The First Amendment guarantees
religious freedom: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof … .” The constitutional guarantee of free exercise of religion was incorporated to the states in Cantwell v. Connecticut (1940). Invoking the state’s
defense of this natural right always seems easy and convenient when the
religious practices in question are popular—e.g. when Christianity is involved.
When the Supreme Court ruled recently in Burwell
v. Hobby Lobby that under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, it was an
unconstitutional violation of the religious freedom of closely held for-profit
corporations to require them to provide certain contraceptives for their
employees, many Christians vocally expressed their approval. However, when the
state violates the religious freedom of non-Christians, many people view it as
less problematic. For example, when developers wished to build the Park51
Islamic community center in Lower Manhattan, some
critics sought to thwart religious freedom by preventing the erection of the
“Ground Zero Mosque.” Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin infamously urged
Muslims to “refudiate” it. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich referred
to the project as “a symbol of Islamic conquest”: “It's not about religion and
is clearly an aggressive act that is offensive.” If Christians sought to erect
a Serbian Orthodox Church in a community that consisted primarily of Bosnian
Muslims who had been the target of genocidal ethnic cleansing at the hands of
Bosnian Serb forces in 1995, would Palin or Gingrich complain? Would there be
any public outrage at all? Unlikely.
Uproar against unpopular
religious freedom and the First Amendment is occurring in Oklahoma
City, where the city government has agreed to allow
the Dakhma of Angra Mainyu to hold a black mass on September 21 in rented space
in the publicly owned Civic Center
Music Hall. The Dakhma of Angra Mainyu
is “a religious and educational church dedicated to Angra Mainyu (Ahriman).” Angra
Mainyu is the “destructive spirit” of the Zoroastrian faith, and the ancient
template upon which Satan is based. The Dakhma of Angra Mainyu seems to blend
Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, the Satanism of Anton Levay, the occultism of Aleister
Crowley, and New Ageism into a bizarre mélange of rebellious spiritualism:
Destruction and
Reconstruction is another way of describing the Death and Rebirth cycle of
life. Systems and structures must be dismantled so that new life can be born.
Myths and legends about gods and goddesses bringing destruction to the earth
are common to all traditions. Yahweh destroyed the world through the great
Flood and rained fire and brimstone on Sodom
and Gommorah [sic]. In the Hindu tradition, the goddess Kali, generally
pictured wearing a belt made of dismembered arms and a necklace of human
skulls, represents the positive power of destruction, annihilating ignorance
and maintaining the world order. The god Shiva, Kali's male counterpart,
destroys in order to create. …
Dakhma of Angra
Mainyu is about freedom from any religion that chooses to bind you to some type
of dogma the forces you to restrain your natural animal instincts. They
say desire and “sin” move you away from the ultimate consumer of souls through
fire. Ahura Mazda is the slave driver that forces laws onto mankind that
completely against man’s nature. Only through spiritual and chaotic
destruction of this enslavement, will one become spiritually free from not only
mortal/ethical enslavement, include freedom from Atar which is the Holy Fire
that will consume your soul to recharge Ahura Mazda. The truest form of
freedom is brought about by evil speech (blaspheme). 3 ways define the
human existence: thought, speech, and action. Knowing that mankind is judge
off this paradigm, does it make sense to inhibit your animal desires because
some “God” said they were evil? No, the inhibition is to build internal
pressure, like a teapot without a valve. Upon death this gives the Ahuras
(angels) that much more energy to consume as they live off of pain and blood.
Thus requiring sacrifice and becoming a mayrter [sic].
The group describes its black mass as “a form
of inversion to the Catholic mass”:
The modern form of
the Black Mass is still practiced by modern Devil Worshipers to
celebrate the perversion of the Catholic Mass still seen in society today.
The Black Mass as gone through a transformation to
maintain practice within societal law. The consecrated
host is corrupted by sexual fluids then it becomes the sacrifice of the
mass. The blasphemy remains intact along with corruption of Catholic
Mass. Modern/Laveyan Satanists see this as ritual to mock the Catholic
Mass in the form of a blasphemy rite used to deprogram people from their
Christian background, however Religious Satanism sees the Black Mass as a
religious ceremony to empower themselves and receive a “blessing” from the
Devil. The Black Mass being performed at the Okc
Civic Center
has been toned downed as to allow it to be performed in a public
government building. The authenticity and purpose of the Black Mass will remain
in tact while allowing for slight changes so that a public viewing
can occur without breaking Oklahoma's
laws based on nudity, public urination, and other sex acts.
Unpleasant? Perhaps. But the
religious traditions and rites of one need not appeal to another in a nation
that respects the natural right to liberty. It is likely that terrifying but
entirely fanciful movies like Rosemary’s
Baby, The Omen, and The Devil’s Advocate have induced
irrational fear of devil worshippers in the public consciousness. However, the
Dakhma of Angra Mainyu does not
preach violence as so many other religious groups do: “I respect all life,
meaning I will only kill in self-defense or defense of those whom I watch
over.”
The Dakhma of Angra Mainyu has a
First Amendment right to hold its black mass. However, many are less than
thrilled about their exercise of this natural right. TFP Student Action has an online
petition against the black mass. The petition states:
With my whole heart
and soul, I express full, complete and vehement rejection of the satanic “Black
Mass” scheduled at the Oklahoma City Civic
Center on September 21, 2014. I urge you to cancel this
event which offends 1 billion Catholics worldwide, 200,000 Catholics in Oklahoma
and countless more God-loving Americans. Sacrilege is simply NOT free speech.
TFP
Student Action allegedly “defends traditional moral values on college
campuses.” It was formed in 1973 “to resist, in the realm of ideas, the
liberal, socialist and communist trends of the times and proudly affirm the
positive values of tradition, family and private property.” TFP Student Action’s
director John Ritchie calls
the black mass “the most obscene attack against the Catholic mass that can be
imagined.” He claims
For someone to
deliberately attack the supreme good, [God], intentionally, to cause harm [and
be] deliberately filled with hatred is something that not only hurts Catholics
and Christians, in general, but everybody of good will.
Ritchie views
the First Amendment as anything but absolute:
I don’t think the
First Amendment should be used as a baseball bat to bash Christians over the
head, and in this case I think it's being used in that way.
The natural right to freedom of
religion is inalienable and cannot be abridged by the government no matter how
many Talibanesque blowhards sign a petition. To allow democracy to determine
rights is to invoke tyranny of the majority. Today enough hard-line Christians
sign a petition to get the government to shut down a black mass. What if
tomorrow enough Neo-Nazis sign a petition to get the government to shut down a synagogue?
What if the day after that enough Islamophobes sign a petition to get the
government to shut down a mosque? What if some dark day in the future enough
communists sign petitions to get the government to shut down all places of
worship?
The black mass is clearly an
expression of hostility against Christianity in general and Catholicism in
particular. However, most religious rites are at least subtle expressions of
hostility toward all other religions. Whether a religious service is Christian,
Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, or Satanic, it is essentially
sending the message that all other religions are false. And all religious
services essentially send the message that atheism is false.
Ritchie assumes that the
Christian God—“the supreme good”—exists. The government cannot make such an
assumption. Theology is not the job of the government at any level. The job of
the government is to protect the life, liberty, and property of its citizens.
To expect or allow the government to do more is to beg for tyranny. What gives
the government the right to decide when someone is exercising his or her religious
freedom under the First Amendment and when he or she is using his or her
religion “as a baseball bat to bash Christians over the head?” The answer is
always inevitably more speech and not less speech. Whether the arena is
political, religious, or anything else, “the marketplace of ideas” always best
thrives and always best leads to the truth when there is more speech and not
less.
The irony is that TFP Student
Action is emulating the communism it claims to deplore by seeking to shut down
religious expression. Communists in Spain,
the Soviet Union, and elsewhere were notorious for
oppressing Christians. Why should anyone rationally believe that the government
will stop at oppressing devil worshippers? Once the beast gets a taste for
religious oppression, it will eventually go after Muslims, Jews, Christians,
and all other people of faith. Without social freedoms, economic freedoms are
not possible. A government that picks winners and losers in the realm of
religion will eventually seek to do the same in the realm of business. The
erosion of the natural right to liberty will eventually lead to the erosion of
the natural right to property. Eventually, this will all lead to the erosion of
the natural right to life. Ultimately, natural rights stand or fall together.
The choice is freedom or tyranny.
(For more analysis of the First
Amendment, natural rights, and the Real Culture War, read my book The
Real Culture War: Individualism vs. Collectivism & How Bill O’Reilly Got It
All Wrong available now in print and digital on Amazon.)
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