{"id":8047,"date":"2010-04-07T23:12:39","date_gmt":"2010-04-08T03:12:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/anglicansamizdat.wordpress.com\/?p=8047"},"modified":"2010-04-07T23:12:39","modified_gmt":"2010-04-08T03:12:39","slug":"getting-stoned-as-a-religious-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/getting-stoned-as-a-religious-right\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting stoned as a religious right"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalpost.com\/news\/story.html?id=2775134\">National Post<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Mother Teresa, Pierre Berton and &#8220;the tree of life&#8221; were all invoked Wednesday as spiritual guideposts by a senior member of a Toronto church seeking a religious exemption to the country&#8217;s marijuana laws.<\/p>\n<p>The references were part of testimony by Brother Peter Styrsky in Ontario Superior Court, as he explained his transformation from agitated delivery driver to a more spiritually content person as a minister within the Church of the Universe.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I used to be very angry,&#8221; Mr. Styrsky said. The affable witness explained that his life changes were due in part to marijuana use. &#8220;It is a high. But it is not just recreational. It&#8217;s like a connection to God.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>For the first time, a court in Canada is being asked to set out a framework to decide whether a group and its practices qualify for Charter protection on religious grounds.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Apparently, the Church of the Universe has about 4,000 members in Canada; it could overtake the Anglican Church of Canada in the near future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the National Post: Mother Teresa, Pierre Berton and &#8220;the tree of life&#8221; were all invoked Wednesday as spiritual guideposts by a senior member of a Toronto church seeking a religious exemption to the country&#8217;s marijuana laws. The references were &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/getting-stoned-as-a-religious-right\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[271],"tags":[2090],"class_list":["post-8047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religious-highs","tag-church-of-the-universe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8047\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}