"Should Christians in the U.S. support African preachers?"

[I really don't want to editorialize too much about this. The backstory to the issues raised in this article is that Christianity owes its dominant position in Sub-Saharan Africa to European colonialism, and also to the economic and political domination of Africa by western, Christian nations, including, especially, the United States, throughout the post-colonial period. Also, and if nothing else, this article demonstrates just how powerful money is in the world of religion.]

Should Christians in the U.S. support African preachers?
ERIK TRYGGESTAD | The Christian Chronicle (link)

TUBUNGU, SWAZILAND - Christians in the U.S. who provide salaries for African preachers believe they are doing the right thing.

“But unknown to them, they’re slowly assassinating congregations,” Stanley Shereni says.

Shereni, a native of Zimbabwe, is in his third year at African Christian College in this tiny African kingdom. After a day of classes, he and two other students sit under a thatched-roof pavilion and share big dreams.

Shereni and Ruregerero Nyahore, another Zimbawean, want to launch a publication for churches in their home country, to inspire them to keep growing.

Zimbabweans “don’t just want entertainment,” Nyahore says. “They want something that can comfort them, counsel them and give them direction. I think that is … why we have come to further our education.”

But preachers here aren’t guaranteed a living. Moses K. Banda, a 22-year-old student from Malawi, says that almost no congregations in his homeland support full-time ministers. After graduation, preaching alone won’t pay his bills.

The same is true in Zimbabwe, a once-prosperous nation crippled by hyperinflation. People there “now need the Gospel more than ever,” Shereni says.

The three students could appeal to Christians in the U.S. for support. Many of their predecessors have. But, growing up in Churches of Christ, the students have seen foreign aid bless — and curse — the family of God in southern Africa.

When a preacher receives his salary from the U.S., he is tempted to answer only to the source of his support — not the African congregation he serves, Shereni says.

Without proper oversight, it also is easy for evangelists to falsify reports to their supporters.

“We are not saying, ‘Stop supporting us,’” he adds. Instead, he suggests that U.S. and African churches form project-driven partnerships that involve entire congregations.

“Members of the church are the stakeholders,” Nyahore says. “They have fascinating ideas that can help improve the church. But, because they don’t have access to communication with some people who can help, they go nowhere.”

WHEN THE BOSS IS OVERSEAS

In the past century, mission efforts and Bible correspondence programs have yielded thousands of baptisms in sub-Saharan Africa. Today, the continent is home to more Churches of Christ than the U.S.

In such a Christian-rich environment, hiring local evangelists makes more financial sense to many U.S. churches than sending missionaries — especially in the midst of an economic downturn. Supporting African ministers also helps alleviate poverty.

“If you can’t eat, you can’t tell the people that God is able (while) you are suffering,” said Julius Mwambu, an evangelist in Mombasa, Kenya. Mwambu receives support from the U.S., but it is funneled through a ministry overseen by Kenyans.

Across the continent, foreign aid is a fact of life, Mwambu said.

“The Muslims from the Middle East are pumping lots of money into Africa for their religion to spread,” he added.

Funds from the U.S. can help African churches reach the lost, said Charles Ngoje, missions director for Winyo Christian Academy in Kenya. But money also can create disunity and lead to abuse, he said.

“It is common sense that someone will do a better job if his boss were around,” Ngoje said. “A situation in which one’s boss is thousands of miles away — in distance, world view, culture — is not an effective arrangement.”

But Ngoje noted that, in some cases, African church leaders who answer only to their foreign benefactors are mimicking the behavior of their American predecessors.

Ngoje remembers a meeting when African church leaders asked a foreign missionary how he was spending his time.

The missionary replied that he was answerable only to the people who sent him, Ngoje said.

A GAP BETWEEN PULPIT AND PEW

In Kenya, foreign money is one factor that has contributed to “a big discrepancy between the African clergy and the flock,” said Ronald Wasilwa.
Wasilwa works for a non-governmental organization and preaches in Kitale, Kenya.

He cited a survey conducted by a council of churches in his homeland of various Christian denominations. The study found that many evangelists enjoy a standard of living much higher than the churches they serve. As a result, religious leaders often have difficulty motivating their congregations to perform good works, Wasilwa said.

“In Africa, the pew and the pulpit live in two different worlds — and we are all to blame,” Wasilwa said.

DOES FOREIGN AID STIFLE GIVING?

Dependency on U.S. dollars also can discourage African churches from contributing financially to benevolence, said Leonard Chumo Falex, a minister in Nairobi, Kenya.

When U.S. churches support works without contributions from African churches, “the African people are continually denied the opportunity to be blessed as givers,” Falex said.

African culture encourages people to share, even if they live in poverty, and the U.S. church often fails to “harness the beauty of a giving African spirit,” Falex said.

Because of dependence on American money, some rural African churches don’t practice sacrificial giving, said Fielden Allison, a longtime missionary in Kenya and instructor at African Christian College.

Allison informally surveyed Churches of Christ with about 40 members each and found that most collected the equivalent of one U.S. dollar each Sunday.

“That is an average of about 2.5 cents per person,” Allison said. “The same people drink several cups of tea per week (that) cost about 10 cents per cup.” Many pay tuition for their children and own cell phones.

“Will the African church be judged by God for their failure to give to support their own works?” he said. “Will Western churches be judged for enabling African churches to depend on outside help instead of shouldering their own responsibility? Tough questions need tough answers.”

NEW MODELS, BUT RESPECT FOR OLD

The three students — Banda, Shereni and Nyahore — say they dream of a day when American and African churches can function as equal partners, identifying short-term projects and pooling funds to make them happen.

Sam Shewmaker, a longtime missionary in Africa, agrees that there is a need for “inter-cultural, church-to-church partnerships.”

“This will not be easy,” said Shewmaker, who lives in Kigali, Rwanda, and serves as African church-planting facilitator for Missions Resource Network. “It will take a humility and determination to build communication, understanding and trust … . But the payoff can be greater unity in the body of Christ and much more effectiveness in achieving God’s global mission.”

Though American money has created problems in African churches, South African evangelist Chris Burke warned against condemning the model of U.S. churches supporting missionaries in Africa.

Though not perfect, “it’s the model that effectively established the church in Africa,” Burke said.

“God used missionaries to accomplish great things, in spite of their normal, human shortcomings,” he said.

Ngoje agreed.

“We must not forget that there are trustworthy individuals who have been tried and tested and have (done) a great job with direct support from the U.S.,” he said. “The growth of the Kingdom is paramount and must not be jeopardized by paradigm shifts.

“Let the Holy Spirit lead willing supporters as to how best their donations can serve to bring a greater good to the missional need in Africa.”

Where's Muhammad??

The Washington Post and many other newspapers have refused to run a cartoon by Wiley Miller, the syndicated artist who produces the "Non Sequitur" cartoon strip.

The caption of the cartoon says "Where's Muhammad?" But Muhammad is not depicted anywhere in the cartoon.

Get it?

I hope that Muslims around the world will protest against this. By their actions, the newspapers that refused to run the cartoon are implicitly portraying Islam as a religion of bloodthirsty psychopathic killers who can't take a joke.

“A religious axis of evil" (More on Femke Halsema on Islam)

Femke Halsema, the leader of the Dutch GreenLeft Party, has stirred up controversy with a speech she delivered this weekend in Utrecht. In that speech she strongly rejected the most dearly held beliefs of Progressive Islamic Apologetics, including:

(1) That one must be either a leftist multiculturalist true believer who is uncritical of Islam or a right-wing racist Islamophobe.
(2) That leftists must never voice any concern over sexism or homophobia among Muslims, and that anyone who does voice such concerns is guilty of racist hate-speechifying.
(3) That "extremist" views are held by only a tiny, isolated minority of Muslims.
(4) That any restrictions on the wearing of the burqa, let alone on headscarves, is an unacceptable violation of religious freedom.
(5) That concerns about Sharia law are just so much Islamophobic fearmongering by right-wingers.

It turns out that this is not the first time that Halsema has waded into these troubled waters, although it is very possible that she has never gone quite so far in her explicit criticisms of her fellow leftists in general and of the excesses of multiculturalism in particular.

Just a little over a year ago, in September of 2009, Halsema stirred up what she herself called an "internetstormpje" (a wonderful Dutch term that literally means "little Internet storm") over remarks she made in an interview with Kustaw Bessant for DePers.nl (here is the interview in the original Dutch, and here it is in googleized English).

In that interview she had been asked about her views on Islam, to which she responded that "I am one of the few who accuse Saudi Arabia, along with [Geert] Wilders, about the violation of womens' rights. I will always vehemently oppose any alleged introduction of Sharia." ("Ik ben een van de weinigen die Saoedi-Arabië aanklaagt, samen met Wilders, voor de schending van vrouwenrechten. Ik zal altijd heftig ageren tegen elke vermeende invoering van de sharia.")

To emphasize her point, Halsema went on to proudly recount what she called her "most famous attack" against Islam, during a 2006 speech in which she had stated that "fundamentalist Muslims, fundamentalist American Christians and the Roman Catholic Church ... [are] a religious axis of evil". Halsema also stated in the interview that this particular speech had caused her "many problems".

After the September, 2009 interview, Halsema wrote a blog post on "Freedom of Belief and the Headscarf" (that link is to the English translation via google translator, here is the same post in the original Dutch: Vrijheid van geloof en van hoofddoek). In her blog, Halsema stated that the comments she had made in the DePers.nl interview, on Islam and freedom of religion, had been distorted by the media and by commentators and bloggers on the Internet. She says, quite reasonably, that this should come as no surprise. She was much more concerned, however, with what she described as "some violent, and sometimes downright evil comments from progressive circles," attacking her for defending women's rights and gay rights and for criticizing Islam as oppressive.

In that blog post (already linked to) Halsema focused specifically on two themes: (1) criticism of Islam in general, and (2) the headscarf issue in particular.

As far as criticism of Islam goes, she states very clearly that freedom of religion necessarily includes the freedom to criticize religious beliefs. She also insists that freedom to criticize religion must be upheld "Especially in a movement like the Greens, where there has traditionally been a lot of criticism directed at Christianity, and where religious freedom and religious criticism have always been seen as two sides of the same coin (although a few seem to forget that now)."

Halsema also says that the views she expressed in the DePers.nl interview were perfectly in line with "the right of people to hold orthodox Islamic beliefs, and the right of people to criticize those beliefs." Halsema goes on to say that if she were to criticize the SGP (a conservative Protestant Dutch party) for their regressive Christian attitudes toward women and gays, she would be cheered by her fellow leftists, but when she makes exactly the same criticism of sexism and homophobia among Muslims, this is seen as "too close to home" (literally "is het huis te klein", "the house is too small"). Here she is clearly taking a swipe at the way in which European leftist parties pander to the Muslim vote.

On the specific issue of the headscarf, Halsema had already (in the DePers.nl interview) outraged hypersensitive multiculturalist whiners by saying, "I prefer to see every woman in the Netherlands without a headscarf. And totally free." And she also stated, "playfully", as she herself called it, "I think it's a pity that women hide their beautiful hair."

In her subsequent blog post, Halsema wrote that while she supports the right of a woman to wear a headscarf if she freely chooses to do so, there can be no doubt that many Muslim women in the Netherlands are coerced into wearing the headscarf. She also pointedly quoted a Muslim cleric's "veiled" threat against women who dare to exercise their freedom: "Which women are more often the target of rape, those who are veiled, or those who are not?"

Related posts from this blog:

• Ayaan Hirsi Ali: "And if they don't meet these demands then you can send them back."
• "most Americans do not buy the 19 fanatics story"
• "Islamism" widespread, deeply rooted among Muslims in Europe, according to Pew study
• The right to oppose Islam
• A Plague On Both Their Houses: Notes Toward a Renewal of Liberal Anticlericalism
• A Moratorium (my proposed answer to the Ground Zero Mosque)
• Brain Dead American Left Can't Get Enough of Arundhati Roy
• Why Does the American Left Hate India and Hinduism??
• The Case of Geert Wilders: Islam, Free Speech, Tolerance, and Politics

Dutch Green Leader Calls for Progressive Critique of Islam (FINALLY!!!)

On Saturday, Femke Halsema, head of GroenLinks (Dutch Greens), gave a speech in Utrecht on the subject of freedom of religion. The speech appears to have been something quite radical: a major European leftist political leader actually calling for criticism of Islam over the issues of women's rights and gay rights.

Halsema diverged abruptly from the "politically correct" orthodoxy of 21st century Progressive Islamic Apologetics on four major points:

(1) She dared to suggest that women and gays are subject to systematic persecution and oppression in Islam in general and in predominantly Muslim communities in the West in particular.

(2) She dared to suggest that "multiculturalism" has gone too far, and is now becoming an excuse for overlooking oppression based on gender and sexual orientation among Muslims.

(3) She dared to suggest that "Salafist" and "orthodox" ideas have strong support among Muslims in the West. That is to say that, "extremist"/"Islamist" ideology is not just supported by a tiny, isolated, minority.

(4) She dared to suggest that even such things as laws banning the wearing of headscarves, at least in some situations, are necessary and justifiable in order to combat the regressive influence of Islam, and to protect basic freedoms and rights for all citizens.

Hopefully more information will be available soon -- like a full transcript of her speech translated into English! In the meantime, here are two links:
http://www.allah.eu/about-islam/netherlands-progressives-should-talk-about-women-gay-rights-in-islam.html
http://www.nisnews.nl/public/121010_1.htm

on retreat

I don't actually leave until tomorrow morning. If you leave a comment before then I may or may not be able to get to it. But after that I will be off the grid until next Wednesday. (All comments on this blog are moderated.)

From: Dinosaur Comics at quantz.com. Ryan North is the creative genius behind Dinosaur Comics.



White crane photo by Daniel Gill.

"Nothing in common ... except the name"? (Contra Hutton, Part Two)

"Those engaging in Pagan Studies, provided that they speak and write in sufficiently public a manner, are inevitably going to mould the traditions that they are studying."
Ronald Hutton

I have the impression that very few Pagans have actually read Ronald Hutton's books -- or at least that vanishingly few have read them carefully, much less critically. After all, the man is really only known for one thing: he is the guy who supposedly succeeded in debunking once and for all the silly idea that modern Paganism is the Old Religion.

The problem, and my reason for speculating that people have not actually read Hutton's books, is this: not only has Hutton never proven his claim that "the paganism of today has virtually nothing in common with that of the past except the name," he himself has consistently admitted that this contention not only remains unproven but is, in fact, false.

Isn't it odd that Hutton has managed to achieve notoriety for championing a position he himself explicitly rejects in his own writings? Apparently, in the minds of his confused and uncritical fanbase, Hutton's vague, densely equivocal, mis-sourced, and self-contradictory prose is transformed, magically, into well-researched, well-reasoned, clearly stated, declarative findings of historical fact.

What?, you say, Ronald Hutton has all along admitted that modern Paganism has "a distinguished and very long pedigree"? And now even admits that in Triumph of the Moon he "ignored the existence of certain types of ancient religion, which far more closely resembled [modern] Paganism, had certainly influenced it, and had certain linear connections with it"!

The sad truth is, Hutton's admission of a "distinguished and very long pedigree" for modern Paganism, and Wicca in particular, was right there in black and white two decades ago in his Pagan Religions of the British Isles [p.328]. At that time, however, Hutton clung to the sophistry of a chinese wall separating religion from magic, so that the "pedigree" in question only applied to modern Paganism "as a form of ritual magic," and not as a religion.

Hardly anyone noticed Hutton's admission and the accompanying disclaimer, which were drowned out by the gleeful triumphalism with which the proclamation of the downfall of The Old Religion was greeted.

A certain kind of Pagan, you see, has always been embarrassed by the claim that ours is The Old Religion. These tend to be the same Pagans who insist that we must "get over" not only the Burning Times, but the entire history of relentless Christian violence against our religious traditions. Why, those weren't our co-religionists at all! Those medieval witches and heretics have nothing to do with modern Pagans! It's all been a big mistake, nothing more than a silly "category error" due to improper usage of the very word "Paganism" itself! Nothing to see here, folks, move along.

There were, of course, many voices raised in the Pagan community against what Hutton was saying, although to be precise, these voices were raised against what Hutton was believed to be saying, and what he wanted people to believe he was saying. For Hutton has all along handled the "nothing in common except the name" meme the way Dick Cheney treats the "Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11" meme.

(That is to say, parenthetically, that one can produce video footage of Cheney claiming a clear and explicit connection between Saddam Hussein and the terrorist attacks of 9/11. One can also produce footage of Cheney denying that he has ever said any such thing. Mostly Cheney dances around the issue and simply resorts to saying "Saddam Hussein" and "9/11" in the same sentence as often as possible. Just so with Ronald Hutton and his Old Religion debunkery. Sometimes Hutton asserts confidently that modern Paganism is nothing more than an invented religion, while at other times he says that modern Paganism has a "distinguished and very long pedigree". But mostly Hutton just waves his hands and makes assertions about supposed "differences" between a distorted version of modern Paganism and an even more distorted version of ancient Paganism.)

Probably the two most well-known Pagans who have taken up the challenge are Max Dashu and Donald Frew, both of whom are quite well known and respected in Pagandom. Frew, an elder in the Covenant of the Goddess, is one of the most consistent and prominent Pagan faces in the world of interfaith dialogue (among other activities, Frew has been a Pagan representative to meetings of the World Parliament of Religions). Max Dashu founded the online Suppressed Histories Archive, and was recently awarded an honorary Doctorate degree from Ocean Seminary College "in honor of her significant and founding contributions to the fields of thealogy and Goddess iconography, as well as to women's history."

For easy reference, here are some key publications involved, in the order in which they appeared. First come the debunkifying works of both Ronald Hutton and Jacqueleine Simpson (a folklorist who has tried to put the kibosh on Margaret Murray's "witch cult" thesis), and then comes Frew's counter-deconstruction and Dashu's review of Triumph, followed by a rejoinder each from Hutton and Simpson. Lastly I list the book in which Hutton presents his most complete and explicit argument on where he stands concerning the relationship between modern and ancient Paganism, Witches Druids and King Arthur:

• Hutton, R., 1991, The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles. Oxford: Blackwell.
• Simpson, J., 1994, "Margaret Murray: Who Believed Her, and Why?" Folklore 105 (1994):89-96.
• Hutton, R., 1996, "The Roots of Modern Paganism." In Paganism Today, ed. Graham Harvey and Charlotte Hardman. 3-15. London: Thorsons.
• Simpson, J., 1996, "Witches and Witchbusters." Folklore 107 (1996):5-18.
• Frew, D. H., 1998, "Methodological Flaws in Recent Studies of Historical and Modern Witchcraft." Ethnologies 1 (1998):33-65.
• Dashu, Max, 1998, "A review of Ronald Hutton's Pagan Religions of the British Isles", suppressedhistories.net.
• Hutton, R., 1999, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Hutton, R., 2000, "Paganism and Polemic: The Debate over the Origins of Modern Pagan Witchcraft", Folklore, Vol. 111, No. 1 (Apr., 2000), pp. 103-117.
• Simpson, Jacqueline. 2000. “Scholarship and Margaret Murray: A Response to Donald Frew.” Ethnologies, 22 (1): 281-288.
• Hutton, R., 2003, Witches, Druids, and King Arthur, London, Hambledon and London.

Future installments in the Contra Hutton series will mostly focus in greater detail on the arguments that Hutton presents in Chapters Four & Five of Witches, Druids and King Arthur. A lot of this will be new, but I will also be expanding on themes already covered in the first post and posts linked to therein.

"The world was made up of jewels .... "

psilocybin molecule. ooooh, pretty.

Sometime during the Summer of 2001, I was in one of the local Borders stores (the one at White Flint Mall). I pulled a book on ayahuasca (a hallucinogen used as a religious sacrament by indigenous peoples throughout much of Latin America) off the shelf, and when I opened it up a piece of paper fluttered down to the ground. I picked the paper up, and I was quite surprised by what I read on it. It was an advertisement seeking volunteers for a study at Johns Hopkins University.

I felt like I had stepped into some kind of Woody Allen movie, or something. You see, this was a study of the effects of psilocybin, known to the Nahua (Aztec) people as teonanacatl: the flesh of the Gods. And they were looking for volunteers.

Naturally, I called the number on the flyer. I spoke to the Project Coordinator (I think that was her title) -- who had a very difficult job, which she did extremely well. I would hate to have the job of screening people who are volunteering for such a study! I imagine many calls must go something like: "Yeah, like, uh, you know, I'm callin' about the, uh, you know, 'shroom study? And, uh, I'd like to get in on that, you know?"

I can't remember exactly, or even approximately, what I said or what she said. Except that the result of the conversation was that we scheduled a time for a formal phone interview to determine if I was suitable for the study. Which it turned out I wasn't.

There were two primary criteria for the study. First of all they were looking for people who had a regular spiritual practice such as meditation. No problems there, since I'd been doing Zen meditation daily since the late 80's. Second, they were looking for people who had no previous experience with hallucinogenic drugs. Oooops.

Although I was very disappointed that I wouldn't be sampling any of their research-grade psyilocybin, I was nevertheless still very excited just to know that this was happening. Not only was it a hopeful sign that serious scientific study of hallucinogens was alive and well, but this study was specifically aimed at the relationship between spiritual practice and the use of hallucinogens, a cause very close to my heart.

I was especially pleased that even though I could not personally participate, I was encouraged to refer other people to the study, which I did (and at least few of these did end up being subjects).

Those events back in 2001 all came back to mind earlier this year, when a spate of news items appeared concerning a more recent study, in which psilocybin was administered to people with advanced and potentially life threatening cancer. The researchers wanted to test whether or not a one-time experience with psilocybin can bring about "dramatic shifts in consciousness and awareness that will lead to ... improvement in anxiety, depression, and pain associated with advanced cancer." (source)

And then I was reminded yet again today, when I learned about the fundraising effort to support the release of the new movie DMT: The Spirit Molecule on DVD. If you haven't already, please seriously consider making a donation to help out that worthy cause!

Here is an excerpt from one of those articles that appeared last April:

Psychedelic trips aid anxiety treatments in study
by MALCOLM RITTER, AP Science Writer – Fri Apr 23, 9:40 am ET

NEW YORK – The big white pill was brought to her in an earthenware chalice. She'd already held hands with her two therapists and expressed her wishes for what it would help her do.

She swallowed it, lay on the couch with her eyes covered, and waited. And then it came.

"The world was made up of jewels and I was in a dome," she recalled. Surrounded by brilliant, kaleidoscopic colors, she saw the dome open up to admit "this most incredible luminescence that made everything even more beautiful."

Tears trickled down her face as she saw "how beautiful the world could actually be."

That's how Nicky Edlich, 67, began her first-ever trip on a psychedelic drug last year.

She says it has greatly helped her psychotherapeutic treatment for anxiety from her advanced ovarian cancer.

And for researchers, it was another small step toward showing that hallucinogenic drugs, famous but condemned in the 1960s, can one day help doctors treat conditions like cancer anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The New York University study Edlich participated in is among a handful now going on in the United States and elsewhere with drugs like LSD, MDMA (Ecstasy) and psilocybin, the main ingredient of "magic mushrooms." The work follows lines of research choked off four decades ago by the war on drugs. The research is still preliminary. But at least it's there.

"There is now more psychedelic research taking place in the world than at any time in the last 40 years," said Rick Doblin, executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, which funds some of the work. "We're at the end of the beginning of the renaissance."

He said that more than 1,200 people attended a conference in California last weekend on psychedelic science.
But doing the research is not easy, Doblin and others say, with government funders still leery and drug companies not interested in the compounds they can't patent. That pretty much leaves private donors.

"There's still a lot of resistance to it," said David Nichols, a Purdue University professor of medicinal chemistry and president of the Heffter Institute, which is supporting the NYU study. "The whole hippie thing in the 60s" and media coverage at the time "has kind of left a bad taste in the mouth of the public at large.

"When you tell people you're treating people with psychedelics, the first thing that comes to mind is Day-Glo art and tie-dyed shirts."

Nothing like that was in evidence the other day when Edlich revisited the room at NYU where she'd taken psilocybin. Landscape photos and abstract art hung on the walls, flowers and a bowl of fruit adorned a table near the window. At the foot of the couch lay an Oriental rug.

"The whole idea was to create a living room-like setting" that would be relaxing, said study leader Dr. Stephen Ross.

Edlich, whose cancer forced her to retire from teaching French at a private school, had plenty of reason to seek help through the NYU project. Several recurrences of her ovarian cancer had provoked fears about suffering and dying and how her death would affect her family. She felt "profound sadness that my life was going to be cut short." And she faced existential questions: Why live? What does it all mean? How can I go on?

"These things were in my head and I wanted them to take a back seat to living in the moment," she said. So when she heard NYU researchers speak about the project at her cancer support group, she was interested.

Psilocybin has been shown to invoke powerful spiritual experiences during the four to six hours it affects the brain. A study published in 2008, in fact, found that even 14 months after healthy volunteers had taken a single dose, most said they were still feeling and behaving better because of the experience. They also said the drug had produced one of the five most spiritually significant experiences they'd ever had.

Here is a link to an article about those results that came out in 2008, referred to in the last paragraph excerpted above: Sacred Intentions: Inside The Johns Hopkins Psilocybin Studies. And here is a link to a 2006 article on the Johns Hopkins study: Mushroom drug produces mystical experience (duh).

DMT on DVD, or: Spirit Molecule, The Movie

LBJ took the IRT down to 4th Street USA.

When he got there, what did he see?

The youth of America on LSD.

Rick Strassman is a pretty damned amazing guy. If you are not already familiar with his master work, DMT: The Spirit Molecule, then, well, please, familiarize yourself with it! And now you don't even have to read the book, you can watch the movie!



The basic story is this: Rick Strassman is a neuroscientist who has done pioneering research on DMT, one of the main chemical compounds found in Ayahuasca, a mixture of naturally occurring hallucinogenic substances utilized by traditional Shamans throughout the Amazon rainforest. Strassman wrote about the initial phase of his research in his book DMT: The Spirit Molecule. Part of what made Strassman's work so revolutionary was that it was the first time since the 1960's that the US federal government had allowed human subjects to participate in research using "scheduled" hallucinogens. This has resulted in a new Renaissance of serious scientific research on the human mind using psychedelics as a unique and irreplaceable tool.


But don't just sit back and wait for the movie to come out on DVD. It's time to join the psychedelic revolution! (Or, as the case may be, to re-enlist!) You can support the movie by making donations in two different ways:

• via kickstarter (which is especially easy if you are on Facebook and have an Amazon account)
• via paypal

The movie itself features such psychedelic luminaries as: Ralph Abraham, Marlene Dobkin de Rios, Alex Grey, Huston Smith, and Martina Hoffmann.

Many thanks to the folks at The Daily Grail, which is where I heard about this!

If you found this post of interest, you might also want to check out LSD, Creativity and Spirituality.

[The image to the right is a poster for a 2008 exhibit by Martina Hoffmann (one of the artists featured in the film) at the Microcosm Gallery, while the image below is an art blanket, titled "Cusp", also by Martina Hoffmann -- it is available for purchase at artblanketsonline.com.]

Wilders Trial Set To Resume With Same Judges

A hastily convened panel of Dutch judges has ruled against Geert Wilders' petition to have Jan Moors removed as the presiding judge in his ongoing trial for the heinous crime of upsetting Muslims (which, in the Netherlands is punishable by up to one year in prison and a hefty fine).

Justice Frans Bauduin had been brought in to rule on the motion to have Moors disqualified from the case. In his ruling, Bauduin conceded that "The words used by the presiding judge [Jan Moors] in that last sentence were chosen unfortunately. They’ve given the requestor a wrong impression." At the same time, Bauduin insisted that, “There are no weighty indications that the judges have given the impression of being prejudiced.”

The sentence in question was a remark made by Moors in response to Wilders' announcement, through his attorney Bram Moszkowicz, that he would refuse to answer any questions from the judges at his trial. Moors' response to this was to state that he had heard that Wilders had a reputation for "avoiding a discussion ... it seems you’re doing that today as well.”

Sources: 

• Dutch Court Rejects Wilders Push to Change Judges at Muslim-Insult Trial, Bloomberg story by Jurjen van de Pol
• Dutch politician hate speech trial to resume, AP story by Toby Sterling
• Dutch hate speech case to resume, Al Jazeera