For the 22nd year, more than a hundred people gathered in downtown Raleigh on Good Friday to re-enact Jesus’ last steps, marching with crosses and calling attention to social justice issues. This year’s Pilgrimage for Justice and Peace focused on immigration, but as in past years, marchers also called for an end to torture, the death penalty and the war in Iraq. Several Franciscan friars and retired Roman Catholic Bishop F. Joseph Gossman were among the marchers.It was Good Friday, the day Christians believe Jesus died on the cross. In keeping with tradition, the marchers re-enacted the 14 Stations of The Cross, the 14 stops Jesus made as he carried his cross to the site where he was crucified by the Romans. At each stop between the Capitol and the U.S. post office on Fayetteville Street, marchers recited a litany of prayers in English and Spanish. As they walked, those in the crowd sang, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” and “We are marching in the light of God.”

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Unforgettable. That is how members of St. Paul’s Christian Church in Raleigh describe the late Patricia Olejar, a talented and tireless volunteer for the church.The church’s new cookbook, “The Art of Cooking,” is dedicated to her. With friend Judy Caves, Olejar prepared and auctioned gourmet dinners to raise money for the church. The cookbook contains some of the menus and recipes from those special occasions.

As the cookbook tribute describes her, “In her home she created a signature style of warm hospitality and delicious food, served with just the right mix of elegance, originality and always a dash of humor. In her church and volunteer organizations, Pat was a leader who set high standards to challenge and inspire the group.”

“The Art of Cooking,” the church’s third cookbook has a spiral binding and 188 pages. It is filled with popular and appealing dishes, including recipes for Eastern Carolina Barbecue by Katherine Olejar Reitz, State Fair (Apple) Cobbler by Mae Peche, Martha Washington Candy from Katherine Kelly, Eggless Milkless Butterless Cake by Ada Sanders, Vegetarian Chili by Alex Evans and She Crab Soup from the Francis Marion Hotel in Charleston.

“The Art of Cooking” is available from St. Paul’s Christian Church, 3331 Blue Ridge Road, Raleigh, NC 27612 or call 787-1278. The cost is $15 per book plus $3 per copy for shipping. Proceeds will be used to establish a daylily garden at the church, a dream of Pat Olejar’s

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A woman draws on an ancient civilization’s rituals to learn healing

Victoria Johnson doesn’t tell strangers she practices shamanism.

She prefers to call it “healing work.” If someone probes further, she’ll offer more details, but telling people she’s a shaman invariably conjures up an image of a witch doctor, a wizard or a sorcerer.

Johnson, who will be speaking on the Shaman’s Way of Healing at the Unity Center of Peace Church in Chapel Hill on Saturday, said she is none of the above.

A former FBI agent and later a federal prosecutor, Johnson embraced shamanism slowly, and for the most common of reasons.

Juggling both her job and her responsibilities as a mother, she increasingly felt stressed out physically and emotionally. For a while, the one thing that relaxed her was acupuncture. So she abandoned her law career and went to study the traditional Chinese healing method.

But all along, she believed there was a way to heal the body without using needles. After moving from Florida back to North Carolina in 2001 — she had grown up here and vacationed in the mountains for years with her husband — she came across a book that changed her life. That book, by Alberto Villoldo, was “Shaman, Healer, Sage: How to Heal Yourself and Others with the Energy Medicine of the Americas.”

“I read that book and I knew [Villoldo] was my next teacher,” said Johnson, who lives in Brevard, south of Asheville. For the past few years, Johnson, 52, has been studying the medicine wheel and the healing practices of the Q’ero people of Peru. She now works as a shaman practitioner and as a teacher for Villoldo’s training organization called The Four Winds (www.thefourwinds.com) based in Park City, Utah.

Johnson said shamanism has helped her answer the big questions of life: Why she’s here and what she wants to be. For her, the answer is helping support others on their healing journey. She does so through a series of techniques, including visualization and work with stones, that help reorient a person’s energy toward balance and wholeness.

The cycle of life

A shaman is a person who journeys into an altered state of consciousness to acquire power for healing illness, whether physical or psychological. Getting there may involve the ritual use of hallucinogenic plants, a drum, a rattle or a dance. Other shamans use stones or bones or animal skin. The goal is to interact with the spirit world on behalf of a community or a client.

The word “shaman” comes from the Tungus language of Siberia and refers to a person who makes a journey into an altered state. Shamans are indigenous to many cultures, on every continent. But Johnson learned her brand of shamanism from the South American Incas, the ancient civilization in the Andes Mountains of what is now Peru.

At the heart of her method is the concept of a medicine wheel, a circle representing the cycle of life. Divided in four, it represents the four directions, each with its own spirit or energy field. By traveling south and west, for example, a person releases wounds and traumas from the past and begins to walk in a different path. The north and west directions stoke visions that can help people achieve their destinies.

Today’s shamanic practices are mostly used for therapeutic and personal development. In that sense they differ from the ancient rites of indigenous shamans, said Michael Winkelman, a professor at Arizona State University who has studied shamanism.

In hunter-gatherer societies, he said, shamans were as concerned with harm as they were with healing, directing their spiritual powers in positive as well as negative ways. Shamanic rites were communal events that might last all night long. Shamans themselves were charismatic leaders who directed the movement of hunting and warfare.

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PHILADELPHIA – The globe-trotting priest from Connecticut drove a Jaguar, shopped at Bergdorf Goodman and bought jewelry from Cartier, all with money stolen from his church’s coffers. By the time the parish finance council caught on, he had embezzled $1.3 million.THE PROBLEM: Many U.S. churches have been victims of embezzlement over the years, reflecting not just moral weakness on the part of the wrongdoers but also lax financial controls. Often, church budgets are overseen by volunteers or employees with little guidance or training.

SOME EXAMPLES: Last year, The Associated Press found reports of more than 20 churches in 17 states dealing with embezzlement cases.

The cases included those of a Roman Catholic priest in Virginia who admitted stealing at least $400,000 from his parishioners and a Lutheran youth minister in Pennsylvania charged with embezzling more than $68,000

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3,200 worshippers flock to the facility

CLAYTON – A blue flashing police light and traffic control greeted hundreds of drivers Sunday morning as they headed to the grand opening of the new 2,000-seat worship center at Cleveland Community Church, one of the Triangle’s fastest growing churches.

Drawn by radio and television advertising and the pastor’s upbeat message, worshippers filed into an auditorium-size hall with a soaring ceiling. On the stage that doubled as pulpit, a 12-member band with the pastor’s wife as a lead singer played Christian rock loud enough to require ear protection in the front row. Facing the congregation, six video screens reflected larger-than-life images of the musicians.

“I’m so pumped you’re here today,” Matt Fry, the pastor who founded and built Cleveland Community Church, told the last of the two grand-opening services which were attended by an estimated 3,200 worshippers.

In his sermon, he admitted the church, better known as C3, is unlike other Johnston County churches.

C3′s new facility first took shape in an airport on a paper napkin. It measures 85,000 square feet, which is larger than a large grocery store, but like some Triangle Harris Teeters it will feature a Starbucks coffee shop and bookstore once construction is completed. He told Sunday’s congregation that their building compared to Noah building the ark. He told different versions of the story, which included scenes from the Hollywood movie “Evan Almighty” on the video screens.

“This is a day we’ve been dreaming about for years,” Fry said in an interview after the service.

C3 began 10 years ago in an old lunch room at Cleveland Elementary School. Located in one of the fastest growing communities in the Triangle, attendance at the church services doubled every two years.

Now, C3 draws worshippers from as far away as North Raleigh and Goldsboro.

Christopher Lee of Willow Spring checked out C3 for the first time Sunday. He had watched the new facility go up.

“It doesn’t look like a church,” Lee said.

Curiosity also drew Pam and Maurice Rozier of Clayton. Unlike Lee, the couple have been looking to join a new church.

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A mathematician applies reasoning to arguments for a higher being’s existence

Who isn’t an atheist (or agnostic) these days? The Celebrity Atheist Web site (celebatheists.com) lists hundreds of movie stars (Angelina Jolie and Woody Allen, for example), business tycoons (Bill Gates and Warren Buffett) and scientists (Steven Pinker and Steven Weinberg) who don’t believe in God. Books by nonbelievers abound. The biologist Richard Dawkins came out with “The God Delusion” a little over a year ago, and Christopher Hitchens jumped on the bandwagon recently with “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.” These writers not only don’t believe in God, they are downright hostile toward God.

The latest book debunking God has a lighter tone. John Allen Paulos aims to prove — with logic, dry wit and a mild manner — that God does not exist. Despite his less rancorous approach, Paulos is dead set against the idea of God. “Why postulate a completely nonexplanatory, extra perplexity to help explain the already sufficiently perplexing and beautiful world?” he asks.

Paulos, a mathematician at Temple University, is a very good writer, who spices his clear prose with touches of humor. In this book, he lines up 12 arguments for God. Then, using well-honed mathematical reasoning, he shoots them down. A few of the arguments for God’s existence are arcane, making the arguments to disprove them difficult to follow.

One ontological argument, for instance, comes from Descartes’ idea that God is a perfect being. Since he (Descartes) is not perfect, then the idea of perfection must come from something outside him — an external perfect being: God. Paulos points out that the only way such a proposition can be proved is for its negation to lead to a contradiction. But no contradiction of Descartes’ statement follows from God’s not existing. Maybe not, but both argument and counter argument seem slippery and unconvincing.

A stronger argument for God is called “the argument from presupposition.” Paulos outlines it as follows:

“(1) In presenting its divine narrative, a holy book presupposes God exists. (2) People read and come to accept the narrative. (3) The narrative must be true. (4) Therefore God exists.”

This argument is so straightforward that it has been summarized on bumper stickers: “God said it, I believe it, and that settle’s it.” The sentence includes, Paulos notes, a “telling apostrophe.” Paulos easily exposes the flaw in this argument. “Claiming that a holy book’s claims are undeniable because the book itself claims them to be is convincing only to the convinced.”

And there are plenty of the convinced around — from pious politicians to celebrated scientists. Francis Collins, the former head of the Human Genome Project, is one prominent scientist who has publicly proclaimed his belief in God. In “The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief,” Collins revealed the source of his deeply religious views. They stem, he wrote, from the concept of a “Moral Law,” a major component of which is altruistic behavior. Collins believes that the Moral Law is contrary to all natural instincts and must come from God.

Paulos calls these views “the universality argument.” What’s considered moral or immoral, he writes, is strikingly similar across cultures. Unprovoked murder, for example, is condemned by all societies. Many believers, like Collins, conclude that these similarities in behavioral codes must come from a single source — God. Therefore, God exists. This is a serious effort to establish the existence of God. It was put forth first by C.S. Lewis, the respected British writer and scholar, in his book “Mere Christianity.”

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Bishop presides at dedication of modern home for traditionally black parish

Etheldreda Guion came to Durham a newlywed in 1963, a Catholic from New Orleans looking for a new parish. She visited Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in downtown Durham, which she learned was for whites.

Black Catholics, they told her, went to Holy Cross, a small stone church across the street from N.C. Central University, which then was known as the N.C. College for Negroes. Guion began attending and soon found that the small church boasted such a devoted following that parishioners refused to let it be closed.

Holy Cross is now the last traditionally black Catholic parish in the Raleigh diocese, which covers the eastern half of the state. But the church’s quaint stone home has been replaced with a modern building of brick and pine a couple of miles south on Alston Street.

The need for a new home was evident Sunday morning, when Bishop Michael Burbidge presided over the new church’s dedication. The 420-seat church holds five times as many people as the old church, and it was standing room only on Sunday.

“All I can say is, it’s just an awesome, awesome sight,” said Guion, a parish council chairwoman, as she waited for the dedication to begin.

The church dedication was Burbidge’s first since he was appointed bishop of the Raleigh Diocese in June 2006.

Holy Cross stayed true to its traditions, with the choir belting out gospel-style renditions of hymns that had parishioners clapping in rhythm. Chuck Davis, who founded an African-American dance group in Durham, dressed in traditional West African mudcloth and pounded a kenkeni drum as he led the congregation into the new church.

Humble origins

Holy Cross’ beginnings trace back to a Christmas Day Mass celebrated at the dental office of Dr. Norman Cordice on South Mangum Street in 1939. A beauty parlor also served as a home for Durham’s few black Catholics until the church opened in 1952.

The parish began scouting for a new location five years ago. By then, NCCU had already purchased most of the old church’s 20-acre site. Guion said council members feared that the university would take the rest under eminent domain if they did not sell it first.

The new church cost about $3.5 million, with roughly a third of the money raised from members and others in the community. Among its features are a stained-glass window above the main entrance that depicts a wide, leafy tree. A large chunk of the old church’s original stone wall serves as the backdrop behind the altar

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When the good folks at Wilson’s Barton College invited me to be the speaker for its annual Allan Sharp lecture, I hesitated. I had never entertained the idea of speaking on the designated topic, “Southern Religion As Seen Through the Eyes of a Journalist.”It was a challenging assignment. In retrospect, I don’t think I did very well addressing such an elusive mystique as Southern religion.

Before going over, I consulted my guru on all things religious, the Rev. Bob Mullinax, and asked him to define “Southern religion.”

“The South,” he said, “was part of the Great Awakening movement and was fervent in the pursuit of ‘personal,’ largely Calvinistic religion during numerous periods of revivalism.

“Southern culture, characterized by lower incomes, lack of educational opportunity and concentration of wealth among land-and-slave owners, was fertile territory for the pietistic, ‘simple’ Gospel, with its promise of rewards and justice in the great out yonder.

“It is undeniable, I think, that Southern Religion was used, intentionally and/or in ignorance, to help keep the South poor by its anti-union stance, and racially divided by its perpetuation of anti-black attitudes following the Civil War.

“Blacks and poor whites needed one another, but were kept separate by a segregation supported by religious and political influences. Often-ignorant interpretations of a literal Bible worked hand-in-hand to preserve the status quo.”

There’s no doubt but what Southern religion has a distinct flavor, more emotional, and, as skeptics argue, more irrational. It is deeply rooted in unquestioning faith and the power of prayer.

For example, while we were visiting our Florida family at Thanksgiving, the St. Petersburg Times reported that a woman in nearby Port St. Lucie had been flipping flapjacks made from a $1.25 package of mix from Wal-Mart when she noticed the image of Jesus and Mary on one of the pancakes.

Promptly posting the pancake on eBay, she soon had an offer of $338 from an Alabama woman who wanted it for a going-away gift to her husband being deployed to Iraq. When the deal fell through, an Illinois man snapped up the pancake for $29.

Could this happen outside the South?

Prayer is the foundation of Southern religion as I perceive it. That may be due to the fact that the Baptists, for long the South’s dominant denomination, pray at the drop of a hat. Sometimes for the strangest things. In last Sunday’s N&O letters to the editor, readers were hotly debating whether God answered prayers for rain.

Some prayers defy rationality. A Foothills relative once told me that she, running late for a hair appointment, asked God to turn all the stoplights green along the way, and the Almighty complied, getting her there two minutes early. She was offended by my suggestion that she see a shrink.

That’s not to say I haven’t also been guilty of such ecclesiastical nonsense. For years, I prayed for Carolina victories in football and basketball. I eventually came to my senses after Notre Dame beat us seven years in a row, concluding that God either was a Catholic or didn’t give a doodle about the outcome of sporting contests.

One of my favorite stories from UNC coach Dean Smith has its roots in those early years, when the Dean was recruiting players from “up Nawth.”

A certain player, a tiger on defense and master of the slam dunk, nevertheless was a disaster at the free throw line, although he unfailingly crossed himself before every shot.

Finally, the priest at the local Catholic church approached Coach Smith in a restaurant and said, “Coach, would you please do me a favor and ask Tommy not to cross himself before he takes those charity shots. With his dismal record, he’s giving the Catholic Church a bad name.”

A Newsweek magazine poll has determined that 89 percent of Americans believe God answers prayers, but only 51 percent think he pays attention to the outcome of sports events.

It is human nature that when don’t get what we pray for, we tend to pout, much in the way described by poet Emily Dickinson:

Of course I prayed

And did God care?

He cared as much

As on the air

A bird had stamped her foot

And cried ‘Give me!’

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Davie Street Presbyterian looks back on a turbulent time after the historic black church hired a white pastor

Members of Davie Street Presbyterian Church were accustomed to the injustices that came with being black in North Carolina in the 1960s — school segregation, political disenfranchisement, separate lunch counters.

But they were caught off guard when a four-foot-tall cross wrapped in burlap and doused with gasoline was set on fire on the front yard of the parsonage.

The church’s offense? The mostly black downtown Raleigh congregation had just hired a white pastor.

The Rev. Frank Hutchison and his family had moved into the parsonage on South East Street in January 1965. One month later, they awoke to find their house — and their whole neighborhood — aglow from the burning cross outside. Although no one was hurt and the fire was soon extinguished, members of the church were horrified.

“We knew there was some restlessness,” said Lethia Young Daniels, a church member, now 87. “But we didn’t know it was to that extent.”

Last weekend, during the church’s 139th anniversary celebration, members reflected on those four turbulent years, from 1964 to 1968, when Hutchison served the church. The Presbyterian pastor, now retired and living in Florida, was the guest of honor.

Cross-burnings were typical across the South during the civil rights era, and especially in rural areas as white supremacists tried to intimidate African-Americans. They were less common in Raleigh. Still, as the struggle for equality swept through various sectors of society it affected the churches, too.

Some blacks tested the waters by trying to attend white churches. They were often rebuffed at the door by ushers who asked them to leave. Most white churches remained mum on the subject of integration, hoping to tamp down a potentially explosive issue.

“The most typical response of the white church was passive,” said Collins Kilburn, a retired minister and a former leader of the North Carolina Council of Churches. “They didn’t offer any aggressive leadership.”

A good fit

Davie Street Presbyterian was not seeking the limelight when it called a white man as its pastor. Hutchison, who spent a year in Detroit training to serve in interracial settings, applied for the opening, and the church accepted him.

“We felt very comfortable with Frank, and as a matter of fact, he felt very comfortable with us,” recalled Harry Payne, a longtime member of the church.

The church had always had good relations with whites. It was a group of Northern white missionaries who came down to Raleigh after the Civil War that helped get the church started. Davie Street is part of the mostly white Presbyterian Church USA. The local New Hope Presbytery, stretching across Eastern North Carolina, includes 130 churches, of which 13 are mostly black.

But the church was not quite prepared to serve on the vanguard of the civil rights battle.

After the cross-burning, the men of the church got together to develop a strategy. They tapped Payne, who served in the U.S. Army Special Forces, to figure out how to prevent future cross-burnings.

“All we were trying to do was make sure the minister and his wife were safe,” said Payne.

Their first task turned out to be persuading the Hutchisons to stay. It didn’t take long.

“That they would open themselves up to the trouble of having a white minister impressed me,” said Hutchison. “The commitment of the people was outstanding.”

As misfortunes often do, the cross-burning led to closer ties between the church and its pastor. Church women stayed with Hutchison’s wife and daughters until 9:30 every night, and friendships were quickly formed.

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GREENSBORO – In a historic vote, delegates to the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina voted to cut ties to five Baptist colleges and universities they birthed years ago.The debate, at Greensboro Coliseum’s Special Events Center, was acrimonious. Many expressed their opposition to the measure, which will allow the five institutions to begin charting their futures by electing their own trustees and forgoing annual contributions of about $1.2 million each. For the change to take effect, it requires a second reading at next year’s session.

Delegates were sharply critical of the severance plan and skeptical that the schools would maintain their Christian character.

“If they’re going to separate … we shouldn’t give them the privilege of saying they’re Baptist,” said Tom McLean of Summerville Baptist Church in Denton. About 2,400 delegates attended the session.

All five presidents of the colleges, however, said they planned to honor the historic Baptist and Christian principles on which their schools were founded.

“To assume we’ll go wayward is a false assumption,” said Jerry Wallace, president of Campbell University in Buies Creek. He added that he hoped to continue voluntary ties.

“We want to come to this convention. We want to recruit students from Baptist churches.”

The five colleges cutting their ties are Campbell; Chowan University in Murfreesboro; Gardner-Webb University in Boiling Springs; Mars Hill College and Wingate University.

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