Perhaps one of most thought-provoking presentations I attended at the American Academy of Religion’s Annual Meeting in San Francisco was that by sociologist Helen A. Berger at the Contemporary Pagan Studies Group panel “Pagan Analysis and Critique of Religion.” Her talk, “Fifteen Years of Continuity and Change within the American Pagan Community,” was a flurry of statistical information  gleaned from a 2009 re-visitation of the Pagan Census project. This isn’t the first time Berger, co-author of “Voices from the Pagan Census: A National Survey of Witches and Neo-Pagans in the United States,” has presented some initial finding from this new collection of data; in late 2010 she wrote an editorial for Patheos.com’s “Future of Paganism” series where she revealed where the data was leading.

Helen A. Berger presenting at the AAR.

“In comparing the two surveys [The Pagan Census and the Pagan Census Revisited] I found that the number of Pagans who claim to practice alone has grown from 51% to 79%. The growth of solitary practitioners has been facilitated by books and the Internet. During the 1960s and 70s when the religion was initially spreading, it was passed from person-to-person, most commonly in groups, such as covens. This has clearly changed as in the PCR only 36% state that they were trained in a group. [...] Parallel to the growth of solitary practitioners is the increase in people who state that their primary form of practice is Eclectic Paganism, which is the most common designation, with 53% of the respondents claiming this designation.  Additionally, 22% state that they are spiritual but dislike labels.”

That essay got very little attention at the time, even though it held some remarkable data of interest to our communities. Perhaps there were so many thought-provoking editorials produced for that series that it was drowned out a bit? In any case, the collection of religion scholars, Pagan scholars, journalists, and interested local Pagan community members, were very interested in what Professor Berger had to say about her (as yet unpublished) data. We found out that 40.8% of young self-identified Pagans never or “nearly never” meet with other Pagans for the purposes of ritual or religious observance. We found that a vast majority, 79%, primarily practice alone (solitary), and we found that Wicca, once the statistical heavyweight of the modern Pagan movement, is quickly losing ground to Pagans with eclectic practices. At one point Berger made an allusion to Robert Putnam’s book “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community”, saying that a similar book about the Pagan community could be called “Circling Alone.”

How often do we communicate with other Pagans?

However, while Pagans are increasingly solitary in practice, we do interact with one another, but that interaction is happening increasingly on the Internet. More than half of Pagans today use blogs, message boards, and social media to connect with the wider Pagan world, the only method of communication and interaction that garnered a majority. Are such methods of communication and connection enough to bind us together as a movement?

“Paganism is a community of spiritual individualists that is well integrated, on both the local level through gatherings, festivals and open Sabbats and on the national and international level through websites, message boards, and blogs. As much of the integration takes place on the Internet or person-to-person, it is unclear how important umbrella organizations such as Covenant of the Goddess or Pagan Associations will be in the future. However, the desire for individuals to practice together and to get together for spiritual purposes suggests that they may grow in import as they help to organize gatherings, rituals, and classes. Paganism will continue to provide a new image of what religion can be in a postmodern world; one without churches or clear boundaries, based on books and the Internet and individuals gathering together and interacting and then returning to practice what they see as their own eclectic religion.”

Berger stressed repeatedly during her presentation that she hasn’t come to any firm conclusions about the data she’s collected in 2009, and what it might mean for modern Paganism’s future. That said, she did wonder if modern Pagans were building a new model of religious growth that flies in the face of the traditional growth arcs (the building of congregations, for example). Paganism is still growing, albeit not at the explosive levels of the 1990s, and if our movement survives over the long term it could completely change ideas of how religions survive and thrive in a post-modern (and increasingly post-Christian) world. I’m hoping we see more from Berger on this data soon, and I’m hoping to contact her for a more in-depth interview about the findings she presented at the American Academy of Religion’s Annual Meeting. For now, I think our organizations, activists, and clergy need to start grappling with the directions our movement is headed, and shift their expectations and methods accordingly.

Pagan scholar Helen Berger, co-author of “Voices from the Pagan Census: A National Survey of Witches and Neo-Pagans in the United States”, has announced that she and fellow researchers James R. Lewis and Henrik Bogdan are revisiting the Pagan Census project. The Pagan Census was first initiated nearly twenty years ago, and compiled data from thousands of modern Pagans to give a fascinating snapshot of our communities during Paganism’s meteoric rise in the 1990s. Now, in an age of blogs and instant communications, an update is underway to compare and contrast just how much we’ve changed.

“A number of scholars have noted that it would be helpful to have a follow-up of that survey to see if and how the community has changed or remained the same. The survey that follows uses many, although not all of the same questions that were in the original survey to provide that comparison. There are also new questions, for instance about the Internet, something that was of little interest 20 years ago but is now, and some from other studies, that again permit a comparison. This has resulted in the survey being somewhat long–we appreciate your taking the time to complete it.”

I urge all my readers who identify in any way with the modern Pagan/Heathen movement to participate in this census and spread the word to everyone you know. The more respondents the census has, the more accurate the data. You can find it, here. You can be sure that I will be paying attention to this renewed project as it goes forward, and will keep you appraised of any updates or results.

The Sioux City Journal is currently running coverage of Lawrence Harris’s murder trial. Harris is accused of first degree murder in the deaths of his two young step-daughters, which he said was the result of a “spell gone bad”. The trial will determine if these were premeditated killings, or if Harris was clinically insane during the murders.

Lawrence Douglas Harris was under pressure, unmedicated and trying to find a way to gain control of his life when he attempted to cast a spell in the basement of his house the day his stepdaughters were killed, his attorney told jurors in his trial today. In a packed courtroom with tight security, Assistant Public Defender Mike Williams delivered his opening statements, saying his client was insane that day. “Not just a little psychotic here and there. Not just a little disturbed, but insane,” Williams said.

The double-murder of two young children would be enough to make this case a media circus, add in the fact that Harris had a long-running fascination with the occult, Paganism, and Satanism, and you have all the ingredients for sheer pandemonium (both journalistically and in the court room). So it is a lucky thing that the expert witness on Wicca and Paganism called to the stands was Pagan scholar Helen A. Berger, author of “A Community of Witches: Contemporary Neo-Paganism and Witchcraft in the United States”, and co-author of “Voices from the Pagan Census: A National Survey of Witches and Neo-Pagans in the United States”.

Also testifying for the defense, Helen Berger, a sociology professor at West Chester University in Pennsylvania, explained something of Wicca, satanism and paganism and said Wicca is not about violence and killing. She said Wiccans believe that anything they do, good or bad, comes back to them threefold … During cross-examination of Berger, Assistant Woodbury County Attorney Mark Campbell produced an inverted pentagram that was found with Harris’ ritual items in the basement. “The Satanic Bible” refers to use of an inverted pentagram during rituals. Berger said the symbol is not part of Wiccan practices.

Berger was also one of the first experts to be interviewed by the Sioux City Journal in the initial wake of the killings. We can feel very lucky that Berger is the voice for Paganism in this trial, and not, say, one of the old “Satanic Panic” experts still hanging around. For full transcripts of the proceedings, go to the Sioux City Journal’s special page devoted to the trial (I really must commend the paper’s even-keeled and extensive coverage here). As for Harris, since Iowa doesn’t have the death penalty, he’s looking towards a lifetime of confinement, either in a cell or an institution. I’ll leave it to the jury to decide which one of these he deserves.

I don’t get to say this too often, but bravo to the Sioux City Journal for their even-keeled and well-sourced follow up story to the horrendous “witchcraft” killing of two young girls.

“The sisters were found dead in a second floor room of their Nebraska Street home. Fire crews discovered the bodies while responding to a fire call at the home Sunday afternoon. It was initially ruled suspicious … Their stepfather, Larry Harris, is now charged with two counts of first degree murder … Police say the girls were found strangled and stabbed in their home. Larry Harris told investigators at the scene that the girls were dead in their room, the victims of witchcraft gone badly.”

Faced with claims of “witchcraft” and the murder of two young girls, the Sioux City Journal, instead of going for sensationalism, went to actual academics who study modern Paganism and Religious Witchcraft for answers.

“Professor Helen A. Berger, author of three books on witches, said she doubted anyone claiming to have killed children while casting a spell is a true practitioner of witchcraft or Wicca, a nature-based religion often associated with witchcraft and spell-casting. It is unclear what belief system, if any, Harris was acting on when he allegedly killed the girls, Alysha and Kendra Suing … Lisa Stenmark, a professor in San Jose State University’s Comparative Religious Studies program, said most people proclaiming to be witches — especially those who practice Wicca — would not harm or sacrifice a human during a ritual. Stenmark said she believed further investigation would show Harris’ actions likely had nothing to do with witchcraft or Wicca.”

In addition, when the article looks for previous examples of ritualized killings, they don’t dig for something Pagan-related, they instead focus on a far more common religious paradigm.

“Kendra and Alysha’s killings may be out of line with what experts consider modern witchcraft and pagan practices, but they are not the first children to die during a failed ritual. In 2004 in Georgia, two people told authorities they had killed a 6-year-old girl during an exorcism gone wrong. Police said Christopher and Valerie Carey strangled, beat and stabbed the girl in an attempt to rid her of demons. Investigators found the girl, whose back had been broken, in a hotel room, covered with pages from a Bible.”

This is solid and balanced journalism by Journal staff reporter Molly Montag. Kudos to her for avoiding the tired trend of “balancing” the article with anti-Pagan Christian “experts”, or dipping into sensationalist exposition in order to sell more papers. If only all Pagan-related journalism was more like this.