The new Church advertising campaign for Easter this year (primarily C of E but not exclusively, indeed it is understood now to be highly ecumenical: includes RCs and Baptist input) focuses on the death of Diana using a poster with funeral flowers along the bottom and the slogan: “If all this started you thinking, carry on in church this Easter.”

I have several serious worries about this. 1. The death of Diana has done nothing whatever toward bringing anyone nearer to repentance and faith in Jesus. She was an adulterous woman who did ‘good works’, in part as a way of creating an image for herself, in opposition to her estranged husband Prince Charles (who is also an adulterer). But she was declared, or at least presumed, during the funeral service, to have ‘gone to heaven’. (on what basis?) 2. The wave of neo-pagan worship of Princess Diana that swept (and still persists) this country and all over the world - including Cuba for some strange reason - has led to her being enthroned as a new goddess - or perhaps not so very new after all. The Queen of Hearts as she herself stated she wished to be (the Queen of Heaven as in Jeremiah). 3. The link with her death and the absurd clairvoyant ‘prophecy’, promoted among others by Gerald Coates, the renowned leader and false prophet of the Pioneer churches, about a spiritual revival associated with the removal of the flowers, further fuels the false spirit behind Diana, and the serious danger of making any such link with Jesus’ Resurrection. 4. The association by name and looks with Artemis/ Diana of the Ephesians in Acts 19 is not without interest. ‘She whom all Asia and the world worship’ (v27) and is another serious worry. This Artemis in Ephesus was not so much the huntress as a Venus/Cers/ Astarte/Asherah/Ishtar figure. All of these goddesses - often represented with a child (Osiris etc) in their arms - were described in ancient literature as yellow haired and blue eyed, which was very different to the racial features of the area from which these goddess figures come from. Indeed the Madonna and Child of Roman Catholicism is in direct descent from these images. 5. The image of suffering and being hounded down by the ‘Establishment’ ran very strongly in her story, as did her ‘reaching out to those dispossessed, the outcast etc’. Yet the spirit behind this is not of Christ, who truly died for the sins of the world and who preached good news to the poor - the good news of forgiveness to sinners under the wrath of God. It is something much more sinister.

6. Now that the church will try to link her death with Easter the circuit is nearing completion. She whom all the world worships will be associated directly once more with resurrection and Spring. Like the ancient goddess Ishtar from whom we get the pagan Name of the season: Easter.
Philip Foster..UK

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As a tail piece: What of the monstrous image of Mother and Child in the Millennium Dome we are going to be treated to?
Into this image people will be able to go on special ‘rides of discovery’: with all its pagan connotations of entering into the goddess of fertility. ...See this Issue
Philip Foster..UK

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