By BUD KENNEDY
bud@star-telegram.com
ARLINGTON — A wee bit o’ Scotland has come to the outskirts of Cowboys Stadium, and with it a foggy auld controversy over whether a Scottish sculpture park is also a pagan shrine that might hex the Dallas Cowboys.
City leaders and the family of late philanthropist Jane Mathes Kelton gathered Thursday to rededicate
Caelum Moor, a former $3 million corporate sculpture park now relocated as public art along the bonny banks of Johnson Creek.
The same day, nursing home chaplain Michael Tummillo of Stephenville posted on a Web site: "Occultic landmark resurrected near home of the Dallas Cowboys." He warned Arlington about a "demonic backlash."
"Ridiculous!" said Norman Hines, now 70, creator of the 1985 park of 22 granite sculptures, some up to three stories tall and with Celtic markings reminiscent of the ancient English monument Stonehenge.
Tummillo was part of a 1996 witch hunt in Arlington, when 20 evangelical pastors signed a letter complaining that
Caelum Moor, then near Interstate 20, was attracting pagan and Wiccan religious events.
The letter was headlined, "No Witchcraft Park in Arlington."
In a Thursday phone interview, Tummillo called
Caelum Moor "a mockery of Christianity" and said those near the park — including the Cowboys — are "in a dance with the devil."
Kelton’s son, Andrew, now a real estate executive in North Carolina, said: "That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard in my life."
Former Mayor Richard Greene, the target of the pastors’ protest, was among dedication speakers on a foggy, rainy night that made Randol Mill Road feel like Randol Moor.
"I was amazed," he said after his speech. "It’s a work of art that any community would want. I never understood what they were talking about."
Tummillo was a youth pastor with the now-disbanded Redeeming Love Covenant Church when the Rev. Danny Smith and his wife, Dena, took their witchcraft warnings nationwide on CNN and even to the syndicated TV entertainment show
Strange Universe.
Church members said they saw pagans and Wiccans worshipping in the park, just as pagans have at the original Stonehenge. Police had no reports. But reporters found a local Wiccan "high priestess" who had been there.
In a time when evangelical pastors were really worried about (1) teenagers’ dabbling in Satanism and (2) getting lots of free publicity, the ministers accused the city of supporting satanic worship.
"What about separation of church and state?" Tummillo asked Thursday, even though the sculptures represent Scottish and Celtic tradition, not religion.
In an online religious tract,
The Battle of Caelum Moor, Tummillo even sadistically blames Hines and
Caelum Moor for a series of divorces, deaths and church and business failures.
"I believe there’s a devil and that we tugged on his cape," he said by phone. "There was a demonic backlash. That satanic spirit has been lying dormant. It’s back now."
I took a look around
Caelum Moor last week.
I didn’t see anything satanic. One sculpture has a triangular Celtic knot emblem.
Another has a big hole in the middle. It looks like a good place for Tony Romo to practice his passing aim.
Come to think of it, maybe we ought to worry about that hex.
Bud Kennedy’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. 817-390-7538 Twitter @budkennedy
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