Content area
Full Text
I don't remember Sister Lillian, my comparative-religion teacher at Bishop Kelly High School in Boise, ever mentioning the Asatru Folk Assembly.
I know the class covered the major Christian denominations as well as Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Shintoism and most of the world's other major faiths, as well as the nonfaith of atheism and the I'll-worry-about-it-later church of agnosticism. But I don't think Sister Lillian ever told me about Asatru. Maybe I was sick that day.
I know now, of course, that members of the Asatru Folk Assembly are modern pagans who follow the pantheistic tenets of pre-Christian Europe. Ten members of the church descended on the Tri-Cities last week to conduct a memorial service for Kennewick Man, that 9,300-year-old bag of bones who has sparked a posthumous custody fight between anthropologists and native tribes.
I mean no disrespect to the followers of Asatru, which is headquartered in Nevada City, Calif., and claims 500 members throughout the Northwest. But any modern religion whose followers believe in hoar-frost giants and water sprites is bound to be ridiculed. And poor Kennewick Man, who never even saw Sam Hill's Stonehenge...
