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According to the Associated Press, the prison group has
no formal headquarters, and false notions that the gang
has a base of operations in Bluffs, Illinois should not
be confused with the uncongregated religion of the same
name. It was founded in Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, but
has since spread to Iowa State Penitentiary in Fort Madison,
where it gained religious sanction by the state at about
the same time the US Supreme Court recognized it as a religion.
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The Church of the New Song has allegedly participated in
voodoo rituals in prison, apparently tolerated by prison
authorities as long as the Church respect the wishes of
the prison and refain from laying curses on the warden.
Their religion is based on "Eclatarianism," the
belief in a pervasive, harmonizing spirit called the Eclat,
an inanimate and ultimate power similar to the Christian
God.
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In 1997 a group of Church of the New Song inmates in Iowa,
led by George Goff, led an unsuccessful appeal to a three-judge
panel arguing that prison officials were discriminating
against inmates who were being locked in administrative
segregation without access to the food trays from a church-sponsored
"Celebration of Life" banquet. Apparently, the
panel discovered through several informants that the Church
was simply a "sham religion that exist[ed] only in
the prison context" (22 February 2005 The Des Moines
Register).
Iowa state authorities were at the time seeking to strip
the Church's formal status as a religion, granted to the
Church in 1974. Lawyers attested that the religion was nothing
but a security threat group intent on planning and preparing
criminal acts, including assaults, behind prison walls.
State lawyers and correctional officials filed court papers
that allege the gang is primarily a white-supremacist group
involved in threats, coercion, and violence, and posing
a serious threat to correctional employees and other inmates.
They have also alleged that the Church participates in "attempted
murder, assault, drug trafficking and extortion" (2
April 2004 Associated Press)
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