Tapping Clergy Again
It looks like the government is tapping the clergy again to encourage the pastors to guide their congregations into passivity and compliance with illegal governmental operations, and to be a conduit of information from the congregations to the government.
Shortly after 9/11, the newly formed Homeland Security sent out letters to registered clergy to attend special disaster briefings. Being registered clergy, I received one of these letters, and attended the seminar. I quickly discovered that they weren't telling us how to prepare for, and assist our communities before during and after, disasters but rather how to preach to our congregations to insure compliance and passivity during and after disasters. We were given the quotes from Christian sermons and prayers, and the Bible (as if every clergymember there were Christian) that would indoctrinate the congregations into acquiesence with governmental dictates. A prayer by Aelred, the abbot of Rievaulx in Yorkshire, England with certain words and phrases underlined was distributed: "Teach me to suit myself to everyone" was one such phrase.
We were told that pastors were not equipped to deal with anxiety, nor was our pastoral education, training and experience adequate to deal with disasters. We were to prepare and give over our congregants to government specialists.
They said it was appropriate that violence increase against women, and we were to use Scripture to support acceptance, through both exegesis and hermanuetics. Genesis 34 was given as an example (where Jacob's daughter Dinah was raped by Shechem, then demanded as a wife - and Jacob agreed so long as Shechem and his people became circumcised, then while the men were recovering from their circumcisions, Jacob's people looted their town - the message being to allow your opponents to be violent to your women, then trick then with lies and rob them).
And then Ezekiel 37 was discussed - that we would conflate the government with the Christian God. The words "I said it and I'll do it. God's decree." were spun so it would seem as if the government was acting on God's word, and anyone who defied the government was defying God.
We were urged to encourage our congregants into habits of confession - and since most states lack a confessional privacy law, we were to pass anything we gleaned from the confesional on to our government contacts.
The power and abilities of pastors and clergy was subtly undermined by frequent references to the fact that pastors lacked adequate training for disaster care and crisis counseling, and were to refer their distressed congregants to government appointed mental health professionals.
We were urged to "get on board" and develop lines of communication with the government, to begin to introduce our congregants to new terms such as "social distancing" rather than quarantine and shunning, and to accustom them to being referred to government officials for what was once routine and expected pastoral care.
Church lands were to be set aside for "protective containment" and church buildings for "long term assemblage".
This and more was inserted in among some very good information. Stripping all the propaganda from it, the information was solid and good.
What distressed me about all of this was the subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle information that the government expected clergy to not minister to their people, but to act as channels of information for the government, to soften their congregants up so they would accept government officials in place of clergy.
I'm not sure how many of the Christian clergy attending this seminar reacted, but us "fringies" - a couple of rabbis, priests from the Buddhist temple, a few non-mainstream Christians got together, and the very few Pagans in attendence and decided to strip the papers we received of their propagandistic manipulations and proceed forward as if the government asn't involved.
I watched what happened along the coastline with Rita and Katrina with horror because I saw some of the things they'd hinted at actually being carried out - the subjugation and abuse of the citizens, forced confiscations of guns, massive relocations of inhabitants, and clergy working with armed escorts.
And now - now the government is repeating this, with better preparations, better information, more subtlety - they've sent out another letter inviting clergy to a disaster preparedness seminar for the bird flu.
The information is virtually the same as what we were given after 9/11, but much more devious in its wording. It sounds so remarkably reasonable, and stripping the propaganda from it is much harder to do becase they've hidden some of it in statistics that look proper and solid. It's still heavily Christo-centric, which makes it easier for those of us who are not Christian to see how heavy-handed it still is, and how the government expects to use clergy and church property for government internment camps - they're calling them "community centers" now.
As I did in 2001, I am once again refusing to participate in this.
Back in 2002, I and the Elders of Numenism (all 4 of us!) got together and decided what the Numenist responses would be to any governmental request/demand for information on our co-religionsists, and our decision was silence. We would not cooperate with any governmental request for information that was beyond the urgent need of our co-religionists in time of disaster. We would not send any of our co-religionists to any government-recommended health care provider, mental or otherwise. We would seek out the training and such to make ourselves free of the need to rely on the government for anything other than what we believed a government was meant to provide: trade regulations, roads, public utilities, protection from invading forces, defending our Founding Documents, and judicial arbitration.
This new pamphlet is more of the same. I don't have a scanner to show you mine, but I do have a link to someone else's pdf pamphlet(with his notes on it), so you can see the document for yourself: Pastoral Crisis Intervention
This new round is stressing that pastors need to preach subservience to the authorities so the government doesn't have to deal with the "cowboy mentality" of citizens standing up for their property and Constitutional rights, that the government has had problems with quarantines, martial law, and forced relocations (New Orleans cited as a prime example of "uncooperative citizens"). Pastors are being told that preaching subservience to such seizures and roundups would be "for their own good". Detention centers (churches designated for long term containment of unruly citizens) have been renamed "community centers" - and isn't that a travesty of what we Numenists have and do? I resent their subverting perfectly good words to nefarious ends.
They want pastors to push people into forced inoculations with a "Pills in People's Palm in 48 Hours" Program. There is insufficient medical data to show that any vaccination or pill for the bird flu will actually work because the flu is still evolving - and the government wants us to placidly be dosed up, no veto allowed, no risk factors being considered. Which roads to close off when martial law is established (not if) have already been determined and mapped out, and the mass confiscation of guns had a test run in the wake of Katrina (many of those people who legally had those guns still don't have them back). We were asked to make a pledge, an oath, to support FEMA and Homeland Security during martial law and property seizures, and we would be fully compensated if we were injured by resisters during our participation in these events.
The 2002 pastoral crisis seminars laid the groundwork for this most recent pastoral crisis seminar. I think I've become a rebel priest. I will not comply with these governmental requirements, nor will I take any oath to support the things we were told, subtley or overtly, in this seminar. I never took an oath or signed any paperwork to keep silent about these seminars, not in 2002, and not now.
My efforts will be to protect my co-religionists, my friends, my family. I will not support anyone who advocates or enforces actions that lead to martial law, confiscations of private land and property, forced relocations and detention of honest citizens, and other such atrocities.
Edited to add: This is a public post. Practically all my posts are public. You know what that means? Anyone can read it. Anyone can comment (although, if anyone gets really rude, I reserve the right to delete the comment - hasn't happened so far, but just in case...). Anyone can link. I retain copyright, of course, to what I wrote (which is pretty much everything but the stuff I quote or link to).