IS ONE MAN'S MARIJUANA ANOTHER'S RELIGION?

The Church Of The Universe Touts Smoking Cannabis As A Sacrament,
Which Has Led To An Unusual Debate In A Toronto Court: How Do You
Define Religion? Charles Lewis Reports.

A strong selling point of the Church of the Universe is the use of
marijuana as a sacrament -- so assuming someone is inclined to
indulge, the church is a godsend.

That link to the divine, however, did not stop police three years ago
from charging two of the brethren with possession of marijuana for the
purpose of trafficking.

Now the case, which began in April, is in one of the more unusual
phases to ever take place in a Canadian court room: a debate over what
exactly constitutes a religion and even whether such a definition is
even possible.

Brother Peter Styrsky and Brother Shahrooz Kharaghani -- two bearded,
gnome-like men who sport funky wool caps to court and whose supporters
in the gallery smell vaguely of something illegal -- believe their
freedom of religion, under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, has
been violated.

The two men are ministers at the "G13 Mission" in Toronto, which is a
church, an organic plant store and allegedly an illegal source of marijuana.

"This is an inside joke among people who like to smoke marijuana,"
suggested Crown attorney Nicholas Devlin during cross-examination of a
senior member of the Church of the Universe, in April.

This week, Devlin called to the witness stand Katherine Young, a
professor of religion at McGill University, to articulate what a
religion is and then to show why the Church of the Universe is more of
a club to smoke pot than a real faith.

Young herself warned that trying to come up with a definition is an
enormous problem for scholars because of the complexity of religious
beliefs. Indeed, defence lawyer George Filipovic attacked Young's
theories under cross-examination, charging that her definition was
arbitrary, too specific and her research into the Church of the
Universe would be "laughed at by fellow academics and would never have
been written by a respectable scholar."

Young looked at the characteristics of major and minor religions and
then compared those characteristics with the Church of the Universe.

She studied major and minor religions and created a list of common
denominators that she said all faiths had, including a supernatural
dimension, whether it be God, gods, ghosts or spirits, or an ultimate
experience; ways to help people to live with paradoxes such as life
and death, good and evil, and order and disorder; and a source of
authority from a scripture or ancestral teachings or a magisterial
structure such as the Catholic Church.

Young said she could not see anything that resembled ritual, sacred
spaces or symbols, or helped its members deal with life's paradoxes in
the Church of the Universe.

The only "scripture" or other literature she could find was from
Cannabis Culture magazine and some information on a website. "The
group raises a lot of suspicions," she said. "It's not clear if it's a
religion or a front (for protection against marijuana laws)."

She also said the group did not require obligations from its adherents
and the general teaching was "do anything you want to do" -- a
characteristic she had not found in any other accepted religion.

"If there are no obligations then you are left with anything you want
it to be," she said.

Filipovic said Young's definition of religion was far too specific and
many notable scholars have put forth definitions that were far
broader. He quoted William James, the philosopher who authored The
Varieties of Religious Experience, who wrote: "(R)eligion shall mean
for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their
solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to
whatever they may consider divine."

The trial will continue later this summer.