My semi-regular round-up of articles, essays, and opinions of note for discerning Pagans and Heathens.

We start off with two film-related tidbits that might interest my readers. First, Warner Bros. is moving forward with a big-budget production of the Odyssey directed by Jonathan “Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning” Liebesman and scripted by Ann “The Chronciles of Narnia” Peacock.

“Warner Bros. has nabbed Ann Peacock’s spec “Odysseus” and set Jonathan Liebesman to direct. Story centers on the Greek lit hero and king of Ithaca who returns to his island after 20 years of fighting the Trojan Wars only to find his kingdom under the brutal occupation of an invading force. Gianni Nunnari (“300”) is producing through his Warners-based Hollywood Gang shingle. Craig Flores exec produces.”

The Warners-backed Hollywood Gang is also producing the Theseus-starring “War of Gods” (and an as-yet untitled sequel to “300″), making ancient Greek legend a hot topic in 2010. Meanwhile, the remake of “Clash of the Titans” (starring Perseus), which is racing “War of Gods” to the theatres, has started filming and you can see some set photos, here. I predicted in the wake of “300″ that we’d see more “sword and sandal” flicks set in a Greco-Roman context, and it looks like the flood has arrived.

Since we’re talking about film and fantasy, you might want to check out a fascinating round of panel discussions by SF Signal that asks about gods and pantheons in fantasy literature.

“In a created fantasy world, gods can proliferate by the hundreds. When building religious systems for fantasies, what are the advantages/disadvantages of inventing pantheons vs. single gods, or having no religious component at all?”

Check out some of the really thoughtful and insightful ruminations on the subject from fantasy luminaries like Marie Brennan, Elizabeth Bear, L.E. Modesitt Jr., and John C. Wright (among others).

Speaking of panelists, Starhawk speaks out against torture at the On Faith site and references the repeated tasering of a Pagan Cluster member and the Burning Times in the process.

“Torture, like a virus, also has a way of spreading. When torture is licensed at the highest levels, it percolates down to every police department and branch of Homeland Security. We may have a black president now, but a black man in this country who is arrested still stands a high chance of being brutalized and beaten. At the protests last summer outside the Republican National Convention, a dear friend of mine was attacked by police at a legal and peaceful rally, thrown to the ground and tasered multiple times. Another young friend was beaten in jail, then marched hooded and shackled through the hospital where he was finally taken for treatment. These are small examples, but they show how a culture of torture, force and bullying takes root and eventually threatens the freedom and safety of us all.”

I’ll ignore the Burning Times references and instead agree that ultimately no good can come from a policy of torture. Most of Starhawk’s fellow panellists seem to agree (except for Chuck Colson). I wonder what they think about the Pew Forum’s recent study linking torture acceptance with increased church attendance.

While I’m on the subject of Pew research, another recent study finds that nearly half of Americans have changed faiths in their lifetime.

“Americans change religious affiliation early and often. In total, about half of American adults have changed religious affiliation at least once during their lives. Most people who change their religion leave their childhood faith before age 24, and many of those who change religion do so more than once. These are among the key findings of a new survey conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life. The survey documents the fluidity of religious affiliation in the U.S. and describes in detail the patterns and reasons for change.”

Sadly this data doesn’t go into how many people leave Catholic and Protestant Christianity for “other” religions, but it still gives and interesting snapshot of how fluid religious affiliation in America truly is.

In a final note, the dreaded H1N1 (the virus formerly known as “Swine Flu”) briefly cast its spectre over famed Pagan goth-rock band Inkubus Sukkubus who were in Mexico City for a concert.

“Tony and Candia McKormack went to Mexico City last week to play a gig to promote their band’s new album — which is ironically about the Mexican Day of the Dead. Authorities cancelled the event after the swine flu outbreak and Tony, 48, and Candia, 42, flew back to England on Monday. They began feeling unwell after arriving at Heathrow and have now been ordered to remain inside their home in Kingsholm, Gloucs, along with their two children Leon, 11 and Carmen, four.”

Luckily it turned out to not be H1N1 and everyone is fine. The band’s new album “Viva La Muerte” is shipping now, and all planned gigs are going forward. For more Pagan-related music news, check out the Twitter feed for my A Darker Shade of Pagan podcast.

That’s all I have for right now, have a great day!

My semi-regular round-up of articles, essays, and opinions of note for discerning Pagans and Heathens.

SF Weekly interviews Sister Edith Myflesh from the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and discusses the group’s popularity, charity work, religious diversity, and what real-live nuns think of them.

“…the sisters have no affiliation to any one creed. Some are pagan, some Jewish, even some practicing Catholics. Despite the church’s stance that the order “mocks” women who’ve taken traditional religious vows, Sister Edith swears the nuns she’s met have been nothing but supportive. “They get what we do,” she says, explaining that the tasks of the female clergy – caring for the sick, raising money for charity – have a lot in common with the sisters’. And like parishioners going to confession, Sister Edith has found that people blurt out the most personal things to a member of the order in full makeup. “When we look like that, we’re not human anymore. We become mirrors for people to project onto,” she says, recalling the times she’s given relationship advice to strangers.”

More subtle hints that as religion becomes ever-more female dominated boundary maintenance and the castigation of blasphemers will slowly lose its importance, replaced instead with a more pragmatic stance regarding the usefulness of holy fools?

Over at his Beliefnet blog, Gus diZerega gives a three-part argument (part one, part two, part three) against a “Pagan clergy”. In his final installment, diZerega argues that completely severing matters of faith and religion from government control (marriage, military, prison chaplaincy) will serve us far better than trying to construct an institutionalized clergy model.

“To sum it up, as our numbers increase we will need a larger professionally trained group of Pagans who can do some of the kinds of counseling work that Christians do through their clergy.  But we do not need that kind of institutionalized status to do it, and our traditions and the core of who we are will be safer if we do not seek it  We are on much safer ground to invoke the issue of religious freedom, now that we are widely recognized in the courts and among many religious leaders as a legitimate spiritual practice.”

DiZerega seems to assert that Pagan religious leaders should stick to ritual, rites of passage, and teaching, while other Pagans should pursue academic experience in counseling and medicine (and I’m assuming, legal arbitration), avoiding the  (corrupting?) confluence of power and influence usually associated with the monotheist clergy/laity model. Indeed, according to diZerega, the entire modern concept of “clergy” can contaminate us in our search for mainstream respectability.

The lesbian-focused site Lez Get Real features a short e-mail conversation with Pagan author Deborah Blake concerning Wiccan and Pagan attitudes towards homosexuality.

“First of all, in answer to your question about homosexuality–in general, Pagans accept all paths, very definitely including homosexuality. My step-daughter is gay and a Pagan. In fact, many gays, lesbians and transgenders are attracted to Wicca and Paganism in part because it is such an accepting religion. There is absolutely nothing in our beliefs that says that alternative sexuality is bad, forbidden or in any way “lesser” than more conventionally accepted sexuality.”

Always nice to see more communication between the LGBT community with the modern Pagan community. While there are a variety of attitudes within different modern Pagan religions concerning LGBT-folk, I would say that the vast majority are fully accepting and welcoming to gays. Indeed, as I’ve pointed out before, gay marriage is very much a Pagan issue too.

Over at Letter From Hardscrabble Creek, Chas Clifton passes along the news that HBO’s “Rome” may rise again as a feature-length film.

“A feature version may be in the works to wrap up the unresolved plot strands of the award-winning HBO/BBC TV series Rome, which dramatised the dirty-politics underside of Rome’s transitional period from republic to virtual monarchy amidst civil war.”

As much as I enjoyed the series, I thought it went (historically speaking) off the rails towards the end of its second season. I mean, they couldn’t even give poor Cicero his famous last words! Still, the sets were fantastic, and the religious elements engaging, so I suppose I’d fork over the cash to see a big-screen version should it actually come about.

In a final note, if you want to know how hard it really is to uncover Pagan news on a daily basis, check out the Pew Forum’s examination of religious news coverage in 2008.

“Throughout much of 2008, the media generally seemed to follow two patterns in its coverage of religion. First, religion reporting was often episodic, clustering intensely around big events such as the pope’s visit and religion stories related to the 2008 holiday season. Religion stories also faded quickly from the headlines. Second, the angle of religion coverage frequently gravitated toward controversies, such as Barack Obama’s relationship with Jeremiah Wright and stories about the clergy sex-abuse scandal that surfaced during the pope’s visit. This was particularly problematic for the presidential and vice-presidential candidates, who were inundated with questions concerning their faith.”

All in all, only 1% of mainsteam media coverage focused on religious news (on par with education, immigration, and race), and nearly 40% of that centered on the Pope’s visit to America. Considering the huge impact faith and religion have on the world, you would think it’d be a bit higher. If it weren’t for the Internet, blogs, and Google scouring every online news source, I doubt we’d hear much at all concerning minority faiths.

That’s all I have for now, have a great day!

A couple recent news items gives us a glance into what a multi-religious and post-Christian America could look like. First, in honor of Women’s History Month, the Pew Forum re-analyzes data from their U.S. Religious Landscape Survey and came up with some interesting results.

“March is Women’s History Month. A new analysis of data from the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, finds that women are more religious than men on a variety of measures.”

What does that mean? It could potentially mean a couple things. First, leadership and support roles across the spectrum of belief will be slowly turned over to women out of necessity, secondly, religions that continue to alienate women may find themselves in the same fix as Christian churches in Britain (which are losing 50,000 female members per year).

“…while old men argue about whether women can be bishops, or if gays should be treated like human beings, the women have been leaving in droves to faiths that are more relevant to their lives. You can all do the reproductive math and figure out what happens to a religious tradition with a shortage of women.”

The second news item comes from the New York Times who looks at the work of sociologist Phil Zuckerman. Zuckerman, author of  “Society without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment” spent 14 months in Scandinavia exploring their overwhelmingly secular and irreligious nature and had some surprising news for those who believe that a (Judeo-Christian) God is necessary for a moral and good society.

Well documented though they may be, these two sets of facts run up against the assumption of many Americans that a society where religion is minimal would be, in Mr. Zuckerman’s words, “rampant with immorality, full of evil and teeming with depravity.” Which is why he insists at some length that what he and his wife and children experienced was quite the opposite: “a society — a markedly irreligious society — that was, above all, moral, stable, humane and deeply good.”… Zuckerman found what he terms “benign indifference” and even “utter obliviousness.” The key word in his description of their benign indifference is “nice.” Religion, in their view, is “nice.” Jesus “was a nice man who taught some nice things.” The Bible “is full of nice stories and good morals, isn’t it?”

So what do these two stories mean? How do they fit together? Well, if women become the power structure and lifeblood of religion in America, and if we do indeed become (slowly) more secular to accomodate an increasingly multi-religious society, it could create an atmosphere that greatly benefits faiths that are comfortable with these developments (and hurt faiths that aren’t). Faiths like the modern Pagan faiths. I’m not saying these changes will create some sort of Pagan utopia, if certain extremist elements feel too threatened it will be far from it, but these trends do seem to be a harbinger of continued growth for our family of faiths (and other religions flexible enough to change with the prevailing winds). I for one welcome our new secular female overlords!

As we reach the close of 2008, it is time to stop for a moment and take stock of the previous year. When you look at (and for) news stories regarding modern Paganism (and related topics) every day of the year, you can sometimes lose focus on the larger picture. So it can be a helpful thing to look at the broad strokes, the bigger themes, the events and developments that will have lasting impact on the modern Pagan movement. What follows are my picks for the top ten stories from this past year involving or affecting modern Pagans.

10. Parsing Pagan Numbers: 2008 was a very good year for folks who enjoy sifting through surveys and demographical data about Pagans. We saw some signs that Pagans might affect the political thinking of those around them, that liberals may be more likely to dabble in the paranormal, that Britain is shifting into a post-Christian reality faster than we imagined, and that Pagans overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama for President. However, the big story concerning statistical data and modern Pagans comes from the groundbreaking Pew Forum’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, which gave us some new insights into just how many Pagans there might be in America.

“Finally, we have confirmation that modern Paganism is continuing to grow. The study found that 0.4 percent of Americans adhere to a “New Age” religion, broken down into “Pagan”, “Wiccan”, and “Other”. These figures don’t include those who described themselves as “eclectic”, “spiritual but not religious”, “other liberal faith groups”, or members of CUUPs who identified themselves primarily as Unitarian Universalists. Working then with the idea then that (at least) 0.4 percent of Americans are modern Pagans (according to the study), that means there are at least 1.2 million Pagans of one variety or another in America.”

The Pew survey’s large sample size (35,000 respondents) gives our movement some firm reasons to believe we are indeed steadily growing (though not as fast as some would think). It seems like the explosive growth patterns we saw around the world in the 1990s are past, and a healthy, maintainable, expansion has replaced it (look for further confirmation of this hypothesis when the UK and Australia take their next censuses in 2011).

09. Pagans in Prison: The issue of the rights of Pagan prisoners continues to be a big story. Two major stories were the Washington Department of Corrections altering its stance regarding a prisoner’s adherence to multiple faiths (which allowed for the existence of “Christo-Pagans” and other religious meldings), and the historic testimony of Pagan chaplain Patrick McCollum before the US Commission on Civil Rights.

Wiccan Chaplain Patrick McCollum

McCollum described discrimination against American Pagan inmates as “endemic”, and called for a complete overhaul of the way in which prison chaplains and staff are hired, and the establishment of a independent grievance process which would include experts in non-traditional faiths. As Pagan populations around the world grow, so too will the number of Pagan inmates, the fight for equal and fair treatment is an essential struggle that will no doubt continue for several years.

08. The Ups and Downs of Christian-Pagan Relations: This past year saw two books from Christian publishers that claimed to forward dialogue and engagement with the Pagan community, but only one that actually seemed to back up those claims (that would be “Beyond the Burning Times”). While many Pagans are quick to point out that not all Christians are Pagan-hating Jack Chick-reading caricatures, we found that there is still a lot of skepticism and cynicism inherent in the process of building better relations. No doubt this skepticism and reluctance to reach out stems from the ongoing stream of alarmist propaganda, straw man arguments, and a long-standing resistance among some Christian organizations to allow us equal access to the rights and privileges enjoyed by the dominant monotheisms. But small progress is still progress, yes?

07. Animal Sacrifice and Santeria Rights: I have long argued that what happens to our religious “cousins” in the African diasporic religions (Santeria, Vodou, Candomble, etc) ultimately affects the rights and freedoms of modern Pagans. We ignore their legal struggles – whether due to ignorance, indifference, or abhorrence – at our own peril. 2008 saw the fight over the legal right for these faiths to carry out their rituals in peace, specifically animal sacrifice, intensify dramatically. Relations between practitioners of Santeria and local police forces are getting tense, and the legal case of Texan Santeria priest Jose Merced, who was prevented from carrying out private rituals after neighbors called the police.

“Santeria priest Jose Merced filed a federal discrimination lawsuit against the city of Euless in December 2006 after officials told him he couldn’t sacrifice goats at his home for a ceremony initiating a new priest. Followers of the African-Caribbean religion consider animal sacrifice as essential to Santeria as Communion is to Catholics. Euless says the killing of goats for whatever reason would violate its city-wide slaughtering ban. Last year, the city proposed a settlement that permitted the killing of chickens – which is also involved in the ceremony and allowed under the city ordinance. Mr. Merced rejected the offer, saying that Santeria would cease to exist without the sacrifice of goats as well.”

Though Merced lost that case, it is currently being appealed. The problems being faced by Santeria and other related faiths (legal and cultural) is only intensified by ill-informed police and reporters who see dark magical rites whenever a dead animal surfaces in a street or graveyard. In fact, to some, all these diasporic religions are pretty much the same, and have little issue with casually mixing them up (which allows for utterly preposterous stories to be taken seriously). You can bet that 2009 will only see more coverage of these religions as they continue through their own version of the “Satanic Panic” years that Pagans endured.

06. Pagans and Litigation: This past year saw no shortage of the Pagan community in the courtrooms. Accusations of discrimination are no longer being tolerantly endured, instead we have witnessed more litigation over the rights/rites of Pagans (and other related matters) this past year than ever before. You had a Wiccan who successfully fought a ban on fortune-telling, a Reclaiming Witch who is fighting an unjust firing, a controversial custody case, the Supreme Court pondering the rights of a New Age syncretic religion, a religious displays case that involved Wiccans which fizzled out, a fight over religious graffiti, a bizarre “Satanic-Panic” criminal case involving Pagans in North Carolina, and a variety of cases involving public prayer. All that is only the tip of the iceberg, and you can bet 2009 will see even more courtroom struggles involving the Pagan community.

–

Tomorrow I will post the top five Pagan stories for 2008. In the meantime, I invite you to check out the top religion stories from some different perspectives. Time magazine’s top ten religion stories, the 2008 Top Religion Stories as selected by Religion Newswriters, The Revealer’s Best Religion Writing of 2008, Christianity Today’s top stories of 2008, and the Ten Worst Religion Stories of 2008 from Beliefnet’s Progressive Revival blog.

My semi-regular round-up of articles, essays, and opinions of note for discerning Pagans and Heathens.

The California Literary Review has published an excerpt from “The Last Pagan: Julian the Apostate and the Death of the Ancient World” by Adrian Murdoch. A sensitive and nuanced portrayal of the man who almost stemmed the tide of Christianity.

“It is unfair that Julian is still known to us primarily for attributed and spurious dying words. That tradition has the wounded and dying emperor filling his hand with blood, flinging it into the air and crying: “Thou hast conquered, O Galilean!” But then the history, as ever, was written by the winning side. Whether the Galilean actually won or not, it is perfectly possible to go beyond an entry in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations and look not just at Julian’s death but, beyond that, to his life, to see how he was a product of his time. It was a narrow—one might even say lucky—victory for the Galilean, and Julian might just as easily have entered the history books as Julian the Philosopher rather than as Julian the Apostate.”

I can only imagine that Julian would take great pleasure in the modern resurgence of Pagan/polytheistic religions (you could argue that he prefigured the modern Pagan faiths by generations), and would no doubt keep a blog in which to publish his criticisms of “the Galileans”.

Stefani “Spiral” Barner examines the high-choice ethic of modern Paganism that allows both for a pro-military warrior culture, and pacifistic conscientious objectors.

“…the Pagan community is in a unique position. It is possible to support both the service person and the CO—to honor the sacrifices that either choice demands and to embrace the paradox that comes with loving both. Let us demonstrate to the world that it is possible to be both anti-war and pro-soldier. Let us struggle together for peace, even as we recognize and support those who are sent to war. Let us cherish the wisdom that comes from speaking truth to power, as well as the insight that is gained through willingly enduring fear and pain, sacrifice and strife. Let us hear and share the truths of both soldier and CO.”

Barner also references recent court decisions that seem to support granting conscientious objector status within philosophically diverse religious communities. Allowing for CO status in religions that aren’t explicitly pacifist. A situation that seems confusing for top-down organizations like the military or some Christian denominations, but one that is completely normal for the average Pagan used to dozens (if not hundreds) of unique (and valid) relationships with the divine.

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has released lots of new data in its groundbreaking U.S. Religious Landscape Survey. Including the political inclinations of Pagans (and the other “others”).

ReligiousLiberty.TV points to two YouTube videos that examines Christian proselytism in India from the Hindu perspective.

“The video also proposed a “Code of Ethics” for religious conversion which includes language that it should be the result of true spiritual change, not manipulation or coercion. This is likely to increasingly become a larger issue in a global economy and information society. As this issue grows, churches will need re-evaluate their methods of spreading the gospel and seriously consider how they are being perceived in order to avoid sweeping attempts to ban all forms of proselytism.”

A idea of a mutually-agreed upon code of conduct for religious conversions has been floating around for years now, and is supposed to come to fruition soon. It remains to be seen if such a document would be “toothless”, as many groups see conversion as their highest priority, and have no qualms of moving in ethically questionable directions.

In a final note, scientists may have discovered when legendary king and hero Odysseus returned to Ithaca after the Trojan War.

“They say the epic poem appears to confirm that the return of Odysseus to the island of Ithaca coincided with a solar eclipse on April 16, 1178BC. In the Odyssey, the moment when Odysseus kills the suitors who have been courting Penelope, his wife, during his absence after the Trojan War, is marked by the Sun being “blotted from the sky”. “

Of course this calculation rests on Homer being accurate centuries after the fact, and not taking too much poetic license. So take this date with a grain of salt.

That is all I have for now, have a great day!

Lisa Cupido, writing for The Modesto Bee, has a very informative and interesting write-up of the growing popularity of Pagan handfasting ceremonies among couples (both Pagan and non-Pagan) looking to wed. Cupido interviews a wide-ranging assortment of sources for the piece, from author Raven Kaldera (who touches on same-sex marriage within modern Paganism), to trained celebrant Lamira Martin.

“Lamira Martin is a celebrant from St. Louis, Mo., who trained with the Celebrant USA Foundation, an institute that teaches people to officiate at weddings, funerals and other personalized ceremonies. She has been performing pagan and nondenominational weddings for only a year and a half but has wed 60 couples of all ages and backgrounds. Her most popular requests include handfasting, unity candle lighting and sand ceremonies … ‘Most of the couples I meet are in their 20s and want something beautiful and spiritual, but not religious … A lot of people have lost the connection to their churches, but they still want a ritual and to write their own ceremony.’”

In addition to covering the growing popularity of handfastings, Cupido also digs into what is feeding the popularity of handfastings (Paganism’s explosive growth over the last twenty years), and the economic ripples this new popularity creates.

“As some vendors of pagan items can attest, there is no shortage of customers for popular Wiccan and Celtic wedding items like costumes, Renaissance gowns, handfasting ropes and candles. Kimberly and Bill Tuttle, the owners of Gryphon’s Moon, started their company 13 years ago, unaware that their moonstone pendants and incense would attract so many pagan clients. The most popular item on their Web site, gryphonsmoon.com, is their handfasting ring, which features the inscription “Hearts as one,” in Runic, an early Germanic alphabet.”

In a final note on this very well-written and researched article, I would like to congratulate Cupido on being one of the first journalists to (indirectly) include the data about Pagans from the recently released Pew Forum’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey. A survey that gives a big boost to the estimated Pagan population in America.

“A 2001 survey by the Graduate Center of the City University of New York found that the number of followers of Wicca, one of the many religions that fall beneath the pagan umbrella, increased from 8,000 in 1990 to 134,000 in 2001, making it the fastest-growing religion in America in terms of percentage increase. Marty Laubach, a sociology professor at Marshall University, says the number of followers of pagan religions is even higher now, citing a 2008 U.S. Religious Landscape Survey that put the estimate at 1.2 million. ‘My suspicion is that the first number was way too low due to people not responding,’ Laubach said. ‘The 1990 study was conducted at the height of the ’satanic panic,’ which kept many neopagans in the closet.’”

One of the best articles dealing with modern Pagans I have read in awhile. I suggest reading the whole thing. Kudos to Lisa Cupido, this is what journalistic coverage of Paganism is supposed to look like.

Reverberations from the Pew Forum’s groundbreaking U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, the first independent survey to place modern Paganism over the one million mark, are still being felt. Recently The Chronicle Review, a publication of The Chronicle of Higher Education, explored some of the ramifications of these findings.

“…findings in the study shed new light on issues around which there has been no scholarly consensus … it is becoming increasingly obvious that the term “Judeo-Christian” no longer makes sense, given how many Americans are neither. But the favorite terms to replace it – “Judeo-Christian-Islamic” or “Abrahamic” – seem equally inappropriate. It is not just that Buddhists, who do not trace their roots to Abraham, may outnumber Muslims, who do. It is that the combined percentage of those who identify themselves as either Hindu (0.4 percent) or from “other world religions” (0.3 percent) does so as well. We are not one nation divided into three monotheistic faiths. We are a nation characterized by many faiths, as well as by none.”

If America is no longer a “Judeo-Christian” (or “Abrahamic”) country, what does that mean? Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life, claims that the era of a common Christian morality is coming to a close.

“The fact that we now have so many religions in this country suggests either that no common morality is possible, or that, if it is, religion cannot be its most important source. The ways in which religious diversity either increases or detracts from speaking about the common good ought to be a subject stimulated by Pew’s conclusions.”

Which means that we could see a day when divisive “culture war” and other “social issues” will cease to be a tug-of-war between liberal secularists on one side, and conservative Christians on the other. Instead, there will be a variety of viewpoints and moralities involved in the discussion, changing the entire dynamic of debate.

Some will wonder if this is simply a statistical “blip” before some new Great Awakening re-asserts Christian moral dominance in America, but Wolfe says that data points to Christian denominations having retention problems across the board, including the “conservative” and “evangelical” denominations.

“Protestant denominations … were all losers … Pew has found that the strictest of all churches, at least in the sheer amount of proselytizing time and energy it requires, has the lowest overall retention rate … whatever the case in the past, there is no strong evidence of strict churches attracting a disproportionate share of members now … If the religious world of adults in the United States is diverse and in constant flux, the religious affiliations of young Americans, who will be tomorrow’s voters and citizens, are even more so. Three times as many Americans under 30 as those over 70 are not religiously affiliated.”

These problems haven’t escaped the notice of conservative and evangelical churches, but their attempts to fix what they define as an “image problem” may be too little and too late.

“Christians are supposed to represent Christ to the world. But according to the latest report card, something has gone terribly wrong. Using descriptions like “hypocritical,” “insensitive,” and “judgmental,” young Americans share an impression of Christians that’s nothing short of … unChristian.”

Of course, this doesn’t mean that we’ll be living in some sort of multi-religious utopia any time soon. Those in power rarely let go easily, and we may see battles over issues of religious morality and political influence get a lot worse before they attain a new balance. America may have woken up into a new “post-Christian” society, but the hangover from two hundred years of Christian dominance will most likely give us headaches for many years to come.

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life has released a new study of the religious landscape in America. The results, which the Pew Forum calls “unprecedentedly precise”, points towards an increasingly “post-Christian” landscape in America.

“The United States is firmly 78 percent Christian but barely 51 percent Protestant, according to a survey released Monday (Feb. 25). The findings, part of the sweeping U.S. Religious Landscape Survey produced by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, reaffirm a decades-long decline toward minority status for the family of churches that long steered American politics and culture.”

That “barely” 51% figure includes both mainline and evangelical varieties of Protestants. The vast majority of the rest of that 78 percent are the Catholics, who are the largest Christian denomination in America with 23 percent of American adults. But things aren’t looking too good for the Catholics either.

“In the marketplace of American faith, Catholicism is the big loser. Catholics have lost more members to other faiths, or to no faith at all, than any other U.S. religion, according to the new survey released by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life … Perhaps more worrisome for church leaders, while 2.6 percent of Americans converted to Catholicism, four times as many — 10.1 percent — of cradle Catholics have left for another faith or no faith at all. Roughly 10 percent of all Americans are former Catholics, the study reported.”

According to Pew researchers, Catholic numbers have only remained stable due to waves of Hispanic immigration. So Catholicism’s stability is precarious, and observers claim that as the current waves of Catholic immigrants assimilate to American culture, they too will drift away from the faith as previous waves of immigrants have.

So if Christianity’s cultural power is starting to wane, what is taking its place? Well, the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans has risen to 16.1 percent, with a large chunk of that number claiming to have no particular religious orientation. Hindus have acheived the highest retention rate among faiths in America (8 in 10 children remain Hindu), meanwhile, the study finds that religious adherence is becoming increasingly fluid, with 28 percent of people leaving their childhood faith, and a whopping 44 percent changing affiliation in their lifetime.

Finally, we have confirmation that modern Paganism is continuing to grow. The study found that 0.4 percent of Americans adhere to a “New Age” religion, broken down into “Pagan”, “Wiccan”, and “Other”. These figures don’t include those who described themselves as “eclectic”, “spiritual but not religious”, “other liberal faith groups”, or members of CUUPs who identified themselves primarily as Unitarian Universalists. Working then with the idea then that (at least) 0.4 percent of Americans are modern Pagans (according to the study), that means there are at least 1.2 million Pagans of one variety or another in America.

This is the largest scientific study that (theoretically) places modern Paganism over the one million mark. A number that could conceivably be much larger (0.8% refused to answer the survey). Previously, the largest estimated number was 768,400 Pagans in North American according to a COG poll. It is very likely that the actual number of people fitting under the umbrella of modern Paganism is much larger. Signaling perhaps that our days of being classified under “other” are coming to a close. For more data, I suggest looking through the entire study, There is a treasure trove of information here, that has only begun to be analyzed.