Religious Persecution: Going After the Wrong People

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In the early 1970s the Seattle Police were dealing with some serious threats to the Seattle community. There were robbers, vandals, criminals assaulting innocent civilians, and worse happening daily in the city. Luckily, the Seattle Police Department had their priorities straight; the police knew the true threat to the city came from criminals and degenerates who were drinking alcohol at The Monastery in downtown Seattle. In an attempt to publicly shame the patrons, on a night in 1982, the Police made sure every person in the Church was cited, held in custody, photographed and exposed as the “filthy dirty sacramental alcohol drinkers” that they were. This really amounted to religious persecution against a diverse group of worshippers. Good job, Seattle police – way to go!

Just one little thing, The Monastery held itself itself to be a Church. And yes, perhaps just like the fundamentalists and Holy Rollers danced to the spirit, The Monastery guests maybe had some spirits to help them dance too. We tend to forget that prior to the fourteenth century the Catholic Church had a festival called “Carnival”, in which the sacraments were shared by the parishioners throughout the Roman Republics. During these Carnivals, Priests did not speak in Latin, and the frolicking and partying continued through the wee hours of the morning, worshiping the Lord. Sometimes Parishioners become so intoxicated that they had to be awakened in the morning and removed by the custodians. An attempt to stem the revelry would have been religious persecution.

“…the custom of the churches was thoroughly entrenched in the late Middle Ages and a tolerated—if not actually enjoyed—even by many parish priests. Priest women danced; whole congregations joined in. Despite the efforts of the hierarchy, Christianity remained, to a certain extent, a danced religion.” — Dancing in the Streets, by Barbara Ehrenreich

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