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David Lucifer
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Death of a religion
« on: 2006-09-07 11:14:51 » |
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vector: Premise Checker on the paleopsych list
Zoroastrians Keep the Faith, and Keep Dwindling
New York Times, 6.9.6
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/06/us/06faith.html
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
BURR RIDGE, Ill. -- In his day job, Kersey H. Antia is a
psychologist who specializes in panic disorders. In his private
life, Mr. Antia dons a long white robe, slips a veil over his face
and goes to work as a Zoroastrian priest, performing rituals passed
down through a patrilineal chain of priests stretching back to
ancient Persia.
After a service for the dead in which priests fed sticks of
sandalwood and pinches of frankincense into a blazing urn, Mr.
Antia surveyed the Zoroastrian faithful of the Midwest -- about 80
people in saris, suits and blue jeans.
"We were once at least 40, 50 million -- can you imagine?" said Mr.
Antia, senior priest at the fire temple here in suburban Chicago.
"At one point we had reached the pinnacle of glory of the Persian
Empire and had a beautiful religious philosophy that governed the
Persian kings.
"Where are we now? Completely wiped out," he said. "It pains me to
say, in 100 years we won't have many Zoroastrians."
There is a palpable panic among Zoroastrians today -- not only in
the United States, but also around the world -- that they are
fighting the extinction of their faith, a monotheistic religion
that most scholars say is at least 3,000 years old.
Zoroastrianism predates Christianity and Islam, and many historians
say it influenced those faiths and cross-fertilized Judaism as
well, with its doctrines of one God, a dualistic universe of good
and evil and a final day of judgment.
While Zoroastrians once dominated an area stretching from what is
now Rome and Greece to India and Russia, their global population
has dwindled to 190,000 at most, and perhaps as few as 124,000,
according to a survey in 2004 by Fezana Journal, published
quarterly by the Federation of Zoroastrian Associations of North
America. The number is imprecise because of wildly diverging counts
in Iran, once known as Persia -- the incubator of the faith.
"Survival has become a community obsession," said Dina McIntyre, an
Indian-American lawyer in Chesapeake, Va., who has written and
lectured widely on her religion.
The Zoroastrians' mobility and adaptability has contributed to
their demographic crisis. They assimilate and intermarry, virtually
disappearing into their adopted cultures. And since the faith
encourages opportunities for women, many Zoroastrian women are
working professionals who, like many other professional women, have
few children or none.
Despite their shrinking numbers, Zoroastrians -- who follow the
Prophet Zarathustra (Zoroaster in Greek) -- are divided over
whether to accept intermarried families and converts and what
defines a Zoroastrian. An effort to create a global organizing body
fell apart two years ago after some priests accused the organizers
of embracing "fake converts" and diluting traditions.
"They feel that the religion is not universal and is ethnic in
nature, and that it should be kept within the tribe," said Jehan
Bagli, a retired chemist in Toronto who is a priest, or mobed, and
president of the North American Mobed Council, which includes about
100 priests. "This is a tendency that to me sometimes appears
suicidal. And they are prepared to make that sacrifice."
In South Africa, the last Zoroastrian priest recently died, and
there is no one left to officiate at ceremonies, said Rohinton
Rivetna, a Zoroastrian leader in Chicago who, with his wife,
Roshan, was a principal mover behind the failed effort to organize
a global body. But they have not given up.
"We have to be working together if we are going to survive," Mr.
Rivetna said.
Although the collective picture is bleak, most individual
Zoroastrians appear to be thriving. They are well-educated and
well-traveled professionals, earning incomes that place them in the
middle and upper classes of the countries where they or their
families settled after leaving their homelands in Iran and India.
About 11,000 Zoroastrians live in the United States, 6,000 in
Canada, 5,000 in England, 2,700 in Australia and 2,200 in the
Persian Gulf nations, according to the Fezana Journal survey.
This is the second major exodus in Zoroastrian history. In Iran,
after Muslims rose to power in the seventh century A.D., historians
say the Zoroastrian population was decimated by massacres,
persecution and conversions to Islam. Seven boatloads of
Zoroastrian refugees fled Iran and landed on the coast of India in
936. Their descendants, known as Parsis, built Mumbai, formerly
Bombay, into the world capital of Zoroastrianism.
The Zoroastrian magazine Parsiana publishes charts each month
tracking births, deaths and marriages. Leaders fret over the
reports from Mumbai, where deaths outnumber births six to one. The
intermarriage rate there has risen to about one in three. The
picture in North America is more hopeful: about 1.5 births for one
death. But the intermarriage rate in North America is now nearly 50
percent.
Soli Dastur, an exuberant priest who lives in Florida, is among the
first generation of immigrants who started the trend. Mr. Dastur
grew up in a village outside Mumbai, where his father was a priest,
the fire temple was the center of town and his whole world was
Zoroastrian.
He arrived in Evanston, Ill., in 1960, where he knew of no other
Zoroastrians, to attend college on a scholarship provided by one of
the Parsi endowments in Mumbai, which have since provided
scholarships to many others. He earned a Ph.D., worked as a
chemical engineer and married an American Roman Catholic he met on
a blind date 40 years ago.
Mr. Dastur is a priest in much demand to perform ceremonies because
of his melodic chanting of the prayers. He and his wife, Jo Ann,
have two grown daughters. Neither married a Zoroastrian.
"They're good human beings," Mr. Dastur said. "That's more
important to me."
The very tenets of Zoroastrianism could be feeding its demise, many
adherents said in interviews. Zoroastrians believe in free will, so
in matters of religion they do not believe in compulsion. They do
not proselytize. They can pray at home instead of going to a
temple. While there are priests, there is no hierarchy to set
policy. And their basic doctrine is a universal ethical precept:
"good thoughts, good words, good deeds."
"That's what I take away from Zoroastrianism," said Tenaz Dubash, a
filmmaker in New York City who is making a documentary about the
future of her faith, "that I'm a cerebral, thinking human being,
and I need to think for myself."
Ferzin Patel, who runs a support group for 20 intermarried couples
in New York, said that while the Zoroastrians in the group adored
their faith and wanted to teach it to their children, they in no
way wanted to compel their spouses to convert.
"In the intermarriage group, I don't think anyone feels that
someone should forfeit their religion just for Zoroastrianism," Ms.
Patel said.
Despite, or because of, the high intermarriage rate, some
Zoroastrian priests refuse to accept converts or to perform
initiation ceremonies for adopted children or the children of
intermarried couples, especially when the father is not
Zoroastrian. The ban on these practices is far stronger in India
and Iran than in North America.
"As soon as you do it, you start diluting your ethnicity, and one
generation has an intermarriage, and the next generation has more
dilution and the customs become all fuzzy and they eventually
disappear," said Jal N. Birdy, a priest in Corona, Calif., who will
not perform weddings of mixed couples. "That would destroy my
community, which is why I won't do it."
The North American Mobed Council is so divided on the issue of
accepting intermarried spouses and children that it has been unable
to take a position, said Mr. Bagli, the council's president. He
supports accepting converts because he said he can find no ban in
Zoroastrian texts, but he estimated that as many as 40 percent of
the priests in his group were opposed.
The peril and the hope for Zoroastrianism are embodied in a child
of the diaspora, Rohena Elavia Ullal, 27, a physical therapist in
suburban Chicago.
Ms. Ullal knew from an early age that her parents wanted her to
marry another Zoroastrian. Her mother, a former board president of
the Chicago temple, helped organize Sunday school classes once a
month there, enticing teenagers with weekend sleepovers and
roller-skating trips.
The result was a core group of close friends who felt more like
cousins, Ms. Ullal said recently over breakfast.
Both of her brothers found mates at Zoroastrian youth congresses,
and one is already married. Ms. Ullal stayed on the lookout.
"There were so few," she said. "I guess you're lucky if you find
somebody. That would be the ideal."
Ms. Ullal's college boyfriend is also the child of Indian
immigrants to the United States, but he is Hindu. [They married on
Saturday and had two ceremonies -- one Hindu, one Zoroastrian.] But
Ms. Ullal says that before they even became engaged, they talked
about her desire to raise their children as Zoroastrians.
"It's scary; we're dipping down in numbers," she said. "I don't
want to hurt his parents, but he doesn't have the kind of
responsibility, whereas I do."
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Blunderov
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"We think in generalities, we live in details"
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Re:Death of a religion
« Reply #1 on: 2006-09-09 14:05:23 » |
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[Blunderov] This from the splendid Austin Cline - may his tribe increase. Unstintingly, he has provided a rather pleasant little image of vigorous young plant which is savable.
http://atheism.about.com/b/a/258068.htm?nl=1
Couple Claims Marijuana is Sacrament in their Religion
Image Source: Jupiter Images
Danuel and Mary Quaintance were arrested for transporting 172 pounds of marijuana in their car. That's more than just a small amount for personal use, but according to them it's all for religious use. A judge is considering their argument and the possibility of dismissing the case on the basis of their right to freely exercise their religion.
Although it sounds like they are just making this up, there is evidently a church where marijuana use is a central focus.
The Quaintances contend they have a right to marijuana as the central focus of the Church of Cognizance, founded by Danuel Quaintance in 1991 and registered as a religious organization in Arizona in 1994. The couple say the church, which has about 130 adherents nationwide, functions largely through “individual orthodox member monasteries.”
Source: AZ Central They even claim that it has an ancient pedigree, being based on the teachings of Zoroastrianism:
Danuel Quaintance testified the Church of Cognizance is based on his research and interpretation of religious texts and is a form of neo-Zoroastrianism, an ancient religion that holds as sacred a drink made from a mountain plant called haoma. In the teachings of Zoroaster, the plant, the drink and the god are the same. The Quaintances believe cannabis, hemp or marijuana is haoma. The Quaintances cite as precedent the February Supreme Court decision ruling against government efforts to deny access to a hallucinogenic tea to members of a Brzilian-based church in which this tea plays a central role. If government laws regulating drugs can be lifted for that church, then why not for the Quaintances?
A Zoroastrian priest actually testified against them, saying that contemporary Zoroastrian ceremonies eschew the use of any mind-altering substances and, anyway, no one knows what the haoma really was in ancient times. This may be true, but it’s not very persuasive as an argument against the Quaintances. American law doesn’t permit giving exemptions to only those religions which are old enough or religious practices which are old enough.
Deborah Pruitt, a cultural anthropologist and college professor in Oakland, Calif., testified for the defense that mainstream religions typically view new religious forms as cults or charlatans, but said they are no less genuine.
She distinguished faith-based religions that rely on institutionalized doctrine passed down by specialists from those that rely on direct experience. Christian pentecostals, Wiccans, voodoo practitioners, Sufi dancers and members of the Native American Church all have characteristics of religions that rely on direct experience for contact with deities or spirits, she said. Pruitt is raising an important point here: there is a lot of prejudice against “new” religious movements, but just because a religious group or movement is new doesn’t make it less valid than older religions. I don’t just mean this from an epistemological perspective (i.e., a new religious group’s claims are no less likely to be true than an older group’s claims), but also from a legal perspective. The law cannot give exemptions and benefits to members of older, established religious groups on the basis of protecting their right to freely exercise their religion but then deny the same exemptions and benefits to members of newer, smaller religious groups.
If the exemptions really are necessary for adherents of older religions to exercise their religion, then denying them to adherents of newer religions is a deliberate attempt to infringe on their free exercise of religion and discriminate against them. On the other hand, if denying exemptions to members of newer religious groups won’t have a significant impact on their ability to practice their religion, then the exemptions aren’t really needed by adherents of older religions. The Constitution — not to mention basic logic and morality — demands nothing less.
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