Rastafari gain sacramental rights to marijuana in Antigua and Barbuda, celebrate freedom of worship

LUIS ANDRES HENAO
AP News
June 2, 2023

LIBERTA, Antigua (AP) — On the same ground where their enslaved ancestors were forced to plant sugar cane, Rastafari on this small island nation are now legally growing and ritualistically smoking marijuana.

For Rastafari, the practice brings them closer to the divine. But for decades, many have been jailed and endured racial and religious profiling by law enforcement because of their marijuana use.

The government of Antigua and Barbuda has sought to right that wrong. The twin islands recently became one of the first Caribbean nations to grant Rastafari authorization to grow and smoke their sacramental herb.

“We’re more free now,” said Ras Tashi, a member of the Ras Freeman Foundation for the Unification of Rastafari, who was arrested several times for growing cannabis but refused to plead guilty because to him, “it’s a God-given plant.”

On a recent Sunday, he led chants and praise in the tabernacle on the foundation’s farm located in Liberta’s lush agricultural district. Tashi puffed on a corn husk-wrapped joint while others passed chalice pipes and waved Rastafari flags in the green, gold and red colors of the faith.

“The government gives us our religious rights … we can come and plant any amount of marijuana … and no police can come and take up any plant. We fight for that right — and we get that right,” he said.

Rastafari elsewhere are pushing for similar religious protections. Experts and stakeholders think the Antigua and Barbuda law could give a boost to these efforts worldwide at a time when public opinion and policy are continuing to shift in favor of medical and recreational marijuana use.

Under the same law change, the island government also decriminalized the use of marijuana for the general public. In addition to the expansive religious use granted Rastafari, people outside the faith can grow four cannabis plants each and possess up to 15 grams.

“We believe that we have to provide a space for everyone at the table, irrespective of their religion,” Prime Minister Gaston Browne told The Associated Press at an interview in his office in the capital city of St. John’s.

“Just as we’ve recognized other faiths, it’s absolutely important for us to also ensure that the Rastafari faith is also acknowledged … to acknowledge their constitutional right to worship and to utilize cannabis as a sacrament.”

“Ganja,” as marijuana is also known, has a long history in the Caribbean region, and its arrival predates the Rastafari faith. Indentured servants from India brought the cannabis plant to Jamaica in the 19th century, and it gained popularity as a medicinal herb.

It began to gain wider acceptance in the 1970s when Rastafari and reggae culture were popularized through music icons Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, two of the faith’s most famous exponents.

Rastafari reject materialist values and often practice a strict oneness with nature, eating only unprocessed foods as part of “Ital” their faith’s vegetarian diet. They also let their hair grow, uncombed, into dreadlocks.

But many of them were long treated as second-class citizens across the Caribbean islands, looked down on for their dreads and sacramental marijuana use.

The prime minister said that growing up poor in Antigua, he witnessed how adult Rastafari were chased by police and locked up, while children were not allowed in schools because of their hair. Browne also recalled how members of the Rastafari generously fed him “Ital” meals when his single mother, who had a mental illness, struggled to raise him and his siblings.

“They embraced me,” he said in his office overlooking palm trees, green hills and the turquoise Caribbean waters. “It speaks to that positive value of brotherly love … I was always socialized to embrace Rastafari.”

After Browne took office in 2014, he appointed Ras Frank-I, the late respected Rastafari leader, ambassador to Ethiopia. In 2018, Browne apologized publicly to the Rastafari community for the oppression and religious persecution they suffered. He also said that Rastafari should be given a stake in the production and economic benefits derived from medicinal marijuana as reparations “for the wrongs inflicted on this significant minority group in our countries.”

His government also helped build a Rastafari-run public school and led efforts to decriminalize marijuana use.

Earlier this year, he met with Rastafari groups and granted them licenses from the country’s medical cannabis authority to grow the plant for religious purposes.

“We have adopted many European and non-European religions and we have a Pan-African religion … and instead of embracing it, we have sought to destroy it,” Browne told Rastafari members in March. “I want to encourage you to stand your ground (and) continue to exercise that resilience.”

The changes have faced some opposition from some politicians and Christian leaders in the socially conservative Caribbean region. But Rastafari academics praised Browne’s apology and his government’s actions, saying this tiny nation of about 100,000 people has gone further than regional efforts by larger countries, and could set a global example.

Jamaica, and most recently, the U.S. Virgin Islands granted sacramental rights to cannabis. But Charles Price, a professor at Philadelphia’s Temple University who focuses on Rastafari identity, said that it is Antigua and Barbuda’s comprehensive initiative that could spur more organizing for the sacramental recognition of cannabis in other islands.

They have become “test cases for the rest of the Caribbean,” he said. “They’ll suggest the viability of this … so other nations can now look to these two nations and say, ‘Ah, they’ve done it.’”

Through a lease from the government, a former sugar cane plantation — a symbol of slavery and British colonial oppression — in Antigua has been transformed into worship grounds, sustainable farmland and the headquarters for Ras Freeman, one of the island’s main Rastafari groups.

“This might be a small win, but it’s something we can definitely celebrate and feel proud of — that lands that were once used to enslave our people, we’re using it to liberate our community,” said Ras Richie, a member of the group. He’s also co-founder of Humble and Free Wadadli

During that recent Sunday worship service, the breeze fluttered verdant leaves on the marijuana fields surrounding the grey stone remnants of a sugar mill.

Inside the nearby tabernacle, it moved clouds of fragrant marijuana smoke that hung in the air while Ras Freeman members chanted psalms, ululated and banged on Nyabinghi drums.

“The attitude towards it has dramatically changed and it’s more in a positive light,” Ras Kiyode Erasto, Ras Freeman’s chairman said outside the tabernacle, while he grasped branches of dry cannabis.

“We give thanks for the prime minister … his government bravely stand up with courage to decriminalize, and to even give sacramental rights to the Rastafari community.”

Erasto said he suffered bullying and discrimination growing up. At one point, he said, his mother had to cut his dreadlocks so he could be allowed in school.

“It was sad,” he recalled. “I loved my locks as a child.”

Rastafari dreadlocks are an “antenna towards the cosmos” to connect with “the planets, the sun, the moon … it’s the transmission receiver towards messages out there that come to us in a spiritual sense,” said Erasto, who now has long, white-gray, flowing locks.

Throughout his adulthood, he joined marches demanding fair treatment for his community and traveled to other islands for conferences led by the Caribbean Rastafari Organization to advocate for the sacramental right to cannabis.

“We see it as medicine, a food source. We see it as a sacrament. … It aids us into meditation and (to) tap into consciousness,” he said. “To deprive us of our food, of our medicine, we saw that as being unjust. … We had to stand up and fight over the years.”

Erasto was part of an effort by Rastafari from across the Caribbean to help repeal the so-called “Rasta Law” in the British Virgin Islands. The 1980 law ordered immigration authorities to refuse entry to nonresident Rastafari and “hippies” to the territory. It remained on the books for more than 20 years.

“One go through a lot of struggle, especially with the cannabis,” said Shakie Straker, Erasto’s mother and the group’s matriarch, after she sang and praised for hours during Sunday worship. “One pay a lot of money, fines to the court. Man go to jail. Man even lose their life. And this is the struggle, but (now), it’s 100% better.”

To purify the land, the group keeps the red embers of a Nyabinghi fire always burning near their house of worship. They cook together and share meals of coconuts, cassava, carrots and onions produced on their land without pesticides. They keep a strong presence on social media with photos and videos that introduce visitors to their culture and faith. And they have plans to expand, hoping eventually to build a museum, a store to sell their Ital food and a sacramental cannabis dispensary.

“What gives me hope is now that we are reaching out to different parts of the world and realizing the respect that Rastafari has,” Ras Richie said. “That’s the power we have now.”

__

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

https://apnews.com/article/marijuana-rastafari-religious-freedom-caribbean-c8f3b622e3ef8b04a79303401e5d468a

Religious Liberty Behind Bars

Two court cases involving Rastafarian inmates attract the attention of legal advocates of other faiths

Tablet talks about Judaism a lot, but sometimes we like to change the subject. Maggie Phillips covers religious communities across the U.S.—from Christians to Muslims, Hindus to Baha'i, Jehovah's Witnesses to pagans—to find out what they're talking about.

MAGGIE PHILLIPS
Tablet
MARCH 03, 2023

Last year, two separate cases were filed with the Fifth and Seventh Circuit Courts of Appeals, respectively, by Rastafarians seeking damages. Both litigants, Thomas Walker and Damon Landor, said that their dreadlocks were forcibly shaven while they were inmates, violating their religious liberty. At the center of both cases, which have attracted the attention of other religious groups who have filed amicus briefs in support of both Walker and Landor, are different interpretations of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA). The 2000 legislation says that prisoners may "obtain appropriate relief" for violations of their religious liberty. But just what constitutes appropriate relief—or Rastafarianism, for that matter—is still up for debate.

According to the Notre Dame Religious Liberty Clinic, which filed an amicus brief for Walker in the Seventh Circuit, together with groups representing Anabaptists, Muslims, and Sikhs:

Walker began growing dreadlocks in 2013 after taking the Nazarite vow of separation, thus committing himself to never drink alcohol, never eat meat or dairy, and never cut his hair. In 2018 he was incarcerated at Stateville Northern Reception Center, where he was permitted to keep his dreadlocks. In early April 2018 he was transferred to Dixon and registered in the prison system's online database as a practicing Rastafarian. He kept his dreadlocks for the first six weeks with no incident.

On May 25, 2018, a corrections officer informed Walker that his dreadlocks had to be removed for 'security' reasons. Despite telling the officer that cutting his hair would violate his religious beliefs by 'sever[ing] [his] physical connection to Jah [(God)],' Walker ultimately had to relent and allow the prison barber to sever his dreadlocks or else face severe disciplinary action and the forcible removal of his dreadlocks.

Landor's lawyer, Zack Tripp, described his client's case in an email to Tablet:

"In 2017, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit directed Louisiana that it must grant religious exceptions and allow Rastafarian men like Mr. Landor to keep their dreadlocks in prison. Yet, when Mr. Landor handed that decision to the prison officials just weeks prior to his release, they tossed the court's opinion, shackled him to a table, and had him shaven completely bald. What Mr. Landor's allegations shows is that, without a damages remedy, Congress's protections and the court's decisions interpreting those protections aren't worth the paper they're printed on. No damages means no accountability."

In neither initial case did courts in either state interpret the phrase "appropriate relief" to include financial damages, but rather injunctive relief—which would suspend the cutting of Rastafarian inmates' hair—which was not applicable in either case, as the men had been released from prison. In Illinois, Walker's case was thrown out after he was released from prison in 2021, while his original complaint, filed in 2019, was still in litigation. The Louisiana judge in Landor's case dismissed it, writing in her opinion that Landor's claims similarly became moot upon his release from confinement in 2021, and that RLUIPA's appropriate relief provisions do not include financial compensation. (Josh Halpern, one of Tripp's associates, will argue Landor's case before the federal appeals court in New Orleans in May.)

Backers of the Walker and Landor cases believe that the ability to award damages ex post facto—providing financial compensation to the men after their release—will serve as a deterrent to future abuses of inmates' religious freedom. There could be broader implications for both majority and minority religious groups if the interpretation of RLUIPA is expanded to include damages, since it also protects religious land use. An ability to sue for damages could serve as a protection against case obstruction and anti-religious animus in zoning processes for churches, mosques, and synagogues.

"It is hard to imagine an even moderately well-read person or even a person with just ordinary life experiences not knowing about Rastafarianism," wrote Judge Iain Johnston, referring to the defendants in his opinion terminating Walker's case. "Have they never listened to the radio? Have they never seen Cool Runnings? Did they not understand the Bob Marley reference in Caddyshack? Did these people really live such isolated and sheltered existences?" In a footnote, Johnston also gives due credit to Lee "Scratch" Perry and Toots and the Maytals ("legends in their own rights").

If Johnston's assertion that familiarity with portrayals in film and music are adequate to familiarize Americans with the minority faith of Rastafarianism, further reading on the historical and cultural context of the faith would suggest otherwise. In a 2002 Journal of Law and Religion article, "Chant Down Babylon," authors Derek O'Brien and Vaughan Carter provide a brief survey of Rastafarianism's development in Jamaica, where it began as a rejection of colonialism and its accompanying social, cultural, and legal structures.

Influenced by early 20th-century activist Marcus Garvey, Rastafarianism became associated with Pan-Africanism and Black pride sentiment, with "Babylon" serving as shorthand for the society and systems that exist outside of Africa. Garvey was influenced by Pan-African thought, the idea that people of African descent should unite around shared interests.

A nonhierarchical, nonproselytizing faith with no clergy or official doctrine, it is, according to O'Brien and Carter, "a wholly private affair." Indeed, even to refer to it as Rastafarianism is, they write, an inaccuracy, since its followers (called Rastafari) "do not recognize any form of 'ism.'" What we think of when we speak of Rastafarianism developed in the 1930s, coalescing around existing Afro-Christian syncretism in Jamaica, and Garvey's vision of the establishment of a Black nation in Africa. In the Rastafarian conception, Ethiopia in particular emerged as Zion, the focus of their repatriation aims, in opposition to Babylon. According to O'Brien and Carter, a literal interpretation of an exhortation from Garvey, who was mistrustful of traditional Christianity, to put on "the spectacles of Ethiopia" to envision God, led to the deification of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Sellassie.

The practice of wearing dreadlocks emerged, they write, as a rejection of colonial conceptions of what constituted "beauty and good grooming," and a mark of pride in African hair. It was also a function of Garvey's conviction that Blacks should reinterpret the Christian Bible for themselves through a Pan-African lens. Such a reading would break open the scriptures in a new way, he believed, becoming a source of liberation. Colonial powers could no longer use the Old or New Testament to "domesticate," in Garvey's language. Hence, an interpretation of the Book of Numbers 6:5 to support the wearing of dreadlocks:

All the days of the vow of his separation there shall no razor come upon his head: until the days be fulfilled, in the which he separateth himself unto the LORD, he shall be holy, and shall let the locks of the hair of his head grow.

While the corrections officer defendants in Walker's case may be excused for an unfamiliarity with Numbers, Marcus Garvey, and 1930s Jamaica, his lawyer thinks that ignorance is immaterial.

"Religious illiteracy isn't a defense," Tripp said in his email to Tablet. "Mr. Walker told the defendants at least four times [italics Tripp's] over the course of multiple days that his dreadlocks were an expression of faith. At that point they were obligated at a minimum to consider accommodation. Instead, they forcibly shaved him bald."

And Rastafarians have faced this challenge before: "The claimed ignorance of Rastafarianism is particularly incredible," Johnston wrote in his opinion, "when claimed by individuals in the corrections field." Court decisions about dreadlocks relating to the religious liberty of inmates date back at least to the 1980s and early '90s, O'Brien and Carter write.

In a 2020 decision, Tanzin v. Tanvir, the Supreme Court decided that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), an earlier law protecting religious freedoms with regard to the federal government, provided for retroactive money damages against federal officers who commit similar infractions to the ones alleged by Landor and Walker. What Tripp (who also represents Walker), and the groups filing amicus briefs, would like the circuit courts to decide once and for all is that RLUIPA, which is often described as RFRA's "sister law" that applies to state governments, also allows for the same types of monetary damages after the fact.

"A damages remedy is critical because, in cases like these, RLUIPA is essentially unenforceable without one," Tripp said in his email. "Without damages, prison officials could toss aside a binding decision from the U.S. Court for the Fifth Circuit and shave Mr. Landor bald, with impunity. Damages are the only way to deter the wrongdoers and to remedy the violations. Forward-looking relief does nothing to remedy the past harm. It is damages or nothing."

The amicus brief filed by the Notre Dame Religious Liberty Clinic makes a similar point: "When religious minorities are not able to bring claims for damages, prison officials often lack incentives to sufficiently protect these religious rights," their summary of argument reads. Additionally, under the current interpretation of RLUIPA, in which relief frequently takes the form of a court injunction against the course of action that infringes on an inmate's religious liberty, as a result, "RLUIPA cases are often mooted before a plaintiff is able to receive relief" when prisoners are transferred or released.

Even then, in the case of Landor, he alleges he presented a copy of a 2017 injunction against prohibiting dreadlocks in Louisiana prisons to the prison guards when he was transferred to Louisiana's Raymond Laborde Correctional Center. Nevertheless, officers there shaved his head bald. About three weeks later, on Jan. 20, 2021, he was released. In the opinion dismissing his case, the judge notes that he has since started to regrow his locks.

Are prisoners entitled to ex post facto damages after they've left prison? In Walker's case, although Judge Johnston in his summary judgment opinion criticizes the correctional officers' claims of unfamiliarity with Rastafarianism, he also seems to suggest a "no harm, no foul" principle applies. He notes that before he was even released, Walker had begun to regrow his dreadlocks.

Informal estimates place the Rastafarian population at about 1 million worldwide. According to the 2020 U.S. State Department Report on International Religious Freedom data, they constitute only around 1% of the population within Jamaica itself. A project by CUNY professor Jennifer Lutin and her students on immigration and New York City attributes the spread of Rastafarianism to outward migration from the Caribbean that occurred in the 1960s and '70s, and to the increased popularity of reggae. Their work asserts that the first mention of Rastafarianism in U.S. media appeared in 1971. From then on, Rastafarians did not receive much in the way of favorable coverage (the section on Rastafari on the website for Lutin's class, "Peopling New York City," cites references to "Rasta cultists," and NYPD reports saying that Rastafarians "shoot whoever they feel like," and use their religion "as a cover for their criminal activity"). Formal organized Rastafarian worship is less common than regular gatherings (called "reasonings") to discuss scripture, conduct religious and spiritual education, and engage in ritual consumption of marijuana, usually at places like restaurants, dance and music clubs, and shops oriented toward Rastafarian clientele. These and other types of small-scale commercial activities, including selling marijuana, are the product of a common strain in Rastafarian thought that it is imperative to operate parallel enterprises within their own community to avoid participating in the economic system of Babylon. To the extent that organized Rastafarian worship exists, it is loosely regulated by orders or "mansions," which have varying requirements and shades of belief among them. Mansions tend to be the loci of formal congregational worship for those members who engage in it. Lutin, et al. write that while the majority of Rastafarians in the U.S. flocked to urban centers on the East Coast, New York City emerged as the one capable of sustaining various Rastafarian mansions, in neighborhoods like Flatbush and Crown Heights.

Although judicial precedent establishes Rastafarianism as a legitimate religion from a legal viewpoint, its lack of formal membership requirements or initiation rites can make it difficult to distinguish, O'Brien and Carter write, "between the real Rastafarian and the charlatan. "Furthermore, in establishing the sincerity of religious beliefs (something the 1944 Supreme Court decision United States v. Ballard determined that the court could scrutinize), they state that Rastafarianism's blend of religious practice with cultural and political movements mean that a Rastafarian "may be sincere, but not sincerely religious."

O'Brien and Carter hold up Rastafarian religious liberty controversies as a distillation of the tension inherent in the U.S., between majoritarianism and pluralism. On the one end of the ideological spectrum, there is the majoritarian view, articulated by the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, that the legal privilege accorded to norms that suit majority religions in the U.S. "is an 'unavoidable consequence of democratic government.'" On the other end of the spectrum is the pluralist view, that America is a more dynamic country for the diverse range of viewpoints and beliefs espoused by its citizens. However, the authors believe, even the more liberal conception of religious liberty upheld by the pluralists still tends to favor groups like the Amish and Native Americans, who are viewed as being within the American tradition and national conception of itself, over less familiar outsider groups, like Rastafarians, who can face what they refer to as "catechismal inquisition[s]" in court over the precise nature of their beliefs.

Much like Johnston's critique of the corrections officers' lack of familiarity with Rastafarianism in Walker, O'Brien and Carter give examples of Rastafaris themselves being submitted to criticism by courts for being ignorant of the history, key figures, and beliefs of their own movement.

But religious literacy cuts both ways.

Johnston's critique that the correctional officers haven't had the breadth of cultural experience to have seen the Jamaican bobsled movie or gotten all the references in a 1980 golf comedy, while noting that Walker was ultimately allowed to grow his dreadlocks back, seems to betray an attitude toward Rastafarianism that is not much more informed than the officers'. In an email statement through his lawyer, Walker said the officers who shaved his head "pointlessly violated my religious convictions." As a Rastafarian, he said he wears dreadlocks "as a connection to God."

The extent of many Americans' religious literacy comes either from movies, books, and music, or from court cases, when a religion's most controversial or least intelligible aspects are put up for public debate. In contextualizing the relevance of Rastafarians' religious liberty challenges, O'Brien and Carter paraphrase authors Davina Cooper and Didi Harmon, writing that "with judicial efforts to define what it means to be a Jew, the problem is that the law is not merely reflective, rather it discursively produces its own version of Jews and Judaism." Likewise with Rastafarianism, O'Brien and Carter write, since the most salient legal issues tend to relate to dreadlocks and marijuana use. Accordingly, they maintain Rastafarianism is easily reduced to caricature and, therefore, rendered more likely to be dismissed in court as an unintelligible subculture with little relevance to the broader American polity.

The understanding of religious liberty in American legal precedent is fairly broad, with standards of evaluation for a sincere belief, and markers like external practices, which parallel or are roughly analogous to traditional understandings of God and faith. However, amid widespread disaffiliation from traditional religion, traditional organized religions could become less familiar to the general public. An increase in religious liberty cases dealing with the sincerity of the faith held seems plausible. Can Scalia's legal majoritarian argument with regard to religious minorities stand as more and more "conventional" faiths become religious minorities? What of those who may identify culturally with the religion of their family or country of origin, without being especially devout?

"When one comes to trial which turns on any aspect of religious belief or representation," Justice Jackson wrote in his dissent in United States v. Ballard, "Unbelievers among his judges are likely not to understand, and are almost certain not to believe, him." That was in 1944, when church attendance was much higher.

When Scalia, a Catholic, penned his decision on the majoritarian nature of religious liberty in 1990, his religion constituted nearly a quarter of the U.S. population. In 2022, Catholics had dropped from 25% of the U.S. population to 22%. Were his co-religionists today to face the same sincerity tests as the Rastafarians, grilled on their familiarity with the beliefs and practices of their faith, few would likely fare better: Church attendance is on a steady decline, and in 2019, barely one-third told a Pew research poll that they believed in a central tenet of the Catholic faith, the transubstantiation of the bread and wine at Communion into the literal body and blood of Christ. Nor is this prospect a far-off hypothetical. In January of this year, a Catholic Charities Bureau in Wisconsin asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court to consider a case in which their state has called into question their own doctrine. A state appellate court denied them a religious exemption, which would have allowed the Catholic Charities to opt out of the state-run unemployment program in favor of one they provide themselves, on the grounds that their activities serving the poor and disabled are not "inherently" religious.

Today's religious majorities could be tomorrow's misunderstood minorities in a secularizing country. The challenges that Rastafarians like Landor and Walker have received in court over their little-known religious faith has attracted the attention of the Anabaptist Bruderhof association, Muslim Advocates, the Sikh Coalition, Quakers, Reform and Orthodox Jews, Catholics, mainline Protestants, and Unitarians, all groups that have filed amicus briefs in one or both cases seeking damages.

"I am deeply grateful that so many different faith groups are supporting me and my cause," Walker said in his email statement. "I'm hopeful that I will be able to win my case and help prevent Dixon and other prisons from mistreating others as they mistreated me."

Landor echoes Walker in his own email statement, also sent via email through Tripp: "I brought this case to hold them accountable and to help ensure this doesn't happen to anyone else—not in Louisiana or anywhere," he said. "The support I've received from so many other religious groups and institutions gives me hope that things can change."

This story is part of a series Tablet is publishing to promote religious literacy across different religious communities, supported by a grant from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/rastafarian-religious-liberty-cases

Rastafari want more legal marijuana for freedom of worship

LUIS ANDRES HENAO and KWASI GYAMFI ASIEDU
The Associated Press
December 10, 2021

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Mosiyah Tafari banged on drums and chanted psalms with other Rastafari in a ballroom where the smoke of frankincense mixed with the fragrant smell of marijuana — which his faith deems sacred.

The ceremony in Columbus, Ohio marked the 91st anniversary of the coronation of the late Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I, whom Rastafari worship as their savior. For hours, the group played traditional Nyabinghi music on their most important holy day.

“Cannabis is something that puts you in contact with the spiritual aspect of life in the physical body,” said Tafari, a member of the Columbus-based Rastafari Coalition, which organized the event.

“It’s important for Rastafari because we follow the traditions of the Scriptures and we see that cannabis is good.”

For Rastafari, the ritualistic smoking of marijuana brings them closer to the divine. But for decades, many have been incarcerated because of their use of cannabis. As public opinion and policy continues to shift in the U.S. and across the world toward legalization of the drug for both medical and recreational purposes, Rastafari are clamoring for broader relaxation to curtail persecution and ensure freedom of worship.

“In this system, they’re very focused on, ‘Oh, we can make a lot of money, we can sell these medicinal cards, we can sell this ganja,’ but what of the people who have been persecuted? What of the people who have been sent to jail, imprisoned, even killed,” said Ras Nyah, a music producer from the U.S. Virgin Islands and a Rastafari Coalition member.

“We must address these things before we get too ahead of ourselves,” said Nyah, who attended the ceremony wearing a tracksuit in the Rastafari colors of red, green and gold.

The Rastafari faith is rooted in 1930s Jamaica, growing as a response by Black people to white colonial oppression. The beliefs are a melding of Old Testament teachings and a desire to return to Africa. Rastafari followers believe the use of marijuana is directed in biblical passages and that the “holy herb” induces a meditative state. The faithful smoke it as a sacrament in chalice pipes or cigarettes called “spliffs,” add it to vegetarian stews and place it in fires as a burnt offering.

“Ganja,” as marijuana is known in Jamaica, has a long history in that country, and its arrival predates the Rastafari faith. Indentured servants from India brought the cannabis plant to the island in the 19th century, and it gained popularity as a medicinal herb.

It began to gain wider acceptance in the 1970s when Rastafari and reggae culture was popularized through music icons Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, two of the faith’s most famous exponents. Tosh’s 1976 hit “Legalize It” remains a rallying cry for those pushing to make marijuana legal.

Rastafari adherents in the U.S., many of them Black, say they have endured both racial and religious profiling by law enforcement agencies due to their ritualistic use of cannabis.

Tosh’s youngest son, Jawara McIntosh, a singer and marijuana activist who performed under the stage name Tosh1, was serving a six-month sentence for possession after police said they found over 65 pounds in his rental car, when he was attacked in a New Jersey jail in 2017 and was left in a coma. He died last year.

The attack prompted his sister Niambe McIntosh, Peter Tosh’s youngest daughter, who was a teacher in Boston at the time, to become an advocate for criminal justice reform and launch a campaign to fight the stigma surrounding cannabis and support those affected by its prohibition.

“I realized that his story had to be shared because no family should ever ... face these harsh consequences over a plant,” said McIntosh, who also heads The Peter Tosh Foundation, which advocates for legalization.

The so-called war on drugs declared by President Richard Nixon more than five decades ago prompted a rise in anti-possession laws including stricter sentencing.

The negative impacts of the drug war have, for years, drawn calls for reform and abolition from mostly left-leaning elected officials and social justice advocates. Many of them say that in order to begin to unwind or undo the war on drugs, all narcotics must be decriminalized or legalized, with science-based regulation.

”We had founded the Peter Tosh Foundation originally with the ‘Legalize It’ initiative geared at promoting the science, the spiritual benefits of cannabis,” McIntosh said, “but also recognizing that those that have been harmed by prohibition should most be at the forefront of this new booming business.”

The concern is shared by other U.S.-based Rastafari as corporations look to invest in and profit from recreational and medical cannabis.

“Maybe take some of those finances, those many millions and billions and trillions of dollars, and invest them back into brothers and sisters who have been incarcerated over a long period of time,” Tafari said.

“Invest in our communities that have been damaged ... maybe allow some of the Rastafari to be a part of those business endeavors as well.”

Shifting public opinion and policy on cannabis has led countries including Canada, Malawi and South Africa to ease laws in recent years.

While it remains illegal on the federal level in the United States, lawmakers from Oregon to New York have passed a raft of legislation legalizing cannabis in a third of U.S. states.

A Gallup Poll released last year indicated that 68% of Americans favor legalizing marijuana — double the approval rate in 2003. In mid-November of this year, Republican lawmaker Nancy Mace of South Carolina introduced legislation in Congress that, if passed, would decriminalize cannabis federally — an impediment cited in many states that have opted not to pursue legalization on their own. But it would not change local-level restrictions, meaning that states would still determine their own marijuana statutes.

In Jamaica, authorities gave the green light to a regulated medical cannabis industry and decriminalized possession of small amounts of weed in 2015. The country also recognized the sacramental rights of Rastafari to their sacred plant.

“We are able to access a certain kind of connection with creation, and that is ultimately the sacramental gift that we seek to defend,” said Jahlani Niaah, a lecturer in Cultural and Rastafari Studies at Jamaica’s University of the West Indies.

Jamaicans are now allowed up to five plants per household for personal use only. But Niaah said this has not stopped run-ins with police.

“Rastafari have had various challenges where they’ve had herbs confiscated and disappeared in police custody and continue to be abused in relation to claiming a sacramental right,” he said.

“There’s really a slip between the pen and the practice.”

Jamaican Minister of Justice Delroy Chuck said in a statement that “instances of perceived discrimination are unfortunate” but the government continues to facilitate equality and inclusion in the legal regime.

“In fact, there has been and continue to be several sensitization sessions undertaken since the establishment of the legislation,” Chuck said. “These include sensitization sessions with our law enforcement agencies.”

Other Jamaican Rastafari are concerned that they have been left out of the burgeoning business.

“The people who went to prison, who had to run up and down from police and police helicopters, they financially could not afford to get involved in the medical ganja industry,” said Ras Iyah V, a Rastafari advocate and former member of Jamaica’s Cannabis Licensing Authority. In 1982, he was convicted, served a short sentence and paid a fine for cannabis possession.

When the Jamaican government launched a program in 2017 aimed at helping “traditional” ganja farmers transition into the legal industry, he was hopeful that it could help the Rastafari community. But today he is “very disappointed in terms of how it is going. The vast majority of our ganja farmers are not able to participate because they don’t have any land.”

Setting up a 1-acre cannabis farm following the guidelines established by Jamaican law can cost thousands of dollars, he said.

“The cannabis industry has now been taken out of the hands of Rastafari and the traditional ganja farmers and placed in the hands of rich people,” he said. “It makes us very bitter because we don’t see any justice in that.”

___

AP journalist Emily Leshner contributed to this report.

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through The Conversation U.S. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

https://apnews.com/article/health-religion-ohio-marijuana-columbus-d2dc83bc70426d6b6b10449496469557

CultNEWS101 Articles: 10/2/2019

Rastafarins, Scientology, MK-ULTRA, Witchcraft, Fiji, Jehovah's Witnessess, Russia, Religious Freedom 

All Africa: Ethiopia: Why Ethiopia's Rastafari Community Keeps Dwindling

"Rastafarians from around the world have been settling in Ethiopia for the last 50 years, after being given land by Emperor Haile Selassie. Today, life in "the promised land" is far from the paradise they had imagined.

A purple tint covers the evening sky over Shashamane, home to Ethiopia's remaining Rastafarians. Inside the house of the Ethiopian World Federation (EWF), a few Rastafarians are watching a documentary about how science is threatening people of color. "Yeah, that's right", they mutter now and then. In the front row, Ras Paul, wearing a red, yellow and green beanie, is in charge of the projector.

Initially, "the EWF [was] a black organization, not a Rastafarian one", said Ras Paul, the only employee of the place. The federation was launched in the US in the 1930s to support Ethiopia during the Italian invasion and to promote black unity. After World War II, Ethiopia's Emperor Haile Selassie granted 200 hectares of land to descendants of slaves who wished to find a home on the continent. The EWF was to administer and attribute the land in Shashamane. "We can only gain political power if we become self-sufficient and rule ourselves, and the only way we [people of color] can do that, is to return home to Africa", Ras Paul explained.

Whereas the Rastafarians were not the only ones being targeted by Selassie's land donation, they ended up being the vast majority to undertake the journey from Jamaica and other countries to Ethiopia. Haile Selassie was widely viewed by Rastafarians as the Messiah who would one day bring them back to Africa. This belief added a strong religious component to the repatriation movement. It was encouraged by Selassie himself, who visited Jamaica in 1966 and urged the Rastafarians to move to Shashamane.

"The land grant was originally corporate land, but the Rastafarians spiritualized it", Ras Paul said in a British accent. He arrived in Ethiopia from the UK 20 years ago. "Religiously speaking, we were enslaved by the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant Church. We learnt that for most world religions, you can find their foundations inside of Africa."

Rastafarian belief is founded on an interpretation of the Old Testament. "The Bible was the only thing we were given to read as slaves, we see Ethiopia in the Bible and we identify with that. We can also identify with the story of Israelis going into Egypt and being slaves for 400 years", said Ras Paul. But for the Rastafarians, the Holy Land is in Ethiopia. In Ras Paul's office, the thin face of Haile Selassie gazes down from every wall. Rastas see him as the true reincarnation of the Christ, in accordance with a biblical prophecy."

" ... Internal squabbles, economic struggles and the difficulty of integrating with the local Ethiopian community have led many Rastafarians to leave town, either to find work in the capital Addis Ababa, or to move to another country. Only about 200 still live in Shashamane. In the late 90s, they numbered approximately 2,000.

Recently, the Ethiopian government started the allocation of national residence cards to Rastafarians who have been living in the country for over 10 years. This was an important step, not only because it gave them the right to legally live in Ethiopia, but also because it stopped the payments "illegal residents" had to make in order to be able to travel outside Ethiopia. According to Ras Paul, "Now it's their chance to travel, see their families, they can come back when they want to.... I'd say about a third of the population is out of the country now".

The allocation of the residence permit, which gives Rastafarians the status of "Foreign National of Ethiopian Origin", was celebrated as a major step towards the community's recognition and integration. They now have the right to work and can legally send their children to school. But ist is not enouigh for some. "I consider myself to be an Ethiopian returned home, and I have no desire to leave this country to live anywhere else," Ras Kawintesseb, who born in Trinidad and Tobago, said."

The Underground Bunker: Scientology reels in politicians and gets photo ops out of Hurricane Dorian

"Scientology Volunteer Ministers traveled to the Bahamas this week to provide relief in the wake of Hurricane Dorian. " ... We know of one boat and one airplane that have been making the trip. The 82-foot luxury yacht Gecko which usually rents for $9,000 per day has made several trips, bringing water and supplies to the island."

POLITICO: The Secret History of Fort Detrick, the CIA's Base for Mind Control Experiments.

"In 1954, a prison doctor in Kentucky isolated

seven black inmates and fed them "double, triple and quadruple" doses of LSD for 77 days straight. No one knows what became of the victims. They may have died without knowing they were part of the CIA's highly secretive program to develop ways to control minds—a program based out of a little-known Army base with a dark past, Fort Detrick.

Suburban sprawl has engulfed Fort Detrick, an Army base 50 miles from Washington in the Maryland town of Frederick. Seventy-six years ago, however, when the Army selected Detrick as the place to develop its super-secret plans to wage germ warfare, the area around the base looked much different. In fact, it was chosen for its isolation. That's because Detrick, still thriving today as the Army's principal base for biological research and now encompassing nearly 600 buildings on 13,000 acres, was for years the nerve center of the CIA's hidden chemical and mind control empire.

Detrick is today one of the world's cutting-edge laboratories for research into toxins and antitoxins, the place where defenses are developed against every plague, from crop fungus to Ebola. Its leading role in the field is widely recognized. For decades, though, much of what went on at the base was a closely held secret. Directors of the CIA mind control program MK-ULTRA, which used Detrick as a key base, destroyed most of their records in 1973. Some of its secrets have been revealed in declassified documents, through interviews and as a result of congressional investigations. Together, those sources reveal Detrick's central role in MK-ULTRA and in the manufacture of poisons intended to kill foreign leaders."

The Guardian: New Zealand man charged over 'witchcraft' deaths that shocked Fiji

"Police have charged a New Zealand man with five counts of murder following the mysterious "witchcraft" deaths of a Fijian family last month.

Husband and wife Nirmal Kumar, 63, and Usha Devi, 54, their daughter Nileshni Kajal, 34, and Kajal's daughters Sana, 11, and Samara, eight, were all found dead in the Nausori Highlands in August.

According to reports and police testimony, a one-year-old baby was found alive among the bodies.

The case has shocked Fijians. With no visible injuries present on the bodies of the five family members, police suspected poisoning as their cause of death.

The father of the two dead children told the Fiji Sun that his father-in-law, also among the deceased, was interested in witchcraft.

"I never saw anyone or any family so much into witchcraft than my in-laws," he said.

"I used to see my in-laws and other witchdoctors making a doll from dough and poking needles in it. I always took my daughters away into the bedroom. My wife and daughters were obviously also dragged into it."

On Monday, three weeks after the bodies were found and after toxicology reports were ordered, police laid charges.

The suspect, who has permanent residency status in New Zealand, and his wife had been questioned by police last month, with court order issued to prevent the pair leaving Fiji."

RFE/RL: Two Russians Given U.S. Entry Bans For Allegedly Torturing Jehovah's Witnesses

"Two high-ranking regional officers in Russia's Investigative Committee have been banned from entering the United States for alleged "gross violations of human rights."

A September 10 State Department statement said Vladimir Yermolayev, head of the Investigative Committee in the city of Surgut; Stepan Tkach, a senior investigator; and their immediate family members "are ineligible for entry into the United States."

They are suspected of leading a group of Surgut Investigative Committee officers in subjecting at least seven Jehovah's Witnesses "to suffocation, electric shocks, and severe beatings during interrogation."

In 2017, Russia outlawed the religious group and labeled it "extremist," a designation the State Department said was "wrongful."

The statement said 60 Jehovah's Witnesses were currently awaiting trial on criminal charges and that more than 200 individuals were currently imprisoned in Russia 'for exercising their freedom of religion or belief.'"  

News, Education, Intervention, Recovery

CultMediation.com   

Intervention101.com to help families and friends understand and effectively respond to the complexity of a loved one's cult involvement.

CultRecovery101.com assists group members and their families make the sometimes difficult transition from coercion to renewed individual choice.

CultNEWS101.com news, links, resources.

Facebook

Flipboard

Twitter

Instagram

Cults101.org resources about cults, cultic groups, abusive relationships, movements, religions, political organizations and related topics.

Selection of articles for CultNEWS101 does not mean that Patrick Ryan or Joseph Kelly agree with the content. We provide information from many points of view in order to promote dialogue.

Ethiopia: Why Ethiopia's Rastafari Community Keeps Dwindling

Maria Gerth-Niculescu
All africa
SEPTEMBER 9, 2019

Rastafarians from around the world have been settling in Ethiopia for the last 50 years, after being given land by Emperor Haile Selassie. Today, life in "the promised land" is far from the paradise they had imagined.

A purple tint covers the evening sky over Shashamane, home to Ethiopia's remaining Rastafarians. Inside the house of the Ethiopian World Federation (EWF), a few Rastafarians are watching a documentary about how science is threatening people of color. "Yeah, that's right", they mutter now and then. In the front row, Ras Paul, wearing a red, yellow and green beanie, is in charge of the projector.

Initially, "the EWF [was] a black organization, not a Rastafarian one", said Ras Paul, the only employee of the place. The federation was launched in the US in the 1930s to support Ethiopia during the Italian invasion and to promote black unity. After World War II, Ethiopia's Emperor Haile Selassie granted 200 hectares of land to descendants of slaves who wished to find a home on the continent. The EWF was to administer and attribute the land in Shashamane. "We can only gain political power if we become self-sufficient and rule ourselves, and the only way we [people of color] can do that, is to return home to Africa", Ras Paul explained.

Whereas the Rastafarians were not the only ones being targeted by Selassie's land donation, they ended up being the vast majority to undertake the journey from Jamaica and other countries to Ethiopia. Haile Selassie was widely viewed by Rastafarians as the Messiah who would one day bring them back to Africa. This belief added a strong religious component to the repatriation movement. It was encouraged by Selassie himself, who visited Jamaica in 1966 and urged the Rastafarians to move to Shashamane.

"The land grant was originally corporate land, but the Rastafarians spiritualized it", Ras Paul said in a British accent. He arrived in Ethiopia from the UK 20 years ago. "Religiously speaking, we were enslaved by the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant Church. We learnt that for most world religions, you can find their foundations inside of Africa."

Rastafarian belief is founded on an interpretation of the Old Testament. "The Bible was the only thing we were given to read as slaves, we see Ethiopia in the Bible and we identify with that. We can also identify with the story of Israelis going into Egypt and being slaves for 400 years", said Ras Paul. But for the Rastafarians, the Holy Land is in Ethiopia. In Ras Paul's office, the thin face of Haile Selassie gazes down from every wall. Rastas see him as the true reincarnation of the Christ, in accordance with a biblical prophecy.

Clash of Rastafari generations

A first influx of Rastafarians into Shashamane started in the late 60s until the mid-70s. A second wave arrived from Jamaica in the early 1990s, after the Ethiopian Civil War. Nowadays, a discrepancy persists between the ones who were here "from the beginning" and those who made the journey in recent decades.

The older generation prefers not to talk about their past which they describe as a traumatic experience. But for those who settled over 50 years ago, the newcomers had it easy here and don't have the legitimacy to speak in the name of the community.

"For many decades, they've held the political power within our community because they have some legitimacy, and for many years they were the only legitimate ones", Ras Paul recalled. "So you find there will be a clash in that way: I've personally witnessed this." The tall Rasta-man regrets that his community is to some extent "dysfunctional".

Legal status and integration

Internal squabbles, economic struggles and the difficulty of integrating with the local Ethiopian community have led many Rastafarians to leave town, either to find work in the capital Addis Ababa, or to move to another country. Only about 200 still live in Shashamane. In the late 90s, they numbered approximately 2,000.

Recently, the Ethiopian government started the allocation of national residence cards to Rastafarians who have been living in the country for over 10 years. This was an important step, not only because it gave them the right to legally live in Ethiopia, but also because it stopped the payments "illegal residents" had to make in order to be able to travel outside Ethiopia. According to Ras Paul, "Now it's their chance to travel, see their families, they can come back when they want to.... I'd say about a third of the population is out of the country now".

The allocation of the residence permit, which gives Rastafarians the status of "Foreign National of Ethiopian Origin", was celebrated as a major step towards the community's recognition and integration. They now have the right to work and can legally send their children to school. But ist is not enouigh for some. "I consider myself to be an Ethiopian returned home, and I have no desire to leave this country to live anywhere else," Ras Kawintesseb, who born in Trinidad and Tobago, said.

"It makes sense to me that I get to become an Ethiopian citizen. I'm not satisfied with being a foreign national, so I've applied for my Ethiopian citizenship," the Rastafarian who landed in Addis Ababa 23 years ago added. Married to an Ethiopian, Ras Kawintesseb is in touch with the Ethiopian community through his family and his multi-lingual music. But that's not the case for all Rastafarians in Shashamane: some are afraid that Ethiopians want to take their land away; others haven't had the chance to learn Amharic or adapt to the Ethiopian culture.

Ras Paul says he wishes to mingle more with Ethiopians. "But here it's very tense, because of the political problems of the country and the political emphasis on the land grant. There is big tension here, attacks on Rastafarians, seizing of Rastafarian land... Most of us have a story of a house being burgled, especially on his Imperial Majesty's birthday. On our most holy days they target us", he exclaimed, aggrieved. Others disagree and say that Ethiopians appreciate the Rastafarians and are flattered that their country is seen as the Holy Land.

Rejecting colonialism

Over the years, some European Rastafarians have also settled in Shashamane, adding an element of complexity to the interpretation of the movement. "Some of them are much more learned than most of the Caribbeans. Rastafarian brotherins and sisterins are from all nations, from around the world!," assured Ras Paul. Although when it comes to the land grant, he is categorical.

"What is their position on repatriation? What is their position on reparations? If a group of people have had something done to them over a period of 500 years, those people need repair. If you're talking about going from one country to the next, to inhabit land that was given [for a specific purpose], nobody should have the right to take itaway", Ras Paul said angrily. "We've had Europeans come on this land grant, take the land and sell it to other Europeans. That is colonialism", he complained.

It was precisely to flee colonialism in all its forms that the Rastafarians settled here. Ethiopia, though briefly occupied by the Italians, was never officially colonized.

Here in Shashamane, Ras Kawintesseb feels free to express his spirituality more than ever. "As a musician, I am not only free to live it, but to express it to the world: the simple proclamation and chanting and vibration have that spiritual power," he said.

"We're not taught in school, or hardly ever, about basic ideas of your inner mind, your inner being," said Ras Kawintesseb as he climbed into his favorite tree for his daily reading routine. "You've got to go and look for those ideas yourself."

https://allafrica.com/stories/201909100084.html

Rastafarian pot farm shootout sparks religious-use debate

KATHLEEN RONAYNE and PAUL ELIAS

ASSOCIATED PRESS
August 3, 2017

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The shooting of two California deputies responding to a disturbance at a Rastafarian marijuana farm has drawn attention to religious use of the drug, sparking debate over whether churches should be protected from drug prosecutions.

Religious organizations throughout California have been growing marijuana for ceremonial purposes for years — and have been losing in court for just as long.

That’s because there is no religious exemption to state and federal marijuana bans, and there won’t be any special treatment when California legalizes pot next year.

That’s unlikely to stop Heidi and Charles Lepp, a Sacramento couple affiliated with the church where Tuesday’s shooting occurred.

Heidi Lepp launched her Sugarleaf Rastafarian Church in 2014 while Charles was serving eight years in federal prison after openly growing more than 20,000 pot plants in Lake County for what he considered religious purposes. She said she’s advised nearly 200 farms affiliated with her church not to adhere to state licensing rules.

“As a member of the church you aren’t bound by a lot of the rules other people are,” Charles Lepp said. “You’re not supposed to grow in Yuba County where this incident happened without a county issued permit, (but) as a church you don’t need a permit.”

Officials don’t agree. The religious argument didn’t keep Charles Lepp, an ordained Rastafarian minister, out of jail, and it hasn’t been successfully used by the Oklevueha Native American Church in Sonoma County. The church filed two unsuccessful civil rights lawsuits against the local sheriff for destroying its marijuana farm in 2015.

Yuba County Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Leslie Carbah said the Rastafarian church doesn’t have the proper county license to grow marijuana on the property at the center of Tuesday’s shooting.

She didn’t say whether sheriff’s investigators are looking into the farm’s operations. The property has been cited for illegally growing marijuana and as of October 2016 owed more than $400,000 in penalties, the Marysville Appeal-Democrat reported (https://tinyurl.com/y7klre24).

The licensing dispute didn’t stop Heidi Lepp from calling police Tuesday when a worker on the farm told her a newly arrived church member was armed, agitated and destroying pot plants. Heidi Lepp told the worker to leave and then she called the Sheriff’s Department, which dispatched three deputies.

Two of the deputies chased the suspect up a hill and into a house about 100 yards behind the farm. Another deputy remained outside, guarding the backdoor.

Sheriff Steve Durfor said the two deputies exchanged gunfire with the suspect inside the house and both were shot. The suspect died.

Authorities identified him as Mark Anthony Sanchez, 33, of Gilroy, California, a former California State Prison inmate with a history of violent felonies and two active warrants for his arrest. Lepp said he began working at the farm about a month ago.

The two deputies were in satisfactory condition after each underwent surgery. Both are expected to recover, Durfor said.

Jay Leiderman, a Ventura defense attorney who represents clients charged with marijuana crimes, said many people in Lepp’s position want to argue that marijuana is to them as wine is to Catholics. But Leiderman said “religious use is an extremely hard defense to use in California.”

California authorities said religious organizations will have to obtain a state license when they become available next year like everyone else if they want to legally grow marijuana in California.

There will be no exceptions for religious use, said Alex Traverso, spokesman for the state’s Bureau of Medical Cannabis Regulation.

“There are certainly plenty of other folks who have been doing things one way for quite some time that probably would like to be exempt for other reasons,” he said. “After Jan. 1, it’s really going to be a challenge for everybody to regulate the market and get people who are not in the regulated market into the regulated market.”

But at this point, the Lepps have no plans to come into the legal fold. They insist that religious freedom laws apply to them because marijuana is the sacrament of their religion. Heidi Lepp shares a set of documents with every group that affiliates with her Sugarleaf Rastafarian Church advising them not to consent to property searches or police questioning. She instructs them all to call her before dealing with law enforcement.

“Cannabis is a plant that should be free to everybody,” she said.

___

Elias reported from San Francisco.

https://www.apnews.com/2b50f72e8a7843f9a05d7766e7e0c616/Rastafarian-pot-farm-shootout-sparks-religious-use-debate