were not consulted. Everyone here at Llewellyn was surprised and troubled when we first heard the news of this secret list. I think we can *all* agree that we would much rather have Pagans and seekers in prison be able to read anything and everything that is donated to chaplain libraries than simply what is on a list like this. It is a real shame for all religions involved. Chaplains were already selectively screening out books that include nudity, incite violence, etc. etc. from what I’ve heard anyway. Why try to be all pre-emptive by making a pre-approved list, rather than letting the chaplains handle these issues on a case-by-case basis as they always have? I have talked with others about this and so far no one knows who these mystery list-makers could be.”

So while it is good that the chapel libraries are being restored, the core issues haven’t changed, and we may see a similar purge take place again at the end of January. The federal Bureau of Prisons needs to be transparent as to who their religious “experts” are, and how these lists are being made. Better yet, they need to abandon this unconstitutional policy that serves only their convenience, not the safety of Americans or prisoners.
]]> http://wildhunt.org/blog/2007/09/prisons-will-restore-purged-pagan-books.html/feed 0 http://wildhunt.org/blog/2007/09/update-secret-list-of-approved-books.html http://wildhunt.org/blog/2007/09/update-secret-list-of-approved-books.html#comments Fri, 21 Sep 2007 12:38:00 +0000 Jason http://wildhunt.org/blog/2007/09/update-the-secret-list-of-approved-books.html Today’s New York Times has published the leaked lists of approved books for prison chapel libraries. The lists, a part of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ controversial “Standardized Chapel Library Project”, limits approved books in hopes of eliminating works that “discriminate, disparage, advocate violence or radicalize.”

“The federal Bureau of Prisons is under pressure from members of Congress and religious groups to reverse its decision to purge the shelves of prison chapel libraries of all religious books and materials that are not on the bureau’s lists of approved resources. Outrage over the bureau’s decision has come from both conservatives and liberals, who say it is inappropriate to limit inmates to a religious reading list determined by the government.”

You can get a PDF of the list for Pagan books, here. Also of interest might be the Yoruba and Native American lists. From a quick read-through it seems like a list that will make Llewellyn happy, a large chunk of the selections are published by them (including several selections by Silver RavenWolf, D.J. Conway, and Ted Andrews among others). Asatru and Heathenry seems to be well-represented with six books by Steve McNallen of the Asatru Folk Assembly, along with works by Galina Krasskova, Mark Puryear, and Swain Wodening.

Some of the selections weren’t surprising, like Margot Adler’s “Drawing Down the Moon” and Starhawk’s “The Spiral Dance”, but others, like Edgar Cayce’s “Gems and Stones”, seemed a bit out of place. There is only one book by Aleister Crowley allowed, “The Book of Thoth”, and a few titles that seem aimed at Celtic Reconstructionists (“The Apple Branch”, “The Oxford Dictionary of Celtic Mythology”). But even with 131 book choices, there are several glaring omissions, including an almost complete lack of academic-oriented Pagan books, not a single book on Thelema, and no books by important founding figures like Gerald Gardner or Doreen Valiente.

But no matter how good (or bad) the list as a whole may be (and we still have no idea who composed the list), it still represents a dangerous encroachment on religious liberties, and has been gaining criticism from both sides of the political spectrum.

“The Republican Study Committee, a caucus of some of the most conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives, sent a letter on Wednesday to the bureau’s director, Harley G. Lappin, saying, ‘We must ensure that in America the federal government is not the undue arbiter of what may or may not be read by our citizens’ … Sojourners, a liberal evangelical group based in Washington, sent an alert to its members, who within 48 hours sent the bureau more than 15,000 e-mail messages urging it to scrap the policy. The issue is also a hot topic on conservative Christian talk radio shows.”

But despite the flood of criticisms, the BOP is standing firm and refusing to reconsider its policies. So it looks like changes to this newly restrictive measure will either have to come in the form of legislation from congress, or the class-action lawsuit currently in motion. In the meantime, it looks like the prison system’s “secret chiefs” get to decide which books Pagan prisoners can read.
]]> http://wildhunt.org/blog/2007/09/update-secret-list-of-approved-books.html/feed 1 http://wildhunt.org/blog/2007/09/secret-list-of-approved-books.html http://wildhunt.org/blog/2007/09/secret-list-of-approved-books.html#comments Mon, 10 Sep 2007 13:13:00 +0000 Jason http://wildhunt.org/blog/2007/09/the-secret-list-of-approved-books.html The New York Times weighs in on the growing controversy concerning a new policy set by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which tightly restricts approved religious titles to prison libraries.

“Behind the walls of federal prisons nationwide, chaplains have been quietly carrying out a systematic purge of religious books and materials that were once available to prisoners in chapel libraries. The chaplains were directed by the Bureau of Prisons to clear the shelves of any books, tapes, CDs and videos that are not on a list of approved resources. In some prisons, the chaplains have recently dismantled libraries that had thousands of texts collected over decades, bought by the prisons, or donated by churches and religious groups.”

This secret list (the BOP won’t release it to the public) claims that 20 religious categories (”from Bahaism to Yoruba”) have a list of “up to” (but in some cases, most likely less than) 150 approved titles. These titles have been selected by “chaplains and scholars” (but no list of these individuals has been released, either), in order to avoid works that “discriminate, disparage, advocate violence or radicalize.” Considering the huge gray areas in terms like “radicalize” or “disparage” it is unsurprising that the move has already sparked a class-action lawsuit and serious criticism.

“Government does have a legitimate interest to screen out things that tend to incite violence in prisons,” Mr. [Douglas] Laycock [professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School] said. “But once they say, ‘We’re going to pick 150 good books for your religion, and that’s all you get,’ the criteria has become more than just inciting violence. They’re picking out what is accessible religious teaching for prisoners, and the government can’t do that without a compelling justification. Here the justification is, the government is too busy to look at all the books, so they’re going to make their own preferred list to save a little time, a little money.”

In addition, according to religious scholars who have seen the list, the title selection is “inhibiting”, and favors “a bias toward evangelical popularism and Calvinism”. So naturally, one has to wonder what the book selections are for modern Pagan and Heathen religions. Which books were approved for Wicca? For Asatru? Which “experts” picked the books for these categories, and how many titles total are allowed in prison libraries? Have innocent non-extremist books been removed because they didn’t make the list?

“The bureau has not provided additional money to prisons to buy the books on the lists, so in some prisons, after the shelves were cleared of books not on the lists, few remained.”

No matter what your opinion concerning the rights of prisoners, this move seems completely misguided and almost designed to cause controversy and confusion amongst the religious organizations that provide chaplaincy services to inmates. I’ll be watching this story as it develops, and if I can I’ll try to find out the “approved” Pagan books. If you are a Pagan/Heathen working in the prison system, and have any information on removed books, please drop me a note by leaving a comment on this post, or sending me an e-mail.
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