We all know I’ve had my issues with religion mega-site Beliefnet over the years, but I have to give credit where credit is due. The site, since its purchase by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, has tried to reach out to the various religious communities that regularly visit and make use of its services. One recent initiative has been to add several new blogs, many dedicated to a particular faith tradition. Now the Pagan community is (finally) getting its due with the addition of Gus diZerega as an official blogger.

Gus diZerega

I need to emphasize that this is A Pagan’s blog.  We are a spiritual tradition whose members are held together by common practices far more than by common beliefs.  It has always been so in Pagan cultures.  From Classical times to the traditions of African Diasporic religions of today and those of our indigenous peoples as well, broadly Pagan traditions have always been of this nature.  NeoPagans be they British traditional Wiccans, Celtic Reconstructionists, Asatru, Druids, or any of many other new traditions, may appear bizarrely eclectic and turbulent from a scriptural perspective, but we fit right in with our own history.  We do not much fight or argue over dogma, unless someone ventures to speak for us all on those matters.  I do not want to try.

I couldn’t think of a better candidate to start off a more productive relationship between Beliefnet, the various faith communities represented at that site, and the wider Pagan community. Gus is author of “Pagans & Christians: The Personal Spiritual Experience”, and co-author of the much-praised “Beyond the Burning Times: A Pagan and Christian in Dialogue”. A veteran Gardnerian Wiccan with 25 years of experience under his belt, he is also a political scientist who is helping to start a new online academic journal. I advise my readers to head over to the new blog and say hello, add it to your blogrolls, and particiapate in this new venture (I’ve heard rumours that if this goes well, they might want to add more Pagan voices). For more about Gus and his beliefs, check out my recent interview with him.

Reviews for a new book by Christian author Jeffrey Dean, “The Fight of Your Life: Why Your Teen Is at Risk and What Only You Can Do About It”, have started to pop up, and it seems that Wicca is one of the “risks” teens face.

Even as he speaks bluntly about what’s really going on out there—from the new “cool homosexuality” and the rise of Wicca to the far-reaching effects of teen drug and alcohol use—Dean’s tone remains hopeful and encouraging, and for good reason.

Trying to figure out what exactly Dean says about Wicca in the book, I went to an excerpt on the publisher’s web site. There, Dean puts the dangers of Wicca into context for you.

This fight is about a tsunami of information, communication, anything- goes ethics, and the inevitable moral experimentation that results. It’s a world of light-speed Internet, texting, unlimited access to online porn, oral-sex parties, MySpace, cutting, Wicca, drinking, drugs, and more.

Yes, that’s right, Wicca is like porn, drug-use, cutting, and oral-sex parties (Seriously? Oral-sex parties? I thought that myth was debunked.).  Now, I didn’t expect Dean to endorse Wicca or modern Paganism, he is Christian after all, but this is the sort of hyperbole that leads to kids getting institutionalized and punished for simply believing differently. Wicca isn’t a warning sign, and it isn’t a form of self-abuse like cutting or drug-use. Dean also continually uses spiritual warfare language throughout the book, and seems to hint that children having a different (non-Christian) belief system must be aggressively combatted. So much for that “free will” thing that Christians say God gave them. The underlying message to teens here seems to be “hide your different beliefs if you have Christian parents”. After all, if a Christian parent allows their children to think differently, they could also start cutting, or using drugs, or attending oral-sex parties.

BBC News has run a story on the Church of England’s efforts to reach out to “spiritual but not religious” people, complete with hipster missionaries sent out to psychic fairs, and alternative meeting and worship services. But do these experiments in boosting church attendance really work? Not so much, according to reporter Jolyon Jenkins.

Ian Mobsby, an emerging church guru, argues we live in the age of the “spiritual tourist”; a “world driven by individualism… where people want to experience something that brings peace, centredness and depth.” He sees parallels between today’s post-religious culture and the early days of Christianity, a time of prevailing mysticism in Europe. “We are entering a world where people aren’t interested in whether something is true or not, or whether they believe it or not, but whether it works,” says Mr Mobsby. In other words, if an emerging church can offer a sense of community and give a feeling of inner peace, that may be enough – belief will follow. But three years into his mission in Telford, Mark Berry’s core community is not spiritual-but-not-religious recruits, but already-committed Christians who use his gatherings to deepen and provide new perspectives on their faith. There may be a hole in people’s lives, but there’s not a great deal of evidence that it is God-shaped.

This isn’t scientific, but my own experiences with alternative Christian outreach programs have backed this up. While the  curious may drop in from time to time, the committed members are usually self-identified Christians already. So psychic-fair outreach programs, Church-led extreme-sport events, and goth masses,  act more as retention programs than anything else. Not that there is anything wrong with trying to lure estranged church-goers back into the fold, but I agree with “emerging church guru” Ian Mobsby’s claim that were moving into a results-based religious future. A future that doesn’t necessarily favor large institutional religions.

If your faith is losing members, a new marketing plan, no matter how effective, won’t stem the tide. Who knows though? Maybe hanging out in psychic fairs and doing extreme sports will end up changing the outreachers more than the (potentially) outreached. Perhaps these new “hip” emerging-churchers are simply becoming the change they want to see, and that may wind up being a more effective ministry than any sort of “alternative” event. (Thanks to Mike for tipping me off to this story.)

Word has leaked that Barack Obama’s campaign director for religious-affairs, Joshua DuBois, has been tapped to lead up the revamped Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (now called the Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships). DuBois, a 26-year-old Pentecostal pastor, was raised by James Dobson-listening conservative parents and spearheaded Obama’s efforts to reach out to socially conservative evangelicals and Catholics.

President Obama plans to name Joshua DuBois, a 26-year-old Pentecostal pastor and political strategist who handled religious outreach for the Obama campaign, to direct a revamped office of faith-based initiatives, according to religious leaders who have been informed about the choice. The office, created by President George W. Bush by executive order at the start of his first term, is likely to have an even broader mandate in the Obama White House, said the religious leaders, who requested anonymity because the appointment has yet to be announced.

The big question now is if DuBois will do a better job reaching out to religious minorities than some of his predecessors under President Bush. Will this younger man be more tuned in than Jim Towey? The man who famously questioned whether Pagans could be charitable or help the poor.

“I haven’t run into a Pagan faith-based group yet, much less a Pagan group that cares for the poor! Once you make it clear to any applicant that public money must go to public purposes and can’t be used to promote ideology, the fringe groups lose interest. Helping the poor is tough work and only those with loving hearts seem drawn to it”.

While Towey did eventually backtrack somewhat from his anti-Pagan gaffe, you have to wonder if DuBois, who has been cagey about his personal stands on hot-button issues (not to mention his views of other faiths), will be much better. Can a man focused so heavily on conservative and traditional Christians also reach out to Hindus, Buddhists, Pagans, and indigenous faith traditions? Will this revamped initiative bring all faiths to the table? I suppose we’ll have to wait and see, but the Obama administrations first forays into faith have been decidedly mixed to say the least. What do you think? Will the new faith-based initiative be fairer and more inclusive under a Democratic administration? Should Obama have even kept the office around?

Since I’ve been getting on CBS’s case recently for their exploitation of minority religious and ethnic groups, I figured I should tune in to last night’s episode of NCIS that promised a Satanic theme.  I’m glad to say that my pre-episode hopes were fulfilled.

I’m still holding out hope that NCIS will buck the trend, after all, the show includes a positive goth character, so maybe the Satanic thing is a red herring, a misdirection from the true nature of the killer. One can only hope.

That turned out to be exactly the case. While I won’t give away the ending, I can say that all the ritualistic elements were explained away, and the Satanic/cult angle was indeed a red herring. They even had the goth-styled Forensic Specialist Abby Sciuto (played by Pauley Perrette) specifically debunk the “Satanic” pentagram on the victim’s back.

Not the same pentagram.

This points towards the power of representation in popular media. Because NCIS has a “goth” character whose mandate is to “defy the negative stereotype”, the writers are forced to (at least partially) consider her perspective. It stands to reason that someone who goes to goth clubs, drives a hearse, and listens to Industrial music would have met a few Satanists in her time, and know they aren’t ritualistic killers (and that many of them don’t even literally believe in the entity of Satan). So writers are then, if they have any talent, forced into either explaining why these ritualistic killers are an abberation from the norm, or debunk the supposed “Satanism” invoked in the episode (which is what happened here).

Compare this to The Mentalist, where there are no characters who act as subcultural signifiers. Indeed, the main character is a “reformed” outsider (sham TV psychic) who now uses his powers of observation to debunk and mock the world he once inhabited. It’s little wonder their “Wiccan” character was a string of negative stereotypes, what was holding the writers back? Certainly not anticipated outrage from the Pagan community, we’re far too small to scare away advertisers (half of America hasn’t even heard of Wiccans if some surveys are to be believed) or garner national press for every insult. Fair treatment towards outsider views in popular media can only be expected when the outsiders are involved (whether in front of, or behind, the cameras).

Obviously, this isn’t a perfect solution, Criminal Minds was recently criticized for some ugly stereotypes about Gypsies, and they have two “outsider/geek” characters, but they do have a far better track record than most of debunking stereotypes concerning outsider and subcultural groups (I know they specifically addressed “Satanic Panic” in an older episode). This doesn’t mean I think shows should start shoehorning Pagan and Wiccan characters into their ensembles, only that visibility and involvement can make the difference between being the Furries on CSI or the goth girl on NCIS. So hats off to that show’s writers for avoiding some bad stereotypes, and including a positive “outsider”.

ADDENDUM: You can watch the entirety of this episode of NCIS online.

Sometimes you learn more by reporting the gossip than you do by merely stating the facts. For instance, last week a story appeared about a British Druid demanding the reburial of a 4000-year-old skeleton on religious grounds. What that article didn’t tell you was that Paul Davies, the man supposedly speaking for The Council of British Druid Orders, is actually leading a small splinter group calling itself CoBDO West.

The ‘row’ concerns a small breakaway group of druids (known to some as COBDO West) who’ve requested the museum release the remains so they can rebury them where they came from. King Arthur and mainstream COBDO want the same thing — but are upset that COBDO West have taken matters into their own hands. ‘COBDO West are just a joke — three men and a dog, without even the dog,’ splutters King Arthur.

Further sniping between CoBDO and CoBDO West can be seen in the comments section of this article. And yes, I too instantly thought of the “splitters” scene from Life of Brian. Needless to say, other British Pagan and Druid groups are increasingly embarrassed by the public fighting.

‘A lot of people are embarrassed by it all — very embarrassed,’ says Emma Restall Orr, a druidic teacher and priestess from Warwick-shire. ‘They’re feisty, burly lads who are very much on the edge of druidism but are rowing in public and giving druids a bad name.’

It should also be noted that neither CoBDO nor CoBDO West speak for all British Pagans or Druids on the issue of reburial and archeology. PEBBLE (The Public Bodies Liaison Committee for British Paganism), and the related group HAD (Honouring the Ancient Dead), are pursuing a more nuanced course that acknowledges the need and importance of archaeological study.

HAD is not declaring one policy in terms of action. HAD’s focus is to ensure that there is discussion, consultation and shared decision-making around ancient human remains. In this way, all interested parties, including local communities and Pagans, will be heard when it comes to human remains (ancestors) exhumed within their landscape, ensuring that the spiritual, religious and social value of these remains is presented alongside any scientific, monetary or political value discerned by those funding or carrying out that excavation.

One important voice of dissent on the reburial issue  is fellow Pagan blogger Yewtree, who is a member of Pagans For Archeology. Check out the article “Finding a Compromise – Keeping Places” for some of her views on the subject (an article by Jenny Blain and RJ Wallis is also worth a look). As for the warring CoBDO’s, they may soon find themselves left behind by a modern Druidry that doesn’t want to be associated with punch-ups at the pub and media stunts.

Terry Dobney has been a druid for 50 years and has been Chief Druid and Keeper of the Stones at Avebury for the past 11. He wears long white robes and an antler on his belt, clasps a hazel staff and has a rook’s feather in his cap. ‘Druids are supposed to have a balanced view and see both sides of the argument,’ he explains. ‘But there are some strong egotistical characters who need keeping in check. We’re drawing up a code of conduct for being a druid.’

Looks like some “egotistical characters” better watch out before they are seen in the same light as Kevin Carlyon, and become leaders of nothing more than a fancy acronym.

Conservative Christian polling organization The Barna Group has put out the results of a new national survey that tracks knowledge and opinions concerning the religion of Wicca. Leaving aside my usual reservations about their methodology (which I believe skews heavily towards “born-again” Christians and conservatives), it does say some interesting things about the perceptions and depth of knowledge people have of this Pagan faith nearly fifty years after it being introduced to America.

A slight majority of Americans (55%) say they have not heard the term “Wicca.” Among the 45% who have heard of, the segments most familiar with Wicca include people younger than 60 (50% are familiar with the name, compared to 35% of older adults); Christian evangelicals (65%); Skeptics (61% of atheists and agnostics); Asian Americans (52%); upscale adults (62%); and those who describe themselves as socio-politically liberal in most cases (55%).

While only about half of Americans have heard of Wicca (according to this survey), a surprisingly large percentage (62%) accurately define it as an “organized form” of religious Witchcraft. Only seven percent thought Wicca was Satanic in nature. So, if so many people know who we are, do they like us? According to Barna, not really.

When asked to express their view of Wicca, 6% held a favorable view (2% very favorable and 4% somewhat favorable), and 52% held unfavorable views (7% somewhat unfavorable and 45% very unfavorable). Perhaps the most intriguing response was from the remaining 43% who said they did not know what they thought of Wicca or had no particular opinion about it.

So only around 6% of people who’ve heard of Wicca like Wiccans? That can’t be good. Especially if the large percentage of people who have unfavorable (or very unfavorable) opinions come in at a whopping 52%. Which group do you think will have more influence on the 43% with no particular opinion? Of course they don’t define what “unfavorable” really means. It could be someone who is merely annoyed at a teen-aged Witch they know, or it could be evangelical Christians actively spreading falsehoods about Wiccans.

Despite this somewhat dis-favorable outlook, Barna believes there are many factors that will continue contribute to Wicca’s growth, and that teens will continue to adopt various Wiccan-friendly beliefs.

Barna said he expects Wicca to continue to fly below people’s religious radar until it develops higher profile, more structured leadership, which is in some ways antithetical to Wiccan practices. However, he also expects significantly growing numbers of young Americans to embrace elements of Wiccan practice, such as spell casting and performing magic rituals, which have proven to be central behaviors featured in various popular media presentations in recent years. Many young adults will not consider themselves to be Wiccan but will adopt some of its practices and thinking alongside their more traditional religious views and behaviors.

Like I said earlier, I feel that Barna’s surveys often over-emphasize the conservative Christian voice. So these numbers could be seriously skewed. I also think that his estimates of the number of Wiccan practitioners (which he puts as under 250k) are too low, especially considering the data from the far more robust (and religiously non-partisan) Religious Landscape survey from the Pew Forum. However, I do think this data sends an important message to Wiccans and the wider Pagan community concerning just have far we’ve come, and how far we have to go. It’s why media depictions of modern Pagans are still an important issue. We may be jaded to all the innaccurate and exaggerated lampoons of our belief systems, but for around half of America it may be their first glimpse of what Witches do.

OddcultTV has posted a profile of the acclaimed occult/metaphysical London bookshop, Treadwell’s. Leading the tour of the shop is owner and manager Christina Oakley Harrington.

Back in 2007 I did a blog post on the store where I said (somewhat hopefully) that Treadwell’s raises the standards for future occult-oriented shops. I only wish there was a shop like this near me! When you’re done with that video, you might also want to check out OddcultTV’s other interviews, including one with the Keeper of the Stones at Avebury.

Longtime readers of this blog will notice that I use the term “post-Christian” quite a bit. This doesn’t mean that I think Christianity is going to dry up and blow away any time soon (that would be statistically unlikely), but that we are entering a world where that faith is one of many, and no longer the only moral and cultural guide.

…a post-Christian world is one where Christianity is no longer the dominant civil religion, but one that has, gradually over extended periods of time, assumed values, culture, and worldviews that are not necessarily Christian (and further may not necessarily reflect any world religion’s standpoint). This situation applies to much of Europe, in particular in Central and Northern Europe, where no more than half of the residents in those lands profess belief in a transcendent, personal and monotheistically-conceived deity.

This trend is no longer isolated to France or Germany, it has been gaining stream in the Americas as well. As it happens, the forces who prefered a Christian-dominated society are becoming increasingly hostile and defensive.

A television advertisement shows Bolivia’s President Evo Morales dressed as a shaman. He is knocking away at an image of Christ; a document marked ‘New Constitution’ is emblazoned with the slogan: “Choose God, Vote No”. This ad has been put out by evangelical groups concerned the new constitution will lead to legalized abortion and same-sex marriages. Neither issue is mentioned in the document, leaving room for ambiguity.

Polls show that the referendum on a new secular constitution, which would place the Catholic Church on equal footing with indigenous religions, will pass, leaving Christian groups increasingly worried about the “public will”.

Same-sex marriages are not ruled in the document. Gabriela Montaño Viaña, the presidential representative in Santa Cruz, said the constitution “could open the door to a civil law allowing homosexual marriage if there was a public will to do that”.

Why the worry over what “the public” wants? Because it seems that many conservative/traditional Christian thinkers believe that without the cultural and religious dominance of Christianity, we will all slide into amoral paganism.

…the West is not becoming secular, it is becoming visibly more pagan. Further, the failure to address the pagan nature of the West will lead to a failure to fully address the challenge of Islam.  Scripture presents only one real alternative to the worship of the one, true God. That alternative is the worship of natural forces given personal forms as various deities. These forces included such things as the state (pharaoh or emperor worship), war, fertility (the baals), wisdom, love, the sun, moon, and stars. These deities were worshipped because their adherents believed they supplied the vital necessities of life — children, health, security, material well-being, and personal power and renown. Paganism, in this context, would be defined as allegiance to, reliance on, or preoccupation with specific natural powers as the source of one’s well-being and happiness.

The true enemy then isn’t “secularism”, but what they fear the process of secularization will bring about. A post-Christian (and ultimately post-secular) re-enchantment that  gives birth to a new multi-religious (pagan) world. Christian groups have responded with increasing hostility to this process, and some are slowly re-embracing once-discarded ultra-conservative factions as a sort of rear-guard action against the secular onslaught. But are all the fears of this “pagan” future justified? Conservative journalist and pundit Heather Mac Donald argues that we shouldn’t fear moral chaos as secularism continues to rise in the West.

The religious superstructure of centuries past has been dismantled.  Rising in its place is a remake of religion “in the image of mass-consumer capitalism,”  according to a sociologist of American religion at the University of Notre Dame.  That remake offers up easily digestible bits like the “5 Minute Theologian”  and “7 Minutes With God.”  Only a quarter of Americans attend church weekly.  Yet moral chaos has not broken out; society has grown more prosperous as secularism expands.  Empathy with others, an awareness of the necessity of the Golden Rule, survive the radical transformation of religious belief, it turns out.  Perhaps because a moral sense is the foundation, not the result, of religious ethics.

In other words, ethical and moral behavior isn’t the result of Christian cultural dominance, but a part of natural human development. Something that any clear-eyed religious historian would know to be true. While I, for one, welcome our new secularist overlords, I fear what the increasingly radicalized fringe groups will do when they believe “spiritual warfare” and repressive ballot measures are no longer enough. While I think a post-Christian future is inevitable, I worry about the birth pangs necessary to realize this brave new world.

MagickTV has posted video coverage of the pre-inaugural “Ritual of Unity and Blessing” in Washington D.C. that I reported on earlier this month. This includes an hour-long video of the ritual itself, and interviews with the organizers.

Above, the ritual.

Above, the interviews.

Thanks to MagickTV and Ed Hubbard for providing this first-hand coverage of the event. While I know it’s somewhat fashionable to poke fun at the Witch School folks, they really deserve a hats-off for their efforts to provide Pagan journalism with some first-rate source material. Be sure to also check out their recent coverage of the Livingston Parish win. If you have a YouTube account, I highly recommend subscribing to MagickTV’s channel.