Can We Get It Together?

The coming years are going to be difficult ones for modern Pagans. This is a statement that I have heard echoed from all sections of the modern Pagan community. From Asatru to Reclaiming, from Druid groups to Goddess worshippers, from lineaged Wiccans to eclectic solitaries who just finished reading their first book.

So how do we prepare? Where do we turn when we feel are rights have been trampled on? Who will advocate for us in Washington? Who will be the links in the chain when coalitions are called for? First, I want to give a quick run-down of the pan-Pagan groups are that currently trying to represent and fight for “us”.

AREN, Alternative Religions Education Network

Formerly the “Witches Anti-Defemation League”, AREN is supposed to be a group that raises awareness of issue of concern to the Pagan community, but their “news” section dates back to 1998. Darla Wynne is a member of AREN, yet they mention her struggle only in passing at the bottom of the main page. They now promise to get up to date by releasing an “e-zine” with the first issue coming out in….October of 2004! This group may be helpful in getting you the name of a Pagan-friendly lawyer, but that looks like the extent of their current powers.



The Pagan Unity Campaign

Originally conceived as a group that would evolve into a Political Action Committee that would lobby for Pagan interests, the group (after a lengthy flame-war over their definition of “Pagan”) has devolved into a feel-good group that as a national entity sends out coordinated mailings to representatives letting them know they have Pagan constituents. The once ambitious group now seems like little more than a website. Rarely updates and in no position to provide representation for a wider Pagan interest.



Lady Liberty League

An outgrowth of Circle Sanctuary, the LLL is supposed to provide “Religious freedom support for Wiccans, Pagans, and other Nature religions practitioners worldwide. An international information and networking service”. They do seem to have things together better than the previous two groups. They have a page for people to request support, they participate in the Parliament of the World’s Religions and they seem to have a long history. The downside is that their news doesn’t seem to have been updated in a year and there is no sign that the group has any sort of plans for growth.

From there we get to groups who are there to support modern Pagans and do a bit of interfaith work like COG and Earthspirit, but neither have an explicit mandate to lobby or advocate for the wider community. You also have awareness raising groups like Pagan Pride who garner a lot of press, but stay neutral otherwise.

I didn’t mention the many local groups or groups that seem to be a website and nothing else, or groups that have obviously been abandoned by the creators.

I’d like to say, I’m not foolish enough to call for “Pagan unity”, I have seen the flame wars and rifts caused by attempts to lump our diverse population into bullet-points and mission statements. But what the collective “we” do need is some sort of way to make our voice heard on the few issues we generally do agree on and to find a way to make our desires known on a national level.

If I were to make recommendations…

1. I would say that the success of 527 groups on the web have shown us a way forward to play to our collective strengths. We have a very strong web presence and the micro-donations strategy can encourage giving from our normally reluctant populace.

2. We must reach out to the Heathens. Any group must put aside it’s Wicca-centric model and reach out to our more libertarian-leaning cousins. Yes the reconstructionists tend to be more conservative, but in general it tends to be the best kind of conservativism and there are many issues including civil liberties and conservation that we could form strong coalitions on.

3. We need to learn from Reclaiming and other Pagan groups that have been doing political action. While some Pagans don’t agree with every issue they fight for, they have perfected tactics and methods learned from other activists and brought it into a religious mind-set. This may prove vital if other tactics prove fruitless.

4. We need to ditch the failing groups and start clean. Attempts to revitalize groups that are long dormant won’t get us anywhere. If anything those groups should share their resources with us and move to something new.

5. An web site needs to be dynamic and updated constantly! Blogs! Blogs! Blogs! If a site is going to go more than two days without an update if will become stale. The days of “e-zines” are over, the days of fresh content every day are here. This hypothetical group would need a team of dedicated bloggers from several different faiths and traditions to keep the site interesting with commentary and insights on the latest news stories.



6. Cross the generational gap. Lastly we will need to make sure the site is truly inter-generational. We want teens and elders working together. This site MUST be fresh and a bit “hip” and must appeal to a broad audience to succeed.

Will this happen? Who can say, but maybe it is an idea we need to ponder in the coming years.

Just So You Know

I’m currently working on some longer entries, so instead of real content on my own website I direct you to the blog of Pagan academic Chas Clifton who has posted several excellent entries in the past few days, everything from Burning Man to the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion-Society of Biblical Literature.

Quote of the Day (II)

“What about Halloween? she wonders. “Can we keep Halloween?” “When the ghouls and the goblins and the witches come out to play?” I ponder. “It seems we never got rid of the ghouls and the goblins and the witches in our minds and hearts. We’re burning ‘witches’ in Iraq right now. We call them collateral damage. We better keep that day just as it is. It may help us remember how we got here.” – Gary Corseri

Quote of the Day

“Most modern mainstream religious holidays are within a few days of ancient pagan festivities, our celebrations are thought to be among the world’s oldest holidays. Rather than telling the people to stop that and do this, the Christian leaders adopted dates of popular pagan holidays that the people were already celebrating.” – Jody Michael, Pagan priest, Utica Observer-Dispatch

Trends in Pagan Publishing

Witchvox tips me off to a new book by Brendan “Cathbad” Myers that tackles the issue of Paganism and social/environmental activism.

“‘Dangerous Religion’ is a thought-opera of spiritual contemplations on Pagan and environmental themes, and simultaneously a manual for environmental activists and other participants in the anti-globalization movement.”

Activism, specifically environmental activism and related global justice issue have been popping up in more Pagan books lately. For instance T. Thorn Coyle’s latest book Evolutionary Witchcraft.

“We need to connect, to find the sacred in our lives right now, rather than on some future day of transcendence and redemption. In a time of global and environmental crises, a religion that firmly connects us to the earth is not only appealing, but crucial.”

Join these with Starhawk’s ongoing work and recent book on her global justice activism “Webs of Power” and it looks like there is an emergent voice in the Pagan publishing market.

All this along with the recent growth in books and journals by Pagan academics sends positive signals of a faith evolving away from it’s adolescence and into a mature religious movement.

Quote of the Day

“The book concludes that what has caused our nation to spiral down into our present moral bankruptcy has been the gradual acceptance of moral relativism, secular humanism, atheism and neo-paganism, augmented by the un-constitutional actions of a US Supreme Court which has usurped its authority and has acted as legislators not interpreters of the Constitution.” – Arlene Sawicki (endorsing the book “Legislating Morality”)

Dewitch?

For my Christian friends in the audience, let us pretend that a large Pagan publisher put out a book called, lets say, “DeChristing Our Youth”, in it the author who has had no direct experience with Christianity (he has, say, a friend who is Christian and knows a couple others who have “dabbled” in it) spends some 240 pages talking about the “dangers” of youth following Christ and how “hollow” the faith is. Perhaps the author also includes a story narrative which goes even further and implies that Christians kill people and mutilate animals during their rites.

Can you imagine what would happen? The editorials, the endless blog tirades, the holding up of this book as representative of the depraved “secular left”. No doubt national leaders of the Christian faith would denounce it and the publisher would endure a hailstorm of criticism that could conceivably put it under.

Now imagine that such a book *has* been published only it’s about Wicca.

In this book (with a cover design that could have come from an occult publisher) youth minister and author Tim Baker purports to give people curious about Wicca everything they need!

“Dewitched is the must-have resource for any teen, youth pastor, or parent who wants good solid information and advice from a Christian perspective about this popular but dangerous religion.”

So what does the book tell us? Well, it compares and links Wicca to Satanism.

“Although he makes sure to present the different belief systems of Wicca and Satanism, such as Wicca being earth-based while Satanism is not, he also connects Wicca and Satanism through their founders and certain aspects of their beliefs.” – Ruth Robinson

Which certain aspects? Certain aspects link Buddhism to Christianity but that doesn’t make them the same or even “linked” as this author is trying to do with Wicca and modern Satanism.

But wait, there is more. In the one review of the book on Amazon.com a rather upset Wiccan clues us in to the “narrative” portion of the book.

“It does say that Wiccans don’t cast spells to harm another or practice animal sacrifice, yet the fictional (but supposedly educational) story in the book features a so-called “Wiccan” who details the people she’s harmed through spellcasting in her diary, and is part of a coven that is portrayed mutilating a cow during a Sabbat ceremony, and even sacrificing a human in a perversion of a traditional first-degree initiation.” – “Cunning Woman”

Ah, sometimes the old slanders are the best! Wiccans engage in human sacrifice! Wiccans recruit and corrupt the young! Wiccans tell people to turn away from the true faith! Wiccans engage in child abuse! The irony of course is that all these slanders were said about the early Christians.

This book tries to have it both ways. It wants to present itself as modern and informed and dare I say “hip”? Sadly the book also wants to dabble in all the old slurs that have been thrown at modern Pagans since we grew large enough to worry the conservative Christians. In the end it is just another piece of garbage laced with the same ignorance only prettied up a bit.