A PAGAN group has accused the Church of Scotland of religious discrimination after being banned from holding a spiritual fair in a Kirk building.
The pagans blamed a Christian evangelical group for persuading the church to impose the ban after accusing them of ''Satanism''.
The Scottish Esoteric Network, also known as The Source, was due to hold its annual event at the St Stephen's Centre in the Stockbridge area of Edinburgh on April 4. However, according to the pagans, the Sonrise Christian Fellowship, which also uses the building, complained to Stockbridge Parish Church, which runs the centre.
The Kirk said the fair had been given the go-ahead last year. The pagans had originally billed it as an ''Alternative Therapy Fair'' before changing it to ''Psychic Fair''.
The Rev Anne Logan, minister at St Stephen's, said: ''The kirk session met after the last event, which was billed as a psychic fair. It was not comfortable with all that happened. It was a kind of let that we would prefer not to have at St Stephen's.''
A Church of Scotland spokeswoman could not confirm the complaint's origin and stressed that Sonrise was not part of the Kirk. She said: ''This is not a question of religious discrimination because the Church of Scotland does not recognise the Scottish Esoteric Network as another religious body. A minister and the kirk session reserve the right to hire out their hall as they see fit.''
She added that the problem was not because the event was a ''psychic fair'' but because of ''something that happened during the event''.
Mr John Flett, of the Scottish Esoteric Network, said: ''This would be the Satanic practice that this group supposedly witnessed. But the accusations were nonsense. Everyone thought they were just a joke.''
He said the ban contravened the European Convention on Human Rights and arose from the same discrimination that saw Edinburgh woman Helen Duncan jailed in 1944 for witchcraft. Home Secretary Jack Straw is now considering a posthumous pardon.
Mr Flett added: ''Regardless of what the Church has done to us in the past we don't regard ourselves as enemies of the Church.''
Mr Dougie Bain, a spokesman for The Source, claimed the centre organisers had said the building was a community resource for everyone and that they knew perfectly well the event was to be an alternative therapy fair with a pagan input.
He said other religious groups such as Bahais had attended the fair and would also be furious about being called Satanists.
Mr Bain claimed the accusation was ''total rubbish'', adding that Satanists were often either pests or paedophiles. ''We are very family orientated, very communal and supportive of each other,'' he said.
Calls to the Sonrise Christian Fellowship, which practices speaking in tongues and has people fainting during blessings at St Stephen's, were not returned yesterday.
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