“The Druids may well have been the most prominent magico-religious specialists of some of the peoples of north-western Europe just over a couple of thousand years ago; and that is all we can say of them with reasonable certainty.” Thus begins Blood and Mistletoe: the History of the Druids in Britain by Ronald Hutton, Professor of History at the University of Bristol in England. Hutton is far and away the top Pagan historian of our time; in this case “Pagan... Read more

Last night Cathy and I went to TCU to hear Karen Armstrong give the inaugural Daryl D. Schmidt Lecture on Religion in Public Life. Her topic was “Religion in an Age of Terror: Perils and Possibilities.” She spoke for an hour, then took questions for about 20 minutes. There was a book signing afterwards, but we had a 70 mile drive to get home so we didn’t stay for that. She began with a story – not from the Abrahamic... Read more

Wiccan author and musician T. Thorne Coyle (who was one of the primary musicians at the Druid Gorsedd back in August) has a recent blog entry where she says: my hunch is that we often avoid daily practice not out of laziness, or lack of discipline, but because we know that profound changes will occur in our lives and we are not sure we are up to shouldering what feels like the burden of the unknown. Something inside of us... Read more

When a leading Southern Baptist blogs on the passing of a notable Unitarian Universalist, it makes for an interesting contrast. Forrest Church, who died on September 24 at the age of 61, was Senior Minister of All Souls Church in New York City for thirty years. He was the author of more than twenty books, and co-authored A Chosen Faith, which is on the shelf of every Unitarian Universalist in the country, or so it seems. His next-to-last book was... Read more

The Dallas Morning News Religion Blog’s question of the week addresses the rise of “none of the aboves” – people who are religious (or “spiritual but not religious”) but who don’t identify with any religious organization, even while interest in religion is high and megachurches are doing well. It asks “why are fewer Americans identifying with a religion, denomination or particular faith group?” The responses from the panel of experts are interesting. I was late adding my comment, and many... Read more

Jason Pitzl-Waters of The Wild Hunt blog has this piece on two Pagan politicians who’ve been “outed” by their opponents and seen their chances of getting elected drop dramatically. Jason reminds us “In the age of the Internet there is no “broom closet” secure enough to keep your secret.” He closes with an exhortation to “come out, come out, wherever we are.” I’m not in the broom closet, but I’m not exactly out either. I don’t lie to people, but... Read more

In an excellent article a couple years ago titled “The Moral Instinct,” Harvard professor Stephen Pinker (best known for his work on the evolution of language) argues that we all make moral choices instinctively, then look for some principle to justify the decisions we make. The practical point of Pinker’s hypothesis is that those who do things we find objectionable rarely think they’re doing anything wrong, so attempting to shame them into changing rarely does any good. Here’s a recent... Read more

David Sparks of Temple Spiritualis Compassare, Little Elm; Mike Joffrion of The Sacred Fire Temple, Fort Worth; John Beckett of Denton CUUPS Pickin’ up rocks in the hot sun, I fought Nature and… well, Nature’s always going to win in the long run, but if we can tame this little corner for a generation or two, we’ll have something nice. Magic works in odd ways. Two weeks ago, we performed a ritual to help build the Pagan community. Today, representatives... Read more

If you’re in the area, come by and celebrate the Fall Equinox with us, Saturday September 26 at 7:00 PM. Click the flyer for a larger image. Read more

The Wall Street Journal asked religion writer Karen Armstrong and uberatheist Richard Dawkins to answer the question “where does evolution leave God?” Their responses forced me to ask some serious questions about my beliefs, but in the end I’m even more confident I’m on the right path for me. On first reading, I instinctively sided with Armstrong. She explains the difference in logos and mythos: how they are complementary and not oppositional, and how we need both to live lives... Read more