Modern Pagan religions are growing, this is a fact backed up by surveys and census data, and many believe that we are growing even faster than these somewhat imprecise methods can track. Historian Ronald Hutton has estimated that there may be as many as a quarter of a million Pagans in the United Kingdom, far more than the figure of 40,000 from the 2001 census, and Pagan groups in Australia and Britain have engaged in campaigns that they hope will bring in census results closer to their own estimates. That said, until we get better figures, better surveys, we have to go by what we have. That means around 40,000 Pagans in the UK, around 30,000 Pagans in Australia, around 22,000 Pagans in Canada, and recent Pew Forum and ARIS data that places modern Paganism hovering somewhere around a million adherents (give or take a hundred thousand or two) in the United States.

Not going to become the 3rd largest religious group any time soon.

However, even if we grant that the larger estimates by friendly scholars and movement insiders are more accurate (and I’m hoping 2011 census data will bear our larger estimates out), that would still only mean around 3-5 million modern (ie “neo,” revivalist, and reconstructionist) Pagans worldwide. We are far from taking anything over, despite our advances and achievements. Yet the mere idea of Paganism’s return has sparked some atavistic fears within certain segments of Christianity, and has caused them to use shoddy estimates to falsely bolster our numbers in order scare their audiences into buying products. Many are gloomily predicting that Wicca will soon be America’s third-largest religion. Naturally, what scares certain conservative Christians excites some Pagans, leading them to use these explosive estimates to their own ends.

Wicca is America’s Fastest Growing religion, and it is anticipated by some Christian religious experts that it will become the third largest religion in the United States early in the 21st century, behind only Christianity and Islam. Just this week, a press release for the new book God’s Ghostbusters, by Defender Publishing quoted editor Thomas Horn “In the United States alone, there are now more than two hundred thousand registered witches and as many as 8 million unregistered practitioners of ‘the craft’.”

Witch School Co-Founder Ed Hubbard recognizes that the statements and numbers put out by Horn are similar to his own viewpoint. Hubbard offers “There is such a rapid spiritual reorientation in America occurring, that the need for thousands of Wiccan teachers over the course of the next decade will be required to meet the demand for basic teachings. Because of Wicca’s liberating beliefs and useful skills, people want to understand and embrace it, and learn how to awaken their inner abilities.”

That’s from a brand-new press release issued by Witch School, using these largely invented figures to sell their product. In fact, Witch School co-founder Ed Hubbard knows Horn’s figures are overblown, because he told me so right here at The Wild Hunt.

“I know how they got the 8 million. It has to do with a series of articles from 2005. Basically if we had doubled every eighteen months as we did in the beginning, we would be facing 8 million. I know much of where this is coming from. I can give the strange math if you ever want it.”

In fact that there is a “spiritual reorientation” going on in the West, but it isn’t really about modern Paganism. The numbers point to growing numbers of the religiously unaffiliated more than anything else. That may be good for us societally speaking, and may even spark some growth, but we aren’t the primary recipients of this shift into post-Christianity. Witch School may have had over 200,000 people take classes with them, but I highly doubt they’ve managed a 100% retention rate of students who stuck with Wicca or some other form of modern Paganism over the years.

Speaking frankly, I think it does our movement no favors to peddle misinformation and wishful thinking in order to self-promote. Spreading inaccurate narratives, no matter how positive they may seem, actually harms our attempts to establish ourselves. Muddying waters with “strange math” simply sets us up as opportunistic self-promoters instead of building the bridges we need in areas like chaplaincy, intrafaith, and interfaith work. I’m disappointed that a popular Pagan service would validate the Christians who want to see us as a encroaching menace, even if may flatter our conceptions of rapid growth. The narrative of explosive growth does us no good, I hope that Pagans will drop it in favor of statistical data that will support our claims.

There are two types of people who tend to over-estimate the size of the modern Pagan movement. Those who are advocates of Pagan religions and want to emphasize our vitality and popularity; and those who are hostile to Pagan religions and want to frighten (or at least dismay) their audience with the specter of Pagan dominance. Of these two, polemicist Melanie Phillips falls into the latter camp.

“Some of Ms. Phillips’ data may startle those of us who think of ourselves as reasonably normal people. “What previously belonged to the province of the quack and the charlatan have become mainstream,” and “‘Wicca’ – or witchcraft – and paganism constitute the fastest growing religious category in America, with between 500,000 and 5 million adherents.” Throw in New Age spirituality, and the number reaches 20 million.”

First off, we have the “fastest growing religion” meme, which isn’t true, though often parroted. While modern Pagan religions are growing, in North America the fastest-growing religious category is “none”/”unaffiliated”. Now between 15-16% of the population in America. I can’t imagine how Ms. Phillips missed this, as it was a big religion story covered in several major newspapers.

“The only group that grew in every U.S. state since the 2001 survey was people saying they had “no” religion; the survey says this group is now 15 percent of the population. Silk said this group is likely responsible for the shrinking percentage of Christians in the United States.”

Now maybe some of  those unaffiliated folks are Pagan-friendly, but I wouldn’t bet on a significant percentage leaning in that particular direction. Next is the “between 500,000 and 5 million adherents” line. Recent Pew Forum and ARIS data has modern Paganism hovering somewhere around a million adherents (give or take a hundred thousand or two) in the US. That’s nothing to sneeze at, but it isn’t Pagans taking over numbers either. If she had wanted to low-ball the estimate she could have gone with the ARIS data estimates which says Wiccans and Pagans combined are just under 700,000, but where did she get 5 million?

Now a lot of folks have estimated that there are several million Pagans, but few of them have any hard data to back it up. They are mostly guesses made from incomplete data or their hopes/fears. My guess at the source is the famously anonymous Barnes & Noble marketing executive who opined that the Pagan book-buying market was an astounding 10 million. Half it to seem more reasonable, and presto! Of course, who buys a book and who identifies as Pagan are two very different things. I’m currently staying at my mother-in-law’s house, and while she is no Pagan (at least not in the religious sense), she also owns “Cunningham’s Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs”, “The Politics of Women’s Spirituality”, and Jean Bolen’s “Crossing To Avalon”.

So what does it matter that Melanie Phillips is trying to sell copies of “The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth, and Power” by overestimating the influence and growth of modern Paganism? Well, aside from the fact that she thinks modern Pagan religions are somehow a symptom of growing irrationality while civilizations “built on the values given to us by Christianity and the Hebrew Bible” are somehow a religious bulwark against irrationality (an interesting assertion to say the least), there’s the fact that she is littering the chattering classes with more bad data. If you want to argue that the world is going to hell, and Wiccans chanting is a symptom of it, be my guest. But lazy research not only distorts factual information about Paganism, it also undermines the larger points works like these try to make. It calls into question all the other assertions and “facts” used to make a case for a growingly irrational world.

So if you want to use Pagans to build your “irrational world” straw-man, at least look up the Pew and ARIS data when citing numbers, and hey, maybe actually reading a book or two on Pagan theology and belief might not hurt either.

Top Story: The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has released a new study, entitled “Religion Among the Millennials”, that tracks the beliefs and views of the generation born after 1981 (and who largely came of age in the year 2000, hence the name).  The report asserts that Millenials are far more “unaffiliated”, religiously speaking, than the previous two generations, and less concerned about “culture war” issues like gay marriage and abortion than their predecessors.

“Young people are more accepting of homosexuality and evolution than are older people. They are also more comfortable with having a bigger government, and they are less concerned about Hollywood threatening their values. But when asked generally about morality and religion, young adults are just as convinced as older people that there are absolute standards of right and wrong that apply to everyone. Young adults are also slightly more supportive of government efforts to protect morality and of efforts by houses of worship to express their social and political views.”

As for Millenials and modern Paganism, 2% of adults aged 18-29 adhere to a Pagan, New Age, Unitarian-Universalist, or “eclectic” faith (the “other faiths”). Outstripping adherence to Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and roughly tied with Judaism and Mormonism. Further, Millenials are about tied with Baby Boomers in adherence to an “other” faith, with Generation X making up the demographically largest grouping. You can download the entire report, here. You may also want to take a look at Pew’s 2007 Religious Landscape Survey, something I’ve covered in depth here, which much this data is culled from.

What does it all mean? It could certainly mean a more tolerant world, as an overwhelming majority of this generation believe there is more than “one true way”, and that the Bible isn’t the literal word of God. Less than half even believe that religion is important. Millenials, along with Generation X, represent a sea-change in attitudes that have so bitterly divided previous generations. A “post-Christian” future, one where Christianity is only one voice among many, seems ever more likely. A world where religion may be female-dominated and largely private. Sounds like a future I’d like to stick around for.

In Other News:

Did the Founders Mean Pagans Too? The Newsweek/Washington Post religion site On Faith features an editorial from Dr. Barbara McGraw, Director of the Center for Engaged Religious Pluralism at Saint Mary’s College of California. In it she addresses the now-infamous WallBuilders amicus brief in McCollum v. California that argues the Constitutional religion clauses only applied to monotheists.

“…perhaps Richard Henry Lee put it best when he said in 1787: “It is true, we are not disposed to differ much, at present, about religion; but when we are making a constitution, it is to be hoped, for ages and millions yet unborn . . . .” In other words, those who differ about religion in ages and among millions yet unborn are included in the protections of the Constitution. What is especially sad about the narrow way that Barton wants to interpret the founding era is that Barton’s approach obscures the real contribution of Christianity to America: support for a political system that protects the individual’s relationship with the Divine (however understood) … genuine Christianity supports religious rights for all. Christianity was not at the founding, nor is it now a monolithic “ism” that justifies the domination and suppression of others–not even Wiccan/Pagans.”

I’d recommend reading all the various quotes she offers, building the case that the founders meant for religious freedom to apply to all Americans, at all stages of its existence, no matter what that future may bring. You can expect to hear a lot more about Patrick McCollum’s case in the near future, when I spoke to him at Pantheacon it was clear that a lot of attention and interest is building in this case. Expect things to break out into the mainstream media very soon.

Anti-Pagan Smears: WorldNetDaily, where no nutty conspiracy theory goes unloved, touts the new book by its managing editor David Kupelian, entitled “How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America”. Along with the usual stuff, Obama is a Marxist, Hollywood is bad, public schools are turning boys into big sissies, mental illness is a scam, etc, we get a whole section on the dangers of Paganism and the “New Age”.

“Why are neo-pagan and New Age religions like Wicca becoming so popular? (America’s increasing disillusionment with Christianity has created a giant cultural and spiritual vacuum, into which alternative religions are being drawn.)”

Now, I’ve covered WND’s anti-Pagan stuff before, but I usually just ignore it nowadays. However, since Kupelian’s new book is being promoted by a major publisher, and he’s making the publicity rounds with conservative heavyweights like Sean Hannity, I thought this deserved a bit of attention. It matters in this instance, because the folks who like to gobble up those pop-journalism partisan books (from the left and right) that burn up the bestsellers lists will be getting a bit more than political opinion. They’ll also be getting anti-Pagan talking points. It’s not very pretty when political populism starts mixing with intolerant religious ideologies, so we should keep our eyes open.

Bob Barr Recants Recanting His Anti-Pagan Views: If you all were wondering what conservative/libertarian politician-turned-pundit Bob Barr thinks about the Air Force Academy building a Pagan worship area, wonder no longer!

The past couple years have given much food for thought to those who are interested in the state of religion in the United States of America. In 2008 you had the release of the Pew Forum’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, and then at the beginning of 2009 you had Trinity College’s American Religious Identification Survey data from 2008. Both not only showed an ongoing increase in the population of modern Pagans, but that the “religiously unaffiliated” or “nones” now claim around 15% of our total population. But are the “nones” really not religious? While the Pacific Northwest is only second to New England in the percentage of “unchurched” adults (hovering around 25%), some assert that the Cascadian “nones” are actually deeply spiritual and look to nature and the New Age as inspirations in crafting their own belief systems.

“According to the just-published “Cascadia: the Elusive Utopia.” … a lot of these “nones” in the Pacific Northwest are actually very spiritual, walking a path of their own making, but not into organized religions and churches. Sociology professor Mark Shibley of Southern Oregon University wrote the lead essay called “The Promise and Limits of Secular Spirituality in Cascadia.” “This region is different. The people here are not as connected to religious institutions,” he says. The alternative spirituality here shows itself in two main ways, Shibley notes: “nature spirituality,” such as you see in the secular environmental movement, and the more well-known New Age spirituality, where the gaze is shifted inward.”

If thousands of Cascadian residents are drawing on “nature spirituality” and “New Age spirituality”, you potentially end up with a whole lot of (what we would probably recognize as) Pagans who just aren’t bothering to label themselves that way in surveys. As if to confirm that thesis, the Ashland Daily Tidings rounds up a Pagan priestess and three other residents of the Pacific Northwest to talk about their beliefs. At times, it becomes very hard to differentiate the Pagan answers from the (ostensibly) non-Pagan answers.

“Absolutely. There are lots of different sources [for the spiritual and sacred]. Nature is the core. It’s earth-centered, an awareness of things greater than me, that science can’t explain.”

That’s not the Pagan priestess, that’s Dominick Della Sala, Ph.D. – chief scientist, National Center for Conservation Science and Policy, in Ashland. Sala was raised Catholic in Brooklyn, NY. Perhaps merely living in the Pacific Northwest makes one predisposed to see the sacred within nature, which would explain why Oregon (and the Pacific Northwest in general) is such a Pagan mecca (I moved here after all). So when we parse those surveys to get an idea of how we’re growing, “we” might be far larger than we expected in places where the “nones” thrive. For more on the spirituality of the Northwest, you might want to pick up “Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia: Exploring the Spirit of the Pacific Northwest”, as mentioned earlier in this post, for more insight. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to continue watching the sun rise in Eugene.

A couple recent news items gives us a glance into what a multi-religious and post-Christian America could look like. First, in honor of Women’s History Month, the Pew Forum re-analyzes data from their U.S. Religious Landscape Survey and came up with some interesting results.

“March is Women’s History Month. A new analysis of data from the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, finds that women are more religious than men on a variety of measures.”

What does that mean? It could potentially mean a couple things. First, leadership and support roles across the spectrum of belief will be slowly turned over to women out of necessity, secondly, religions that continue to alienate women may find themselves in the same fix as Christian churches in Britain (which are losing 50,000 female members per year).

“…while old men argue about whether women can be bishops, or if gays should be treated like human beings, the women have been leaving in droves to faiths that are more relevant to their lives. You can all do the reproductive math and figure out what happens to a religious tradition with a shortage of women.”

The second news item comes from the New York Times who looks at the work of sociologist Phil Zuckerman. Zuckerman, author of  “Society without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment” spent 14 months in Scandinavia exploring their overwhelmingly secular and irreligious nature and had some surprising news for those who believe that a (Judeo-Christian) God is necessary for a moral and good society.

Well documented though they may be, these two sets of facts run up against the assumption of many Americans that a society where religion is minimal would be, in Mr. Zuckerman’s words, “rampant with immorality, full of evil and teeming with depravity.” Which is why he insists at some length that what he and his wife and children experienced was quite the opposite: “a society — a markedly irreligious society — that was, above all, moral, stable, humane and deeply good.”… Zuckerman found what he terms “benign indifference” and even “utter obliviousness.” The key word in his description of their benign indifference is “nice.” Religion, in their view, is “nice.” Jesus “was a nice man who taught some nice things.” The Bible “is full of nice stories and good morals, isn’t it?”

So what do these two stories mean? How do they fit together? Well, if women become the power structure and lifeblood of religion in America, and if we do indeed become (slowly) more secular to accomodate an increasingly multi-religious society, it could create an atmosphere that greatly benefits faiths that are comfortable with these developments (and hurt faiths that aren’t). Faiths like the modern Pagan faiths. I’m not saying these changes will create some sort of Pagan utopia, if certain extremist elements feel too threatened it will be far from it, but these trends do seem to be a harbinger of continued growth for our family of faiths (and other religions flexible enough to change with the prevailing winds). I for one welcome our new secular female overlords!

Lisa Cupido, writing for The Modesto Bee, has a very informative and interesting write-up of the growing popularity of Pagan handfasting ceremonies among couples (both Pagan and non-Pagan) looking to wed. Cupido interviews a wide-ranging assortment of sources for the piece, from author Raven Kaldera (who touches on same-sex marriage within modern Paganism), to trained celebrant Lamira Martin.

“Lamira Martin is a celebrant from St. Louis, Mo., who trained with the Celebrant USA Foundation, an institute that teaches people to officiate at weddings, funerals and other personalized ceremonies. She has been performing pagan and nondenominational weddings for only a year and a half but has wed 60 couples of all ages and backgrounds. Her most popular requests include handfasting, unity candle lighting and sand ceremonies … ‘Most of the couples I meet are in their 20s and want something beautiful and spiritual, but not religious … A lot of people have lost the connection to their churches, but they still want a ritual and to write their own ceremony.’”

In addition to covering the growing popularity of handfastings, Cupido also digs into what is feeding the popularity of handfastings (Paganism’s explosive growth over the last twenty years), and the economic ripples this new popularity creates.

“As some vendors of pagan items can attest, there is no shortage of customers for popular Wiccan and Celtic wedding items like costumes, Renaissance gowns, handfasting ropes and candles. Kimberly and Bill Tuttle, the owners of Gryphon’s Moon, started their company 13 years ago, unaware that their moonstone pendants and incense would attract so many pagan clients. The most popular item on their Web site, gryphonsmoon.com, is their handfasting ring, which features the inscription “Hearts as one,” in Runic, an early Germanic alphabet.”

In a final note on this very well-written and researched article, I would like to congratulate Cupido on being one of the first journalists to (indirectly) include the data about Pagans from the recently released Pew Forum’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey. A survey that gives a big boost to the estimated Pagan population in America.

“A 2001 survey by the Graduate Center of the City University of New York found that the number of followers of Wicca, one of the many religions that fall beneath the pagan umbrella, increased from 8,000 in 1990 to 134,000 in 2001, making it the fastest-growing religion in America in terms of percentage increase. Marty Laubach, a sociology professor at Marshall University, says the number of followers of pagan religions is even higher now, citing a 2008 U.S. Religious Landscape Survey that put the estimate at 1.2 million. ‘My suspicion is that the first number was way too low due to people not responding,’ Laubach said. ‘The 1990 study was conducted at the height of the ‘satanic panic,’ which kept many neopagans in the closet.’”

One of the best articles dealing with modern Pagans I have read in awhile. I suggest reading the whole thing. Kudos to Lisa Cupido, this is what journalistic coverage of Paganism is supposed to look like.

Reverberations from the Pew Forum’s groundbreaking U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, the first independent survey to place modern Paganism over the one million mark, are still being felt. Recently The Chronicle Review, a publication of The Chronicle of Higher Education, explored some of the ramifications of these findings.

“…findings in the study shed new light on issues around which there has been no scholarly consensus … it is becoming increasingly obvious that the term “Judeo-Christian” no longer makes sense, given how many Americans are neither. But the favorite terms to replace it – “Judeo-Christian-Islamic” or “Abrahamic” – seem equally inappropriate. It is not just that Buddhists, who do not trace their roots to Abraham, may outnumber Muslims, who do. It is that the combined percentage of those who identify themselves as either Hindu (0.4 percent) or from “other world religions” (0.3 percent) does so as well. We are not one nation divided into three monotheistic faiths. We are a nation characterized by many faiths, as well as by none.”

If America is no longer a “Judeo-Christian” (or “Abrahamic”) country, what does that mean? Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life, claims that the era of a common Christian morality is coming to a close.

“The fact that we now have so many religions in this country suggests either that no common morality is possible, or that, if it is, religion cannot be its most important source. The ways in which religious diversity either increases or detracts from speaking about the common good ought to be a subject stimulated by Pew’s conclusions.”

Which means that we could see a day when divisive “culture war” and other “social issues” will cease to be a tug-of-war between liberal secularists on one side, and conservative Christians on the other. Instead, there will be a variety of viewpoints and moralities involved in the discussion, changing the entire dynamic of debate.

Some will wonder if this is simply a statistical “blip” before some new Great Awakening re-asserts Christian moral dominance in America, but Wolfe says that data points to Christian denominations having retention problems across the board, including the “conservative” and “evangelical” denominations.

“Protestant denominations … were all losers … Pew has found that the strictest of all churches, at least in the sheer amount of proselytizing time and energy it requires, has the lowest overall retention rate … whatever the case in the past, there is no strong evidence of strict churches attracting a disproportionate share of members now … If the religious world of adults in the United States is diverse and in constant flux, the religious affiliations of young Americans, who will be tomorrow’s voters and citizens, are even more so. Three times as many Americans under 30 as those over 70 are not religiously affiliated.”

These problems haven’t escaped the notice of conservative and evangelical churches, but their attempts to fix what they define as an “image problem” may be too little and too late.

“Christians are supposed to represent Christ to the world. But according to the latest report card, something has gone terribly wrong. Using descriptions like “hypocritical,” “insensitive,” and “judgmental,” young Americans share an impression of Christians that’s nothing short of … unChristian.”

Of course, this doesn’t mean that we’ll be living in some sort of multi-religious utopia any time soon. Those in power rarely let go easily, and we may see battles over issues of religious morality and political influence get a lot worse before they attain a new balance. America may have woken up into a new “post-Christian” society, but the hangover from two hundred years of Christian dominance will most likely give us headaches for many years to come.