TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/101992/1019110.000

Text File | 1993-04-08 | 5.6 KB | 119 lines

                                                                                LAW, Page 60

Shedding Blood in Sacred Bowls


Does American religious liberty extend to animal sacrifice?
That's for the Supreme Court to decide.

By RICHARD N. OSTLING -- With reporting by Greg Aunapu/Miami


    The beige stucco house in Miami's western suburbs looks
too tidy and typical to hint at what transpires inside. But the
noises give it away: chanting, bleating, squawking, cooing. At
the back of the house, in a white-tiled, surgically clean room,
sits an old woman in a white dress. She will remain there for
an entire week, eating and resting and praying. The remainder of
her initiation into the priesthood of Santeria -- literally,
"saint worship" -- will take an entire year, during which she
must wear only white, remain celibate and eat only prescribed
foods.

    She is joined for her initiation ritual by several
white-robed men and women. On the floor are vessels made of
china and wood containing smooth stones in which the spirits of
the gods reside. A priest named Jorge leads in a goat from the
garage. The animal moves reluctantly, like a stubborn dog. As
the chanting congregation beseeches the deity Chango to accept
the animal, a santero, or priest, holds the animal's head
firmly, stretching the neck with one hand. With a sharp knife
he easily slices through the carotid artery. The animal
struggles feebly. Seconds later, the goat's head is lying on the
floor as blood gushes into each of the vessels.

    By the end of the day, six goats, 14 chickens, 14 guinea
hens and several doves will be offered as sacrifices. The
carcasses will be butchered in the garage and prepared for the
next day's feast. As many as 100 people will attend to celebrate
the "birth" of their newest Santeria priest.

    To believers in Santeria, ritual sacrifices are essential
to winning the favor of the gods and initiating new members
into the priesthood. To animal-rights activists, they are
gratuitous carnage. In Los Angeles and in Hialeah, Florida,
where Santeria is spreading quickly through the Latin, Caribbean
and African-American communities, the activists have pressed for
laws prohibiting sacrifices. It now falls to the Supreme Court
to decide whether those laws violate the Constitution's
protection of "free exercise" of religion.

    The Justices will hear arguments next month in the case of
the Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, a Santeria congregation
led by Ernesto Pichardo that held its services in a former
used-car dealership in Hialeah. Worried about the city's image,
irate animal-rights activists, community leaders and politicians
united to pass an anti-sacrifice ordinance in 1987. For
animal-rights groups, it was a natural extension of
long-established laws on animal cruelty or of more recent
crusades to halt animal research.

    Pichardo contends that his rituals are no different from
hunting or commercial slaughtering of animals for meat. "You can
buy Chicken McNuggets in Hialeah," says Jorge Duarte, an
attorney for the Santeria church, "but you can't kill a chicken
for religious reasons." Santeria spokesmen insist that unlike
the gruesome rituals still routinely performed in Cuba, their
sacrifices are humane and no animals are tortured. But opponents
disagree. ``Carcasses are polluting our rivers and rotting in
the streets," says Marian Lentz of the Animal Rights Foundation
of Florida. Pichardo admits that some offbeat cults may be
responsible for the animals floating in canals. But he insists
that his own group cooks and ritually eats most of its animals,
gives leftovers to the homeless, and neatly disposes of any
carcasses that cannot be eaten because they have absorbed
negative power.

    The practices at issue are as ancient as Cain and Abel.
Animal sacrifice was central to Judaism until the Jerusalem
Temple was destroyed 19 centuries ago, continues as an annual
ritual performed by all Muslims, and has been a part of African
animistic religions as far back as records exist. Santeria's
spiritual roots reach back 4,000 years to the Yoruba tribe in
southern Nigeria. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the slave
communities of Cuba blended worship of Roman Catholic saints
with their ancient African rites.

    Despite the oddity of animal sacrifice to most Americans,
mainstream religious groups have weighed in to support the
Lukumi Babalu Aye church. Jewish organizations fear that
Hialeah's law might rule out kosher slaughtering. Christian
groups like the Presbyterian Church and National Association of
Evangelicals want to prevent the Supreme Court from further
restricting religious rights. Complains attorney Oliver Thomas
of the Baptist Joint Committee: "The American public has a hard
time seeing beyond the dead chickens."

    For years the government had to prove that it had a
"compelling interest" in order to limit religious liberty. That
was the basis for outlawing Mormon polygyny and Pentecostal
snake-handling. But in a significant 1990 decision holding that
Native Americans have no constitutional right to ritual use of
peyote, the Supreme Court gave government more leeway to
restrict religious practices. A proposed bill to restore the
"compelling interest" test has not reached the floor of
Congress, but another attempt will be made next year.

    Pichardo argues that if animal sacrifices are outlawed, a
faith that only recently went public will be driven underground
again and will become far less subject to regulation. He
declares, "People will never stop practicing their religion."
No matter what the Justices think of the way they go about it.