The “Infection” is Spreading

BPNews reports on a article appearing in the Southwestern Journal of Theology that looks at how “four of the most prominent non-Christian religious movements today — Mormonism, the Jehovah?s Witnesses, Wicca and the ‘Pop Psychology’ movement” are affecting Christianity. The findings are chilling (if you are a certain type of Christian I would suppose).

“Gritz, professor of church history at Southwestern?s Fort Worth, Texas, campus, cites a 2002 Barna Research Group study which notes that Christians have adopted spiritual views from Islam, secular humanism, Eastern religions and even Wicca. Barna cites biblical illiteracy as the reason for the trend.”

I wonder what Wiccan views Christians have adopted? Female divinity? Polytheism? A belief in magic(k)? An urge to buy books published by Llewellyn?

But it looks like this article has our number (and I mean literally)!

“William E. Gordon Jr., an associate with the interfaith evangelism team of the North American Mission Board, discusses the rapid growth of the contemporary Wiccan movement in the previous century. The occult movement has grown so rapidly that witches now boast that their belief system is the fastest-growing movement in America, with some 5 million adherents to the mythology.”

Five million! Is that in America or in the whole world? Because even most modern Pagans put our total number at around 1 million in America and those are the thinking-big numbers. Smells like that old chestnut of “inflating the enemy”. Remember when the whole world was going to turn Commie? Remember when Saddam supposedly had WMDs? You get the picture. If we are “big” then we will be considered a “threat” and therefore worthy of fighting in some strange spiritual “war”.

Tags: Neopaganism