Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 28, 1990 TAG: 9007280271
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: FRANCES STEBBINS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Yet that rumor and another about Proctor & Gamble having a "satanic symbol" on its products live on and on. Occasionally, people have called this newspaper to get the address of the appropriate government agency that could quell O'Hair once and for all.
Those who have heard the rumors for the past 15 or more years wish O'Hair, satanic symbols and the rumors would quietly fade away. The rumors' persistence, however, has inspired some religion writers, such as Michael Hirsley of The Chicago Tribune. In a column 18 months ago, Hirsley wrote that heeding such rumors is harmful to the national debt. As a government agency, the FCC has more to spend its money on than responding to letters about O'Hair, he said.
Several years ago the FCC said it "is not considering a petition to ban the broadcast of religious programming . . . . The commission is inundated with letters and telephone calls from concerned leaders of the religious community and the general public. The commission has received more than 1 million letters on this subject. . . . Once again it is emphasized that the commission is not considering taking religious programming off the air, nor has a petition making such a suggestion ever been filed with the agency."
The agency has repeated the message since the rumor has resurfaced.
Although O'Hair has one son who attracts attention to his fundamentalist Christianity by attacking his mother, another son continues O'Hair's efforts to get formal religion out of American public life. According to Hirsley's column, Jon Murray, the atheist son, says the FBI is harassing his family by not doing more to quell the rumors.
But, Murray added, the publicity hasn't hurt the O'Hairs either.
A choir of about 50 men and women from the five wards or congregations of Latter-day Saints in the Roanoke Valley drew several hundred listeners when it presented 90 minutes of patriotic music earlier this month.
Although the singers weren't exactly up to the standard of their famous Mormon Tabernacle Choir counterparts, they still performed with skill and beauty. Edith Haynes directed.
The program combined American patriotic airs with several compositions based on Mormon theology. "This Is a Choice Land" and "Title of Liberty" were introduced by leaders in the congregations who explained the references from the Book of Mormon.
More familiar to a non-Mormon were the frequent references to religious freedom in America. Latter-day Saints have special reason to honor this freedom. They are among many religious groups that came into being in a 19th-century America in which narrow adherence to a particular doctrine was more esteemed than tolerance for all who worship God.
An introduction to The Book of Mormon notes that members of the group were persecuted severely early on, and their founder, Joseph Smith, was lynched in Illinois.
The ideal of religious freedom has generally favored the Mormons, although their addition of Smith's revelations to the familiar canon of Scripture still causes them to be branded as heretics by people who refer to themselves as "Bible believers."
In the past 40 years in the Roanoke Valley, Latter-day Saints have grown from one to five active groups. The concert has become an annual event open free to the public at the valley Mormon headquarters in Salem.
The annual presence of thousands of Jehovah's Witnesses in Roanoke for summer conventions brought a call from Linda Haull and Emily Hood, former Witnesses who live in Shenandoah County.
Haull, from Woodstock, and Hood, from Timberville, head Pioneer Outreach, which offers what they say is needed help for those who leave the Jehovah's Witnesses.
The duo said Witnesses in good standing "are never given a full disclosure" about the doctrines of the Watchtower Society. Nor, said Hood, are those who try to drop out prepared to be "disfellowshipped."
That, said Haull, means a kind of shunning - "if you're caught leaving, it's regarded [by active Witnesses] as your spiritual death, and that's a terrible experience."
Haull said she left the Witnesses in 1983 and met Hood two years later as the two sought support in their new lives in "a Christian church."
Formed five years ago, their support group in the northern Shenandoah Valley is one of about 150 active throughout the nation, they said. The groups are not part of a formal agency, but their members seek to restore the self-esteem of those upset by their rejection by Witnesses, the women said.
The support group's hot line number is 896-6403. All calls from present or lapsed Witnesses are held in confidence, Hood said.
by CNB