39% Calvinist? Surely some mistake

Hmm, 39% Calvinist eh? Only because some of the values mentioned are mainstream...

Test your C-Factor - how much of a Calvinist are you?

39% You are somewhat of a Calvinist. Some of your points of view make you look like a Calvinist. However, you live your life in a lighter way than Calvinists do, which allows you to enjoy it more.

Category	Score	Comment
Work	43%	Really, you don't have a Calvinistic working ethos. You mainly work for yourself, and you don't see a reason to work much harder
Strictness	20%	You know how to enjoy life. You don't always spend your time in a useful way. Mind the balance!
Sobriety	33%	You were not born to be a Calvinist. Catholicism suits you better - slightly hedonistic, loose and emotional.
Relationships	0%	In your relationships you are not very reserved. One might say: uncalvinistic. You let yourself go too easily to be a Calvinist.
Beliefs	0%	You are an unconcerned believer, who doesn't worry too much.

Play is useful too!

Also Calvin was a very bad man, because he had Michael Servetus burnt at the stake.

Naomi and Ruth in art

The Jesus in Love blog has a new painting of Naomi and Ruth, the very close friends (and possible lesbian partners) whose story is told in the Book of Ruth, part of the Ketuvim.

And Ruth said, Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried.

Ruth 1:16-17

This subject has been popular in art for centuries. There's an Old Master at the Art and the Bible website, by Pieter Lastman ca. 1583–1633, entitled Ruth Declares her Loyalty to Naomi (1614). There's another in the Sudley House collection in Liverpool, by Ary Scheffer. William Blake got in on the act too:

Naomi entreating Ruth to follow Orpah (detail),

Illustration (1795) by William Blake (1757-1827)

Victoria and Albert Museum, London

There's a nice little picture of them on Monkey Mind, probably taken from an illustrated Bible:There's also a sort of quasi-Classicist depiction of them by Thomas Williams Rooke, entitled "Naomi, Ruth and Obed" (1876): There's a nice modern drawing, unattributed, with Hebrew text:This next one, from a blogpost entitled Ruth and Naomi: The Bible on Lesbians, is nice (and I like the pinky desert landscape). It looks as if they are just going to kiss...

Ruth and Naomi, Orpah departing, 1902

by Philip Hermogenes Calderon (1833-1898)

Police raid gay bar on anniversary of Stonewall

This is terrible.

Police Raid Gay Bar in Fort Worth, Texas
on the 40th Anniversary of Stonewall

Late last Saturday night, June 27, Fort Worth Police Officers and Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC) officers entered the Rainbow Lounge in Fort Worth and arrested seven (7) people. One was critically injured during the raid.

The story quickly spread to major news outlets such as the Metroplex, CNN, The Rachel Maddow Show, The Michaelangelo Signorile Show, The Daily KOSS, and The Huffington Post.
Video of the raid.

Our friends at Equality Texas are encouraging LGBTQ supporters to contact Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief to demand a full investigation.

This raid is yet another stark reminder that there is still so much work to be done to end bigotry and prejudice in America and around the world. Soulforce remains committed in our efforts to end the political and religious oppression of LGBTQ people that leads to such violence.

Source: Soulforce newsletter, 1 July 2009.

Is this discrimination?

Jason over at the Wild Hunt has a post about a group of British Wiccans who tried to book a Catholic social club.

They didn't know it was a Catholic social club when they tried to book it, and they were completely honest that the booking was for a group of witches (the event was called the Witches' Ball). The man who initially took the booking said that the social club was a business and only tenuously attached to the Catholic Church. He was then overruled by the diocesan authorities.

The comments on the article in the Stockport Express explain what went on:

When I called to book the venue which had been recommended and which I had used many times I new it as The Flint Street Social Club, I never knew it was run or attached to the Catholic church and when the Gentleman, who was very nice by the way, answered with Our Lady's I then told him who I was, what we wanted and who were were, totally up front and said that I did not want to compromise them in any way. he assured me that this was a totally separate Buisness venture and that anyone could book the room and then 'do what we want in it' . I would not have continued with the booking had he said any different. I required a room large enough to take in excess of 150 people plus a stage where the nights entertainment Abba Fusion an Abba Tribute Duo could perform in complete safety with all there stage equipment.

The Witch's Ball is a family event with dancing, games etc just like any other party. The difference being that some of us Walk the well worn path of The Old Ways, ordinary people, with ordinary lives.

It is such a shame that all religions cannot accept each others ways as we respect every other religion.

The man who had to also tell me that we couldnt have the room was very apologetic and said embarrased at having to tell me they wouldnt let us have the venue.

I guess they have a right to veto certain events (like arms' dealers conferences, BNP meetings and the like) but it's not as if the Wiccans were planning anything other than a family party at the venue.

I hope that dialogue rather than litigation will be the result of this, but I think, as another commenter points out, it's quite likely that other events at Catholic-owned properties could include Wiccans, Muslims, lesbians, gays and so on. So the line should be drawn at what is illegal (i.e. hate speech) not what the Catholic Church considers immoral. That is the rule that applies to discrimination against LGBT people wanting to book Christian facilities, so the same should apply here.

Is this discrimination? Yes, I think it is.

What's so great about Gerald?

Gerald Gardner (the founder of Wicca) was a Conservative, and whilst he professed a deep reverence for women, the view of women he espoused was that of Jacquetta Hawkes, an archaeologist who popularised the notion of the Great Mother Goddess and promoted the idea of women as goddesses of the domestic hearth.

Doreen Valiente had to argue with him when he tried to get her to step down as High Priestess because she was "too old".

Also, according to Lois Bourne, Gardner was deeply homophobic (though this is perhaps surprising given his interest in alternative practices such as naturism).

Of course, we have to remember that he was a man of his time, and make allowances for some of his attitudes. He also had many fine qualities - wit, charm, originality, etc. And there are several things I am eternally grateful to him for:

• he did not insist on being reverenced as Our Glorious Founder, and would make adjustments when people argued with him.
• he gave out different Books of Shadows to different High Priestesses, so there could not be a canonical version of the BoS (no matter how much some people want to turn it into the Wiccan equivalent of the Bible).
• he encouraged his covenors to use the bits of ritual they liked and not bother with the rest

If we compare him to other founders of religions, both ancient and modern, we can see that their religions either declined after their deaths or became rigidly dogmatic. So it is much better to have a flawed and human founder whose opinions you can question, than one whose every word is taken as a divine utterance. So he was great - and Wicca is a flexible and adaptable tradition - precisely because he was flawed.

metaphors for religion

Religions as languages - the idea that religions are languages, each with their own dialects, discourses, and ability to spread through trade and conquest. This metaphor is a very helpful way to understand religions, though it's not the whole picture. Wittgenstein's concept of language games could also be useful here. Jeff Lilly explores this metaphor in two excellent articles, The Future of Neopaganism in the West, Part I: Prestige and Stigma and The Future of Neopaganism in the West, Part II: Going Organic. Similarly, Andrew J Brown likens religions to irregular verbs:

Christianity is an irregular verb par excellence (as too, of course, are all the other world religions). To speak it and understand its hopeful message you simply have to learn them, live them, always use them in the context of the world in which you find yourself. They are never reducible to a set of simple unifying, rational rules.

Religions as vinegar tasters - there's a Taoist painting of Confucius, Buddha and Lao Tsu tasting vinegar; only Lao Tsu is smiling and enjoying the vinegar for what it is. The vinegar represents life, the world as it is. Another article by Jeff Lilly explores the idea of the vinegar tasters.

Religions as software - if your brain is the hardware and your mind is the operating system, religions are the software installed on it (and sometimes it's really difficult to uninstall them). My article, Religions as software, explores this idea.

Religions as ex-girlfriends - Al Billings' hilarious article explores the idea of religions as ex-girlfriends, which means they naturally have opinions of each other:

[Wicca] complains about your “kablahblah” and rolls her eyes while mumbling about patriarchal power schemes. She can’t stop talking about Roman Catholicism and how wrong she was for you… in fact, she seems pretty obsessed with her sometimes.

Religions as explanatory tools for various situations - like why shit happens (surprisingly accurate); why your web page cannot be found; and of course, how many adherents it takes to change a lightbulb (there are Christian lightbulb jokes, Pagan lightbulb jokes, Jewish lightbulb jokes, Buddhist lightbulb jokes, and there may be many others that haven't been discovered).

Religions as cities - this one's been popular ever since someone dreamed up the heavenly Jerusalem, and Augustine burbled on about the City of God. Nevertheless, not a bad metaphor; different denominations can be different suburbs. As Evelyn Underhill famously said, ‘the Anglican Church may not be the city of God but she is certainly a respectable suburb thereof’. Andrew Brown has a lovely article on religions as cities. If Christianity is a city, is Paganism another city (possibly with more trees), or is it the surrounding contryside?

Religions as receivers of frequencies - it occurred to me the other day that each religion has its own frequency for tuning in to the numinous, and that in between the frequencies, there is static (but perhaps one day a new radio station will appear there). Or perhaps one religion is tuned to light, another is sound, and another is radio waves, and so on -- so each religion is a different type of receiver for detecting the emissions from the numinous.

Religions as colours - each religion has a different set of colours representing the philosophical and cultural ideas within it.

Religions as rhizomes or river systems - Deleuze and Guattari's idea of the spread of ideas as being like the growth of rhizomes could also be useful here. Similarly, religions are discourses, so the idea of discourses as rivers could also be useful. R Diaz-Bone (2006) describes discourses as an 'expression, indeed part of a certain social praxis, that already defines a certain group of possible texts, that express that same praxis, indeed can be accepted as representatives of that same praxis.'

Religions as trees: Tolkien described the Catholic Church as a big tree growing into time with its roots in eternity; and regarded the Protestant Reformation as an attempt to chop down that tree, with all its interesting gnarly bits, and start again with a new sapling. Regardless of what you think of his particular religious politics, it's a great metaphor. Trees grow in a particular place and are nourished by the soil and shaped by the winds that blow, so each religion is shaped by its environment; but all trees are recognisable as trees and have some features in common, by which we can compare them, so this metaphor gives you essence (the quality of treeness) and particularity (type of tree, environmental conditions).

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A theophany

Christian theologians (especially Orthodox ones) love to point out that Pagans are worshipping the creation, whereas they are worshipping the creator.

It is one of the first rules of interfaith dialogue to listen carefully to what others say they believe, rather than telling them what they believe.

This creator and creation thing is a bit of an old chestnut and not really true (it may be so in terms of some Christian theological systems, but it doesn't translate into ours).

In other words, Mu. (A Japanase word meaning, "your question is irrelevant in my paradigm"; kind of like "meh".)

Most Pagans see the Divine as immanent in the Universe, not necessarily as identical with it (and yes, don't tend to pay much attention to the unknowable, or believe in the transcendent aspect) so the categories of creator and creature are a bit meaningless, really... in fact I personally find the idea of an external supernatural creator offensive, because to me the Universe was born, not made. It is a theophany: a manifestation of the Divine.

As Sam Webster wrote in his 2007 article, How Close the Gods? Transcendence, Immanence and Immediacy in Pagan Religion (given at Pantheacon 2007):

Immediacy is a more modern term for wrestling with this problem, although one can find the idea discussed in the deep past. It is a subtle idea but its implications are vast. Here we would say, "the Goddess made the Tree and is present AS the Tree (not just IN the Tree)." To touch the Tree is to touch the Goddess. She is immediately present. Nothing is between us and Her. The whole World IS Her, made BY Her and OF Her, and by implication, there is Nothing BUT Her.

In this way of looking at it, it is not that we are focussed on the creation instead of the creator / creatrix: the two are identical, and so making a distinction between them is meaningless.