Wicca in Prison<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I saw this article on WitchVox last week but didn\u2019t read it until Michi sent it out on our CUUPS members list.The article was horrible. What\u2019s encouraging\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2009\/09\/wicca-in-prison.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Wicca in Prison\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I saw this article on WitchVox last week but didn\u2019t read it until Michi sent it out on our CUUPS members list.The article was horrible. 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{"id":497,"date":"2009-09-13T17:41:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-13T17:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2009\/09\/wicca-in-prison\/"},"modified":"2009-09-13T17:41:00","modified_gmt":"2009-09-13T17:41:00","slug":"wicca-in-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2009\/09\/wicca-in-prison.html","title":{"rendered":"Wicca in Prison"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I saw this article<\/a> on WitchVox<\/a> last week but didn\u2019t read it until Michi sent it out on our CUUPS members list.<\/p>\n

The article was horrible. What\u2019s encouraging are the comments. I was expecting to see the usual fundamentalist rants about how Wicca isn\u2019t a \u201creal\u201d religion. Instead, three of the four commenters quickly and concisely summed up what the journalist missed: the picture of Margaret Hamilton in greenface is an offensive stereotype, the prison system is wrong not to give the prisoner what he needs to practice his religion, the prisoner is wrong to use what may be a religion of convenience to sue for large sums of money, and finally, the prisoner is wrong for doing what put him in prison in the first place.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always been extremely skeptical of jailhouse conversions. Too many prisoners \u201cfind Jesus\u201d to look good for the parole board, and too many take up Wicca either because they think it\u2019s an easy route to power or because they want to catch the prison in a case of religious discrimination and profit from it.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year I met a guy who had recently been released from prison after 17 years. I met him at a Druid gathering. He said he was incredibly angry when he first went in, but eventually the anger wore off and he was left with nothing. The Christian prison ministries didn\u2019t do anything for him, but he found the OBOD Bardic course materials<\/a> in the prison library. They were exactly what he needed. When he completed them, he was able to get the Ovate materials through his tutor (the OBOD course materials aren\u2019t cheap) and continue his studies, and he was still working on the Ovate grade when he got out.<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t seen him since February, so I don\u2019t know how he\u2019s doing. He struck me as someone who realized how badly he had screwed up and was genuinely trying to start over. The Pagan materials he had access to had been very helpful to him.<\/p>\n

Just a reminder that not all jailhouse conversions are staged.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"