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                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, January 4, 1992                   TAG: 9201060185
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

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GODDESS GROUPS RESULT OF RESENTMENT

SELENA PEDERSEN skews some facts in her letter Nov. 17 on the goddess "movement" and its ancestry.

There was no place in those days that would shelter 3,000 or 5,000 people, the size crowd Jesus attracted, so he did preach out of doors. However, he also did a lot of his preaching indoors and in synagogues.

While "pagan" does spring from the Latin word paganus, she incorrectly says that all "reports" (as if the wire services had offices in Jerusalem) find Jesus talking to pagans, "these rustic folk" as she describes them.

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all have Jesus talking and preaching mainly to the Jews, and on one of these occasions out of doors, Jesus said: "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." That is a different group of people from Ms. Pedersen's beloved pagan, whom Webster describes as "a person who is not a Christian, Moslem or Jew."

These are a lot of misstatements on Ms. Pedersen's part, but then she accuses St. Paul of vilification of women. In fact, St. Paul outlines acceptable behavior for Christian men, and the outline is no less stringent.

Let's be frank. The goddess movement was inspired by women who resent the fact that Christianity is patriarchial and that all power is vested in God who characterizes himself as "man." These ladies resent that and crave some of that power for themselves, so they invent a perversion of Christianity where women have all the power and thus are goddesses. "Blessed are the meek" is not for them. HAL MARCH ROCKY MOUNT

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