G-ville Summerfest
We're just back from Garrettsville Summerfest, the local street fair. We went down mainly for the St. Ambrose Chicken Festival: half a roast chicken, mashed, beans, roll, beverage and dessert for $7. Such a deal! And cute little girls asking if you want drink refills.
Then we walked down to the fair proper. It was the usual stuff, with lots of charities out to make a buck. One bunch of kids was selling baked goods to support missionaries in Latvia. I don't know which church or organization they represented. But 'scuse me; Latvia is a Christian nation, no thanks to the Teutonic Knights (I think technically there they were the Knights of Livonia or somesuch, but same difference). The implication is that they aren't "real" Christians over there. I don't recall if they are Catholic like the Lithuanians, or Lutheran. Given that their native religion was already squashed once by carpetbaggers, it seems only right to let Latvian Christians be responsible for the spread of the Gospel over there.
Then there were the Latter Day Saints and the Howland family tree. Apparently, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, the Bushes, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Smith all have a common ancestor. And they say there's no royalty in America! I think the nice lady was a little shocked when I pointed to the bottom of the chart and said, "So if we jumped into a time machine and killed this guy, we could change the entire course of history." I mean, definitely there was some bad seed there. And I asked, "How do you feel about the founder of your church being related to Richard Nixon?"
Clearly, I was out for trouble. So were the local Democrats, who were hawking pro-impeachment t-shirts. To which I asked, "Can we get a two-for-one deal and impeach Bush AND Nancy Pelosi?"
Comments
Posted by: jeffrey smith
Posted on: June 23, 2007 09:09 PM
A qwiki from Wiki:
he population is mostly Christian, although few people attend religious services regularly. [10] The largest groups in 2006 are:
* Roman Catholic - over 500,000,
* Lutheran - 450,000
* Eastern Orthodox - 350,000[11].
There are also Jews (9,883 in 2005) in Latvia who are now mainly a remainder from the past.... There are 182 known Muslims living in Latvia; total number of Muslims in Latvia, however, is estimated to be much larger - from 500 to 12,000.
There are about 600 Latvian neopagans Dievturi (The Godskeepers) whose religion is based on Latvian mythology.[12] About 35 % of the total population is not affiliated with a specific religion and may be nontheist.
(endquote)
The RC-Lutheran divide apparently dates from the Reformation.
But I bet the missionaries count them all as infidels because, you know, they're not Evangelical SpiritFilled Foursquare Bible Baptists or whatever.
Posted by: Jeffrey Quick
Posted on: June 24, 2007 07:35 AM
Yeah, I could have looked that up. But the Protestant/Catholic split only confirms my point: that there's sectarian bigotry happening.
And so few Dievturi? When the Baltics regained independence, Baltic paganism was a matter of great interest in the neopagan community, because there were so many practices that made it into the 20th century. I'm not as connected as I was, but it seems the romance has cooled, perhaps because there's a nationalist element involved. Nobody wants to talk about Hindu fundamentalism either, because "pagans don't do those things". Neo-paganism is at least as full of a-holes as any other religion.
Posted by: jeffrey smith
Posted on: June 24, 2007 05:12 PM
what interested me was the number of known Moslems compared to the number of practicing Moslems....visions of thousands of jihadis scampering about in the forests playing target practice. More likely, they're "guest workers".
Part of the disenchantment with Latvian paganism may be the fact that (IIRC) human sacrifice was not unheard of in pre-Christian Latvia. But that may simply be a reflection of the fact that Latvia and Lithuania were about the last bits of Europe to fall to Christianity.
Posted by: Jeffrey Quick
Posted on: June 24, 2007 09:53 PM
I can't speak about Latvia specifically. But Lithuania was around long enough and had trade contacts enough that the local paganism changed under the influence of Christianity, and by the time of Jogailo it wasn't happening. But yes, the Western Slavs in general were accused of human sacrifice. Granted, the accusers weren't disinterested voices, but it seems that wasn't made up of whole cloth.
Posted by: Edmund Ng
Posted on: June 29, 2007 03:05 PM
It seems that you got something against Bush and Nancy Pelosi. Great Job!
You are probably against Dumb People and a Sexist!