Just as legal questions over the Frederick County Commissioners opening invocations policy, initially dubbed a “Wiccan-proof prayer policy,” seemed to be settled, a new issue involving prayer before a government body (and religious minorities) is intensifying. This time Lancaster, California’s voter-approved invocations policy, which I covered last year, has withstood its first legal challenge.

Plaintiffs have failed to establish that the Policy has been used for an improper purpose or is otherwise unconstitutional. Volunteers of numerous faiths are invited to and have given invocations before City Council meetings, and the selection process does not discriminate against any faith.

You can read the full ruling, here. So, when the ruling talks about “volunteers of numerous faiths,” what do they mean?

“Since the City Council adopted the Invocation Policy: twenty invocations were given by people from Christian denominations, and each included a reference to Jesus or Jesus Christ; four invocations were by a person who identifies as a metaphysicist; one invocation was given by a member of the California Sikh Council; and one invocation was given by a person from an Islamic congregation. On four occasions no invocation was given because the scheduled speaker cancelled or was absent. No meetings were held on November23, 2010 or December 28, 2010. When counted only from the date of the challenged invocation, April 27, 2010, nine additional invocations included references to Jesus or Jesus Christ and five invocations have not included such references.”

Lancaster mayor Mayor R. Rex Parris, who had previously stirred controversy by proclaiming that “we’re growing a Christian community, and don’t let anybody shy away from that,” is now saying that “there never was any exclusion, and we never intended there to be any.” But is “a metaphysicist, a Sikh and a Muslim” enough to inoculate Lancaster’s prayer policy against the already-promised 9th Circuit Court appeal? I think the arguments given in an opinion piece published by the Los Angeles Times editorial board last year are still relevant.

“People of varying religious beliefs should be able to attend council meetings, or any other legislative sessions, without feeling marginalized … given the dominance of Christian congregations in almost all corners of the country, a rotating guest list is going to result more often than not in Christian prayer …Though a nondenominational prayer might satisfy the vast majority of Americans, aren’t atheists, agnostics, members of polytheistic religions and, for example, Buddhists — whose faith does not include a belief in a supernatural-related God — entitled to feel equally comfortable at these sessions? … there is no getting around the fact that what the courts call nonsectarian prayer is actually polysectarian monotheistic prayer. To someone who isn’t from one of those faiths — primarily Christianity, Judaism and Islam — this sure looks like establishment of a particular religious belief.”

While the inclusion of a Sikh and a Muslim is admirable, especially after one Lancaster City Councilwoman courted controversy in 2010 by saying that beheadings were “what the Muslim religion is all about,” Lancaster hasn’t veered far from “polysectarian monotheistic prayer.” Sikhism and Islam are, since I last checked, monotheistic religions, so that leaves the lone metaphysicist. If that anonymous metaphysicist came from the local Center for Spiritual Living, the individual in question was probably a monotheist too. So while there may be “numerous faiths” giving sectarian prayers, it remains to be seen if several flavors of monotheist truly is diverse enough. We know that the “include a Wiccan” gambit can work, but what about including a Sikh, a Muslim, and a Metaphysicist among a sea of prayers to Jesus?

On July 8th I reported that Sacred Paths Center, a Pagan community center serving the Minneapolis/St. Paul area (aka “Paganistan”), was in danger of closing down unless they could raise $7,500 immediately. That was followed by an interview conducted by PNC-Minnesota with SPC board member CJ Stone, where it was estimated that the center needed to raise $12,000 total by the end of July to remain open and viable for the longer term. Today, CJ Stone left an update in our comments section, to say that they’ve almost raised their immediate goal, and are hopeful about reaching the $12,000 needed to restructure for long-term survival.

“I’m happy to say we’ve received more than $7000 in donations. We’re close to our minimum $7,500, and I”m hopeful about getting up to the $12,000 that will let us grow and change into the community center everyone needs. Please ask your Pagan confrers near and far to consider a donation or a matching grant. We are doing some local fundraisers, but for folks farther away, there’s a “raffle” of some Paganistani homebrew, $10/ticket. We’ll announce that officially soon, so please keep an eye peeled. I’ll be back here to announce it, too. There’s also an auction of a lovely wedding/handfasting cup set. This is a personal item from my wife’s estate that I donated for the benefit of SPC. I thank very kindly everyone who has worked to help us stay open and continue, to change and grow. Please be sure to check for donation and action updates at our website, www.SacredPathsCenter.com.”

You can find out more about the center’s fundraising initiatives at their website. Sacred Paths Center had recently unveiled a new national public ancestor shrine and sacred spirit altar.  Sacred Paths Center’s journey was also profiled by PNC reporter Cara Schultz  in a special video series produced earlier this year (part 1, part 2).

We will continue to cover this story as it develops.

Pagan Community Notes is a companion to my usual Pagan News of Note series, more focused on news originating from within the Pagan community. I want to reinforce the idea that what happens to and within our organizations, groups, and events is news, and news-worthy. My hope is that more individuals, especially those working within Pagan organizations, get into the habit of sharing their news with the world. So lets get started!

A Pagan Festival in Israel: September will see the nation of Israel’s first Pagan festival, at least in our modern era. A new site is promoting a Mabon (Autumnal Equinox) festival, with word being spread by other Israeli Pagan sites.

“The first Israeli Pagan Festival that we shall celebrate together, on September the 22-24^th, 2011. [...] Pagans from all over the country are invited to celebrate together the spirit of kinship and community that Mabon invokes.”

It may seem like an odd occurrence for a land considered holy by all of the Abrahamic faiths, but modern Pagan religions have become a global phenomenon, and according to Dr. Marianna Ruah-Midbar, they could find fertile soil in Israel.

“At the moment paganism is not a large-scale practice here, but I believe it has very big potential,” she said. “Pagan religions are the fastest growing religions in the West, and it could succeed here too, because Hebrewism and Zionism could connect to paganism due to the emphasis on land and Hebrew holidays. Paganism is a close, unusual parallel of more common practices, like environmentalism or traveling to the East. In practice, it really is not very different.”

As I’ve pointed out before, the growth of Paganism in places like Israel helps puncture the lie that our faiths flourish merely as a rebellion against Judeo-Christian norms or as a result of secularism’s ills. The truth is that Pagan beliefs, practices, and theologies, offer an appealing alternative to the often exclusionary monotheisms that have come to dominate the West. I’ll be interested to see how their first festival goes, how many show up, and if they experience any trouble.

TheurgiCon Is Today: Today is TheurgiCon in Berkeley, California, a one-day intensive that focuses on the practice of theurgy, the use of magic and ritual to invoke (or evoke) the gods. This year’s theme is “Tools of Neo-Platonic Theurgy” and features presentations by Don Frew, Tony Mierzwicki, and John Opsopaus. TheurgiCon was founded in 2010 by Glenn Turner, who also founded PantheaCon, here’s an interview with Turner from 2010 about the event.

You can also read impressions from last year’s event here, here, and here. Read more about this year’s presentations at the TheurgiCon website. I’m hoping to have more coverage of this event in the near future.

Transitions for a Circle Minister: Drake Spaeth, a longtime Circle Sanctuary minister and key participant in Circle’s yearly Pagan Spirit Gathering, has announced that he’s amicably stepping down from his clergy position and taking a break from participation at PSG.

“Yet, open circles sometimes close, and the moment of realization comes that the time to move on has arrived.  I am at such a juncture. I would ill serve the many folks whom I have counseled to recognize and heed the call to take a new risk when the time comes, to make the proverbial Fool’s leap into the unknown, if I now backed away from this moment when it has now come upon me with such clarity. Circumstances have impelled me to the point where, despite any wistful desire I feel that the dream might have continued just a bit longer, that I must step down from being a Circle minister.”

Spaeth is not leaving Pagan ministry, but is instead dedicating his time exclusively to Earth Traditions, an organization he co-founded with Angie Buchanan of Gaia’s Womb. Our best wishes to Drake Spaeth on this transition, we have no doubt his decision will be to the benefit of our interconnected communities.

Gus diZerega Joins Patheos: Gus diZerega, political scientist, Beliefnet blogger, and co-author of “Beyond the Burning Times: A Pagan and Christian in Dialogue,” has become a columnist at Patheos. His first column, “The Ethics of the Universal Potlatch,” is now up.

“This is my first contribution to what I hope will be a weekly column here at Patheos. I am delighted to be in such good company with other Pagan contributors, both those I know and those I have not (yet?) met. I hope to explore some of the insights I think Pagan spirituality brings to challenge Western modernity, which far more than many realize, incorporates transcendental monotheistic assumptions antithetical to our own, and does so even in its secular guise.”

I’m honored and pleased to have Gus in our ranks here at Patheos, and I have no doubt his columns will be enriching. As for his blog at Beliefnet, he’ll continue on there, though in slightly different form.

More Community Notes:

• The planned movie adaptation of Starhawk’s novel “The Fifth Sacred Thing,” which is currently in the midst of a Kickstarter campaign to make a professional pitch video to the major film studios, has launched its own website.
• Congratulation to the Washington DC bureau of the Pagan Newswire Collective, which has just celebrated its one-year anniversary.
• The new issue of Witches & Pagans is about to come out, featuring interviews with Pagan chaplain Patrick McCollum and activist, author and Pagan cop Kerr Cuhulain. This isn’t one to miss! More on this issue once I receive my copy.

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

Back in May I wrote an article looking at the issue of opening invocations at various government bodies. At the center of that piece was discussion of a recently enacted policy in Maryland by the Frederick County Commissioners. The new policy was modeled on the one adopted by the Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors in Virginia after they successfully survived a legal challenge by Wiccan priestess Cynthia Simpson. That policy, and the Frederick County Commissioners’ new policy, called for nonsectarian prayers, but only from members of established monotheistic faiths.

“Board members voted 3-to-2 on Thursday to invite religious leaders to attend their meetings to invoke “divine guidance” for the commissioners and their deliberations. The religious leaders must be ordained and affiliated with a monotheistic religion with an established congregation in Frederick County. Their prayers must avoid referring to any particular religion, denomination or sect.”

An NBC Washington headline called it the “Wiccan-proof prayer policy” and that spin must have caught the attention of County Attorney John Mathias, because the commissioners voted to alter the policy yesterday.

“They voted Thursday in Frederick to adopt changes recommended by County Attorney John Mathias. A key revision eliminates language allowing only those of monotheistic religions to offer the opening invocation. Mathias says such a restriction would have required the county to determine which religions are monotheistic.”

This is an interesting development. In theory, they should be on solid legal ground. Back in 2005 the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided that Chesterfield County’s policy was diverse enough, meeting the standards set by the Supreme Court in Marsh v. Chambers (though the Hindu American Foundation, The Buddhist Peace Fellowship, The Association on American Indian Affairs, and The Interfaith Alliance did not agree). So either this is a public relations move, or, they think that if this policy is challenged as-is it might not stand up in court. Considering the rather rah-rah “one nation under God” rhetoric of the original press release in May, I don’t think their hearts were suddenly moved by the absence of polytheists, or that they were worried over losing the critical polytheist vote in Frederick County (though they were contacted multiple times for comment by the DC bureau of the Pagan Newswire Collective). So it must mean that there is real concern, perhaps even outside Frederick County, that explicitly excluding non-monotheistic religions could ultimately bring down the “nonsectarian monotheist invocations only” house of cards in Chesterfield as well.

Now that Frederick County is open to polytheist invocation, at least in theory (one that I hope gets tested soon), perhaps it’s time for the ACLU in Virginia to return to Chesterfield County and begin building a new case. In the meantime, I applaud the Frederick County Commissioners for doing the right thing, albeit a few months later than I would have liked.

My latest response at the Washington Post’s On Faith site is now up.

Here’s this week’s panel question:

Texas Governor, and possible GOP presidential candidate, Rick Perry has endorsed ‘The Response’ a prayer event scheduled for August 6 in Texas. “As a nation, we must come together and call upon Jesus to guide us through unprecedented struggles, and thank Him for the blessings of freedom we so richly enjoy,” Perry wrote on the event’s official Web site. Perry’s critics are concerned about his distinctly Christian approach to public prayer as well as his association, through ‘The Response,’ with several problematic pastors, among them John Hagee, controversial for his comments on Israel, the Roman Catholic Church and Islam, and C. Peter Wagner, who has suggested that the Catholic veneration of saints is an evil practice.Should politicians be judged by the religious company they keep?

Here’s an excerpt from my response:

We would be foolish to ignore how a politician’s religious beliefs, and which religious figures they rely on for support, shapes their policy decisions. It is especially dangerous for religious minorities who have been rhetorical and practical targets of politically active conservative Christian leaders to pretend that people like Rick Perry won’t be beholding to them should he run for, and subsequently become, president. Due to the unique “bully pulpit” power possessed by our Commander in Chief even comments made before a politician becomes president can later be interpreted into policy by his administration. There is a strong indication this happened during the presidency of George W. Bush, who famously remarked in 1999 that “I don’t think witchcraft is a religion, and I wish the military would take another look at this and decide against it.” In this case “it” was allowing Pagan soldiers to freely practice their religion at Fort Hood in Texas, but nearly a decade later the Washington Post reported on a case involving grave markers for fallen Pagan soldiers where Barry Lynn of Americans United said that discovery documents showed “references to Bush’s remarks … in memos and e-mails within the VA.” In Lynn’s opinion “the president’s wishes were interpreted at a pretty high level.” In short, rhetoric, especially when you go on to lead the world’s most powerful nation, does matter, as does the rhetoric of those who have played king-maker during the election.

I hope you’ll head over to the site and read my full response, and the other panelist responses, and share your thoughts.

On Monday the Human Rights Campaign, the largest national lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization, announced the winners in its second-annual Scholarship & Mentorship Program for Religion and Theological Study. The goal of the HRC’s  Religion and Faith Program is “to ensure that no one should have to choose between their faith, their sexuality and their gender identity.” The 2011 Dissertation Scholarship was awarded to Megan Goodwin, a doctoral candidate in Religion and Culture at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Goodwin’s winning dissertation is entitled “Captive Bodies, Queer Religions: Scripting American Religious Intolerance,” and “focuses on masculinity and religious intolerance in contemporary America.”

Megan Goodwin

I was able to briefly speak to Goodwin about the award, and here’s what she had to say:

“I’m honored to receive the award, and look forward to working with the HRC’s mentorship program. My research explores the crucial role sexuality plays in constructing American religious intolerance. As a queer Pagan scholar, I’m committed to writing about religious and sexual difference — I feel fortunate that the Human Rights Campaign wants to invest in that work.”

The dissertation scholarship includes a stipend of up to $15,000, free attendance to the HRC’s Summer Intensive, a mentor from outside their seminary, and assistance from the HRC’s Religion and Faith Program in presenting their research at universities, conferences and LGBT gatherings. This win for Goodwin is not only a boost for her academic career, but is a step in legitimizing perspectives and scholarship from religious minorities in the United States. Contemporary Pagan religions have often been at the forefront of recognizing the inherent dignity and worth of all individuals regardless of gender or orientation, and our theologies can be a vital part of the HRC mission to “cultivate a new understanding of sexual orientation, gender identity and religion and effectively counter the repressive environment in which so many students are currently trained.”

News of Goodwin’s award has already started to spread through Pagan scholar networks, and Christine Hoff Kraemer, Ph.D., the department Chair of Theology and Religious History at Cherry Hill Seminary, the premier distance-learning institution for professional Pagan ministry, released a statement on the occasion.

“It’s fantastic that the Human Rights Campaign recognizes the important role that non-mainstream religions are playing in our culture’s thinking about sexuality. Megan Goodwin’s research stands to make a valuable contribution, not just to academic Pagan studies, but to religion and sexuality studies in general.”

Academic scholarships by any number of organizations and institutions are awarded every year, but I think this specific award is significant for our communities. Not simply because Megan Goodwin is Pagan, but because her work was singled out by a highly visible and politically active organization that sees Goodwin as part of a larger mission to change our religious culture. The HRC is up front is wanting to change “how pastors, rabbis, and others of deep faith approach religion and LGBT Equality,” to create a paradigm shift in how they approach “sexuality and gender identity in their congregations and classrooms.” Her selection by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation LGBT Scholarship and Mentorship program for Religious and Theological Study sends a message that Pagan voices, and by extension Pagan theologies, are an important part of that process. My congratulations go out to Megan Goodwin. I’m hoping to spotlight her work here at The Wild Hunt soon.

Just a few quick quick news notes to start off your Wednesday.

Absent Christian Soldiers: Remember that story a couple weeks ago about a Christian group in Dorset, England who were going to hold vigils outside a pub in order to “combat” a Pagan moot (social gathering)? Well, it turns out they didn’t show up.

“A Pagan moot in Bridport last week went ahead without any trouble after a planned Christian demonstration never materialised. [...] Despite the Christian group announcing to the press they expected “a high turn out” no one showed up at the venue on the night.”

That’s right, not a single Christian prayer warrior braved the elements to do some anti-Pagan praying. Instead, triple the number of Pagans who usually attend showed up, and they raised some money for the Dorset County Hospital’s Kingfisher Ward. Obviously Pagans meeting in pubs and donating to charity is something that should be stopped, and I’m shocked that these Christian Soldiers who have vowed to halt “evil” failed in their quest.

The Blessed Ex-Satanist: Maybe those Christian Soldiers should take a page from the Blessed Bartolo Longo, a Catholic lay-leader who had once joined a “Satanic” group in Italy during the late 19th century. Once converted, he had no qualms about acting like a jerk around the people he used to hang out with.

To prove his new-found commitment to Christ and His Church Bartolo even attended a séance. In the midst of it, he stood and raised a medal of the Blessed Virgin Mother and cried out: “I renounce spiritism because it is nothing but a maze of error and falsehood.”

See? These are the kind of people who don’t get invited to the cool spirit-invoking parties. As for the article itself, the author seems to be unsure if Longo was “New Age,” “pagan,” or a “Satanist.” But I suppose such distinctions matter little if you believe they are all going to the same place.

We’re All Neo-Pagans Now: Former Wild Hunt guest contributor Lee Gilmore, author of “Theater in a Crowded Fire: Ritual and Spirituality at Burning Man”, writes an essay for the University of Southern California blog The Scoop on modern Paganism. Entitled “Boy Wizards, Green Living, Blue Aliens: We’re All Neo-Pagans Now,” the piece touches on our growth, treatment in the media, Patrick McCollum’s court case, and the “allure of magic and witchcraft” in popular culture.

“In the broader culture, Paganism remains comparatively small in numbers, but influential in terms of the broader cultural trends it embodies. The definitive number of American Pagans remains elusive, but reasonable estimates place the number between 750,000 to 1.2 million, or possibly more. Religious censuses like the Pew Forum’s Religious Landscape survey often lump Pagans in with “Other/New Age” faiths, thus missing the extent to which the values that typify Neo-Paganism are increasingly found in other arenas.

The allure of magic and witchcraft— whether in practice or in fancy—also bubbles up in cultural phenomena like the “Harry Potter” franchise and the new Wiccan subplot in HBO’s “True Blood.” There is also a growing cultural turn toward “green spirituality” in which individuals and faith communities strive to value ecological sustainability and to seek harmony between nature and the sacred. And while it may seem like old news, the widespread and ongoing fascination with the romantic, pantheistic world of “Avatar“—along with its sequels in the offing—is also part of this important cultural trend.”

In her closing, Gilmore notes that reporters would  “do well to take a closer look at Paganism, and other minority faiths,” a sentiment I heartily agree with. Be sure to read the whole thing, she has some incisive analysis, particularly of the McCollum case.