Athens and Corinth¹ are the only locales around the Mediterranean where contemporary historians recognize idolatrous worship (including its drunken sexual practices) being carried out more or less openly in the first century.  Trusting the Bible and experimenting with the idea that this is what New Testament authors meant by the word πορνεία persuades me that such worship was practiced more secretly elsewhere.  But I would be very surprised indeed to learn that as Jesus spoke the words in Matthew 5:32 or 19:9 it was practiced in Judea.  Samaria? Maybe.  But not Judea.  That would be much more surprising than the insight that the people who first heard the law at Sinai were accustomed to these religious practices.

My surprise isn’t an argument for or against the truth of anything.  I was just as surprised the first time I heard about Republican presidents, candidates and cabinet members engaging in this kind of πορνεία.  I was watching television in a hotel room.  By watching television I mean I was flipping through channels searching for a movie with my customary attitude toward television shows and commercials; namely, “Get my attention.  I dare you!”  A piece on Russian Television (RT) about Bohemian Grove broke through the clutter.  But after it was over and I resumed flipping channels I didn’t store that information as an example of πορνεία in the contemporary world, but as an example of the most bizarre Republican bashing I had ever heard.

Subsequently though, a little more research revealed that a journalist in 1989 and a radio talk show host in 2000 successfully infiltrated this secretive and exclusive gathering of media, business and power elites (mostly Republicans) at Bohemian Grove about 70 miles northwest of San Francisco.  Men—exclusively men—have met there in July since the 1880’s.  Though the two infiltrators returned with different perceptions of the meaning of the events in question, some basic facts emerged, especially the opening festivities called the Cremation of Care.

The Cremation of Care is a mock human sacrifice before a forty-five foot stone idol of an owl.  (Years ago it was a plaster-of-Paris Buddha.)  The πόρνη, female prostitutes, at Bohemian Grove are secular pros rather than religious devotees who meet with their clients outside the camp, as it were, since women are forbidden at these gatherings.  The πόρνος, male prostitutes, are other members of this exclusive club.  And I got the impression that their service was more “spiritual,” in the sense that it was offered in the spirit of the festivities rather than as a work for hire.  Apparently however the πόρνος were more active in times past before the AIDS epidemic.  Drinking (and peeing) is legendary at Bohemian Grove.

The talk show host photographed the Cremation of Care ceremony on video.  His hidden camera work was not great filmmaking; it didn’t put me in the scene.  With that caveat I’ll say that my impression was of a ceremony more like an Addams Family version of Disney World spectacle than actual worship of an owl deity.  But that was good for me in the sense that it revealed something I might otherwise have missed.

My bias skews toward faith.  But there were probably as many people participating in ancient fertility rites with as little faith in the deity represented or the rites practiced as the men at Bohemian Grove.  They may have been there for the wine, women and song, or for business opportunities, or political advantage.  Ezekiel alluded to a military alliance as the driving force behind Judah’s πορνεία.²  Isn’t national security worth a trifling dalliance with the meaningless religious beliefs and practices of one’s powerful allies as a gesture of good faith and good manners?  God, of course, perceived things differently.

Religious minds, and the religions they create, don’t value faith as much as conformity to—or at least acquiescence in the face of—traditional ritual.  No matter how rich or successful or powerful the men who attend the July gathering at Bohemian Grove are, they are nothing compared to the longstanding tradition of the Cremation of Care ceremony.  They can do nothing about it, nor protest it in any meaningful way—(some apparently avoid it by arriving late to the gathering)—without jeopardizing their positions as rich, successful, powerful men privileged to attend an expensive invitation-only event.  You’re either on the bus or off the bus, Ken Kesey used to say to the Merry Pranksters in the halcyon days of LSD-induced enlightenment.

I’m not getting this idea about religious minds and conformity to ritual from Bohemian Grove, necessarily.  It was more accessible to me there and then (here and now), than in the ancient past.  It helped me to understand something about the false view of the world shared by the majority of the inhabitants of the southern kingdom Judah (Jeremiah 7:8b-10a NET):

You are putting your confidence in a false belief that will not deliver you [Table].  You steal.  You murder.  You commit adultery.  You lie when you swear on oath.  You sacrifice to the god Baal.  You pay allegiance to other gods whom you have not previously known [Table].  Then you come and stand in my presence in this temple I have claimed as my own and say, “We are safe!” [Table]

In other words, they paid the tithes, brought the offerings and sacrifices, and otherwise performed the rituals of the worship of God, but as the Lord said through the prophet Isaiah, These people say they are loyal to me; they say wonderful things about me, but they are not really loyal to me.  Their worship consists of nothing but man-made ritual.³  So if the story of Jephthah is a boundary stone marking one edge as it were of the religious mind—the extreme to which a man would go to avoid acknowledging sin—the above passage in Jeremiah is like a boundary stone marking the opposite edge—people who will admit to any and all sins in word and ritual but continue to indulge the very same sins,⁴ believing their words and rituals will save them somehow (or at least will do them no harm).

As far as the meaning of πορνεία is concerned I can come to know definitive conclusion.  And this is why:  Is a man witnessing the Cremation of Care ceremony at Bohemian Grove, a mock human sacrifice to an owl statue, guilty of πορνεία? Or must he put on a robe and participate?  Or must he believe in the owl?  Or must he have sex with a prostitute?

Well, what if he has sex with a prostitute without any connection to owl statues and Cremation of Care ceremonies?  What about drunken sexual practices in general?  It sounds like a bar on a Friday or Saturday night for those handsome enough, rich enough or charming enough to get lucky, minus the bloody sacrifice, of course, mock or earnest.

In the allegory in Ezekiel Oholah and Oholibah engaged in prostitution in Egypt; in their youth they engaged in prostitution. Their breasts were squeezed there; lovers fondled their virgin nipples there.⁵  Does that mean two teenagers in the backseat of a car are guilty of πορνεία?  If so, immorality is a fine translation of the word.  But what does immorality mean?  Isn’t that what is contrary to God’s law?  So then unlawful marriage may be a good translation, too.

This kind of indecision frustrates me to no end when I’m searching the Bible for rules to obey.  And I’ve done that and continue to do it at times.  I have studied the Bible like a rule book with all the urgency and life-and-death anxiety that procedure engenders.  Then I’ve searched for rules to justify or declare me righteous.  Finally I’ve searched for rules that might bind God to me anyway.  At that point I usually come to my senses if not before.  Lex Deus (Law is God) as I call it is the most seductive form of idolatry to my upbringing and temperament.

When I actually believe that I am justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus⁶ and that the meaning of eternal life is that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you sent⁷ my anxiety level goes down as my time horizon expands.  I’m comforted then by Paul’s insight, For now we see in a mirror indirectly, but then we will see face to face.  Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, just as I have been fully known.⁸  It is not so burdensome then to plug these various ideas into each particular occurrence of πορνεία to see which fits with the only true God, and Jesus Christ I am beginning to know in part, in a mirror indirectly.