Platform : ‘Sacrifice Is at the Center of Every Religion’

A Laotian Hmong immigrant pleaded no contest earlier this month in Fresno to killing a 3-month-old German Shepherd puppy in a last-ditch ceremonial attempt to cure his wife’s illness. The case revived debate about immigrant cultural and religious practices that may be abhorrent to the majority culture. What are the American limits to interethnic tolerance? What should they be? JIM BLAIR spoke with people involved in friction points between cultures.

YSAMUR FLORES-PENA

A Babalosha (a reverend or priest) of the Lucum, or Santeria tradition. East Los Angeles

Many Christians despise animal sacrifice as something that is utterly savage and completely out of place in society. They say: “We’re a civilized people. We don’t do that any longer. Those are things that people do because they are primitive, because they don’t have any education, because they don’t have any kind of cultural refinement or finesse.”

Yet I had an experience one time when a gentleman came to interview me and the first question was, “Rev. Flores, is it true that the people in Santeria drink blood?” And I said, “No, we’re not Christians.” He turned red, livid. But then I just said, isn’t it true that the wine is supposed to turn into the blood of Christ? And he was the one to hesitate. If you don’t believe that you’re not a good Christian. And that was the end of the interview.

So if people look at their own ritual symbols, sacrifice is at the center of every religion, because what people don’t understand about religion is that the divinity, whoever he or she might be, will always require from those who approach him or her, some kind of offering to satisfy or to purify them before they can approach the state of purity that the divinity is in.

Sacrifice in many ways serves the purpose of purifying, as a token of appreciation and gratitude and also as a token of the liberation, of deliverance. At the core of Christianity is that magnificent sacrifice that Christ offered to God on behalf of humanity.

People tend to look at other religions as being bloody, merciless and the whole thing, but they don’t look at the crucifix in every church. That cross is not there because it’s pretty. It’s a reminder that there was blood shed to create a covenant, because sacrifice is the seal of covenant between a mortal realm and the most immortal and pure realm of heaven.

So it is true that animal sacrifice looks aberrant to many people, but you have to understand that it was [what] these religions or these cultures assume is a way of approaching and befriending the divine. You cannot have a religion without a sacrifice. It is impossible.

LE KHAC LY

Eligibility technician, Orange County Social Services Department. Former Colonel, Army of the Republic of Vietnam

Back in Vietnam we considered people like the Hmong primitive people. That means that they didn’t have the chance to be acquainted with scientific lessons or the civilized society yet. They still have some very superstitious beliefs. That [incident in Fresno] is one example--they kill a dog in order to save a human life.

To us it is tolerable because the human life is more important than the animal life. We do not consider human life and animal equal. So that’s the difference. That may hurt people in this country we call animal activists. [But] we use animals to do scientific tests in the lab in order find medicine for saving human life. I accept that we sacrifice animal life to find something good for human life. It’s kind of selfish, but it’s better than using human life to sacrifice for another human life.

I think it’s tolerable to accept that practice temporarily, while educating them that animal sacrifice is not quite scientific. The next generation--their children--going to school here are familiar with science and civilization here and will come home and educate them. But when you accepted this generation here you had to tolerate them.

CAROLE S. ELLIS

Advisory board member of P.A.W.S. (Pets Are Wonderful Support--a group that cares for pets of people with AIDS). Head of animal welfare task force, West Hollywood

If people are living in the United States they have to abide by our culture as far their respect for animals goes and if they can’t, then they should not be living in our country. People brought up in various other areas [apparently think] that this is OK because this is the way they were raised and taught.

I was very sorry when the Supreme Court basically sanctioned Santeria. I know we have First Amendment rights in this country, but to me the religion has nothing to do with it. Animals are the innocents of the world so obviously they’ll never have a voice and we’re their only advocates.

There are people who feel that animals are underlings and that they don’t have feelings and they don’t have rights and that they’re a lesser form. I believe that we all are very, very important and that animals are not underlings.

It’s arrogant of us to think that we are a higher species in the name of religion. Animals feel pain just as we do.

LYNN O. POULSON

Bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormon),Westwood Second Ward, and a practicing attorney in Los Angeles

Speaking just for myself, I lament that any practice, religious or otherwise, would involve the clubbing of a puppy. I believe, however, that God will hold people accountable for what they know and what they understand. Perhaps it would be good for us to do the same. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ, known as the Mormons, have suffered in years past considerable persecution for their religious beliefs and practices.

However, we have learned that in this country we are free to believe as we wish, but, of course, [that] our religious practices are subject to certain limits imposed by law.

While the matter before us is an unhappy one, I suggest that we follow the example of Jesus Christ, who suggested that those who are without sin be the first to cast stones.

RABBI SIDNEY J. JACOBS

President, Jacobs Ladder Publications, author of “Clues About Jews for People Who Aren’t,” Culver City

I have very strong feelings both as an animal rights advocate and as a religious leader that we should not tolerate the abuse of either human beings or animals for the ostensible purpose of sacrificing [to] or worshiping God.

Judaism wrestled with this question millennia ago. It’s recorded symbolically in the Hebrew Bible, where Abraham is prepared to offer his son, Isaac, as a sacrifice--what he regarded as an intended sacrifice to God. Instead, his hand is stayed. This is the end of human sacrifice.

Isaac is substituted for by a ram and the ram is sacrificed. And when the temple in Jerusalem [was] destroyed in the year 70 of the Common Era (70 A.D.), animal sacrifice ceased because it could be practiced only in the temple in Jerusalem. Its place was taken by prayer as we know it today in synagogues throughout the world.

There is a very small, and I mean tiny, [number] of right-wing fundamentalist Jewish people who would like to see the temple restored and with it the restoration of the cult of animal sacrifice. But the overwhelming majority of Jews who follow what we call normative Judaism--whether it be Reform, Reconstructionist, Conservative or Orthodox Judaism--find abhorrent [the idea that] animals be killed any more than human beings should be killed for the purpose of worshiping God.