Tuesday’s RNS report includes an article by Kevin Eckstrom looking at a case before the Supreme Court about whether to ban a sacramental tea: Lawyers for a small Christian sect asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday (Nov. 1) to allow the importation of a hallucinogenic tea from Brazil, a move that government officials say violates federal drug laws. The justices seemed skeptical that the government has a compelling reason to ban the sacramental hoasca tea, which is used by the 140 members of the O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao de Vegetal (UDV), mostly in New Mexico. A 1993 law, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, compels the government to allow religious practice unless it has a compelling interest not to. Several justices asked why hoasca should be banned when peyote, used in Native American rituals, is allowed. “Peyote seems to have been administered without the sky falling in,” said Justice Stephen Breyer. At the same time, the high court appeared torn over whether the plants that are used to make the tea are banned under a 1971 international drug treaty.
Sally Goldenberg reports from New York on Orthodox Jewish politicians meshing their faith with the demands of their careers: David Ceder, the Democratic opponent to City Councilman James Oddo in the Nov. 8 election, has spent most of the past five months scurrying around Staten Island with his family in an ambitious attempt to collect signatures and establish himself beyond his Willowbrook neighborhood. But the political novice has lost valuable face time in the weeks leading up to Election Day. Ceder is an Orthodox Jew. His religious commitment restricted him from campaigning for most of October, which comprises 20 days of religious observance between holidays and the weekly Sabbath. For 10 of those days, he had to stop working before sundown to mark the official start of all Jewish holidays, thereby cutting himself off fromfrequent evening political functions. Still, Ceder, a candidate in the heavily Orthodox mid-Island district that includes parts of Brooklyn, envisions a healthy marriage between an Orthodox lifestyle and a job in politics. His sentiment is evidence of the increasing comfort Orthodox Jewsfeel toward their roles in public life.
We also have an update on the faith-based response to Hurricane Katrina, by Bruce Nolan in New Orleans: In the eight weeks since Hurricane Katrina, Southern Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, Lutherans and hundreds of volunteers from unaffiliated churches have poured tens of millions of dollars in private relief and volunteer labor into the region. Sometimes sleeping on bedrolls or cots in borrowed churches, they deploy daily to prepare food, spread tarpaulins over damaged roofs, saw trees off homes or rip out sodden wallboard. Others hand out household cleaning kits, distribute debit cards for gasoline and household goods, and sometimes provide a partner for prayer or a shoulder to lean on. The Katrina effort, many church relief officialssaid, dwarfs any previous faith-based domestic relief effort in memory, including that which followed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
