Amplify’d from www.wired.com

Zimbabwe Prof Arrested, Tortured for Watching Viral Vids

By Sam Gustin

Munyaradzi Gwisai, a lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe’s law school, was showing internet videos about the tumult sweeping across North Africa to students and activists last Saturday, when state security agents burst into his office.

The agents seized laptop computers, DVD discs and a video projector before arresting 45 people, including Gwisai, who runs the Labor Law Center at the University of Zimbabwe. All 45 have been charged with treason — which can carry a sentence of life imprisonment or death — for, in essence, watching viral videos.

Gwisai and five others were brutally tortured during the next 72 hours, he testified Thursday at an initial hearing.

There were “assaults all over the detainees’ bodies, under their feet and buttocks through the use of broomsticks, metal rods, pieces of timber, open palms and some blunt objects,” The Zimbabwean newspaper reports, in an account of the court proceedings.

Under dictator Robert Mugabe, watching internet videos in Zimbabwe can be a capital offense, it would seem. The videos included BBC World News and Al-Jazeera clips, which Gwisai had downloaded from Kubatana, a web-based activist group in Zimbabwe.

Nine out of 10 people lack internet access in Zimbabwe, and cable TV is an extravagant luxury. DStv, the monopoly satellite provider, costs $70 per month –- out of reach for most people in a country where teachers make $150 per month.

Gwisai’s meetings are an opportunity for the Zimbabweans who attend them to catch a rare glimpse of international media.

Gwisai’s wife, Shantha Bloemen, said in an interview with Wired.com that her husband had gathered with students and activists at his Labor Law Center in Harare. The idea was to watch news reports about the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, and then hold an academic discussion about democracy. The title of the seminar: “Revolt in Egypt and Tunisia. What lessons can be learnt by Zimbabwe and Africa.”

“They have regular meetings where they show films and documentaries on different social issues,” said Bloemen, an Australian-American who works for the United Nations in Johannesburg. “With the events of the day being Egypt and Tunisia, they wanted to have a meeting and a discussion around those issues.”

Appearing in a Zimbabwe court Thursday on charges of treason, Gwisai testified that he and five others had been tortured by nine state security agents who beat him and other detainees as they lay on the ground of a cell in the basement of Harare Central prison.

Gwisai described the pain as “indescribable, sadistic and a tragedy for Zimbabwe,” and said the goal of the beatings was to produce a confession on the charge of treason.

Gwisai testified that the meeting was held to watch videos of news reports about the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, and then discuss and debate the concept of democracy -– not to foment a rebellion against Mugabe.

Activists said the Central Intelligence Organization, Zimbabwe’s secret police, had infiltrated the group.

Reached by phone, a relative of one of the detainees who asked to remain anonymous described Mugabe’s crackdown as “a pre-emptive strike.”

“It’s a clear indication of the fear and paranoia of this regime,” the relative said.

Mark Canning, Britain’s ambassador to Zimbabwe, which was a British colony until 1980, condemned the detentions and the treatment of the defendants.

“The charge of treason leveled against the group for apparently watching footage of events in other countries, which is readily and publicly available in the media, is excessive and politically motivated,” Canning said in a statement. “It shows the continuing abuse of the legal system by elements of the state opposed to reform and basic human rights.”

Gwisai’s lawyers have filed several countercharges against the police for torture, illegal detention and poor conditions, among other charges.

Mugabe is known as one of the most ruthless and vicious dictators in the world, and it appears he has managed to terrorize his own people sufficiently that the prospect of any sort of popular uprising is very remote.

“They’re too fractured and fearful,” Bloemen said of Zimbabwe’s opposition movement. “They’re inspired by what has happened in North Africa, but you have to reach a turning point, a critical mass, to convince people it’s worth it and you’re going to succeed. That’s always been the difficult question in Zimbabwe, getting that critical mass.”

The next court hearing is Monday in Harare. Until then, the 45 defendants remain incarcerated.

Friends and colleagues of the detainees have set up a Facebook page calling for their release.

Photo: Munyaradzi Gwisai (Courtesy Shantha Bloemen)

See Also:

Ordered to Attack Own People, Libyan Pilots Crash Their Jets

Desperate Qaddafi Bombs Libyan Protesters

Egypt Hacked Vodafone to Send Pro-Regime Texts

Egypt Arrests 4 Facebook Activists

YouTube Rappers Clown Egypt's Dictator Read more at www.wired.com

 

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Sleeping With Dogs May Spread Plague

Amplify’d from www.wired.com

Lie Down With Dogs, Get Up With Fleas. And Plague

By Maryn McKenna

Do you let your dog sleep on your bed? You do, don’t you? Once you read this story, you might want to rethink that.

There were only two cases of bubonic plague in humans in the United States last year. They were two people, unidentified except for their ages  — 17 and 42 — who lived in the same household in the high desert country of Lake County, Oregon. In August, they both came down with high fevers and hard, lumpy swellings in their groins. The older one, a woman, was very sick, was hospitalized with low pulse and blood pressure, and went into kidney failure.

Physicians couldn’t figure out what was wrong. In her blood, they found a rod-shaped bacterium. Four different diagnostic labs took a crack at identifying it. The first said it was Acinetobacter lwoffii. The second suggested it was Pseudomonas luteola. The third guessed Yersinia pseudotuberculosis.

It wasn’t until 25 days had passed, and the woman and teen had recovered, that the isolate got handed up to the regional health district laboratory, part of the state health department. Then someone identified it for what it was: Yersinia pestis, the bacterial cause of plague.

That rang all kinds of alarm bells. Plague is a Category A bioterrorism agent, the highest ranking of three: It causes severe illness and can pass from person to person. Also, it triggers what planners bluntly term “public panic and social disruption”: For centuries, plague has been something we are very, very scared of.

It also makes people very, very sick. On average in the United States — where there are only a few cases per year — one out of seven people who contract plague die of it. If bubonic plague goes untreated, the death rate goes up to one out of two.

So a case of plague makes public health investigators, and bioterrorism responders, come running. And as recounted by the CDC Friday morning, they ran to Oregon — and found no sign that this rural household had been subjected to a bioterror attack or involved in anything nefarious. But they did find dogs. One of the dogs slept on the bed of one of the humans. They checked the dog, which looked healthy, and in its blood they found evidence that, at some earlier point, the dog had been infected with Y. pestis too.

Where did it come from? The natural hypothesis is fleas.

Rodents — rats, but also mice, chipmunks, prairie dogs, ground squirrels — are a natural reservoir for Y. pestis. Fleas on shipboard rats were the vector that carried the plague from Asia to Europe in the 14th century, eventually killing one-third of the population of the Western world. Fleas from wild rodents are the source of the 10 to 20 cases of human plague in the United States every year. And fleas, apparently, had bitten this dog.

Imagine it: A loved dog, probably a big dog, racing through a dog’s perfect landscape: flat, wild, open, full of things to chase and smell and stick its nose into. Running after chipmunks. Tearing through prairie dog burrows. Romping home happily to flop on the bed and dream, while the fleas that jumped onto it hop off again, from the dog to the quilt, from the quilt to the pillow, from the pillow to the owner sleeping unknowingly alongside.

Imagine that, for a minute. And then go buy a flea collar.

Cite: Centers for Disease Control. “Notes from the Field: Two Cases of Human Plague — Oregon, 2010,” MMWR [Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report], Feb. 25, 2010.

KeokiSeu/Flickr/Creative Commons Read more at www.wired.com

 

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The language of clerical sex abuse and cover up

Amplify’d from reform-network.net

The language of clerical sex abuse and cover up

A recent Philadelphia Inquirer commentary written by a retired priest recognizes the docility of the response of Philadelphia-area Roman Catholics to the recent indictments of three priests for rapes of two boys ages 10 and 14 and of a priest in a supervisory position for child endangerment.

The author is spot on about Catholic docility. In Philadelphia, like elsewhere in the United States, there is no widespread, sustained, take-it-to-the-streets anger about priests raping 10- and 14-year-old boys. There is no strong anger like we have recently seen in Cairo, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen, and the state capitol of Wisconsin. That kind of anger flows from something vital to the average person, namely a better quality of life or a fatter government retirement check, not something inconsequential, like the rape of the neighbor’s 10-year-old boy.

The Inquirer commentary is on the surface learned and sophisticated, but with further analysis is wimpy, effeminate, and tame. In other words it’s clerical. It uses limp language, indicating it was written by a priest who lacks cajones, which the clerical formation process is designed to suppress or eliminate.  The author doesn’t use direct, everyday, no-bullshit language that conveys the depth of the real problem.  This kind of learned but lukewarm writing is what one would expect from commentary by a retired priest in a “family newspaper,” where the use of direct, even vulgar language that conveys tough truth is verboten. The Philadelphia Inquirer is, one must remember, a mainstream American newspaper whose primary objective is to maximize profits by selling products and services to mainstream Americans. The Inquirer is not Bill Maher on HBO or Kathy Griffin on Bravo or YouTube.

Patrons of neighborhood bars and writers of blogs have no such constraints on the language they use. Like Maher and Griffin, they often use real-world, salty language to describe the mushy consciences of the Silent Catholic Majority. The members of this non-exclusive club, both clergy and laity, have outsourced their spirituality and critical-thinking skills to the Vatican in exchange for the Vatican’s guarantee of eternal life. This guarantee is reinforced weekly in a carefully controlled ritual where the “Faithful”  are served their dose of an unholy Kool Aid in exchange for donations that keep the barque of Peter afloat. What many of the Faithful fail to realize is that their donations support priests who rape their sons and daughters (mostly sons, for those of you who have been on another planet for the past decade) and the bishops who shield these monsters from criminal prosecution. You know the men I’m talking about: the men in charge, the men who wear dresses and funny hats, the men whom Mafia godfathers use as role models.

The real men in my neighborhood bar whom I remember from my misspent early years, would often, after drinking enough to lubricate their larynxes, use very direct language  when sharing their opinions about the big issues of the day.

If today they were discussing the current insanity called the Clergy Sex Abuse and Cover Up Crisis, they would call this clerical and lay Silent Catholic Majority wimps, pansies, pussies, whores, and suck-ups. They would say that members of this Silent Catholic Majority are more concerned about being buried in consecrated ground than in protecting little kids from pedophile priests who f— little boys. They would say that Catholics should send the bishops a message that this shit has gotta stop. Like right now.

Frank Douglas | Tucson, AZ | February 24, 2011 Read more at reform-network.net

 

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Philadelphia: Ground Zero for Catholic Bishops

Amplify’d from reform-network.net

FROM MARCI HAMILTON…Philadelphia: Ground Zero for Catholic Bishops

http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/Philadelphia-Ground-Zero-for-Catholic-Bishops-Marci-Hamilton-02-25-2011.html

COMMENT: Professor Hamilton is one of the leaders 0f the survivors rights and children rights movements. The professor’s insightful analysis should cause bishops sleepless nights. The bishops’ legal experts will also have sleepless nights. The bishops will be up because they will have to go the bathroom more often worrying if they’ll do some jail time.  Their lawyers will be up because they’ll be thinking about how to spend the obscene fees they’ll be paid by the bishops to defending the indefensible.

Philadelphia: Ground Zero for Catholic Bishops

Survivors can now see that the tide is turning and many rank and file Catholics now comprehend the depth and the scope of what the Philadelphia Archdiocese has done.

By Marci A. Hamilton, February 25, 2011

Unless you’ve been living under a rock (and I hope you are not), you must have heard about the Philadelphia Grand Jury Report that was issued earlier in February and that detailed the persistent efforts by the Philadelphia Roman Catholic Archdiocese to hide child sex abuse. I talked about it in my last column.

The Report ended with suggested criminal charges against the highest-ranking diocesan official yet, Monsignor Lynn. In what appeared to be a slow-motion response, the Archdiocese finally relieved him of his duties this week. How long does it take an American bishop to figure out that a higher-up charged with the crime of the endangerment of children should be placed on “administrative leave”? Lots longer than it should!

I was one of three attorneys who filed a lawsuit against the Archdiocese, Cardinal Rigali, and Cardinal Bevilacqua soon after the Report on behalf of a victim of two different priests at two different Catholic schools in the Philadelphia area. As the complaint details, he asked the Archdiocese for assistance and they promptly asked him to sign a document that says he “prohibits” the Archdiocese from going to the authorities.

God vs Gavel

Philadelphia: Ground Zero for Catholic Bishops

The Bad Guys and the Good Guys

Egypt Can Learn from Survivors

Egypt Explained

The Conservative Media: Unfair and Unbalanced toward Clergy Abuse

Author Bio »

I have never served as trial counsel before, always as a constitutional or federal law consultant, but I was so thoroughly disgusted that the Archdiocese had spent five years since the first damning Grand Jury Report actually continuing the cover-up, that I could not stay on the sidelines. So your loyal columnist here is taking sides. I really, really hate child sex abuse.

In the wake of the upheaval in Philadelphia, rank and file Catholics are furious, from the folks you see in the grocery store, to elected representatives, to the victims who heretofore had kept silent. Catholics who paid only minimal attention to the first Report suddenly have been reading the 125-page 2011 Report and then the 450-page 2005 Report. These two tomes make for the kind of reading that will keep you up nights, because it causes a cataclysmic shift in worldview.

Before, many survivors had no hope that Philadelphia Catholics would believe or support them. And in Philadelphia, to be Catholic and shunned by Catholics is no way to live. People here identify each other (whether you are Catholic or not) by the local parish! Survivors can now see that the tide is turning and many rank and file Catholics now comprehend the depth and the scope of what the Philadelphia Archdiocese has done.

The shock waves from Philadelphia are not geographically limited. Yesterday, Barbara Blaine of SNAP distributed a document in Philadelphia showing that then-Auxiliary Bishop Bevilacqua, when he was in Brooklyn, learned that a known abuser, Fr. Ferraro, who had been sent away for treatment, wanted to return. What was Bevilacqua’s policy? Keep the perpetrator out of his diocese. Anywhere else was just fine. So he traveled around and abused child after child. SNAP is calling on the Pittsburgh and Brooklyn District Attorneys, where he was stationed before Philadelphia, to institute their own grand jury investigations of Bevilacqua’s handling of abusing priests.

The reason that Philadelphia has become Ground Zero for the Catholic hierarchy is one woman: District Attorney Lynne Abraham, who instituted the first Grand Jury Report. She did not care that there might be legal barriers to charges; she just needed to know about the criminal behavior in her jurisdiction. Because of her efforts, the most recent report, with its criminal charges, was made possible.

We need a Lynne Abraham in every city.

Marci A. Hamilton is the Paul R. Verkuil Chair in Public Law, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University and author of Justice Denied: What America Must Do to Protect Its Children (Cambridge, 2008) and God vs. the Gavel: Religion and the Rule of Law (Cambridge, 2005, 2007).

Hamilton’s column, “God vs. Gavel,” is published every Thursday. Subscribe viaemail or RSS. Read more at reform-network.net

 

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The language of clerical sex abuse and cover up

Amplify’d from reform-network.net

The language of clerical sex abuse and cover up

A recent Philadelphia Inquirer commentary written by a retired priest recognizes the docility of the response of Philadelphia-area Roman Catholics to the recent indictments of three priests for rapes of two boys ages 10 and 14 and of a priest in a supervisory position for child endangerment.

The author is spot on about Catholic docility. In Philadelphia, like elsewhere in the United States, there is no widespread, sustained, take-it-to-the-streets anger about priests raping 10- and 14-year-old boys. There is no strong anger like we have recently seen in Cairo, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen, and the state capitol of Wisconsin. That kind of anger flows from something vital to the average person, namely a better quality of life or a fatter government retirement check, not something inconsequential, like the rape of the neighbor’s 10-year-old boy.

The Inquirer commentary is on the surface learned and sophisticated, but with further analysis is wimpy, effeminate, and tame. In other words it’s clerical. It uses limp language, indicating it was written by a priest who lacks cajones, which the clerical formation process is designed to suppress or eliminate.  The author doesn’t use direct, everyday, no-bullshit language that conveys the depth of the real problem.  This kind of learned but lukewarm writing is what one would expect from commentary by a retired priest in a “family newspaper,” where the use of direct, even vulgar language that conveys tough truth is verboten. The Philadelphia Inquirer is, one must remember, a mainstream American newspaper whose primary objective is to maximize profits by selling products and services to mainstream Americans. The Inquirer is not Bill Maher on HBO or Kathy Griffin on Bravo or YouTube.

Patrons of neighborhood bars and writers of blogs have no such constraints on the language they use. Like Maher and Griffin, they often use real-world, salty language to describe the mushy consciences of the Silent Catholic Majority. The members of this non-exclusive club, both clergy and laity, have outsourced their spirituality and critical-thinking skills to the Vatican in exchange for the Vatican’s guarantee of eternal life. This guarantee is reinforced weekly in a carefully controlled ritual where the “Faithful”  are served their dose of an unholy Kool Aid in exchange for donations that keep the barque of Peter afloat. What many of the Faithful fail to realize is that their donations support priests who rape their sons and daughters (mostly sons, for those of you who have been on another planet for the past decade) and the bishops who shield these monsters from criminal prosecution. You know the men I’m talking about: the men in charge, the men who wear dresses and funny hats, the men whom Mafia godfathers use as role models.

The real men in my neighborhood bar whom I remember from my misspent early years, would often, after drinking enough to lubricate their larynxes, use very direct language  when sharing their opinions about the big issues of the day.

If today they were discussing the current insanity called the Clergy Sex Abuse and Cover Up Crisis, they would call this clerical and lay Silent Catholic Majority wimps, pansies, pussies, whores, and suck-ups. They would say that members of this Silent Catholic Majority are more concerned about being buried in consecrated ground than in protecting little kids from pedophile priests who f— little boys. They would say that Catholics should send the bishops a message that this shit has gotta stop. Like right now.

Frank Douglas | Tucson, AZ | February 24, 2011 Read more at reform-network.net

 

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HotAirPundit: Surveillance Video Captures Escalator Malfunction at D.C. Metro Station

http://www.hapblog.com/2011/02/surveillance-video-captures-esc...

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Amplify’d from www.couriermail.com.au

Voodoo sex ritual causes fatal fire

FIRE marshals say candles around a bed in a voodoo ceremony in New York City that included sex ignited linens and clothes, causing a fatal apartment fire.

The blaze began around 6.40pm local time Sunday (10.40am Monday AEDT) when a woman visited a fourth-floor apartment in Brooklyn and paid a man $US300 ($298) to perform a ceremony to bring her good luck. A city official says the man was known in the neighbourhood as a priest and the two were having sex when the fire started. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing. Instead of calling emergency services, the man tried to put out the fire using water from a bathroom sink but the fire spread. A 64-year-old woman was found dead and 20 firefighters were injured. Read more at www.couriermail.com.au

 

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U.S. Gathered Personal Data on Times Reporter in Case Against Ex-C.I.A. Agent

Amplify’d from spirituallysmart.blogspot.com

U.S. Gathered Personal Data on Times Reporter in Case Against Ex-C.I.A. Agent

By CHARLIE SAVAGE

WASHINGTON — Federal law enforcement officials, trying to uncover the sources of a New York Times reporter, James Risen, obtained extensive records about his phone calls, finances and travel history, according to a court brief filed late Thursday.

Prosecutors gathered “various telephone records showing calls made” by Mr. Risen, as well as “credit card and bank records and certain records of his airline travel” and three credit reports listing his financial accounts, the document said.

The brief was filed by lawyers for a former Central Intelligence Agency official, Jeffrey A. Sterling, who has been charged with leaking classified information to an unnamed reporter. The details of Mr. Sterling’s indictment, which was unsealed earlier this year, made clear that prosecutors believe he was a source for Mr. Risen’s 2006 book, “State of War: The Secret History of the C.I.A. and the Bush Administration.”

One of the book’s chapters details a C.I.A. program in 2000 that aimed to disrupt Iran’s nuclear research by giving it blueprints for a nuclear device containing a hidden design flaw. Mr. Risen portrayed the effort as botched, saying it probably helped Iran gain valuable expertise.

The indictment made clear that the government had obtained records of the men’s e-mail and phone contacts. But those could have been obtained by gaining access to Mr. Sterling’s accounts alone. The new brief, which was reported Thursday evening by Politico, showed that law enforcement officials have also extensively investigated Mr. Risen.

The brief did not say when the government obtained the records about Mr. Risen, and the Justice Department declined to discuss the matter. Its investigation into Mr. Sterling dates to the administration of George W. Bush, and Mr. Risen was twice subpoenaed — once under Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, and again under the current attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., Mr. Mukasey’s successor in the Obama administration.

Mr. Risen has refused to talk about his sources. The first subpoena lapsed when a grand jury expired, and a federal judge eventually quashed the second subpoena. It remained unclear whether prosecutors would try to subpoena him again for Mr. Sterling’s trial.

Under Justice Department rules, prosecutors may seek subpoenas of journalists for testimony or for their phone records only if the information sought is essential and cannot be obtained in another way.

In addition, the attorney general must personally sign off after balancing the public’s interest in the news against its interest in effective law enforcement. Those regulations do not cover other kinds of personal records for journalists, however.

It also remained unclear whether the phone records came from Mr. Risen’s account. Justice Department rules require notifying a reporter within 90 days if his or her phone records have been subpoenaed. Mr. Risen said that he had received no such notification, but that he believed that the Justice Department had been “harassing” him because of his reporting during the Bush administration.

“This seems to bolster the view that I was targeted by the government,” Mr. Risen said. “They basically tried to get everything about me. I’m not sure what else they could have gotten except my kids’ birth certificates.”

Lucy A. Dalglish, the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, portrayed the scrutinizing of Mr. Risen as part of a crackdown on leaking that is making it increasingly difficult to report on security and intelligence matters. (The Obama administration, in its first two years, indicted more officials for leaking information to reporters than any previous one.)

“Is it creepy? You bet it is,” Ms. Daglish said. “But that’s how the feds investigate crimes. The problem is that Jim and other reporters are going to have a much more difficult time in the future having government whistleblowers talk to them, and that’s the reason they do this.”

Scott Shane contributed reporting. Read more at spirituallysmart.blogspot.com

 

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Charlie Sheen says to Alex Jones, "We're Vatican Assassins" mockingly

Amplify’d from spirituallysmart.blogspot.com

Charlie Sheen says to Alex Jones, "We're Vatican Assassins" mockingly

Quote during interview with Alex Jones: "...Guys, it’s right there in the thing, duh! We work for the Pope, we murder people. We’re Vatican assassins. How complicated can it be? What they’re not ready for is guys like you and I and Nails and all the other gnarly gnarlingtons in my life, that we are high priests, Vatican assassin warlocks... " Hear it here More Here

Video from Associated Press.

More Info on the "Sheen" name and Martin Sheen's Jesuit/Vatican connections.

'Haim Levine' crack not anti-Semitic, Charlie Sheen says (poll)

Comment from Vanity Fair article: "This is not just about Charlie Sheen. Any TV show is a team effort involving hundreds of people. The selfishness displayed by Charlie Sheen this week means that a large number of people will lose their jobs. Sheen can go for a long time without work, but the grips, make-up, wardrobe, lighting, filming, editing specialists, writers and other production staff cannot. We all want Charlie Sheen to admit to himself that he has a problem and get clean and sober. Judging from his recent comments, it's obvious that he has not yet addressed the depth of his sickness. Worse, by being so childish and arrogant in his recent comments, he has left a debris trail of shattered careers in his wake for hundreds of people. Shame on him. Any actor, especially an overpaid star of a sitcom, should understand that their success comes not just from their talent or the hype that created their inflated myth, but from the support of fellow actors and an army of production staff. That Charlie Sheen could be so cavalier with his comments shows how pathetically self-centered and still in denial he really is. Pathetic." Read more at spirituallysmart.blogspot.com

 

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Critiquing the Spirit of Prophecy

Amplify’d from spectrummagazine.org

Critiquing the Spirit of Prophecy

Donna Haerich

I like Ellen White.  She is one of my role models.  My childhood bedroom was the same one in which she had slept when visiting Graysville, Tennessee in the early 1900’s.  I believe I grew up breathing in her residual spirit.  But the Ellen I know and love is not the Ellen of most of my contemporaries.

I was introduced to Ellen, as were most of you, via a narrative that told of a sickly young girl with only a third grade education who was the recipient of supernatural visions.  As the story goes, she was  influential  in the founding of the Adventist church and over her lifetime produced numerous books and articles on a wide variety of subjects.  Interpretation:  no way could such a simple woman have written such beautiful  passages – no way could an uneducated  woman have understood such deep theological concepts - she had to have been “inspired”.   Her message and her words had to have come directly from God.

Often when I’m preparing my Sabbath School lesson in the wee hours of the morning (frequently Sabbath morning) I am at a loss as to what to bring to my class.  As I study the biblical passages, I pray that God will help me prepare (often with promises that I will not to wait until the last minute again) and I am impressed with a concept, an idea, an understanding that connects the thoughts in a way that I had not heretofore considered and my lesson plan seems to miraculously fall into shape.  While I privately thank the Lord for these insights –I would not dare say to my class later, “the Lord showed this to me.”  Better they think that I’m just intelligent and knowledgeable than risk presuming to have the gift of prophecy.

But for my friend Ellen, this was not an option. In fact it was a social necessity that she acknowledge her total dependence on God for her insights.    In her day women were believed to be not as intelligent as men and incapable of strenuous intellectual pursuits.   She was born into a patriarchal culture in which women’s influence and talents were confined to the feminine domestic sphere.

It is difficult for us today to envision a time when the common belief was that women’s intellectual capacity was limited and that as females they were unable to grasp abstract ideas and concepts.  Their smaller brain size was seen as scientific evidence of their reduced mental capacity.  As the physically weaker sex   their limited energies were to be conserved for the vital and debilitating business of childbearing, not in pursuing a higher education.  It was man’s God-given responsibility to protect, oversee and guide a woman’s decisions and actions.

Upon marriage the identity of a woman merged with that of her husband.  Under law a married woman was not legally a person.    She could not own property, enter into agreements, vote, sit on a jury or initiate law suits.  She could not sign contracts or legal papers without the signature of her husband.    Her husband received all her assets and personal property and the rights to their use as he saw fit.  He was entitled by law to conjugal rights at his discretion with or without her consent.

Women in 19thcentury America were physically, socially, mentally, physiologically and legally dependant on the care and protection of men.  This situation was believed to be according to “natural law”.  This position was taught from the pulpit, the scholar’s lectern and propagated in the public press.  It was enforced by the laws of the land and supported by the medical and scientific community.

Whatever Ellen wrote, whatever she said, when and how she said it, must be seen against the backdrop of the cultural thinking of the day.  Even how Ellen saw herself and how she envisioned her mission must  be filtered through the mindset of women in her day.  As her social indoctrination was quite thorough, it would be natural for her to consider even her own intellectual insights as originating outside of herself.  Therefore her best defense when speaking would be to say, “The Lord showed this to me.”

The Bible and the Bible alone was the mantra of the early pioneers.  In order to accept Ellen White as a prophet, the early Advent believers developed the doctrine of the perpetuity of spiritual gifts.  Using Scripture, they established that the gift of prophecy did not cease with the first century church.   They maintained that the Holy Spirit continued to be active and had guided God’s church down through the ages. *

Even though her “gift” of prophecy was validated doctrinally by the company of believers there was still no way in hell that the men of her day were going to consent to take direction and counsel from a woman.   To do that would go against the natural order and would be contrary to their lifetime of social conditioning.   Therefore Ellen White’s leadership role had to be indirect.  Her direction and counsel would be accepted only if she could be perceived as merely “God’s messenger”.  She was just God’s “delivery system”; she was but “the conduit” through which God spoke.

Nonetheless, Ellen was a serious student of the Bible.  She had a large personal library and read widely.  She sought help in her writing from commentaries, other bible writers and scholars.  She was a world traveler and had a wide breadth of general knowledge.   She was endowed with keen insight into human nature.  She had the ability to hold large congregations in rapt attention and could lecture at length on various subjects with knowledge and skill.

By any external standard, Ellen was a well educated, self-made woman.  Today we would have recognized her literary accomplishments with an honorary doctorate degree.  But by attributing her spiritual insights to an external source the church was able to marginalize Ellen’s own innate abilities as a preacher, a writer and as a Scriptural scholar.

But now a secondary problem arises.  Once a prophet has spoken their message becomes fixed - at least according to the 19thcentury belief and understanding of a prophet’s role.  The prophet’s words were the words of God.   One cannot dispute, change, alter, or mess with God’s word.

Whether it was her own enculturation as a 19thcentury woman or the preconceptions and expectations of her readers, or both, once the script had been written, once people believed her to have a direct line to heaven, her use of the phrase, “the Lord showed me…” could no longer been seen as a literary device but was indicative of the voice of God and was not to be questioned.

I believe God gave the “gift” of prophecy to the Adventist church so that we could see up close and personal just how inspiration works.**   That way we, as a people, could clearly understand our doctrine of “thought inspiration” and could apply it to the study of Scriptures.   I believe our church was blessed in a special way with a firsthand visual aid of the prophetic gift.  As much value as there is in what Ellen had to say – the demonstration of how she said it and the way in which she formed and produced her writings is inestimable.   She gave us a window on the way in which the prophets of old functioned.   However by focusing on the limited predictive nature of prophecy we missed our calling.

Had we not been so fearful of examining the methods in which Ellen White exercised her gift, we would have been in a better position to welcome the vast amount of current scholarship that has exploded in the past fifty years in the area of Biblical studies.   With our church’s gift of a real live prophet we should have been at the forefront of biblical interpretation and been able to place this increased knowledge of the Bible in perspective for the current generation.  But Ellen was relegated to the same status as the biblical prophets and became locked in the same erroneous paradigm of infallibility.

All prophets wrote in their times and cultures.  Ellen White was no exception.  She was not out of step with the mores and standards of her day.  Her counsels were wise and timely for the people living a hundred and fifty years ago.  Sadly Adventist young people today must risk being seen as rebellious when they enjoy activities that are time conditioned.  Ellen’s counsel on social conventions must now be either rigidly adhered to or rejected outright.

As time passed Ellen’s prophetic voice was co-opted by church leaders and others who sought to use her gift for their own benefit - to consolidate power, to increase financial coffers and to validate their own ministries.   Thus, unlike other churches of the time which moved into the 20thcentury and adapted their beliefs and practices to the cultural norms of society, the SDA church remains forever locked in the 19thcentury.   While other conservative churches were able to change with the times, the SDA church faces the danger of becoming a relic of the past.  The very gift that was to free God’s church to grow and become a light to the world became the mechanism which anchored the church to the past.  We made an icon of Ellen and an idol of her messages.

*This doctrine really wreaks havoc with the whole notion that the doctrine of the Trinity was merely a man-made affair.

**I believe Ellen White processed the gift of prophecy in the same manner in which the prophets of old wrote and spoke and therefore must be evaluated and interpreted using the same hermeneuticalmethods as used to understand Biblical writers. Read more at spectrummagazine.org

 

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