Origins of Sacred Temple Prostitution

The Origins and History of Prostitution | doc

Yeah, I think sacred would be better.

(History But Fast) Originating from ancient cultures and societies, prostitution [trading sex for consideration, usually monetary] has been documented as a defined thing as far back as 2400 B.C. in ancient Mesopotamia, where sacred edicts legitimatized this practice.

Deeply rooted in tradition, culture, and socio-economic dynamics, it grew with civilization, oftentimes blurring lines between religious acceptance and societal norms.

Commerce, slavery, segregation -- various factors intertwined, shaping its complex history. With changing times, the perception and status of prostitution has also metamorphosed, sparking a spectrum of laws, debates, and attitudes around the world.

Let's journey back in time, unraveling the enigmatic roots of sacred prostitution in Sumer as reported in the oldest written work we have, The Epic of Gilgamesh.

Archeologist finds tomb of Gilgamesh in Euphrates

Get Real: Pimps 'n Hoes

On the Block with Pimps and Prostitutes

(Tommy G) Feb. 20, 2024: Patreon Extended Cuts: tommygmcgee. Merch: tommygmcgee.com. Music: Izzy93. My Shorts Channel:  @TommyGMcGeeShorts Shot and Edited by @ihatemiguelsierra

SPONSOR: Vikingmarket.eu, just what a Mancave needs, 15% off with code "HISTORYBUTFAST" #workers #heavylife #hardlife #ancientrome #ancientgreece #women #men #history #education #society #laws #amsterdam #usa

Would it be the worst thing to bring back sacred prostitution?

Girls Gone Bible (not Wild)

There is a fascinating little book out there in the world somewhere (and lost in the stacks of the Wisdom Quarterly Library), a pamphlet really, called something like An Experience of Enlightenment. Fascinating title but misleading. First of all, no one gets enlightened.

What happens is that the author recounts the true story of an incident that happened to affluent Westerners, friends dabbling in the occult by having a seance to "communicate with the other side." Sounds ominous, but who wouldn't want to connect to the Other Side, the Twilight Zone, the Shadow World? Sounds scary, but it ended well, not with actual enlightenment but with an experience that was eye opening.

The banana hammock is a popular undergarment

A spirit came through telling them an unbelievable story. They're all Judeo-Christian by tradition so, of course, they don't really care about or believe in religion or spirituality. But then this being, entity, ghost comes through a medium with such a stunning story that it makes them all doubt their secularism. The spirit says that thousands of years ago (~3,000) he used to be a priest in charge of a temple in what is now India, at the sacred confluence of some rivers up north (in the IVC, Gandhara, Scythia region under the Himalayas).

One day a prince is traveling through, and as priest he shows him hospitality. He claps for a temple dancing girl to come out and entertain this guest, this youth, as he is given food and drink. The priest has a crush on this dancing girl, possibly a temple prostitute of some kind or just a veiled sacred Kathak dancer, She immediately falls in love with the youth and he with her. The priest notices and sends her away. But it's too late. They elope. And when the priest, the spirit through the medium, notices, he loses control and kills her. He might have killed the youth, too.

In either case, it's in contradiction to his religion and priestly duties, so when he dies and expects to get into Brahma's heaven for his life of religious devotion to protecting the temple to some god or another, he is unable. Kind Brahma tells him he needs to get their forgiveness. That is, it's not enough that he apologize. That would be easy. It's that they must forgive him. Everyone at the seance table is moved by his testimony and glad he contacted them with this story of past lives, heaven, sin, lust, possessiveness, God, and karma, BUT what's it got to do with them?

(Radio WHP) Prostitution in Victorian Los Angeles, California

What's a Hell's Half Acre? The U.S. has had various.

Westerners horsing around at an American seance table. That's when he lays down the boom, showing how strange the working-out-of-karma is: Those two people he needs to get the forgiveness from at sitting at the table right now. You're one of them, temple dancing girl being ogled by the priest, and that guy's the former youth.

Would sacred temple prostitution have mitigated this situation? Or is emotional love going to always win out, prompting our craving, longing, and attachment? This poor priest, possessive murderer. This poor frustrated couple, gets reborn to find each other anew, in the holy precincts of a temple to the God, but then this jerk's attachment leads him to a jealous rage that gets people killed and him in 3,000 or more years' worth of trouble, trying to track these two down to get them to understand what happened, accept his apology, and grant their forgiveness so he finally move on and up. Do they grant it?

Readers come a way with a dizzying set of questions about what the Buddha was talking about when he warned about craving, lust, attachment, karma (deeds), thoughts, views, words...and forgiveness (khanti). This is a Western author talking to Westerners. There is no Indian, except what we were before rearising here. Even us, why do we care about spiritual India so much?

Why did Paramahamsa Yogananda claim he found his former students now living in the West, reborn white and prosperous? And they recognized him, were attracted to him, found his Kriya Yoga teaching perfectly in line with the Jesusism and Christianity they were now born into, when even today few people realize the "lost years" of Jesus (Issa) were spent in northern India, at that time culturally Tibet, at Hemis Gompa, where he

• studied with Buddhist monks,
• met Brahmins,
• learned Vedic teachings...

He took all of this back to the West with his Zen-like parables for answers and other oddities, totally unJewish but very much in line with what the Essenes suddenly started to practice in Palestine/Israel out of nowhere, with no predecessor in Jewish texts or customs. The Gnostic texts that talk about the way of the Essenes is very Dharmic and much more Buddhistic, Eastern, and mellow as opposed to anything Abrahamic.

And if we go much further back to the Sumerian roots of Judaism (who took those ancient stories and made them about themselves), to a time before the Jewish priests desecrated "God's House" and turned the temple into a usury-bank for moneychangers, a den of iniquity and hypocrisy, so odious that Saint Issa/Jesus Christ flipped those tables over and chased them out, securing the place for godly things again.

Imagine a temple economy based not on the disgusting ritual slaughter of sacrificial animals and black magic rites of scapegoats and blood atonements to some insane tribal war god demanding the scent of burnt offerings (roasted flesh) wafting up to Him but instead the disgusting ritual prostitution of holy orgasm and sex with respect and not possessiveness and clinging. We could be as bonobos rather than chimps and vicious apes!

• This temple economy based on killing animals is exposed in Christspiracy and is just like the ancient Greeks' obsession with dead offerings to their pantheon in Homer's The Odyssey and which even the good Vedas talk about having Brahmin priests do for Brahma or other more sinister spirits, godlings, demigods/titans, ogres, reptilians/Draconians, and interlopers (superiors, devas, asuras, yakkhas, nagas, brahmas)

Who knows how the great Sumerians set up a system of sex at church, sex at temple, sex in the holy precincts of houses of worship, devotion, and morality-learning, but it would be great to bring it back.

Whether prostitution is ultimately good or bad, no one can question how bad it is in current practice -- full of condemnation, shame, drug abuse, exploitation, pimps, madams, abusive boyfriends, lack of agency and advancement. Sex work could be a positive thing. It's going to be a thing anyway.

Look at the bonobos, chimps, gorillas, monkey, macaques, orangutans, and other primates, they use sex the way humans do. And to say we don't is willful ignorance, foolishly dismissing what anyone can see.

• History But Fast, March 9, 2024; Eds., Wisdom Quarterly, orig. 3/27/24

Where Islam and Judaism live in peace

Sheldon S., CC Liu, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Pro-Palestine Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem, Israel

(The Salukie) Oct. 18, 2023: JERUSALEM Mea Shearim, the oldest and most extreme neighborhood in Jerusalem, Israel, where different sects of Orthodox Jews coexist.

Smartphones are forbidden, there's no walking with a group, everybody is wearing black and white, and the news is literally posted on the walls.

If you like this content, please consider supporting channel on Patreon, as videos keep getting demonetized as YouTube's community guidelines get stricter and stricter and it gets harder and harder to afford to produce content. Patreon: thesalukie. To meet in real life and/or see shorter clips from these travels, follow on Instagram where location updates are posted (when it's safe to do). Instagram: thesalukie.

• Is peace between Israel and Palestinians out of reach? (BBC News)

Zionism is not the same as Judaism | Quotable

(Al Jazeera English) Oct. 16, 2023: Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, a Jewish activist and spokesman for Neturei Karta, talks to Al Jazeera about how Jews and Muslims were friends, neighbors, living in peace like milk and water mixing, babysitting each other's children.

Subscribe to channel bit.ly/AJSubscribe. Follow on Twitter: ajenglish. Find on Facebook: aljazeera. Check website: aljazeera.com. Download AJE mobile app: aje.io/AJEMobile.

@AljazeeraEnglish #Aljazeeraenglish #News #Palestine #Gaza #GazaHospitals #GazaHumanitarianCrisis #Israel #IsraelHamasWar #GazaWar #IsraelWar #IsraelPalestineWar #IsraelHamasWar #IsraelGazaWar #GazaUnderAttack #Hamas #AlAqsaFlood #AlAqsaStorm #GazaEvacuation #GazaDoctors #GazaBombardment #prayforgaza #Hamas #Aljazeeraenglish #IsraelWar

Al Jazeera is funded in whole or in part by the Qatari government.

• Arab-American Obama official rebukes Tlaib for using 'language of annihilation' against Israel (msn.com)
• 19 Common Myths White People Believe About Racism

Atrocity propaganda as news? Jewish victims

DemNow; Sky News AU, 10/23/23; A Wells, Sheldon S, Pfc. Sandoval (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

WARNING: Possible atrocity propaganda, probable psyops. This video contains distressing content!

Militant Jews have killed more than 6K civilians

Isn't it odd they're not cuffed, roughed up, surrounded by soldiers but allowed to sit in a well-lit office, by a computer, able to grab anything as a weapon and go berserk? And they're just talking so casually, not "crazed religious fanatics" biting cyanide capsules, clamming up, or giving only name, rank, and serial number? They, without conscience because they're "inhuman" of course, are just yapping away saying what they were told to say once the video recorder started. No one is pressuring them to speak. They're doomed to life sentences in Israeli political prisons with their siblings or Nuremberg tribunals and death sentences, but they commit treason, betray their cause and comrades and do it on tape just because? This parading of prisoners of war is unseemly and not too believable on the part of the PsyOps Office of the Israeli War Department. But who are we to judge or question? If the "most moral army in the world" (lol) while on a holy "crusade" for God (a kind of Judeo-Christian jihad) say that this is just what it seems, it must be. No irregularities here.

• AUDIO: (Democracy Now!)
• Amnesty International finds “damning evidence of war crimes” by Israel in Gaza; Israelis have killed (death toll) more than 6,500 Palestinians (2,700 children), the vast majority of them innocent yet targeted civilians | Democracy Now!

Amnesty Int'l finds “damning evidence of war crimes” by Israel in Gaza; death toll 6,500+

(Democracy Now) Despite growing international condemnation, Israel has rejected calls for a ceasefire of its continued assault on the tiny open air prison that is the Gaza Strip.

“Israeli forces [the self-described "world's most moral army"] carried out indiscriminate attacks, killing and injuring civilians, and in some cases that we documented,…entire families were wiped out [by Israeli militants],” says Amnesty International researcher Budour Hassan, who shares testimonies of Gazans from a new report on Israeli war crimes.

Meanwhile, Israel continues to attack [Palestinian] civilians in the occupied West Bank, and the number of Palestinians held in Israeli jails since October 7 has doubled.

“This level of pressure, of coercion, of oppression that Palestinians have been facing in the West Bank…has received such scant attention because all eyes now are on Gaza,” says Hassan.

Exclusive footage shows interrogation of captured Hamas terrorists

(Sky News Australia) Jewish anchor at right wing Australian news outlet repeats Israeli Army talking points, parading prisoners of war around and making them confess (because as "evil animals" and "nazis," they would never confess on their own, right, Israel? They have no conscience, yet here they are just talking away, no handcuffs or visible duress at all).

Say 'Hi,' Bubela, you just made me 10K and got me an apt.

This "exclusive footage" put out by Israel's Department of War or IDF offices, reveals what Hamas (a political party that did not break into Israel) enticed militants from the El Qassam Brigades to do and what the party promised to give them as financial incentives for every Jewish person they brought back alive.

[It's odd that they are accused of killing so many, when each one would have been worth $10K alive plus a free apartment. It's unbelievable that these "Nazi" religious fanatics with what the IDF claims is a sworn charter "to kill all Jews everywhere in the world." Yet here they are relieving their oppression, utilizing living hostages to bargain for Israel to stop committing war crimes and crimes against humanity against them, like prisoners might revolt and "riot" to stop institutional oppression and abuse by guards.]

During the attack on Israeli-occupied Palestine, some Hamas terrorists El Qassam militants were captured by Israeli paramilitary police and have been [tortured, deprived of sleep] interrogated by the Israeli Securities Authority [an arm of the Israeli military].

The footage shows alleged militants saying their mission was to kill the men [yet men were taken alive and are now hostages] and capture the females and children as well as saying they were promised $10,000 each and an apartment if they kidnapped a Jewish hostage.

The captured militants also speak about setting buildings in the [illegal occupation camps called] kibbutz on fire, and they detail how they entered structures and shot people inside.

Why Americans are leaving their churches

Religion News Service via (msn.com)• 12/1/22; Eds., Wisdom Quarterly

I'm spiritual but not religious about it. - Me, too

(RNS) — As many as a third (33%) of Americans now claim no religious affiliation, and British sociologist Stephen Bullivant has some ideas about why.

In his new book, Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America, due out this week from Oxford University Press, Bullivant reflects in often highly entertaining fashion about the trend lines.

Although it’s full of statistics, Nonverts remains a lively read for ordinary people — a rare feat in a sea of dry data-driven books.

As a researcher, Bullivant wanted to know why Americans, once considered the exception to the secularization that has happened in Europe and elsewhere, are suddenly losing their religion. And it is sudden, he notes.

.

“This kind of religious change in a society doesn’t normally happen in the space of 20 or 30 years,” he told Religion News Service in a Zoom interview. “It’s been within the space of one or perhaps two generations that we’ve seen a sudden surge.”

In the 1990s, nonreligion began climbing from its baseline of around 7% of the population to what is between three and five times that figure now, depending on the survey. (All national surveys show the same rising trendline, but they differ as to the degree.) More

• Comments | 311

Irish versus American comedy (video)

Spud; Dave Allen; Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly

Ireland vs. USA: clips rom The Savage Eye, Hardy Bucks, SNL, and Curb Your Enthusiasm

(DPG) Irish comedian Dave Allen tells a series of religious jokes.

Native Americans to lose sacred objects (video)

Camila Domonoske (Code Switch, 5-25-16); Xochitl, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; NMAI(EuroNews) This is not the first auction in Paris but a pattern of sales the US fails to stop.

The Un-united Native American Nations of the USA that once fully populated this land

.

Native American revolution (tumblr)

Native American leaders and a U.S. State Department official are urging a French auction house to call off a sale of sacred art and artifacts.

The auction is scheduled for next Monday, at the Eve auction house in Paris. Items for sale include a war shirt from a Plains Indian tribe, possibly Lakota, featuring hair from human scalps, as well as an Acoma Pueblo war shield.

The auction also includes numerous ceremonial objects with religious significance to the Hopi tribe. The items in question are so sacred to the Hopi that members of the tribe object to having them photographed or even described, as KJZZ reporter Laurel Morales explained for the Code Switch blog in 2013.

[Buddhist monk behind?] Reporter's Notebook: Hopi Sacred Objects Returned Home

.

Back then, the items — which the Hopi call "Katsina friends" — were in the news for the same reason they're popping up now: A French auction house was planning to sell them.

 

Then, and now, the Hopi consider such a sale a profound act of sacrilege.

 

In the U.S., it's illegal to sell ceremonial Native American items. But France is not bound by U.S. laws on the matter, as The Guardian reports. It's a point of diplomatic friction between the two allies.

The "Trail of Tears" is merely one atrocity in an ongoing genocide (Max D. Standley).

 

An "emergency meeting" was called Tuesday at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

Tribal officials, the State Department, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce of New Mexico gathered to discuss the pending auction.

The Associated Press reports that the governor of Acoma Pueblo, the tribe whose war shield is up for auction, has reached out to Secretary of State John Kerry and asked him to intervene with French authorities. The wire service continues:

"[Kurt] Riley made an emotional appeal at Tuesday's meeting, seeking the return of the Acoma Pueblo ceremonial shield to the centuries-old village in New Mexico. Tribal leaders said it was illegally taken from the community atop a mesa southwest of Albuquerque, and that by pueblo law, it is a sacred item that should never have been removed.

"Through tears, he said seeing cultural items go up for sale has caused the pueblo emotional harm.

"'How it left the pueblo, we don't know. However its mere existence outside the pueblo tells us an event occurred in violation of Acoma law,' Riley said. 'A black market for these cultural items has emerged in the United States.'"

Emergency meeting (Andrew Harnik/AP)

At Tuesday's meeting, Bradley Marshall and Leilani Pole of the Hoopa Valley Tribal Council described the history of their tribe's devastation by U.S. laws.

[There was] pilfering of their sacred items "by the wagonloads," headed to museums and collectors against the tribe's will.

 

"Over the years, we've searched high and low for objects that are part of our community," Marshall said. "When we create [ceremonial] objects, we're in prayer.

We're breathing life [prana] into the object. And so these objects are not just a mere object in some fancy collection, these objects are living beings to us. These objects are a part of our family...these objects have a sacred purpose in our community."

An object from the Hoopa tribe is set to be auctioned on Monday; the auction house estimates it is worth thousands of euros.

 

"We hope one day this member of our community can return to us," Marshall said.

(R. Thunderhands Gilbert) The Hopi, Native Americans of the Southwest USA (documentary)

Dueling markets show Native American art is big business

The U.S. government sides with the tribes. Mark Taplin of the Department of State said:

"In the absence of clear documentation and the consent of the tribes themselves, these objects shouldn't be sold. This type of commercialization of Native American cultural property is fundamentally wrong."

 

The French auction also is to include jewelry from the ancient Hohokam tribe and artifacts from Asia, Africa and elsewhere in the Americas.

Indigenous cultural items can be big money in France, the Guardian explains:

"France has a long history, tied to its colonial past in Africa, of collecting and selling tribal artifacts. The Paris-based 'Indianist' movement in the 1960s celebrated indigenous cultures, and interest in tribal art in Paris was revived in the early 2000s following the highly lucrative sales in Paris of tribal art owned by late collectors André Breton and Robert Lebel."

Dalai Lama: Monks, stop the violence!

Wisdom Quarterly; Sara Malm (DailyMail.co.uk, May 8, 2013); BBC; AP/ABC News

Never mind the hat. These two ex-"popes" are very different. One has disappeared while the other has risen in prominence after both retiring of their own volition (Wisdom Quarterly)

 

Dalai Lama pleads with Buddhist monks to end deadly attacks on Muslims in Burma and Sri Lanka.

• Religious leader asks monks to intervene in anti-Islam violence.
• Dalai Lama condemned attacks on Muslims in Sri Lanka and Burma.
• Hundreds dead and more than 135,000 displaced in Burma this year
• Nominal-Buddhist groups have attacked businesses owned by Muslims.
• Tibetan Buddhist addressed issue in speech at Univ. of Maryland, USA.

Rubbing noses: Gov. O'Malley, Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama has reached out to monks in Burma and Sri Lanka, imploring them to end recent violence towards Muslims in their countries.

 

The Tibetan Buddhist (Vajrayana) spiritual leader blamed those of his own religion for recent violent attacks in South Asia, while giving a speech at the University of Maryland. Hundreds have died and more than 135,000 people have fled their homes in Burma, also known as Myanmar, in the past year's brutal assaults.

In Sri Lanka [a predominantly Theravada Buddhist island off the southern tip of India], Buddhist groups have recently attacked Muslim businesses.

 

In his speech on Tuesday, the Dalai Lama condemned all killings in the name of religion and admitted that not even Buddhists were exempt from carrying out religious attacks.
 

"Killing people in the name of religion is really very sad, unthinkable, very sad," the Nobel Peace laureate said.
 

"Nowadays even Buddhists are involved, in Burma and Sri Lanka. Buddhist monks destroying Muslim mosques or Muslim families -- it's really very sad." More

UK policy has not changed over China and Tibet

David Cameron and Nick Clegg met the Dalai Lama at St Paul's Cathedral, May 2012

 

David Cameron has said the UK continues to recognize Chinese sovereignty over Tibet amid reports of a rift with Beijing over the issue.

 

The Chinese authorities are said to be angry at the prime minister's decision to meet the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, last year.
 
Mr. Cameron told MPs that UK policy had not changed, and it did not support calls for independence for Tibet. More

• China snubs UK in Dalai Lama fight
• Cameron "to visit China this year" [without Dalai Lama]
• PHOTOS: Amazing Thailand (Raspu/flickr.com)
• Benghazi Talking Points had 12 versions

Dalai Lama lashes Burmese, Sri Lankan Buddhist violence
Ravi Nessman (AP/ABC News, May 8, 2013)

What if the violence gets as bad as Benghazi?

NEW DELHI, India - The Dalai Lama has implored Buddhist monks in Burma and Sri Lanka to put an end to a series of recent attacks on Muslims in their countries.  The Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader spoke Tuesday night about religious violence when asked questions following a speech he delivered to 15,000 people at the University of Maryland in the United States.  Burma, which is now known as Myanmar, has been wracked by sectarian violence that has killed hundreds and displaced more than 135,000 over the past year, while Sri Lankan Buddhist groups have recently attacked Muslim businesses [following a near genocide on militant Tamil Hindu minority separatists, a fight that was the longest running civil war in Asia]. More

"The New Alien World Order" (video)

ErGHaw; Wisdom Quarterly

Some people may question whether "Leonid Elenin" is a real person, despite the fact that he is acknowledged as a contributor to various scholarly journals since 2009. Several people have posted ideas about "Elenin," claiming that the name is actually a coded message.

For whatever reason, some believe that the Powers That Be (the military-industrial complex, globalists, elite) encode hints in names as a means of communicating with one another. It is good to question. But let us focus on the fact that what is revealed in this video is a litany of police state aspirations, globalist plans, PsyOps, Orwellian scenarios, and real-world operations already being enacted. There is also serious discussion of extraterrestrial forces throughout human history and in the USA/Israel today.

The goal here is to familiarize viewers with an alternative explanation for things going on in the world that one never hears through mainstream media outlets. It may seem funny, preposterous, upsetting, or even dangerous to discuss. But many things known to have happened -- brought about by unelected movers and shakers -- fit that description. 

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6 (end)

Truth has always been much stranger than fiction. It is easy enough to go back to sleep and ignore the writing on the wall. People make revelations at great personal risk. We intend to hear them out even (especially) when the information does not agree with our preconceived notions. We invite viewers to do the same.

Legal Islamic Sex Slavery?

Nonie Darwish (frontpagemag.com, June 13, 2011)

"Slut walks," such as this one in London, protest the abuse of women (AFP/Carl Court).

Russian Blondes Wanted for Islamic Sexual Slavery

When Muslim sheikhs discuss the topic of the sexual enslavement of women -- which is allowed in the Qur’an -- it sounds politically incorrect to the majority of Muslims.

They have long forgotten that slavery is a well-established institution in Islam. Saudi Arabia officially abolished slavery only in 1962, not because Islam made the Saudis do it, but because the US-backed Saudis wanted to save face after an international cry against modern slavery.

But now some Muslims are demanding its return. So Muslim spinmeisters are advocating the embarrassing, but legal, topic through the mouths of Muslim women.

A Kuwaiti woman (Salwa al-Mutair), a former candidate to the Kuwaiti parliament and called an “activist,” spoke to the Kuwait Times about the establishment of a new law permitting men to buy and sell non-Muslim girls, captured in jihad, as sexual slaves.

It is said said that this is in order to protect Muslim men against seductive sexual immorality. The Arabic Al Arabiya had more details on what Ms. Salwa al-Mutairi is advocating:

Ms. Mutairi was nice enough to put the minimum age at 15 for slave girls to be sold, whether Christian, Jew, or other. She demanded the immediate establishment of slave agencies just like maid agencies... More

Dark Muslim Brotherhood world of Huma Abedin?

Religious Cult Leaders (Discovery)

What qualifies one to be a "cult" leader? What does one need to have -- the gift of gab, charisma, vaulting ambition? Watch and find out if you have what it takes. See what made these evil cult leaders so famous.

• Discovery Channel documentaries: dsc.discovery.com

UC Berkeley police help nab kidnapper

The author of Origins of Schizophrenia Revealed, Phillip Craig Garrido, is accused of kidnapping 11 y.o. Jaycee Lee Dugard in 1991 and raping, falsely imprisoning, and fathering her two children. Lisa Campbell (center) and UCB officer Ally Jacobs at news conference today taking credit for his arrest (AP/SF Chronicle, Paul Chinn).

• Jaycee Dugard abduction case highlights failure of psychics
• The Perfect Family is a Myth
• Marriage: It's Only Going to Get Worse

BERKELEY, California — Two quick-thinking police employees at the University of California Berkeley campus described today how they set in motion Jaycee Lee Dugard's release after nearly two decades of captivity when they encountered her alleged captor on campus. Phillip Garrido, a white male who was distributing bizarre religious material with two girls, seemed incoherent and mentally unstable, Lisa Campbell said. The girls wore drab-colored dresses, were unusually subdued, had unnaturally pale complexions, and appeared robotic and rehearsed when they spoke... More>>

Survey finds Americans less religious

Most religious groups in USA have lost ground

Cathy Lynn Grossman (USA TODAY, March 17, 2009)

When it comes to religion, the USA is now land of the freelancers.

The percentage of people who call themselves in some way Christian has dropped more than 11% in a generation. The faithful have scattered out of their traditional bases: The Bible Belt is less Baptist. The Rust Belt is less Catholic. And everywhere, more people are exploring spiritual frontiers — or falling off the faith map completely.

PHOTO: Ex-Catholic Dylan Rossi, 21, a philosophy student at the University of Massachusetts in Boston meditates. "I don't know anyone religious and hardly anyone 'spiritual,'" he says (Garrett Hubbard, USA TODAY). Enlarge

These dramatic shifts in just 18 years are detailed in the new American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), to be released today. It finds that, despite growth and immigration that has added nearly 50 million adults to the U.S. population, almost all religious denominations have lost ground since the first ARIS survey in 1990.

"More than ever before, people are just making up their own stories of who they are. They say, 'I'm everything. I'm nothing. I believe in myself,' " says Barry Kosmin, survey co-author.

• INTERACTIVE GRAPHIC, VIDEOS: Compare states, dates, religious groups, and non-religious numbers
• FAITH & REASON: What's your religious "path"?
• THE "NONES": Now 15% of the population

Among the key findings in the 2008 survey:

• So many Americans claim no religion at all (15%, up from 8% in 1990), that this category now outranks every other major U.S. religious group except Catholics and Baptists. In a nation that has long been mostly Christian, "the challenge to Christianity … does not come from other religions but from a rejection of all forms of organized religion," the report concludes.
• Catholic strongholds in New England and the Midwest have faded as immigrants, retirees and young job-seekers have moved to the Sun Belt. While bishops from the Midwest to Massachusetts close down or consolidate historic parishes, those in the South are scrambling to serve increasing numbers of worshipers.
• Baptists, 15.8% of those surveyed, are down from 19.3% in 1990. Mainline Protestant denominations, once socially dominant, have seen sharp declines: The percentage of Methodists, for example, dropped from 8% to 5%.
• The percentage of those who choose a generic label, calling themselves simply Christian, Protestant, non-denominational, evangelical or "born again," was 14.2%, about the same as in 1990.
• Jewish numbers showed a steady decline, from 1.8% in 1990 to 1.2% today. The percentage of Muslims, while still slim, has doubled, from 0.3% to 0.6%. Analysts within both groups suggest those numbers understate the groups' populations.

Ihsan Bagby, associate professor of Islamic studies at the University of Kentucky-Lexington, says that most national telephone surveys such as ARIS undercount Muslims, and that he is conducting a study of mosques' membership sponsored by the Hartford (Conn.) Institute for Religious Research.

Meanwhile, some Jewish surveys that report larger numbers of Jews also include "cultural" Jews — those who connect to Judiasm through its traditions, but not necessarily through actively practicing the religion.

Meanwhile, nearly 2.8 million people now identify with dozens of new religious movements, calling themselves Wiccan, Pagan, or "Spiritualist," which the survey does not define.

Wicca, a contemporary form of paganism that includes goddess worship and reverence for nature, has even made its way to Arlington National Cemetery, where the Pentagon now allows Wiccans' five-pointed-star symbol to be used on veterans' gravestones.

Religion as a hobby
Since the first ARIS study was released, other major national surveys have offered snapshots of the USA's faith.

The Baylor University Religion Surveys in 2006 and 2008 -- based on 1,721 and 1,700 interviews, respectively -- were distinguished by a look at how people described and understood God. The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released its Religious Landscape Survey last year, based on 35,000 interviews, mapping Americans' beliefs state by state. It found that 41% of people had switched their religion at some point in life.

BAYLOR: How far is heaven? At least half will make it, Americans say
PEW: How people from different faiths answered questions on Hollywood, homosexuality, politics and prayer

The initial ARIS report in 1990 set the table for those surveys.

It was based on 113,000 interviews, updated with 50,000 more in 2001 and now 54,000 in 2008. Because the U.S. Census does not ask about religion, the ARIS survey was the first comprehensive study of how people identify their spiritual expression.

Kosmin concluded from the 1990 data that many saw God as a "personal hobby," and that the USA is "a greenhouse for spiritual sprouts."

Today, he says, "religion has become more like a fashion statement, not a deep personal commitment for many."

Kosmin is now director of the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.; ARIS co-researcher Ariela Keysar is associate director.

The ARIS research also led in quantifying and planting a label on the "Nones" — people who said "None" when asked the survey's basic question: "What is your religious identity?" More>>

MORE STORIES ON: Massachusetts Islam Hollywood God Pentagon Muslim New England Christianity Jewish Midwest Catholic Church Judaism Hartford Protestant Baptist Sun Belt Arlington National Cemetery Culture Rust Belt Public Life Bible Belt Trinity College Pew Forum Methodists Religious Identification Survey Wiccans Barry Kosmin Nones Study of Secularism University of Kentucky-Lexington Ariela Keysar Religious Landscape Survey