Free Republic

Help! Does anyone know what this “Unity Church” (Spiritual Living? Science Church?) is all about? My best friend, who also happens to be my Dad, has decided that this “church” is the best thing since white bread. At first I gave him a very bland, “that’s good” response. But after reading their Statement of Faith, I am, well, shocked. Our Statement Of Faith The Science of Mind is a correlation of the laws of science, the opinions of philosophy, the revelation of religion applied to human need and the aspirations of humankind. Okay, as if that didn’t have my head...

  "Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge in the field of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods." —Albert Einstein  The general, historical dialogue between religion and science goes back a long way—at least to Plato, Aristotle, and Leibniz. Before the 17th century, the goals of science were wisdom, understanding the natural order, and living in harmony with it. Ever since the "quantum revolution" of about 70 years ago, various scientists have been finding the intriguing parallels between their results and certain mystical-transcendental religions. Heisenberg, Bohr, Schroedinger, Eddington, Einstein—all held a mystical, spiritual...

The lights are dimmed in a home in northern Tehran. The men, women and teenagers gathered in the large living room close their eyes and rock back and forth to the beat of live music. As the tambourine and drums beat louder and faster, some members of the group climb to their feet. They begin to swirl slowly in circles and raise their hands to the ceiling. A few fall into trances. "You can somehow touch relaxation," says 22-year-old Mahsa, who believes that music and dance can provide a direct route to Allah. "It's a very good sensation, and you...

Love It Or Hate It -- It's your ChoiceOver the past ten years the federal government created about 30,000 new laws and regulations. That's just at the federal level of government."If only there were one law that ruled the world," one person recently quipped.There's several dozen if not a hundred issues where government has overstepped the power granted to it by the people. A person could write a hundred articles, one article per issue, that exposes each government abuse of power and abuse of citizens.What if there was one article that could do the job of one hundred separate articles?...

We had arrived at Jamkaran, a holy shrine outside the Iranian city of Qom and site of a water well where the 12th and last imam of Shia Islam, the Mahdi, is said to have disappeared a little over a thousand years ago. Many Iranians believe that the so-called hidden imam, or "imam zaman" (lord of all the ages), will at any moment choose this place to make his return to solve the world's problems. In recent years, the millenarian cult of the well of Jamkaran has become so popular that a hotel has been built nearby and the old...

Give Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer his due. With the publication of his new book Active Liberty, he enthusiastically embraces a mea culpa approach to allegations that Supreme Court justices invent, recreate, and expand constitutional principles as they please. Viewed as a response to Justice Antonin Scalia's A Matter of Interpretation, Breyer’s book, openly advocates for the notion that U.S. constitutional law is whatever a majority of Supreme Court justices wishes based upon their own notions of what "democracy" and fairness should produce. In other words, I and thousands of other attorneys wasted our time taking constitutional law since that...

A CHURCH THAT STRAYS FROM MYSTIC ROOTS BEGINS TO IMITATE SADDUCEES, PHARISEESBy Michael H. BrownStriking it was, the other day, to hear from a priest who mentioned that it is now "politically incorrect" -- among priests -- to take spiritual phenomena such a weeping statues seriously. It was striking because while it has been apparent for some time that many priests and bishops are no longer open to the supernatural, hearing it put in such terms crystallized it. Politically incorrect.Indeed, in the current climate, it is doubtful that apparition sites such as Lourdes in France and Fatima in Portugal would...

The Georgia Guidestones have been part of the landscape in Elberton, Georgia for a quarter of a century. Tourists flood to Elberton each year to see the 19-foot-tall granite monument, often posing for pictures standing beside it. After 25 years, a Christian organization named The Resistance is calling for the monument’s immediate removal. "The satanic Georgia Guidestones must be destroyed," insists John Conner of The Resistance. "The Guidestones should be smashed into a million pieces, and then the rubble used for a construction purpose." The notion of hacking the monument into smithereens for construction scrap has a certain appeal, given...

Roughly half of America dislike everything George Bush says, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t the President of the United States. This is a point too few people keep in mind. Take, for instance, the example of Stas, a very nice Orthodox man, who read my recent piece on concerning the Muslim reporter who implicitly threatened to kill me and nuke America. He thought the piece excellent except for my statement that the Pope was the head of Christianity: “As for the Pope, 1 billion various protestants and 300 million Orthodox don't follow his words and that's half of Christianity.”...

Israeli police today detained two of Madonna’s bodyguards after they assaulted photographers waiting for the star outside her Tel Aviv hotel. Two of the photographers and a policeman who tried to break up the brawl were wounded, said Tel Aviv police spokesperson Liat Pearl. “Two security guards were detained for questioning by the Tel Aviv police department,” said Pearl. The pop diva has been in Israel since Wednesday with 2,000 other students of Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism. Madonna’s visit to the country has sparked a media frenzy with the local dailies devoting pages detailing her luxury hotel suite and even...

There are several aspects to Mel Gibson and The Passion of the Christ that are worth noting. It is clear that Anne Catherine Emmerich, a German Catholic nun, had a vivid imagination relative to the death of Jesus Christ. A mystic, she wrote an account of the death of the Savior that drew upon what she believed to be supernatural visions. Some of her statements were reflective of folk theology that reflected a disproportionate blame for the Crucifixion on the Jews. One has only to look at the passion plays in the German-speaking nations of Europe to observe the folk...

Mystical Qabalah, Mystical Christianity, and the Christian CabalaMystical Christianity is an outgrowth of the same universal spirituality found in the Hebrew tradition as the Mystical Qabalah. Christianity began as a sect of Judaism that sprang from the messianic advent of Master Yeshuvah, who was born a Jew and lived in a Jewish culture. All of his apostles and early disciples were also Jews. Master Yeshuvah, as with every appearance of Messiah, brought a fresh transmission of universal mystical spirituality clothed in the context of the historical setting, cultural milieu, environment, language, characteristic worldview, and prevailing body of discourse among the...

An Introduction to Kabbalah  Z'ev ben Shimon Halevi    KABBALAH   Kabbalah is the name of a body of esoteric knowledge. Its origin is the inner  teaching of Judaism. Its concern is God, the universe and humanity, and their  mutual interrelation.    Tradition states that it was given by the archangel Raziel to Adam and Eve,  after they had been cast out of Eden, so that they might regain entrance to  paradise. This Torah or teaching has been passed on over the generations,  although nearly lost from time to time. It is said that Abraham was initiated  into the tradition by...

Divinity without Dogma A Look at Progressive Churches by Jonn Salovaara Conscious Choice, September 2001 This article looks at groups associated to varying degrees with Christianity. Other articles have featured, and will feature, outposts of other religious traditions. For thousands of years, churches have formally stated and proclaimed "a body of doctrines concerning faith and morals" -- the dictionary definition of "dogma." Institutionalized belief tends to become dogmatic, even when the belief itself begins as an alternative to an earlier dogma. So it was with early Christianity, starting small and in contrast to Judaism and imperial Roman belief and eventually...

Between Science and SpiritualityBy JOHN HORGAN Can mystical spirituality be reconciled with science and, more broadly, with reason? To paraphrase the mystical philosopher Ken Wilber, is the East's version of enlightenment compatible with that of the West? If so, what sort of truth would a rational mysticism give us? What sort of consolation? There are many claimed convergences between science and mysticism. Cognitive psychology supposedly corroborates the Buddhist doctrine that the self is an illusion. Quantum mechanics, which implies that the outcomes of certain microevents depend on how we measure them, is said to confirm the mystical intuition that consciousness...

In an age in which discernment is viewed as a vice and gullibility as a virtue, there is a price to be paid if one decides to be "picky" about what to believe and how to live. We are constantly told not to judge others but to be positive and accepting of all beliefs and lifestyles. "Something is true if you believe it" seems to be the greatest dogma of the 20th Century. This queer notion dominates much of the church as well as much of the world today. The spirit of this age is a gullible spirit. This is...

Saint Rose of Lima Catherine Fournier Saint Rose of Lima Feast Day: August 23 Patron of: Americas, Central America, Peru, Phillippines, South America, India, New World, florists, gardeners, people ridiculed for their piety Symbol: Holy Infant; roses; Dominican tertiery holding roses; Dominican tertiery accompanied by the Holy Infant Young Families Even though Saint Rose of Lima was named Isabel De Flores Y Del Oliva at birth, everyone called her 'Rose' because her cheeks were so red. She was a beautiful baby and a beautiful child. Since most young women get married when they grow up, everyone was certain that...

Is the Wall wailing? Etgar Lefkovits Jul. 3, 2002 In a highly unnatural phenomenon, water has begun dripping from the midst of a stone in Jerusalem's Western Wall. The water leak, which was first noticed Saturday by worshippers at the Wall, continued yesterday for the fourth straight day, Shmuel Rabinovitch, the rabbi of the Western Wall, said yesterday. On Sunday, Antiquities Authority director-general Shuka Dorfman and Jon Seligman, its Jerusalem regional archeologist, were rushed to the scene to examine the dripping, which has so far dampened a 10 by 40 centimeter section of the Wall. The drops of water...

  Feastday: May 25 It would be easy to concentrate on the mystical experiences God gave this saint, rather than on her life. In fact, it would be difficult to do differently, so overwhelming were those gifts from God. The temptation for many modern readers (including the author) would be to see little to identify with in these graces and walk away without seeing more. The other temptation would be to become so fascinated with these stories that one would neglect to dig deeper and learn the real lessons of her life. But Mary Magdalene de Pazzi is not...