TWH – The Open Halls Project, an organization founded in 2009 by Josh and Cat Heath to advocate for military Heathens as well as connect Heathens with resources and community announced they were “shutting down the project” via their website, in July of this year.
The organization has not only been able to connect Heathens throughout the world but was also instrumental in establishing Heathenry and other Paganism as official beliefs recognized by the Department of Defense and listed on its Faith Group list.
The Beginning
The idea of creating an organization that specifically connected and advocated for Heathens came to Josh while deployed in Iraq in 2008 and working with an Open Circle there.
The idea for Heath was to establish a similar version of Open Circle that would be specifically for Heathens to network and utilize when moving from base to base. Returning to Germany, where he was stationed at the time, he and his wife, Cat, began to brainstorm the establishing of what would eventually become the Heathen Open Halls Project.
As the organization began to evolve, the “core mission” became not only connecting resources and a feeling of community to military and civilian Heathens, but also became a mission to establish Heathenism as a recognized faith group to the Department of Defense.
Heath explained, “I had started the process to change my personal religious preference to Heathenry and I thought it shouldn’t be too hard to do…to make a long story short, that became a seven to eight year long process involving many people and organizations.”
The Wild Hunt interviewed Heath in 2017 concerning the successful additions of Heathenry and other Pagan faiths added to the Department of Defenses recognized faith groups.
Shutting Down the Project
According to Heath, the decision to shut down the project is “multi-faceted.” Along with divesting from their 501(c)3 status in the years prior, life transitions and conflicting morals played a part.
“Post religious preference campaign, my work situation changed. I had been in Grad School, working full time, and a child, it happened all at the same time. We didn’t get to spend as much time with the Open Halls Project as a whole, as we wanted to after that.”
Heath goes onto to say that the organization tried to find ways to connect heathens with more local groups and organizations on base but the energy level and ability to commit had changed.
In the official statement on the Heathen Open Halls website, Heath states that the original mission of connecting Heathen folk as they move from base to base never went away but did fall behind their goal to get the religious preference added to the Department of Defense lists.
Heath also cites that the military Heathen community chose to embark on various quests that ran counter to their goals. Vaccine exemption requests and beard requests, the ability to grow beards for military Heathens based on “religious ideology” for example.
Heath stated that was “something they never wanted to get behind and felt ultimately distracted from things they felt were more important.”
Another concern expressed by Heath was those with harmful ideologies in the Heathen world. Vetting new members became time-consuming for the co-directors of the organization as the group focused on inclusiveness for all military Heathens.
Heath refers to “bad actors” in the heathen world, specifically in the military. Weeding out the harmful elements, while educating and protecting the current members of the group became taxing for the couple.
“My wife and I are explicitly anti-racist and we definitely had to deal quite frequently with white supremacists, overt racists, and folks who were really trying to use Heathenry as a vessel to spread harmful ideologies,” he told TWH.
Moving On
As the Heathen Open Halls Project comes to a close, the Heaths’ plan to continue with the path of education in the Heathen world.
Josh Heath plans to focus more on Heathen philosophy and hopes that he and others he is working with can build a foundational structure for formal heathen philosophy for the future.
Cat and Josh Heath [Courtesy]
Cat Heath will continue teaching and has most recently published a book with co-author Patricia M. Lafayllve, entitled Elves, Witches and Gods: Spinning Old Heathen Magic in the Modern Day. The book pieces together old magic in the modern-day setting via recipes, spells, prayers, practical techniques as well as connecting with deities.
Heath does recommend The Troth, an inclusive Heathen organization, to those who are looking for a Heathen connection. He hopes that more groups that focus on the healthy and inclusive aspects of Heathenry emerge in the future.
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