Monday, Nov 22, 2004

Opinion

Posted on Fri, Oct. 01, 2004

Religious intolerance, an ancient inheritance

By HOLLI EMORE

Guest Columnist

Two recent events in the Midlands within 24 hours of each other — one at the University of South Carolina, and the other in Great Falls — highlight the long-standing, continuing tension between religion and power.

Boston Globe columnist, writer and former Catholic priest James Carroll presented a lecture titled “Anti-Semitism: The Old and the New.” A large audience included area clergy, students, fans of the writer and many in the Jewish community, and the program was being recorded for later broadcast by ETV.

Carroll’s acclaimed work, Constantine’s Sword, recounts the sad history of the church and the Jews, detailing how the Roman emperor effectively turned the cross into a sword then used in centuries of brutality. Its message is melancholy, but hopeful in its call not just for greater religious tolerance, but for true acceptance of the spark of God found in each human being, as Carroll put it.

The evening before, the Great Falls Town Council held its regular monthly meeting, now well-attended by out-of-town visitors monitoring the tense situation there. The State reported on Sept. 19 on the ongoing harassment, vandalism, violence and threats endured by Darla Wynne, a local resident who is an adherent of the Wiccan faith.

Wynne’s great sin is to be the “other” of Carroll’s piercing analysis. Her response to many months of misuse and abuse by the Town Council was to finally invoke her rights as a citizen by suing over sectarian prayer at the meeting of a public body. (Wynne, by the way, has asked for no monetary award, even though she is legally entitled to such.) The town of Great Falls has filed an appeal, and our S.C. attorney general, Henry McMaster, has vowed to support the council in this supposed fight for moral high ground.

Now that the FBI and the Southern Poverty Law Center have turned their attention to the hate crimes occurring with regularity against Wynne, the council is more subdued in its public defiance of the law. But its conflict with Wynne has set the stage for continuing disturbing incidents, some more or less beyond its ability to control, such as the recent visit by Charlottean Richard Pope.

Pope cornered Wynne and another friend as they walked away from town hall, accosting them with biblical vitriol, until others stepped closer to intervene. Next Pope turned his invective toward the council itself, condemning it for omitting Jesus Christ from the council prayer. When his screams disturbed the council executive session inside, he was finally cited by police for disorderly conduct.

Carroll wields careful historical research to strike a body blow to such anti-Semitic conceits as the blood libels and deicide charges used to justify terrorism against Jews. We would like to think that kind of prejudice might have died in the light of such 20th century events as the Holocaust; we would be mistaken, however, to make such an assumption. The Inquisition’s dark fingers still reach into our times when irrational fear and prejudice relegate one group of people to a hated status.

Unfortunately, the Inquisition created an additional terrifying fantasy with which to frighten and manipulate its victims, that of witchcraft. The infamous Malleus Malleficorum, issued in 1486 as a guide for inquisitors, detailed such Hollywoodish noir as infant murder, satanic rites and hordes of demonic familiars. (Shakespeare later iced the cake with Macbeth’s famous bubbling cauldron scene.)

Most educated Americans today expect only to find such psychedelia in a painting by Hieronymous Bosch. But when they hear the word “witch,” into their minds floods every imaginable medieval nightmare. In reality, earth-based religions have existed throughout time, around the globe, and are completely unrelated to this sort of Dantesque scenario. Modern Wicca draws from traditions held dear by many original cultures of present-day South Carolinians, including Celtic and other European tribes, Native Americans and others.

Carroll referred to the Christian contempt that would bully non-Christians with such practices as prayer to Jesus Christ at a government meeting. Contempt seems an apt term for the behavior of those who suggest that someone excluded or offended by another’s prayer simply leave the room. Contempt, indeed, when a state constitutional officer publicly endorses such lack of caring.

My family were some of the earliest settlers of our fair state, and fought well that I might worship in the daylight of freedom, and without the oppression of England’s state religion. I pray that in my lifetime, all South Carolinians may come to understand why separation of church and state is a blessing to all of us, allowing each of us the dignity of our private journey with God, by whatever name.

Ms. Emore is the president of the Association of Fundraising Professionals, Central Carolina Chapter, and a nonprofit fund-raising consultant.