On Faith: Faith in 2010

December 29, 2010 By Jason Pitzl-Waters 17 Comments

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

Here’s this week’s panel question:

“As voted by the Religion Newswriters Association’s members, among the year’s most consequential religion newsmakers were Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, Pope Benedict XVI, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, and the U.S. bishops. How would you have ranked them? Has their influence been harmful or constructive? What issue or person do you expect to have the biggest impact in the year to come?”

Here’s an excerpt from my response:

“Many of the noted figures making the biggest waves in the world of religion journalism in 2010 have a troubled, sometimes hostile, relationship to religious minorities in general, and modern Paganism in particular. Their prominence and influence are a constant reminder that our freedoms are sustained by secular ideals of a separation between church and state, a concept under constant attack by those who would prefer a “Christian America,” or at least one that gave special dispensation to their majorities. This tension is often characterized as a mere difference of opinion, but this is a fundamental disconnect that allows outlandish statements and associations to be ignored by mainstream media outlets.”

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

Filed Under: Paganism, Religion Tagged With: , , , 17 Comments

Feedback: Finding the Top Religious Stories

December 5, 2010 By Jason Pitzl-Waters 22 Comments

As we start to head into December, religion reporters are starting to craft their lists of the top news stories for this past year. Of Sacred and Secular’s Joshunda Sanders has posted a top ten list already, and Kevin Eckstrom of the Religion News Service found 2010 to be a year when older stories were “resurrected”.

“The Roman Catholic Church wasn’t the only institution battling a sense of deja vu, as some of the most controversial religion stories from the past 20 years returned to the headlines. A 1994-style fight over health care reform not only pitted Republicans against Democrats, but also Catholic bishops against Catholic nuns. Lingering questions about President Obama’s Christian faith morphed into a belief among one in five Americans that he’s actually a Muslim. Nearly 10 years after 9/11, Islamophobia returned with a vengeance as a Florida pastor threatened to torch a pile of Qurans, and Tennessee officials debated whether Islam is actually a religion. This time, the resurrected stories were more pointed, the debates more polarizing. Old stories found new life online, and voices that once would have been dismissed as extreme were amplified by the Internet, Facebook and Twitter.”

Eckstrom quotes religion and media scholar Diane Winston that “new media has had the effect of keeping certain news stories alive, bringing them back from the dead and propelling them into the news.” Looking at my own Pagan-centric picks for top stories of 2009, I can already see some continuity with the list I’m putting together for this year, and I think few will deny that new media had a big amplifying and extending effect on several religious stories this past year (take Christine O’Donnell, please).

While most religion reporters will be focusing on the Pope, the Park 51 building, or atheist Christopher Hitchen’s battle with cancer, I’d like to get your input and feedback on what you thought the biggest religion stories were from a Pagan perspective. What events do you feel shaped us this year? What stories do you think will end up having repercussions for years to come? Your feedback can help me put me own list together, and maybe I’ll highlight some of your recommendations at the end of December.

Filed Under: Paganism, Religion, The Wild Hunt Tagged With: , , , 22 Comments

Top Ten Pagan Stories of 2009 (Part Two)

December 31, 2009 By Jason Pitzl-Waters 3 Comments

[You can read part one of this entry, here.]

05. Jose Merced, Santeria, and Animal Sacrifice: The battles over animal sacrifice, and the legal rights of adherents to Santeria, were in my top ten last year, and things have only intensified since then. The biggest story was the resolution of a case involving a Santero, Jose Merced, who was restricted from practicing his religion in Euless, Texas, due to the town’s animal slaughter laws. Merced, who lost his initial challenge to the law, was backed in his appeal by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and ultimately prevailed in his case.

“If this decision is ultimately allowed to stand, Merced v. City of Euless could be the case that takes the precedent initially established in Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah nationwide, clearing the way for legal animal sacrifice in religious ceremonies.”

As sweet as this victory, and the precedents it sets, has been for adherents to Santeria in America, the faith is still a long way away from acceptance or mainstream understanding. One had only to look at the variety of random dead-animal cases blamed on Santeros and Santeras (or other African Diasporic Faiths) as proof that they have a long way to go.

“We are left to guess what “evidence” led the authorities to guess it was a ritualistic matter, and what, exactly, makes them point the finger at “Santeria” or “Palo Mayombe”. While people of “African, Central American, Haitian, Cuban or Caribbean decent” lay low, will we eventually find out it was some disturbed teen? Why only people of color? Is it because these police know that white people never do crazy things and give them a ritualistic veneer? Again, this is a recipe for misinformation, stereotyping, and ultimately, discrimination.”

Perhaps now that we have a new Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor, who has publicly stated that distinctions between “traditional” and “non-traditional” religions” are “intolerable”, and has actually ruled favorably on cases involving adherents to Santeria, we can start to see a slow turn-around in the misconceptions and slanders that pass for wisdom among police and animal control officers. But as we enter the new year with yet another lurid Santeria dead-animal case on our hands, that turn-around seems far away and slow in coming.

04. Pagans at the Parliament of the World’s Religions: If there was one event that could point to how far modern Pagans have come in terms of international visibility and relevance in the last twenty years, it would have to be the role we play in the Parliament of the World’s Religions. From a curiosity (and scandal to some) in 1993, to having three Pagans serving on the Parliament’s executive council in 2009. Simply put, our participation and movement toward leadership roles within the global interfaith community in the last fifteen years is extraordinary. We are emerging as a significant world-wide religious movement at a time where our voice and perspective is increasingly relevant and needed.

This Parliament also saw Pagan organizations really reaching out to share the work, discussions, and connections there were being made in Melbourne. With several collaborative efforts being made to give a picture of what Pagan participation in this event was like. Even though there were some mis-communications and controversies in the process, it also made many people feel invested in these events for the first time, and no doubt paved the way for even greater things to come in the future. Modern Paganism is a global phenomenon now, and we are starting to make our voice heard globally.

03. The International Epidemic of Witch Hunts: Thousands of innocent men, women, and children are currently being killed, displaced, and abused because someone, somewhere, believes they practice “sorcery” or “witchcraft”. This state of affairs has grown so large that UN officials are  saying that this is an international problem that is destroying the lives of millions. Far from being a localized phenomenon in “primitive” or isolated villages, witch hunts and witch killings are now global in nature and spreading. Some have stated that this isn’t our problem because the victims aren’t modern Pagans, or that by expressing concern over this trend, we are somehow conflating ourselves with these poor souls, but I think this attitude fails to look at the larger picture. That, as I said yesterday, Paganism is now global, and we have thriving communities in the “over there” places like India and South Africa that are dealing directly with this madness. That we are being naive to think such lunacy could never spread to the “First World”.

“The anger and hardship that cries out for a scapegoat is right here in our backyard. Right now “socialism” or “the government” may be the popular/populist nightmare,  but that can change. A global epidemic of witch-hunts is our issue, not because we share some theological bond with a “witch” killed in Nigeria, or imprisoned in Saudi Arabia, but because we don’t live in an enlightened vacuum, free from the troubles of the “third world” … those of us who are “safe” need to realize that what happens to “witches” in India and Papua New Guinea is no longer a string of  isolated incidents that will always stay “over there”. A “global” problem means it could indeed happen here, and perhaps sooner than any of us would want to admit.”

That fact that churches in America, Australia, and the UK send funds to churches in Africa that engage in witch-hunting only further proves how interconnected this problem is to our homes. Though, to be fair, some countries need no money or encouragement from the West in executing supposed heretics and witches. Luckily some countries, like Nepal, and India, are doing something to reverse this trend, but we need an international initiative of education, aid, and reform if we are to ever see the end of this ongoing tragedy. In the meantime, for those who want to help the witch-children in Africa, two good organizations to send money to are Stepping Stones Nigeria and CRARN (Child’s Right and Rehabilitation Network). In India you can support the People’s Union for Civil Liberties.

02. Patrick McCollum’s Chaplaincy Case, and his Meeting With the Obama Administration: In 2008, Pagan chaplain Patrick McCollum made this list for his historic testimony concerning the treatment of Pagan prisoners before the US Commission on Civil Rights. His work continues, and this year two events have made McCollum especially newsworthy and important. First, despite some recent setbacks, his ongoing battle to overturn the California prison system’s “five faiths policy”, which limits the hiring of paid chaplains to Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, and Native American adherents, has gained a coalition of  new allies.

“Though a judge recently ruled against McCollum in February (twice), saying he had no standing to challenge the policy , his federal-court appeal is gaining support from groups like the Anti-Defamation League (PDF) and Americans United (PDF) … Other groups filing amicus briefs in support of McCollum’s appeal were The Interfaith Alliance, the Hindu American Foundation, and Pagan organizations like Cherry Hill Seminary.”

This is a heartening development in the fight to see Pagan inmates afforded the same rights and treatment as other prisoners, one that may finally lead to this case being fully heard in court.

Secondly, McCollum, while at the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Melbourne, managed to meet with Obama Administration officials concerning how to improve interfaith relations, and limit discrimination.

“According to Rev. McCollum, the meeting was about how the Obama Administration can advance Interfaith relations in the United States. After McCollum’s discussion, officials from the White House sought him out, to have him meet with top officials of the administration to discuss how to limit discrimination and promote Interfaith education in the United States as well as internationally. Upon his return to the states, Patrick McCollum may be able to meet with members with the Justice department as well as the Offices of Faith Based Initiatives to discuss the many outstanding situations that are currently within the American court system.”

That McCollum’s strong voice for the equal treatment of Pagans, whether in prison, or out in the world, was heard in the halls of power here in America is an amazing step forward for all modern Pagans and other adherents of minority faiths. A sign that our issues and needs are being taken seriously, and that we are taking our place at the table in larger discussions concerning the role of faith in our society.

01. Dan Halloran Elected: This one was almost too easy. On November 3rd, 2009, Republican candidate Dan Halloran was elected as the next New York City Councilman for District 19. Why is that so special? He also happens to be an adherent of Theodism, and a member of New York’s Pagan community.


Dan Halloran

“While Dan Halloran isn’t the first openly Pagan candidate running for political office, he may be the first to actually have a shot at winning. Halloran, who is running as an “independent” Republican against Democrat Kevin Kim for a seat on the New York City Council, was recently outed as a prominent Theodsman by the Queens Tribune.”

Despite a campaign that was fraught with mud-slinging, rumors, bad journalism, and accusations of sabotage, Halloran emerged victorious, and proved that an out Pagan can win political office, even in the face of adversity.

“Halloran’s win [has] broken down barriers that will greatly benefit future Pagan adherents looking to get involved in the political process. It has proven that while no race in the near future will be easy for an “out” Pagan, in the right circumstances we can win.”

As if to further prove that point, in addition to Halloran’s historic win in New York, we also learned this year that Jessica Orsini, Alderwoman, 3rd Ward, City of Centralia, Missouri, is a Hellenic polytheist reconstructionist, and that the city of Asheville is happy to elect a post-theist Unitarian-Universalist to their city council. It drives home a message that the “broom closet”, if you want any real part in shaping our culture, should be a thing of the past. That if we stand up, even under bad circumstances, and just be who we are, we can, and will, succeed. It won’t be easy, and we won’t win every time, but if we are to embrace our movement’s future and move it forward, we have to be honest and proud of our identities.

In the words of Harvey Milk:

“You must come out. Come out… to your parents… I know that it is hard and will hurt them but think about how they will hurt you in the voting booth! Come out to your relatives… come out to your friends… if indeed they are your friends. Come out to your neighbors… to your fellow workers… to the people who work where you eat and shop… come out only to the people you know, and who know you. Not to anyone else. But once and for all, break down the myths, destroy the lies and distortions.”

Here comes the future folks, let’s get ready for it.

That wraps up my top ten news stories about or affecting modern Paganism in 2009. Thanks for reading, and I hope you’ll join me for another year of sifting through the news and views of interest to our communities. See you in 2010!

Filed Under: Paganism, Religion Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Top Ten Pagan Stories of 2009 (Part One)

December 30, 2009 By Jason Pitzl-Waters 3 Comments

As we reach the close of 2009, it is time to stop for a moment and take stock of the previous year. When you look at (and for) news stories regarding modern Paganism (and related topics) every day of the year, you can sometimes lose focus on the larger picture. So it can be a helpful thing to look at the broad strokes, the bigger themes, the events and developments that will have lasting impact on the modern Pagan movement. What follows are my picks for the top ten stories from this past year involving or affecting modern Pagans.

10. Counting (and not counting) the Pagans: Just as the Pew Forum’s 2008 U.S. Religious Landscape Survey gave us new insights into just how many Pagans there are in America, so too does the release of Trinity College’s American Religious Identification Survey data in March of this year. The ARIS survey, like the Pew Forum, showed that modern Pagan religions remain vital and growing.

“As you can see, ‘New Religious Movements and Other Religions’ packed on over a million adherents since 2001, and over 1.5 million in the last twenty years. That brings the total of “others” to nearly 3 million … Both Pew and ARIS give “other” faiths 1.2% of the (American) pie. That in turn seems to back up my earlier assertion that there are at least one million modern Pagans in America (probably more like 1.5 million), add in the over half-million UUs (around 20% of whom are “earth-based” or Pagan) close to a million practitioners of Santeria (in North America), and a few hundred thousand indigenous practitioners, and it seems clear that notions of our continued (slow and steady) growth aren’t unfounded.” in some respect),

Paganism’s healthy growth among the “others”, wasn’t the only survey or poll that was of interest. We also saw proof that America is far more religiously eclectic than some might have imagined, that quite a few Pagans are politically active, and that around half of Americans have heard of Wicca (and aren’t too impressed).

However, not all polling organizations thought Pagans (and other “others”) were worth counting.

“Why were “other” non-Christians not included? No Muslims, no Buddhists, no Pagans. Nothing. They must have that data, so why not release it with the rest? It can’t be simple numerical preferences since the recent ARIS data puts “NRMs and Other Religions” on par with religiously observant Jews and just behind the Mormons, two groups that were included in the released data. Is it down to political influence? I’ve sent a request to Gallup to release the “others” data, but haven’t received a response yet.”

Of course, if you want something done right, why not do it yourself? Pagan scholar Helen Berger, co-author of “Voices from the Pagan Census: A National Survey of Witches and Neo-Pagans in the United States”, along with fellow researchers James R. Lewis and Henrik Bogdan, revisited the Pagan Census project this year. I very much look forward to seeing what the updated data will say about our movement.

09. Modern Paganism Goes Global: Even though the emergence of modern Paganism is a well known story in places like Britain, America, and Australia, we saw this year that the modern Pagan impulse has become a truly global phenomenon. Receiving press attention in places like India, Israel, Russia, and South Africa, where an out Pagan serves as an MP.

“Meet Adrian Williams, the only pentacle-wearing witch in parliament. But the card-carrying ANC and South African Communist Party member, 43, from Mpumalanga has renounced the terms “witch” and “witchcraft” because he maintains the issue needs to be treated with sensitivity in South Africa. Williams practises “magick”, but calls himself a pagan or eclectic wiccan.”

As we move forward, we’ll need to start considering what it means that modern forms of Paganism are now truly “world” religions, and adjust our expectations and views of global events in light of that fact. Problems “over there” do affect us, because “we” are now “over there” too. In tomorrow’s top-five, we’ll explore some of the issues that a global Paganism faces, and what that may mean for us in interfaith settings.

08. Our Media Landscape and the Shifting Sands of Religious Journalism: The whole idea of a “top ten stories” list hinges on there being enough stories about modern Pagans to read and evaluate, and 2009 certainly made some wonder if that prospect might become harder in the near future. With the combination punch of an ascendant new-media and a lousy economy, lots of newspapers eliminated their religion beats (or shuttered completely), and some religion journalists anticipated the future being rather bleak.

“Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Paulson called religion-beat reporters a “dwindling band” who have suffered a “serious reversal of fortune” compared to a decade ago. Meanwhile, veteran religion-reporter Gary Stern blogged about his paper eliminating the religion beat, and Mollie at Get Religion wondered how these shake-ups will change the way that blog analyzes religion reporting.”

What does that mean for us? It could mean a lot less attention being paid to Pagans on the ever-dwindling religion-beat. That could be a big problem for those of us who want to stay informed, because our Pagan-created sources of news have had a rough time of things this year as well.

“After the recent merger of PanGaia and newWitch into Witches & Pagans, and the announcement of Thorn magazine ceasing their print edition, I decided to take the temperature of various Pagan periodicals and the resulting picture is rather grim. Of the 32 periodicals listed at the Witches’ Voice, only a handful seem to still be active, operating on a regular publishing schedule, and dealing primarily with Pagan subject matter. Modern Witch Magazine is “out of publication” after one year and three issues, Witch Eye: A Journal of Feri Uprising promises to return in 2009, but the clock is quickly running out for that deadline, and the two best-known Pagan newspapers PagaNet and Widdershins have been out of commission for years.”

We all need to get our content from somewhere, and while the best blogs and podcasts have been doing more and more primary-source journalism, we face a major deficit of news and information if our community doesn’t pull together to pick up some of that slack.  Projects to address this issue are still in their infancy, and it will take a serious amount of collaboration and cooperation to see a robust and thriving Pagan journalism emerge from these troubled times.

07. Paganism in Pop-Culture, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: While serious news may be hurting, the past 12 months have been one of the biggest in recent memory for Pagan themes in popular media. There was the Wiccan-centric episode of “The Simpsons”, the (awful) Wiccan-centric episode of “The Mentalist”, Santeria on “CSI”, a maenad on “True Blood”, and we remained popular on a variety of reality television programs. Still, it wasn’t all awful on the little screen, Ken Burns’ “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea” was a beautiful endorsement of American-grown pantheistic nature religion.

“While the bulk of the twelve hours is spent recounting various grass-roots efforts and political struggles over park creation, almost the entire first episode is devoted to the spiritual dimension of nature (called, appropriately enough, “The Scripture of Nature”). Briefly referencing the influence of works by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, Burns makes ground-breaking naturalist and preservationist John Muir the centerpiece. “National Parks” clearly illustrates how his unique brand of Christian-colored pantheism (along with a keen scientific mind) would go on to inspire many, including President Theodore Roosevelt, to preserve vast swathes of American wilderness. The early episodes also take care to mention Native American spiritual and political perspectives, and extensively interviews National Parks superintendent, and Mandan-Hidatsa Indian, Gerard Baker (who says that John Muir would have made a good Medicine Man).”

Meanwhile, on the big screen, most of the big news were about films that we won’t see until 2010. There was news of the long-awaited companion/sequel to “The Wicker Man”, entitled “The Wicker Tree”, that is now filming. The film “Agora”, about the famous Neoplatonist philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria, was adrift looking for an American distributor for months despite positive box office and reviews in Europe. Many thought it was because distributors were worried it might offend Christians. In addition, two upcoming Greek-myth-drenched films “Clash of the Titans” and “Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief” may make 2010 the year of pop-polytheism.

2009, however, seems to be the year of rampant Hollywood pantheism according to the various conservative critics who saw the blockbuster “Avatar”.

“So I guess the conservative intelligentsia has spoken (David Brooks must not have gotten the memo). Pantheism is bad, Hollywood is bad, Americans are foolish eclectic-syncretic Eckhart Tolle-reading dupes who love pantheism, and we (and our souls) are all in big (I assume) trouble. Of course this reading of Hollywood’s output is a tad skewed, and relies on a rather scatter-shot selection of films (“Dances With Wolves”, Disney’s “Pocahontas” and “The Lion King”, “Star Wars”, and, well, “Fern Gully”, I guess) to convince us that pantheism is the with-it thing in Hollywood and beyond. But it just doesn’t seem to line up as well as they seem to think it does.”

I can only imagine that my 2010 round-up will be even more full of surprises, disappointments, and opportunities than 2009. Oh, and speaking of pagan-ish pop-culture in 2009, some guy named Dan Brown released a book about Masons, it also made some conservatives unhappy.

06. Equal Treatment at Work and School, and the Litigation that Follows: This year has seen a lot of high-profile cases of discrimination (and alleged discrimination) of Pagans in the news. You had the Witch who was fired from the University of Nebraska receive a settlement, the Bath & Body Works manager who was fired for making a pilgrimage to Salem, and a Pagan employee of Google who claims he was mocked and fired for his faith. In addition to those cases, you had the school child who was accused of threatening demon possession, though the parent was not allowed to examine the evidence.

“Denise DeSadier was not allowed to read the accusations made against her son that got him suspended, and their veracity was seemingly never questioned by the principle (who assured a reporter from the local college paper that the matter was investigated fully) . Further, Shaun was forced to undergo an evaluation of his mental stability before being allowed to return to class, and this incident was placed in his permanent record, marking him as some sort of potential safety risk. Short of pursuing a lawsuit against the school, or dropping out altogether, there is no recourse for these accusations that have marred Shaun’s record.  Wishing only to finish high-school and move on to college, Shaun has jumped through the necessary hoops, and wants to move on with his life.”

In our search for equal treatment, in our slow integration into the mainstream, there will be those who want to destroy lives simply for being different. Who will use our litigation victories as a pretext to fan the populist flames to further their own careers. But I think these cases, disturbing as some of them are, are a sign of progress. That they highlight just how far we’ve come, a place where the ACLU readily fights for us, where our standing as “real religions” are usually taken as a given. We’ll no doubt see more cases like this in 2010, but I also think we’ll see fewer than 2009, and we’ll see even more victories establishing our equal protection and equal treatment under the law. These cases are big news, but I think we’ll see a day where they are truly rare.

Tomorrow I will post the top five Pagan stories for 2009. In the meantime, I invite you to check out the top religion stories from some different perspectives. Here are the Religion Newswriters Association’s picks, the top 10 from Time, the top 10 from The Telegraph, US News and World Report, and the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Freedom.

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