59: Wiccan or “Christian” America

On the 4th of July, 2007, pagan religious leaders led a rally across from the White House to call for the appointment of a Pagan military chaplain and to request approval of Pagan religious symbols by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Elevating the “religion” of paganism as a legally–endorsed activity by the United States Military, of which the President is Commander in Chief sounds both fair and odd.

Fair: Democratic rights must be applied to all religious expressions. Everyone should be free to worship the god of their choice, as the saying goes. But what should be classified as a religion? The lines between religion and politics cannot be clearly drawn. People are political, social and religious entities—all the time, and all at the same time. Political questions always have a moral/ethical component and morals cannot be separated from religious truth. When well–known politicians die, the so–called “state funeral” always ends up in a cathedral somewhere, and the living politicians show up on the front row. Church/state separation, so vigorously applied during the politician’s life, evaporates before the great religious mystery of death.

Odd: Naming a witch as a military chaplain in a country known as the modern bastion of Christianity is the clear sign of a level nine magnitude earthquake in the body cultural and religious. The mix of religion and politics worked while a common religious ethos reigned. But the situation has changed dramatically. Witchcraft and Christianity affirm opposite values of right and wrong. Wicca advocates the pagan Nature worship of tribal Europe. The founding documents of the United States affirm an inherent theism: “We hold these truths to be self–evident, that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…” (United States Declaration of Independence, 1776). By demonstrating on the Fourth of July, Wiccans were sublty claiming their rights to “freedom.” Ironically, they are not seekng freedom from “British tyranny” (since I am a British citizen, it hurts to write this!), but from the claims made by the Creator and enshrined in the Declaration. The apparently innocuous public demonstration expresses a massive ideological conflict, between the Wiccan worship of creation (One–ism), now practiced by more and more Westerners in various forms, and the worship of the Creator (Two–ism), celebrated in the founding documents. The conflict heats up when laws are passed based on one or the other of these contradictory religious notions. Such laws include:

• the holocaust of abortion, which since 1973 has been using our taxes to support the indefensible genocidal slaying of the innocent. Abortion theory flows from a pagan understanding of existence that has eliminated the Creator’s laws about the dignity of human life;
• Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month, 2009, signed into the Federal program by the President of the United States. Describing our “pride” in what many believe to be moral perversion goes beyond politics and hastens the passage of other laws that legalize gay marriage and qualify as hate crimes anyone who speaks out against homosexuality. Pagan religion, as the Apostle Paul argues in Romans 1:25–26, is the ultimate inspiration behind homosexuality and its approval in society.

Contemporary legislation must favor one theory or the other in deciding moral issues. This is odd, because, in a sense, it is no longer “fair.” It is right or wrong, whatever a democratic vote might say. In a situation of opposing, all–inclusive religious systems, one wins and the other loses. No “democratic” compromise is possible.

Politics has become exceedingly complicated. For the first time in American history, a religiously pagan conviction about right and wrong has entered the political process. Many Christians share the unspoken belief that America belongs to Christians, as references to the Creator in our founding documents would suggest. However, Christianity is losing the dominant moral and spiritual voice, and Christians will need to know how to be a minority voice in a pagan culture.

Every tongue will one day confess Jesus Christ to be Lord, so take heart in difficult times.