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Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism. Ed. by Wouter J. Hanegraaff with Antoine Faivre, Roelof van der Broek, and Jean-Pierre Brach. Leiden: Brill, 2005. 2 vols. 1228 pp. $289.00US.
A Review by J. Gordon Melton

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Of the several enterprises undertaken in the last generation in religious studies, few have been as arduous as that of defining Western Esotericism as a recognizable major tradition in religion—one that has existed for the late two millennia over against the overwhelmingly dominant Western Christian tradition. Given Christianity's special role in the West, Esotericism has existed largely on the social and intellectual fringe—at various times being labeled heretical and becoming the object of persecution. Attempts to suppress it caused the loss of many of its defining documents, while authorities hounded many of his large representative groups out of existence.

Even today, in spite of an amazing comeback, Esotericism remains a decided minority and has yet to found many of the institutions that would give it greater stability and continuity, especially institutions of higher learning (the equivalent of Christina seminaries). However, it is the significant growth of the Esoteric community, especially in Europe and North America in the last fifty years, that makes this new volume, the Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism, both possible and necessary.

Much has been written about Esotericism in the last two centuries. There are even a number of scholarly books and articles though the majority still reflect the Christian disdain for the subject, usually dismissing it as mere occultism. Esotericism has faired little better from the hands of post-Enlightenment secular scholars most of whom have seen its growth as a real threat to Western culture, or at best dismissed it as irrelevant superstition (like religion in general). In spite of the anti-Esotericism bias, with the steady opening of social space since the seventeenth century, the esoteric community has made steady progress and now counts its adherents in the millions.

What we call Esotericism is a set of more-or-less related movements, personalities, and volumes of writings that have appeared through the centuries, which offer a quite distinct religious vision from that being professed by orthodox Christianity. Given the differences within the Christian tradition (whose umbrella covers such diverse groups as Roman Catholicism, the Presbyterian Church, the Hutterites and the Jehovah's Witnesses), it is not surprising to find a similar diversity among Esoteric groups and writers. The spectrum would include ancient Valentinians, medieval alchemists, and modern theosophists, and at every period that is the same gap between elite intellectuals and popular practitioners found in all traditions. Contemporary expressions of the tradition would include New Thought mystics, commercial astrologers, sex magicians, and UFO channelers.

With roots in the ancient Mediterranean Basin, Esotericism emerged clearly in the second century CE around a variety of teachers often grouped together as the Gnostics. One quite legitimate way, but only one, of looking at the tradition is to see it as the history of those groups and teachers who have continued, rediscovered, and/or perpetuated the themes articulated in the early Gnostic texts. In saying that, as with most assertions about Esotericism, one must immediately step back and in this case, for instance, acknowledge the role of other early movements like Hermeticism and Neo-Platonism. That being said, there is widespread agreement that the tradition passed through movements like the Bogomils, the Cathars, Kabbalah, alchemy, and Rosicrucianism. Today the movement exists in literally hundreds of groups and organizations and tens of thousands of individual practitioner-believers.

So what is it that ties these people together through the centuries? Though a few particular groups and teachers might dissent from any one or two of these ideas, most would find a commonality in a set of affirmations that distinguish the esoteric gestalt from that of traditional Christianity. First, Esoterics generally affirm a radically transcendent deity about which little to nothing can be said or known, and to whom personal attributes are inappropriate. God is at best known via the spiritual cosmos, which exists not as the creation of this deity by fiat, but by emanations of his spiritual substance. The material world is ultimately unreal, metaphysically speaking. Humans are thus not as distinct from God as Christians affirm—creatures vs. Creator—but are part of the spiritual world and ultimately not qualitatively unlike God.

The idea of an utterly transcendent unknowable God among Esoteric believers has had a variety of consequences. For example, it has promoted an emphasis on intermediary beings, who may show up in a variety of guises from angels to ufonauts; it can and has led to atheistic forms of Esotericism, there being little difference between an inaccessible God and no God; and it has usually created religious lifestyles void of worship, the transcendent deity having no use for such acknowledgement.

Esotericism also has a different idea of the human condition, usually beginning with the entrapment of the spiritual essence of the individual self in the metaphysical unreality of matter. The work of the esotericist is to discover his/her true nature and then find the means of escaping the situation in which s/he is found. The answer to the human condition is some form of gnosis, esoteric wisdom, which may be seen as mere knowledge, secret wisdom, or a mystic knowing that only comes in the experience of it. The tools utilized to gain such gnosis include the whole spectrum of occult arts and a range of spiritual exercises from meditation to kundalini yoga, from divination to magic.

It is this tradition of esoteric teachings, leadership, and movements that are covered in the new Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism. It comes at a timely moment and will be recognized as a watershed in the development of the study of its subject matter. It is the first reference work to benefit fully from the last two decades of work on the Esoteric tradition and it authors includes many if not most of those scholars who have developed some special expertise in the field. Editor Woulter Hanegraaf, as chair of the first department of Esoteric Studies, located at the University of Amsterdam, is eminently qualified to oversee this project. Thus this volume can be seen as an expression of the present state of Esotericism studies.

The 1220+-page work includes only some three hundred entries, which allows some in-depth coverage of the selected topics. Approximately half of the entries are biographical studies of the most important representatives of the tradition through the centuries. A few will be familiar, but many are quite unknown outside the still small community of Esotericism scholars. These biographical entries are among the major contributions of the Dictionary to the larger community of religious studies scholars and historians. The bibliography will provide guidance to librarians attempting to build representative collections as the study of esotericism is added to college curricula.

The next largest selection of entries cover the major Esoteric movements. Most contemporary practitioners will find either their individual group only mentioned in passing if at all, but the big movements both past and present are highlighted. Finally, a few entries call attention to some ideas well known for their ubiquity throughout the Esoteric world. Again, while possibly no concept is accepted absolutely everywhere, these ideas are encountered enough as to assist anyone in identifying an Esoteric group or book—correspondences, secrecy, number symbolism, orientalism, reincarnation—to name a few.

Each entry is followed by an extended set of bibliographical references that will greatly extend the Dictionary's usefulness as a desk reference.

In recent years, I have on several occasions delivered lectures to audiences of scholars of New Religions, especially ones with young scholars, in which I have advocated their redirecting their focus to Esoteric groups and movements. This Dictionary is another sign that Esotericism will be an area of significant research and knowledge expansion in the years immediate ahead of us.

There is a massive agenda for the next generation of scholars. There is first and foremost a need to continue the gathering and preserving of the documents produced by the many contemporary Esoteric groups. Much literature is still produced informally and circulated to a relatively few. There is the on-going scholarly task, still in its infancy, of building the history of Esotericism, both as a social movement that has helped shape Western culture and an intellectual movement that has passed ideas and perspectives through the centuries. To balance the loss of so many documents, perhaps permanently, we have been blessed with new methodologies that help us tease information from the material we have.

The Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism is a must for any who would consider themselves a scholar of Esotericism, and should at the very least be in every academic library in the English-speaking world.

And having rendered proper homage to a book that must get four stars in any review, I will venture one statement less than praise. If the Dictionary has any shortcoming, it would be in its treatment of Freemasonry, not that there is anything wrong with the information offered, but that the single entry on Freemasonry is so short--a mere six pages compared to alchemy (46 pages) or hermetics (70 pages). This brevity truly represents an oversight. Freemasonry remains the hidden key to understanding the modern development of Esotericism. It inherited the thrust created by Rosicrucianism, was the vehicle for the radical expansion of Esotericism in the eighteenth century, and a supplied knowledge, rituals, organizational models, and/or founding personnel for all of the major new nineteenth-century Esoteric movements. The politicization and secularization of Freemasonry in the late-nineteenth century should not obscure the essential Gnostic myth that underlies it and the hard-to-underestimate role it played in shaping the contemporary community.

Phyllis D. Osabutey


The Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, Rev. Frimpong Manso has directed the Presbyterian Education Foundation to make a presentation of ¢20 million to the La Presbyterian Senior Secondary School (LA PRESEC) for the provision of basic facilities in the school as part of an immediate measure to revive the school.

This was announced by the General Manager of Presbyterian schools, Rev. S.K. Mensah at a fund- raising ceremony organized on Sunday by the school's Board of Governors (BOG) in collaboration with the La Bethel Presby church.


On Thursday, June 16, The Chronicle reported the chairman of the BOG, Professor Ablade Glover as having hinted that the school faced an imminent closure by the Ghana Education Service (GES) if nothing was done about the poor state of facilities in the school.

The Board's chairman was further reported as having said that the low morale among both teaching staff and students, which he said was responsible for the poor performance of students in the Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (SSCE) over the last couple of years, was the result of the poor state of facilities in the school.

Professor Glover has accordingly called on all stakeholders, past students, citizens of La and well wishers to help save the once prestigious LA SALEM School, which was converted into a secondary school during the commencement of the new education reforms In response to the professor's call, the La Presby District has also pledged an amount of ¢26m to be released to the school in the course of the week, in addition to an ¢8.8m raised on Sunday by the La Bethel congregation in support of the school project. This brings together a total of ¢54.8m to kick-start the first phase of the program to resuscitate the school.

The resident pastor, Rev. Dr. Mensah, who is also the local manager and a member of the school's board, told The Chronicle that a special fund had been set up for the school and by this, there is going to be an identification of 300 prominent citizens of La to give a donation of 1m each.

In addition, he said, 2000 members within the Christian community in the district would be contacted to give monthly dues of ¢20,000 over a five-year period to raise about ¢2.4b to complete a three-block storey-building for the school.

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He noted that the fund raising which was without chairpersons or special guests was to inform members of the church that the Presbyterian church of Ghana now has the full ownership of the school and to sensitize them about the need to support its development ahead of well-organized functions to raise funds for the school.

He expressed his gratitude to the school's Parent Teachers Association (PTA) and individuals who continue to support the school and expressed hope that in a matter of time, LA PRESEC would rub shoulders with other schools in the metropolis.

Eric Elouga


Un culte solennel a conclu dimanche quatre mois de manifestations pour l'anniversaire de cette église presbytérienne.

Entre la piété que commande leur statut religieux et la joie qu'exigeait la circonstance, les fidèles de l'Eglise presbytérienne de Cameroun (Epc) Marie-Gocker de Yaoundé, ont achevé hier, lors d'un culte solennel de clôture, les manifestations marquant leur quarantième anniversaire. A l'intérieur du temple principal situé près de la Beac à Elig-Essono, trois tentes montées et deux bâtiments de culte adjacents, ont accueilli plus de 1500 chrétiens, venus assister à cette cérémonie de clôture en trois temps. D'abord un office religieux en plusieurs articulations et ponctué des interventions de nombreux théologiens. Ensuite une procession d'offrandes de fidèles, en vue de la constitution d'un fonds pour l'élargissement du temple. Et enfin, le partage des chrétiens autour du buffet fraternel préparé pour la circonstance.


Alors que le service protocolaire s'activait à l'extérieur, afin justement d'apprêter ce repas de fin, l'ancien d'Eglise et président du comité d'organisation, Jean Auguste Ngan, revient sur le film des quatre mois d'activités qui constituent l'ossature de la célébration de ce quarantenaire. Premier temps fort, un culte inaugural organisé le 27 février de cette année, en commémoration de la date d'installation de la paroisse Marie-Gocker, le 28 février 1965. Les autres activités qui constituaient la deuxième articulation de la célébration, étaient essentiellement composées d'exposés, de tables-rondes et d'ateliers, organisés lors de la dernière semaine de chaque mois. En rapport avec le thème choisi pour ce quarantenaire, " Renforcement de l'unité des Chrétiens ", l'apprentissage de l'adoration de Dieu et des bases de la mission de l'Eglise, le rôle de la femme/mère au sein du ministère paroissial ou encore la formation pratique des responsables de l'Eglise, ont été au centre de ces travaux. De nombreuses descentes sur le terrain ont été réalisées par les associations et comités de Marie-Gocker, avec notamment des évangélisations dans les quartiers Ngousso et Nkolondom où des églises viennent d'être implantées, ainsi qu'une remise de dons des femmes de la paroisse, à l'orphelinat de Nkomo.

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Des journées portes ouvertes ont aussi été organisées pour montrer qu'au-delà de l'idée répandue selon laquelle Marie-Gocker est une Eglise d'élites, il ne s'agit que d'une paroisse comme les autres.

Après quatre mois fastes et instructifs, les fidèles de Marie-Gocker n'ont pas conclu leurs manifestations sans jeter un regard prospectif sur l'avenir et le développement de leur temple. C'est ainsi que dans l'optique d'un agrandissement prochain avec les constructions d'aires de sport et de foyers, une quête spéciale a été ouverte.

Les candidats à la guérison sont alignés en rang d'oignon : hommes, femmes et enfants, portent une petite pancarte indiquant leur âge et les maux dont ils souffrent : cancer de l'estomac, organe faible, attaque du malin, mauvaise haleine, chômage, problème conjugal... La croisade a lieu au coeur de la nuit à Ikotun, un quartier populaire de Lagos, la gigantesque capitale économique du Nigeria ; elle réunit entre autres des Nigérians, des Suisses, des Sud-Africains et des Britanniques. Parmi les apprentis pasteurs, de jeunes Européens. «Il n'y a pas d'âge pour être un vecteur de l'Esprit saint», explique Christina, une Anglaise de 23 ans, vêtue d'un chemisier rose vaporeux et d'un pantalon noir. Sur fond de gospel tonitruant, dans une ambiance de Star Academy évangélique, les apprentis touchent les malades en criant «out !» (dehors). Ces derniers s'effondrent en crachant. Courant en tous sens, des cameramen en sueur alternent les travellings hallucinés et les zooms sur les flaques de vomi. Les transes atteignent leur paroxysme lorsque entre en scène le prophète de l'Eglise.

Pauvreté absolue. Ces scènes miraculeuses seraient anecdotiques si elles ne réunissaient pas des centaines de milliers de Nigérians, dont les plus hautes autorités de l'Etat. Chasser les démons, trouver un emploi, guérir du sida ou du cancer, trouver un conjoint, chaque problème de la vie quotidienne a, soi-disant, sa solution divine. C'est ce qui explique l'effarant succès des Eglises pentecôtistes. Environ 80 % des 60 millions de chrétiens nigérians fréquenteraient l'un de ces cultes, exclusivement ou en plus d'une Eglise conventionnelle. Certains ont été importés des Etats-Unis, d'autres, s'inspirant du modèle américain, ont été fondés au Nigeria voici plusieurs dizaines d'années. Le boom date des années 90, marquées par l'appauvrissement d'une population sous le joug de dictatures brutales et prédatrices. Malgré l'avènement d'un régime civil en 1999, près de 70 % des 130 millions de Nigérians vivent dans un état de pauvreté absolue avec moins de 1 dollar par jour.

Sur fond de ruine des services publics et de chômage, les pentecôtistes affichent une insolente et séduisante prospérité, les pasteurs roulent en Mercedes ou en BMW, les églises et les camps de prière poussent comme des champignons. «Les associations chrétiennes estudiantines servent de terrain d'entraînement, explique Samuel Oyim, professeur de religion à l'université d'Ibadan. Après le service national, les jeunes diplômés fondent une Eglise et, quelques mois plus tard, ils achètent des maisons et des voitures. De nos jours, au Nigeria, c'est le plus court chemin à la richesse.»

Alpha et omega des prêches, l'argent est présenté comme une bénédiction divine. «La Bible contient les principes du management, affirme la courtière Hauwa Audu, membre de la Chapelle des gagnants. Si on applique ces principes on obtient des résultats dans sa vie personnelle ou dans les affaires. Je ne crois pas que le christianisme ait quelque chose à voir avec la pauvreté.» Gagnante, championne, triomphante, les Eglises rivalisent d'épithètes pour attirer des fidèles en quête de financial breakthrough (réussite financière).

Pression morale. Mais, pour recevoir, il faut d'abord donner. Entre les quêtes lors des services hebdomadaires et la dîme mensuelle, un membre offre 30 % au moins de son revenu annuel à son Eglise. Daouda, un musulman converti il y a six ans, se déleste ainsi d'une bonne partie de ses 70 euros de salaire mensuel : «La Bible dit qu'il faut payer des offrandes et la dîme. Si je le fais, tout ira bien, sinon, ça veut dire que je désobéis aux commandements de Dieu !» Cette pression morale est savamment entretenue par les pasteurs sur des pauvres qui forment le principal contingent des donateurs. Selon Olufunke Adeboye, professeur à l'université de Lagos, la plus populaire des Eglises pentecôtistes au Nigeria, la Redeemed Christian Church of God, a essaimé dans une cinquantaine de pays. En plus de 7 000 communautés au Nigeria, elle a fondé 44 crèches et écoles, une université, elle dirige une agence de voyages, quatre banques, une télévision par satellite. Enfin, elle vient d'acquérir pour des dizaines de millions de dollars une grande propriété au Texas.

Visées messianiques. Si la plupart des cultes semblent préoccupés avant tout par la récolte de la dîme, certains affichent des visées messianiques. Construite pour accueillir chaque dimanche 55 000 personnes, la Chapelle des gagnants, à Lagos, voisine avec une université flambant neuve, où 4 000 étudiants prennent des cours de mécanique, d'ingénierie et de management. Depuis 2002, la Chapelle affirme y avoir investi 15 millions de dollars par an. Son modèle est l'université évangélique américaine Oral Roberts. «Dieu est au centre du cursus, nous avons ce que nous appelons le concept de l'homme total, complètement formaté, esprit, âme et corps, explique le recteur Nathaniel Yemi. Notre objectif est de former une nouvelle génération de leaders qui créeront les changements dont cette nation et l'Afrique ont un besoin urgent.»

Le discours qui prône la foi en Jésus comme seule voie du salut n'est pas un vecteur de division au sud, majoritairement chrétien. Mais, plus au nord, les pentecôtistes sont en première ligne dans les affrontements entre chrétiens et musulmans. Une situation d'autant plus explosive qu'au Nigeria l'extrémisme chrétien trouve son pendant : l'islam radical. Ces dernières années, douze Etats sur les trente-six que compte la fédération ont rétabli la charia, la loi islamique.

Religion and European Integration: Observations from America

by Peter L. Berger


[...] The comparison between Europe and the United States is theoretically strategic for the sociology of religion. Secularity (simply put, the decline in religious belief and practice) has commonly been seen as an inexorable consequence of modernization. Yet the United States, which can hardly be described as less modern than Western Europe, is robustly religious when compared with the latter. Reference is often made to "American exceptionalism" (sometimes favorably, sometimes not so). America is undoubtedly exceptional in many ways, but not when it comes to religion. Most of the world is religious, as is America – Europe is the exception (as stated in the title of a recent book by the British sociologist Grace Davie) – and it is that exception which begs for explanation. [...]

The conventional distinction is between "religious America" and "secular Europe". Things are rather more complicated - I will get to this in a moment. But, looked at from an American perch, there is something ironic about the current arguments for mention of the religious (or "Judaeo-Christian", or "Judaeo-Christian-Islamic") basis of so-called "European values" in the proposed constitution. The only mention of religion in the constitution of the United States is in the First Amendment, which both guarantees the free exercise of religion and prohibits its establishment by government – no mention of any religious basis for "American values". (The Declaration of Independence, which does contain some very vague language of this sort, is not part of the constitution.) Yet this omission has not been an obstacle to an exuberant development of religion. Could it be that it has actually been helpful to this development ? Alexis de Tocqueville certainly thought so. Is there a lesson here for Europe ?

Be this as it may, there are both differences and similarities in the place of religion on the two continents. (More precisely, the comparison refers to Western and Central Europe, the vortex of the alleged secularity. As one goes east and southeast from this region, one finds a very different situation.)

What is different?

All objective indices of religious behavior are much higher in America – in terms of church attendance, recruitment to the clergy, material support of the churches. There has been a high degree of "de-institutionalization" of religion in Europe. Both the Catholic and the Protestant churches are almost everywhere in a state of institutional crisis, with only some relatively small enclaves of traditional "churchliness".

By contrast, church life in America continues vigorously. There has been a decline in participation in the so-called "mainline" Protestant churches, much less so among Catholics. But there is one American phenomenon that is almost completely absent in Europe – the exuberant presence of Evangelical Protestantism, with some forty million Americans describing themselves as "born-again Christians". The same difference shows up in subjective indices – expressions of belief in God, salvation though Jesus Christ, life after death, and for that matter any of the traditional Christian doctrines.

If [Danièle] Hervieu-Léger is right (as in her recent book “Catholicisme, la fin d'un monde”), there has also been a decline in Europe of what she calls the "civilizational" role of religion – that is, the way in which entire cultures were shaped by Catholic, or Protestant, values, regardless of the fate of the churches. Thus America can still be seen as a Protestant civilization in a way in which, say, Scandinavia cannot.

But what is similar?

The most important similarity is individuation. This means that religion is no longer embedded in the culture in a taken-for-granted manner, but rather becomes an object of individual choices. Hervieu-Léger has called this phenomenon "bricolage" (the term suggests tinkering with a Lego set). Robert Wuthnow, referring to America, has used the term "patchwork religion" to describe the same phenomenon. On both continents this includes the people who say that they are not religious but "spiritual". Many of them are perpetual seekers (Hervieu-Léger calls them pilgrims) rather than resolute affirmers of this or that faith. In Europe these people express their religiosity in very diffuse ways, typically outside the churches. In America they frequently set up churches. The prototypical American church of this kind is the Unitarian-Universalist denomination, which officially defines itself as a community of seekers. (A telling joke: How does the Unitarian version of the Lord's Prayer begin ? "To Whom It may Concern".) Significantly, the denomination, though small, has experienced healthy growth.

I would argue that this phenomenon (and not secularity) is indeed a result of modernity, which pluralizes the life-world of individuals and makes taken-for granted certainty (in religion as in everything else) hard to come by. This pluralization is caused by a variety of modern developments – urbanization, mass migration, literacy, mass communication media. All of these confront the individual with a diversity of worldviews, value systems and lifestyles, between which he is compelled to choose. (Jean-Paul Sartre's notion of "being condemned to freedom" is doubtful as a description of the general human condition, but it applies neatly to the modern condition.) Modernity can occur under different political and legal regimes, but the pluralization it engenders is obviously enhanced under democratic regimes which guarantee religious liberty. When the churches can no longer rely on the police to fill their pews, they are forced to compete for the allegiance of uncoerced consumers of their services. This is so even in countries (like France, or Sweden) where one traditional church nominally contains the majority of the population. Even if no other churches are available in the individual's neighborhood, he is free not to adhere to a church at all or/and to put together his own religio-moral "patchwork".

Why the difference?

As already indicated, ever since de Tocqueville there has been the classical explanation of the vitality of American religion in terms of the separation of state and church. This is almost certainly a valid explanation. The withdrawal of state support forced American churches to compete, and competition makes for vital institutions. (It was possible to see this long before the recent introduction of economic theory into the sociology of religion by Rodney Stark and others, though it makes sense to think of a religious market in which certain economic processes occur.) Equally important, though, churches that are not identified with the state do not incur the resentments which, sooner or later, will be directed against the latter.

But this cannot be the whole story. If it were, the separation of church and state in France, more rigid than the American one, has now lasted for almost exactly a century, yet there are no signs that it has vitalized religious institutions in that country. Indeed, as soon as real religious liberty is introduced in a country, even if it still has an official religious establishment, there will be a de facto separation of church and state. This has long been the case in the democracies of Western Europe, with no discernible vitalization of the churches ensuing. There must be some other factors to account for the difference. I will mention three possible factors.

One, the chronology and the intensity of religious pluralism in America: It occurred from the beginnings of European settlement in America, with a large number of Protestant churches spreading throughout the colonies, none big enough to do in the others. Attempts at religious establishment, in New England by Congregationalists and in Virginia by Anglicans, soon failed because of this pluralism. The constitution of the Union then only ratified the pluralism that had preceded it. As Richard Niebuhr had pointed out, America generated a new type of religious institution, the "denomination", defined as a church which recognizes the right to exist of other churches. Even churches to whom such recognition is theologically repugnant are forced nevertheless to behave "denominationally" in the American situation. This is notably the case with the Roman Catholic church.

Two, again for historically explainable reasons, Americans have developed a genius for creating voluntary associations: Let three Americans be stranded on a desert island, and they will start four neighborhood associations. (The conventional view is that American culture is very individualistic. I think this is a mistake. Americans are much less individualistic than other Western cultures such as the French. Rather, they are "associationist" – a different matter altogether.) American religious pluralism has benefited from this cultural trait.

And three, the status of intellectuals differs greatly as between the two continents. Raymond Aron once called France the paradise of intellectuals, America their hell. This is a slight exaggeration, but it is still a valid insight. From the beginning America created a highly commercial culture, and businessmen tend to have a low opinion of intellectuals. This difference became very important for religion on both continents as primary education became universal and compulsory. In many European countries education has been a function of the central state. The cadres of teachers were then drawn from the lower ranks of an intelligentsia which tended to be more secularized than the general population.

By contrast, in America, until very recently, education was entirely run by local communities. The results are simple: In Europe, unless a religious school was nearby, children were exposed to secularizing indoctrination regardless of the wishes of their parents; in America, the parents could fire the teachers whose instruction they disliked. It may be added that the American Enlightenment, and thus the intelligentsia it spouted, was much less anti-clerical than its European cousin – which, again, may be related to the fact that there was no dominant "clerisy" against which Enlightened spirits could fulmigate (to paraphrase Voltaire, no infamy to be crushed).

Thus America is indeed different, but not without significant similarities. [...] America has been part of a “bourgeois Protestant” axis Amsterdam-London-Boston which early on developed a tradition of relative tolerance. The principle of voluntary association intensified as this axis moved westward and its tradition of tolerance embraced an ever-wider circle of religious groups – first within the Protestant fold, then taking in Catholics and Jews, and by now embracing any religious group that eschews ritual cannibalism.

What is the integrative power of Europe?

[...] If one asks how religion may relate to European integration, one must look at the role of religion in the public space of societies. In most of Western Europe one finds the phenomenon described by Grace Davie as "believing without belonging". As mentioned before, people put together (“bricoler”) some sort of religious worldview, but without actively adhering to a church. But there is also the obverse phenomenon – "belonging without believing". In this connection Davie has spoken of "vicarious religion": Many people don't make use of the church, but they want it to be there – just in case it may be needed, or just as a symbolic presence which one does not want to miss. Davie is correct, I think, in finding that such vicariousness is significant. Take Germany: The state collects a church tax and hands it on to the churches. This Kirchensteuer amounts to about eight percent of an individual's income tax – a not inconsiderable amount of money. This tax, unlike every other tax, is not compulsory. To be exempted from it, an individual merely has to declare himself without any religious affiliation (Konfessionslos). Not surprisingly, many people have made use of this easy way of increasing their disposable income. What is remarkable that most have not, including many who never set foot in a church. Their motives are often vague, yet finally quite clear: They want the church to be there as a symbolic presence, as some sort of moral authority, even if they do not need it at this point in their lives. But the need for this symbolic presence may suddenly manifest itself in public space in moments of crisis [...]. Vicariousness is not the same as irrelevance. It is conceivable that a renewed public role of the churches would emerge if Europe were subjected to a more long-lasting crisis. [...]

© IWM / Berger 2004

Mother of bomb suspect denies his guilt
July 22, 2005 - 11:24AM

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The mother of suspected London bomber Germaine Lindsay has tearfully described him as a good son and said she would not accept his guilt without proof.

Maryam McLeod, wearing a traditional Islamic robe and veil over her face during a news conference in Grenada, called the July 7 bombings "horrific" and said she's struggling to cope.

"I need evidence to believe that my baby could ever harm anyone, let alone kill, injure and traumatise a community," McLeod said.

"I am still in shock and know not how to grieve for my son," she added. "Therefore, I grieve first for the victims, ones who are dead and ones who are alive. May Allah forgive our living and our dead and have mercy upon us all."

British police said Lindsay died in the worst of the suicide attacks - a train bomb that killed at least 26 people between King's Cross and Russell Square stations.

McLeod, who, like her son, is a Jamaican-born British citizen, was accompanied by her lawyer and Grenadian husband.

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AdvertisementAt times, she sobbed quietly while speaking of her 19-year-old son, who she said preferred to be called Jamal.

"Jamal ... was the best son I could have ever hoped for," she said. "I respected and admired him so very much because he was so responsible when I last saw him in 2004."

McLeod did not elaborate about her last meeting with her son.

She said Lindsay had been a loving father and husband and called their shared Islamic faith "a religion of peace and justice".

"It is a balanced religion that does not condone or entertain extremism," she said. "Extremism is a newly invented matter and all newly invented matters lead to the hell's fire."

Britain's Sunday Times newspaper has reported that US intelligence officials had warned Britain that Lindsay was on a terrorist watch list but that the British domestic intelligence service, MI5, failed to monitor him.

Fifty-six people, including Australian man Sam Ly, died and about 700 others were injured in the morning rush-hour attacks on three London Underground trains and a double-decker bus.

McLeod said her family was cooperating with authorities and asked the media to allow her to "grieve peacefully".

Lindsay's father, Nigel Lindsay, lives in Jamaica and said last week he had not seen his son since he visited the Caribbean island when he was 11.

After 35 years of bombs and blood a quiet voice ends the IRA's war

Angelique Chrisafis, Ireland correspondent
Friday July 29, 2005
The Guardian

The IRA yesterday declared that its war against Britain was over. Even in the long debased hyperbole of historic moments in the Northern Ireland peace process, this was a monumental announcement.
Its statement, unprecedented in its clarity, was delivered on a DVD by a soft-spoken IRA volunteer called Seana Walsh, who at 50 is typical of the now middle-aged rank and file of the organisation. He had spent 21 years in prison and was one of the IRA "blanket men" during the hunger strike and dirty protests in the Maze prison in the 1970s and 1980s.

Standing in front of an Irish tricolour, he announced that from 4pm a "formal end to the armed campaign" had been ordered. All IRA units were ordered to "dump arms". The IRA vowed to complete its long-running decommissioning process as quickly as possible by "verifiably [putting] its arms beyond use".

The retired Canadian general John de Chastelain will oversee the final acts of decommissioning, which could be completed within a month.

Although the statement did not address the thorny issue of criminality - which has seen the IRA blamed for December's £26.5m Northern Bank robbery and the murder of the Catholic father Robert McCartney - it makes it clear that "volunteers must not engage in any other activities whatsoever".

Eleven years after the first ceasefire, the British and Irish governments hailed it as the key that could unlock the final course of the peace process.

In a highly choreographed press conference in a south Dublin hotel, the Sinn Féin leader, Gerry Adams, described the statement as a "truly momentous and defining point in the search for a lasting peace with justice" and said the IRA had made a unilateral "magnanimous, principled and generous" move.

But asked why the IRA did not specifically say it would end all criminal activities, he shot back: "What part of 'any other activities whatsoever' do people not understand?"

He made a dramatic appeal to the hardline Democratic Unionist leader, Ian Paisley, who has refused to sit down at Stormont with Sinn Féin while the IRA still exists. "Let's talk, let's engage, let's not let this opportunity be wasted," he said.

Mr Adams's take on this historic moment was also clearly aimed at hearts and minds in the Irish Republic.

With Sinn Féin's vote on the rise, it stands a real chance of soon having a place in a coalition Dublin government if the IRA proves true to its word. Mr Adams was clearly signalling that the ultimate prize was simultaneously holding power across Ireland in a power-sharing assembly in the north and a coalition government in the south.

Tony Blair said the IRA announcement was a "step of unparalleled magnitude ... The statement is of a different order than anything before. It is what we have striven for and worked for since the Good Friday agreement".

The taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, said it was "a great day for Ireland and Britain" but in a joint statement with Mr Blair he cautioned that the IRA's words must be "borne out by actions".

The Northern Ireland secretary, Peter Hain, writing in the Guardian, said: "In this new environment it will be the responsibility of unionism to respond positively.

"Provided that the actions have followed the words and the IRA is locked into a democratic and peaceful path, then we will want early negotiations towards the resumption of shared government through a resurrected Northern Ireland assembly."

Already last night difficulties were rearing up.

Sinn Féin refuses to recognise the ceasefire watchdog, the Independent Monitoring Commission, which will verify if the IRA has indeed ceased military operations, punishment attacks and all forms of robbery and smuggling it is alleged to be involved in.

CorSera 05 agosto 2005

Il documento, conosciuto come Codex Sinaticus, è del IV secolo D.C.
Presto il testo più antico della Bibbia sul Web
Un team di esperti sta lavorando alla digitalizzazione del testo. Negli ultimi 20 anni solo quattro studiosi l'hanno potuto consultare



LONDRA - La più antica versione della Bibbia, risalente al IV secolo D.C. sarà presto sul web. Un team di esperti sta trasferendo sul computer il più importante e prezioso documento della tradizione cristiana arrivato fino a noi.
STORIA Il documento, conosciuto anche come Codex Sinaticus, in origine era considerato come una delle 50 copie della Sacra Bibbia commissionate dall'Imperatore Costantino dopo la sua conversione al Cristianesimo. Il codex Sinaticus, scritto in antico greco, deve il suo nome al Monastero di Santa Caterina del Sinai (Egitto) dove venne fu completato nel IV secolo D.C. La Bibbia più antica del mondo adesso è custodita in gran parte alla British Library a King's Cross (Londra) che acquistò il famoso manoscritto per 100.000 sterline nel 1933. Nella biblioteca londinese sono custodite 347 delle 400 pagine, mentre il resto è diviso tra la biblioteca di Lipsia, la biblioteca nazionale Russa si San Pietroburgo ed il monastero di Santa Caterina in Egitto.
VECCHIO TESTAMENTO IL codex contiene la più antica versione del nuovo testamento e la Bibbia dei Settanta, la più antica versione greca del Vecchio Testamento tra le quali alcuni passi ancora oggi considerati apocrifi. Il manoscritto termina con due antichi testi cristiani tra cui vi è una lettera attribuita all'apostolo Barnaba.
TESTO PREZIOSO Sono quattro gli stati che stanno lavorando alla digitalizzazione dell'intero testo: Gran Bretagna, Germania, Russia e Egitto. Gli esperti stanno facendo un'analisi elebaorato del manoscritto per scoprire se sotto il testo biblico sia nascosto un testo cancellato. L'opera è talmente prezioso che negli ultimi 20 anni solo 4 studiosi hanno ottenuto il permesso di consultarlo. Fra qualche anno la tecnologia permetterà a chiunque di studiarlo.
SITO WEB Secondo Scott Mckendrick, capo del dipartimento manoscritti antichi e medievali della British Library ci vorranno circa quattro anni prima che il codice sia interamente on-line «E' necessario che il manoscritto sia fotografato, conservato, poi bisogna ritrascrivere l'intero testo e presentarlo sotto la nuova forma elettronica». La British Library svilupperà anche un sito web dove presenterà il manoscritto. Naturalmente il sito non sarà costruito solo per gli addetti ai lavori. «Ci saranno una serie di spiegazione sulle differenti intepretazioni del codex in grado di soddisfare tutte le persone che sono interessate a questo manoscritto e alla Cristianità» conclude Scott Mckendrick.

News Item

Jehovah's mum tragic act

07aug05

A DYING mother refused a life-saving blood transfusion despite nurses holding up her newborn son in a desperate attempt to get her to change her mind.

As they cradled the infant in their arms, a woman doctor appealed to the mother, a Jehovah's Witness: "Take a look at your little baby.
This child is more important than your faith."
But 32-year-old Irmgard Christoph shook her head.
Twice she said "No" as her husband at her side nodded in agreement.
Mrs. Christoph died of massive blood loss 13 hours after giving birth to a healthy son, leaving him and a three-year-old sister to be brought up by their mother's sister-in-law.
"We all suffered the whole night. It was a drama none of us ever want to experience again," said Dr Bernd Probach, medical director at the hospital near Munich.
Mrs. Christoph had brought with her an affidavit signed by a solicitor declaring she did not want a blood transfusion in the event of an emergency.
"Immediately after the birth she began to lose blood dramatically,"
Dr Probach said.
"Before we operated we asked her if she would change her mind about a transfusion but she refused.
"After we removed her womb and she recovered consciousness, we twice warned her she would die and the child wouldn't have a mother if she didn't accept a transfusion."
Nurses held the baby in front of her while a woman doctor pointed at the healthy little boy and begged her to look at him and put his future before her religious beliefs.
"Her mother was also at the bedside and we begged her to try to influence her daughter," Dr Probach said.
"But she just told us, 'If I interfere they will get upset and I won't be allowed to see the grandchildren'."
Dr Probach said an official from the Jehovah's Witnesses was also at the hospital in Landau, west of Munich.
"He refused to intervene and even accused us of trying to pressure the mother to reject her faith," he said.
Horst Lambrecht, a local Jehovah's Witness leader, said: "Blood is holy and signifies the life of other people. If she had been forced to break our biblical laws, she would have upset her relationship with God."
However, a relative of the woman said: "We are disgusted. These people are fanatics. This was murder."
"Surely life – and the welfare of two small children – takes precedence over the selfishness of a religion like this?"
The local public prosecutor said the doctors had acted properly.
"As tragic as it may be, we are not empowered to take legal recourse if the woman, because of her religion, chooses to die," he said.

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The Associated Jehovah's Witnesses for Reform on Blood, is a diverse group of Witnesses from over 25 countries, including elders and other organization officials, Hospital Liaison Committee members, doctors and members of the general public. All have volunteered their time and energies in an effort to bring about an end to a tragic and misguided policy that has claimed thousands of lives, many of them children.
Website: www.ajwrb.org
Email: info@ajwrb.org
Please support our educational work, send your contribution to:
AJWRB - P.O. Box 190089 - Boise, ID 83719-0089 U.S.A.
*********************************************************************tghyuj

British student murdered

Chris McGreal in Jerusalem
Friday August 26, 2005
The Guardian


A Jewish religious student from London has been murdered and another wounded in a knife attack in Jerusalem's old city.
Shmeul Mett, 21, from Golders Green, was stabbed with a kitchen knife as he walked through the Christian quarter of the old city after praying at the Wailing Wall on Wednesday night. He was to have been married in a few weeks.

Mr Mett's flatmate, Sam Weissbart, 22, also from Golders Green, was stabbed above the hip by the same attacker, described as an Arab man, but survived after stumbling to a police station.

The stabbing was the first deadly attack in the old city for three years. Police say the incident was caught on CCTV cameras.

Israel's security minister, Gideon Ezra, said on radio: "Without doubt, this attack was committed by a lone Palestinian who was not part of any movement, which will make the search for him more difficult."

After the attack, Orthodox Jews clashed with the Israeli police over a demand that Mr Mett's body be spared an autopsy for religious reasons. Several hundred men protested outside Hadassah hospital and attacked an ambulance. Four of the protesters were arrested and three policemen were injured.

Yesterday morning, the police agreed to a family request not to carry out an autopsy on Mr Mett. His body was buried later after his parents arrived from London.

Both stabbing victims studied at the Gateshead yeshiva, or religious school, before moving to Jerusalem about 18 months ago, where they attended the Mir yeshiva in Jerusalem's Beit Israel neighbourhood. It is one of the largest in the world, with several thousand students.