Pubdate: Sat, 20 Jul 2013
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2013 The New York Times Company
Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/lettertoeditor.html
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Mark Oppenheimer

Beliefs

AS A RELIGION, MARIJUANA-INFUSED FAITH PUSHES COMMONLY HELD LIMITS

Sixty-four-year old Roger Christie, a resident of Hawaii's Big 
Island, although most recently of Cell 104 at the Honolulu Federal 
Detention Center, is a Religious Science practitioner, a minister of 
the Universal Life Church, ordained in the Church of the Universe (in 
Canada), an official of the Oklevueha Native American Church of Hilo, 
Hawaii, and the founder of the Hawai'i Cannabis THC Ministry.

As you might guess, it was the last of those spiritual vocations that 
landed him in prison.

In 2010, Mr. Christie, along with several co-defendants, was indicted 
on charges including conspiracy to manufacture and distribute 
marijuana. He does not dispute the facts of the case. He just 
believes that his operation - "a real 'street ministry' serving the 
needs of our neighbors from all walks of life," he told me in an 
e-mail from prison, "busy six days a week," employing "three 
secretaries and a doorman" - was protected by the First Amendment.

On July 29, Mr. Christie's lawyer will argue in Hawaii federal court 
that his client should be allowed to present a religious-freedom 
defense at the eventual criminal trial. He will base his argument on 
the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, passed by Congress in 1993, 
which requires the government to show a "compelling interest" 
whenever it "substantially burdens" a religious practice. In 2006, 
the Supreme Court relied on the act to permit a New Mexico church to 
use the hallucinogen hoasca, or ayahuasca, for sacramental purposes.

But so far such exceptions have been granted to small religious 
communities and relatively obscure drugs: for American Indians' use 
of peyote, for example, or the New Mexico church with its ayahuasca. 
But marijuana? That would be problematic.

"The difference is that peyote and hoasca have little or no 
recreational market, and that is not likely to change because they 
make you sick before they make you high," Douglas Laycock, who 
teaches constitutional law at the University of Virginia, wrote in an 
e-mail in explaining why a court would be unlikely to approve of the 
church's practice. "Marijuana has a huge recreational market. 
Diversion from religious to recreational uses, and false claims of 
religious use, would be major problems."

Mr. Christie is hoping that now, as many state marijuana laws are 
liberalized, federal courts may allow him to argue for the 
sacramental needs of his ministry, where he worked full time until 
his arrest. First, he must convince a federal judge that his religion 
- - or one of his religions - is not just a form of personal 
spirituality concocted to get stoned legally.

According to Mr. Christie's personal declaration, filed with the 
court in April, he joined the Religion of Jesus in 1993, was ordained 
in 2000, then founded as an offshoot the THC Ministry. (THC, 
tetrahydrocannabinol, is the main psychoactive ingredient in 
marijuana.) "The THC Ministry," he wrote, "is a universal religious 
organization that uses cannabis to exalt consciousness, facilitate 
harmony and become close to God and nature and each other."

The Religion of Jesus, Mr. Christie wrote, holds that sacramental 
marijuana use is "a God-given right, as told to us in the Bible in 
Genesis 1:29, in which it says, 'Then God said, I give you every 
seed-bearing plant' " Other tenets of the faith include, "Our 
religion does not believe in going to war" and, "Our ministers are 
required to use a hemp-cloth shawl for ceremonies and prayer."

Mr. Christie's declaration lacks the somber tone that usually 
distinguishes "religion." At his Sunday services, he would "weed out, 
so to speak," any visitors who seemed "insincere" about the faith - 
people without any sense of marijuana's spiritual purpose. His 
faith's "primary sacred day" is April 20, known to Deadheads, readers 
of Craigslist and High Times subscribers as "4/20," slang for marijuana.

The Sunday service sounds like a Judd Apatow movie outtake; it 
requires a "volcano vaporizer" and "large clear inhalation bag." In 
addition, "after services," Mr. Christie wrote, "members would gather 
to drink hempseed coffee, eat and talk." Religion, or late-morning munchies?

But the courts have offered no coherent definition of religion. "What 
constitutes a religion is one of the hardest questions of all, and 
except in the most obvious cases, the courts tend to avoid it if they 
can," according to Professor Laycock. As religion scholars point out, 
categories like "legitimate" privilege religions that are old and 
established - those that have buildings, and other trappings of power.

In a telephone interview, the Rev. James D. Kimmel, who in 1969 
founded the Religion of Jesus, Mr. Christie's church, summed up the 
church's beliefs as "God is our father and we're all sons and 
daughters of God." That isn't the language that Mr. Christie uses, 
but for Mr. Kimmel, who is 78 and not the talk-show host, who lives 
in Hawaii and talks a lot about an esoteric text called the Urantia 
Book, such a discrepancy is no problem at all. "It's a personal 
religion," he said. "We're not institutional."

The courts will probably be loath to allow Mr. Christie his humorous, 
personal, idiosyncratic religion. If we could all have our own 
religions, the courts would have a lot more defendants claiming their 
religions require drug use. Besides, he may not be the ideal crusader 
for religious marijuana. According to the government, the THC 
Ministry offered a "sanctuary kit" that included a 
cognac-and-cannabis "tincture" - the recommended donation was $1,000.

And in its brief, the government quotes transcriptions of wiretapped 
conversations in which Mr. Christie sounds like a drug dealer 
haggling over prices, not a man of God serving his people's spiritual needs.

Yet Mr. Christie's case raises difficult, important questions. If 
only old or popular religions are protected, what would the First 
Amendment mean? If almost any belief system were a religion, then 
what would the word mean?

For its well-meaning efforts to carve out religious protections, 
government got into the business of deciding which religions count - 
and, to Mr. Christie's chagrin, which ones do not.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom