Rev. Dr. Davron Michaels is Paramount Priest of the New Aeon Church International, a Wiccan High Priest and head of the New Aeon Wiccan Tradition, and a leader within the Pagan Solidarity Alliance. His work includes Pagan religious-liberty advocacy, interfaith engagement, and public education. The views expressed here are his own.
When the Christian-themed camp Shift the Atmosphere was evicted from Burning Man last week, members of the camp quickly framed the episode as a question of religious discrimination. They argued that they had come to share the Gospel and were being punished for openly expressing their Christian faith.
Burning Man organizers offered a different explanation. They said the camp had been repeatedly warned about violations involving privacy, consent, and photography and had been given opportunities to correct its behavior before being removed. Members of the camp dispute that account and maintain that they obtained consent and were targeted because they were Christians.
For those of us who followed the activities of Philip Renner Ministries in Salem, Massachusetts, last October, the controversy feels strikingly familiar.
It also raises a question much larger than either Salem or Black Rock City: Where does protected religious expression end, and interference with another community’s religious or cultural life begin?
That distinction matters particularly to religious minorities.
Pagans should be among the strongest defenders of religious liberty in America. Our communities know what it means to have beliefs misunderstood, practices stigmatized, and religious legitimacy questioned. The freedom that protects a Witch, Heathen, Druid, polytheist, or other Pagan protects an evangelical Christian as well.
That principle should not change simply because we dislike someone’s theology. But neither does religious liberty mean that every action undertaken in the name of religion is beyond rules, criticism, or consequences.
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Salem: When a Wider Community Needed a Response
In October 2025, members affiliated with Philip Renner Ministries came to Salem during the city’s Halloween season. Their stated purpose was evangelism. There is nothing inherently objectionable about that.
Christians have as much right to preach Christianity on a public sidewalk as Pagans have to discuss Paganism. Salem has hosted Christian evangelists during Halloween for years. Disagreement, even vigorous disagreement, is part of life in a pluralistic society.
What happened at the Salem Psychic Fair and Witches’ Market was different.
The Wild Hunt reported that people affiliated with the ministry entered private vendor areas, disrupted psychic readings, and applied anointing oil to tables, photographs, and other materials, including an Ancestor altar. The ministry subsequently celebrated at least some of that activity online, saying members remained after the psychics departed and anointed their tent with oil.
That distinction was crucial then, and it remains crucial now. Standing outside a Pagan event and proclaiming that Witchcraft is wrong is religious expression. Entering another community’s space and performing one’s own religious acts upon its objects without permission crosses a very different boundary.
The Pagan Solidarity Alliance did not treat the Salem incidents as merely a local dispute or an online controversy. On November 4, 2025, its Spiral Council issued a formal statement condemning what it described as religious harassment, desecration, and intimidation targeting Pagan practitioners and businesses in Salem. The Wild Hunt subsequently reported that response to the wider Pagan community.
That response mattered because solidarity has to mean more than speaking up only when one’s own congregation, tradition, or organization is directly affected. The people whose spaces were disrupted in Salem did not need to belong to PSA for their religious freedom and sacred spaces to matter to us. A community-wide alliance should be willing to document threats, distinguish protected speech from intrusive conduct, and speak professionally when Pagan practitioners are targeted.
PSA’s objection was not that Christians had come to Salem. It was what particular Christians chose to do once they arrived. That distinction allowed it to defend Pagan spaces without treating Christianity itself as the enemy.
Pagan solidarity logo
From Salem to Black Rock City
Less than a year later, another controversy involving a similar style of evangelism erupted at Burning Man.
Shift the Atmosphere, and Philip Renner Ministries should not simply be treated as interchangeable organizations. John Hinerman has been the principal public defender of the Burning Man camp in current reporting. The significance of Salem is therefore not that an identical organization has necessarily repeated an identical act. It is that the two controversies raise remarkably similar questions about evangelism, consent, spiritual mission, and the boundaries of communities being approached.
According to Burning Man’s account, Shift the Atmosphere was not removed merely for preaching Christianity. Organizers said the camp repeatedly violated rules involving privacy and consent, particularly regarding filming participants, and continued doing so after warnings. Burning Man’s published rules require participants to ask permission before photographing or recording people and impose additional requirements for media intended for public distribution.
Members of the camp tell a different story. They maintain that they obtained consent and that the real objection was their Christianity.
Those competing claims should be reported fairly. But something important can be said without deciding every disputed factual question: religious liberty does not exempt religious actors from neutral rules governing their conduct.
If Shift the Atmosphere was removed simply because its members were Christians or because they preached Christianity, people committed to religious liberty, including Pagans, should object. If, however, it was removed after repeatedly violating generally applicable privacy and consent rules despite warnings, its religious identity does not transform enforcement of those rules into persecution.
Determining which account is supported by the evidence matters.
Consent Is Also a Religious-Liberty Principle
We often discuss consent as an interpersonal ethic. But consent also has profound implications for religious pluralism.
A person may consent to hearing my religious message. A person may decline. A property owner may permit me to conduct a ritual there. A property owner may refuse. A community may establish reasonable rules governing how participants interact within its event.
My conviction that I am acting at the command of a deity does not erase those boundaries.
Philip Renner’s official ministry biography says he has been given a mandate from the Lord to “brand the land” by leading worship in capitals and city halls across America. There is nothing inherently objectionable about holding a theology in which worship changes the spiritual character of a place. Pagan traditions themselves contain practices intended to consecrate, cleanse, protect, or otherwise spiritually transform places.
The ethical question arises not from believing that ritual can change a place, but from acting upon another person’s sacred space, property, or person without permission.
That was at the heart of PSA’s concern in Salem. It is also why the language of privacy and consent surrounding Burning Man deserves serious attention.
One person’s sacred mission does not erase another person’s boundaries.
Religious Liberty Is Reciprocal
Imagine reversing the circumstances.
Suppose Pagan practitioners entered a Christian revival, waited until worshippers departed, and ritually consecrated the stage to another deity. Suppose they entered a church and placed ritual substances upon Christian devotional objects without permission. Then suppose they defended those actions by arguing that preventing them from doing so violated their religious freedom.
Few Christians would find that argument persuasive. Neither should Pagans.
Religious liberty cannot function as a one-way privilege. It depends upon reciprocity.
I have the right to proclaim that my religion is true. I have the right to believe that yours is false. I may pray for you, and you may pray for me. I may even believe that your theology is spiritually dangerous, just as you may believe the same about mine.
What neither of us possesses is an unlimited right to impose our religious practice physically upon the other’s person, property, ritual objects, private spaces, or ceremonies.
That boundary does not weaken religious liberty. It is what makes religious liberty possible in a pluralistic society.
This Is Not Christianity Versus Paganism
There is another reason Pagans should resist framing this controversy as Christianity versus Paganism. It isn’t.
Christian approaches to Pagan communities vary enormously. Christians can proclaim their faith passionately, disagree profoundly with Pagan theology, and still recognize the dignity and boundaries of people whose beliefs differ from their own.
Likewise, Pagans can condemn aggressive or intrusive evangelism without treating Christianity itself as the enemy.
That distinction is not merely diplomatic. It is essential to principled religious-liberty advocacy.
The problem is not Christianity. The problem is any method of religious engagement that treats another community less as neighbors with whom one disagrees and more as spiritual territory to be conquered.
Why the Salem Response Still Matters
When the Pagan Solidarity Alliance spoke about Salem last November, the concern extended beyond one weekend or one ministry. It was about establishing a principle and demonstrating what solidarity should look like in practice.
PSA documented the incident, spoke publicly, emphasized the equal religious rights of Pagans, and deliberately distinguished objectionable conduct from Christianity itself. That is the kind of response our wider community needs if Pagan advocacy is to be credible: consistent enough to defend our own, disciplined enough not to demonize somebody else’s religion, and principled enough to apply the same standards to everyone.
Burning Man gives us another opportunity to apply that principle.
Pagans should not demand immunity from criticism. Christians should not demand it either. Nor should any religious community confuse freedom to express its beliefs with freedom from reasonable boundaries governing its conduct.
Religious identity is not a shield against neutral rules of conduct.
Religious liberty belongs to Philip Renner and his fellow Christians. It belongs to the Witches of Salem. It belongs to Christians at Burning Man. It belongs to Burners who want nothing whatsoever to do with Christianity. And it belongs to every person standing between those worlds.
The challenge of pluralism is not learning how to live alongside people who believe as we do. It is learning how to live alongside people whose understanding of the sacred may contradict ours completely, and recognizing that their boundaries remain their own even when our theology tells us they are wrong.
That is not surrendering one’s faith. It is respecting everyone else’s freedom to have one.
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