from: AMERICAN ATHEISTS subject: AANEWS for February 21, 1997 A M E R I C A N A T H E I S T S ~~ A A N E W S ~~ #252 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~2/21/97 http://www.atheists.org ftp: ftp.atheists.org/pub/ In This Issue... * Atheist Repeat Call -- Investigate Temples! * Jesus And Zoning In Utah * TheistWatch: God Laid-Back After Flood? * Resources * About This List... ATHEISTS RENEW CALL FOR BUDDHIST TAX EXEMPTION PROBE A Senate Committee Issues A Subpoena For President Of Hsi Lai Temple American Atheists repeated it call to IRS officials yesterday for a probe into the tax exempt status of two Buddhist sects linked to John Huang and other principles in the controversial "soft money" scandal. In a letter to Margaret Richardson, Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, AA President Ellen Johnson wrote: "I again wish to request that your Office examine the tax-exempt status of both the Hsi Lai Buddhist Temple and similar corporate entities linked to Supreme Master Ching Hai..." Both Buddhist organizations were used to funnel questionable funds into the coffers of the Democratic National Committee and President Clinton's Whitewater defense account. The Hsi Lai Temple, a $30,000,000 structure located in the Hacienda Heights suburb of Los Angeles, was the venue for a luncheon held in April, 1996 which featured Vice President Albert Gore. That event was organized by DNC operative John Huang, a former official at the Commerce Department who had ties with both the White House and elements of the Chinese Government, including individuals linked to arms dealing. Huang was also former head of U.S. Operations for the Lippo Group, a financial conglomerate headed by the Riady family; Lippo has donated to numerous political causes, and is in business with right wing American televangelist Pat Robertson pumping "no news, no sex, no violence" TV program throughout Asian markets, including 500 cable systems based in Peoples Republic of China. American Atheists also called for an IRS probe into the "Supreme Master" cult headed by a woman calling herself Ching Hai. Charles Trie, a follower of Hai, is also linked to the Lippo conglomerate, and was another major fund raising expert for the Democratic National Committee. He delivered over $600,000 funnelled through the Hai religious group which included "questionable" or "suspicious" checks, sequentially-numbered money orders, and cash to the DNC and the defense fund for Mr. Clinton. American Atheists National Media Coordinator told media yesterday that the 1996 campaign was a "high water mark" for questionable political activities by religious groups. "Not only were the candidates trying to out-do each other with religious rhetoric," said Barrier, "but churches, temples and sects -- as well as organizations like the Christian Coalition -- were ignoring state-church separation and mixing religion with political activism." Temple Office Is Subpoenaed Meanwhile, it has been learned that the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee has issued a subpoena for Hsin Kuang Shih, president of the Hsi Lai Temple. Other orders to appear were served Wednesday and include figures linked to Asian financial groups, as well as John Huang and Charles Trie. There are reports that Trie has fled the country, but Huang is said to be discussing immunity in exchange for his cooperation in any probe. ** UTAH ATHEISTS WARN: GOVERNMENT NOT ZONED FOR PRAYER! Does "Jesus" Have An Opinion On Land Use Rateables? Utah American Atheists Director Chris Allen is a busy, busy man. When not trying to prevent the Salt Lake City-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons) run roughshod over state-church separation, he also has to worry about government officials throughout his state giving religion a helping hand, or an outright official endorsement. Case in point: Davis County, Utah where the Planning Commission Chairman, Larry Jay Davis, now wants to open meetings of that government body with a prayer. Davis is reportedly taking his lead from Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, who proclaimed in his January 6 inauguration that Americans have displaced god from home and government. Davis, identified by the Salt Lake Tribune as a former Bishop of the LDS church, agrees, and insists that prayer has "gotten us where we are today." At least one other Planning Commissioner agrees, while others opine that prayer ritual can "comfort" government officials and the public. Four years ago, the Utah Supreme Court ruled that city councils and commissions may begin meetings with prayer, as long as all religious groups are given "equal access' in leading it. That unfortunate decision ended a lawsuit filed by Society of Separationists, the legal arm of American Atheists, to abolish the practice. In Salt Lake City, where a religious culture war has divided hard-shell Mormons and secularists, the city council has decided to open meetings instead with a simple pledge of allegiance. But out in the boonies, as Allen knows, it's a different story. A number of towns begin official meetings with prayer, including Midvale, Sandy, Draper and West Valley. Allen sees some humor in the latest situation in Davis County, telling media that "Everybody knows (councils) need help with the decisions they have to make." He adds, though that "one suspects that they are trying to wrap themselves in some kind of divine endorsement. And anybody who disagrees with them is some kind of heretic." ** THEISTWATCH SHORT SHOTS Pat Boone, a favorite on Trinity Broadcasting Network, has gotten the boot thanks to his foray into heavy metal music. TBN, which beams its fundamentalist and charismatic "signs and wonders" religious message to 400 stations, announced that it was cancelling the plain-vanilla crooner's "GospelAmerica" program. The network has supposedly received thousands of complaints from supporters after Boone -- a fundamentalist Christian -- appeared in black leather and fake tattoos at the January 27 American Music Awards. Yesterday, TBN officials justified their decision by saying it was "based on recent changes in the focus and content of Pat's music. The 62-year old Boone is ruffled by the move, though. He told USA TODAY: "The sad part is after 30 years or more of public declaration about being a devout Christian, suddenly so many of those folks decided that I totally sold out and were so quick to judge me." It appears that Pat will get a chance to recant, or at least explain his bare-chested, spiked-collar-and-shades look that went out over the Associated Press photo wire. TBN says that he will appear on the "Praise" program on April 15 with his pastor, to "explain his actions." Boone added: "I'm going to wind up losing a lot of fans but I'll gain new ones who'll realize I'm not as square as they thought..." ** Columnist George Wills seems a bit critically sympatico with Ohio Representative John Kasich, a golden boy in the Christian Coalition pantheon. "Kasich needs to tone it down to be viable in 2000 election", reads the headline to the latest Will column. Seems that Kasich happened to walk into a Blockbuster store and spotted a cassette of the movie "Fargo," which he didn't find to his liking. Ever since Blockbuster started censoring videos to achieve that wholesome "family" image (they wouldn't carry "The Last Temptation of Christ", caving into the gripes of Rev. Don Wildmon and the Traditional Values Coalition), we thought that just about everything on the shelves would get the "seal of approval" from a guy like Kasich. Guess not. Wills also fessed-up: "The most important player in Republican nominating politics is the Christian Coalition. It believes that in 1996 it was too reactive, with the result that it did not have influence commensurate with its weight." He adds that when the scrap for the next presidential nomination begins big time -- say, mid-1999 -- "the Coalition might embrace a candidate it deems both sympathetic and plausible." Are we talking Kasich, anyone? We'll be watching. ** We're talking apocalypse here, folks. Seems that with the national consciousness a bit burned-out on the threat of invading aliens a la "Independence Day" (or, might we suggest the poorer special effects of "Alien Autopsy"?), the latest case of pre-millennium jitters involves rogue asteroids dropping in to exterminate humanity, juggle the gene pool and set off world wide ecological catastrophe. In just the past few days, we've had a fairly credible Discovery Channel presentation ("Three Minutes to Impact"), some good NOVA reruns about space debris, and the less-than-praiseworthy NBC impact on our collective brain cells, "Asteroid." The peacock may have won the ratings war earlier this week (about 55 million of us mushed out for a couple of prime time evenings), but it didn't do much for educating people about science, specifically how we might divert a large body from crashing into the planet, and ushering us down the same extinction path as the dinosaurs. Comets, and to a lesser extent meteors streaking in the night sky, have traditionally been considered omens of disaster. A Taoist prince of the second century, b.c.e. proclaimed in "The Book of the Prince of Huai-Nan" that wars and apparitions of comets were related; and Halley's Comet of 1066 is portrayed in the famous Bayeux Tapestry, in retrospect to some a harbinger of the Norman invasion of England and the death of King Harold at the Battle of Hastings. Asteroids, or "very large bodies," however are not comets and do not announce themselves with such visual splendor. But the solar system -- and Earth -- are littered with the evidence of their impacts and havoc. The current phobia of collective demise by an asteroid meshes neatly with many Biblical fundamentalist, charismatic and even new age notions of how the earth is to end (perhaps giving rise, in the process, to a small band of chosen, the "elect" who go on to build utopia and the New Jerusalem.) The more programs you watch about the subject, the more guesses -- alright, preliminary estimates -- of how many such bodies there may be whizzing through our Earth's orbital path, and the odds of our planet encountering such an interloper in the next century you hear. By the most conservative odds, the chances appear to be about 1,000 to 1. Think of that in terms of, say, money, and it might have a sobering effect on your early case of apocalypse jitters. The Pope of Rome isn't worrying, though. Last Sunday, John Paul II made a curious pronouncement before thousands of pilgrims and tourists in St. Peter's Square, assuring him that God will never destroy the world again, as he presumably did in the Great Flood so colorfully and fancifully described in Genesis. "From the words of alliance between God and Noah," declared JP-2, "it is understood that now no sin could bring God to destroy the world he created." One might display the arrogance to inquire why, assuming Genesis or other Biblical accounts are correct, God waited until after Noah to be so generous, or why he choose to inundated the planet for 40 days and nights resulting in the drowning of innocent victims, products of "His" creation. Tsk, tsk. The Vatican was making some progress there, especially in light of the Pope admitting that evolution does seem to carry the day (an acknowledgment of scientific evidence that comes a bit late in the game). Now we're back to that pesky flood bit, and divining the future. Will these Popes never learn? ** Well, if you're not looking skyward for a rogue asteroid, why not hike instead to the Mohave desert of California on the 13th of the month to catch a glimpse of the Virgin Mary? Seems that ever since a woman named Maria Paula Acuna claimed to have had a vision of the mom 'o Jesus several years ago, crowds have been dragging their lawn chairs and cameras to witness the apparition of "Our Lady of the Rock." Maria leads the crowd in prayer, and then gives the signal -- Mary's here! -- and the shutters begin clicking. Skeptics point out that nothing is going on, except maybe the interaction of active imaginations, or maybe flaws in lenses, films and shutter mechanisms. The "pictures" of Mary aren't nearly as distinct as the outline of the "Soybean Savior" Jesus is said to have made a decade ago on the side of a grain silo in the mid west. Even so, the crowds are enthused, and their numbers are growing. The Los Angeles Times recently reported that upwards of 1,000 people or more are making the trek into the Mohave; some of them are vendors peddling rosaries, or religious kitsch. Some are "Mary groupies," part of a growing Marian movement within the Catholic Church which strikes even the ecclesiastical leadership as a potential problem. The Diocese of Fresno which has religious authority over that part of the Mohave, "gently" tries to tell believers that no miracle has been verified. A spokesman for the Los Angeles Archdiocese told the Times: "The church's official position is that there are no apparitions, and people are to be discouraged from going there." The Church spent a year investigating the reports and concluded that the visions are "due to somebody's imagination." We'll buy that. Even so, credulous Mary worship is becoming a fad ever since the "miracle" of Fatima on May 13, 1917 when the Virgin supposedly dropped in on three kids in Portugal. Curiously, she supposedly told them to return to the same location on the 13th of each month. Maria Acuna seems to have fostered a bit of a cult around herself; she graces these events -- on the 13th, religiously -- decked out in a white veil, gown and somewhat more functional white gym shoes. "She is attended by white-clad volunteers," notes the Times. The ritual includes a process where a statue of Mary is carried in a procession, complete with a bed of (plastic) red roses. Why not recycle? When Mary supposedly arrives, Acuna "works the crowd" while an aide trails behind carrying holy water and "holy oil." Mary worship is indeed breaking out all over, from the Mohave to the town of Medjugore in former Yugoslavia. A busy lady... Sure, it's an example of social angst, credulousness and boredom... but what if it's for real? I can see it now. Maria arrives, prayer's, a burst of brilliant light! "Where are you going, my Virgin?!" "Me? I'm going to Disneyland!" ** (Thanks to Helen Johnson in Los Angeles and Margie Wait in Denver for this...) * We've always been amused at the frantic scramble of many mainline religious denominations to "keep up" with the times in hopes of holding on to congregations. Some churches have to resort to rock 'n roll to woo younger folks, or free day-care or bowling leagues to hang on to the boomers. And the National Council of Churches has frantically rewritten the Bible in hopes of removing "sexist" and other offensive language from the Infallible World of God. Hmmm.... Jews are scrambling too, especially since they (and the Christians) are rapidly losing percentages in the believer marketplace to crank cults and Islamic groups. In hopes of reversing the trend, a couple of Ojai, California rabbis have launched a "Synagogue 2000" project to design the synagogue of the future. Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman admitted to the Los Angeles Times recently that "We are taking the principle of how ideas work in Disneyland or in church and applying them to the synagogue." Part of the effort involves bringing together the Orthodox, Conservative and Reform flavor rabbis who have congregations that "work," i.e. are big and not in decline. One official of Synagogue 2000 has even attended seminars on customer service run by the Walt Disney corporation to see what could be learned. And movie maker Steven Spielberg is kicking in $300,000 over the next three years; another $600,000 for the project is coming from a foundation started by the founder of Sara Lee Foods. Advance word is that Synagogue 2000 participants are quickly picking up on the need to emphasize vague "spirituality" talk, rather than stuffy references to "religion" or "doctrine." ** RESOURCES... * For information about American Atheists, send mail to info@atheists.org and include your name and postal mailing address. * A free catalogue of American Atheists Press books, videos, pamphlets and other products is available upon request. Get yours by contacting catalogue@atheists.org and be sure to include your name and mailing address. * Are you already an AA member? If so, join the "spirited" discussion on aachat, our on-line discussion group. For further information, contact the moderator through aachat@atheists.org. * About This List... AANEWS is a free service from American Atheists, a nationwide movement founded by Madalyn Murray O'Hair for the advancement of Atheism, and the total, absolute separation of government and religion. 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