Pissed-off Pagans

James Towey, the director of Bush's office of "Faith-Based" Initiatives managed to anger a number of Pagans, Heathens and other adherents of what's sometimes called "Alternative Religions" recently when he recently published this question and answer set on an "Ask the White House" page at the White House website:

Colby, from Centralia MO writes:
Do you feel that Pagan faith based groups should be given the same considerations as any other group that seeks aid?

Jim Towey:
I haven't run into a pagan faith-based group yet, much less a pagan group that cares for the poor! Once you make it clear to any applicant that public money must go to public purposes and can't be used to promote ideology, the fringe groups lose interest. Helping the poor is tough work and only those with loving hearts seem drawn to it.

Now, I'll grant that, as of yet, there aren't a large number of Pagan groups out there running soup kitchen, homeless shelters, tutoring programs or providing other social services. While Towey seems to believe that this is because either (a) Pagan groups don't exist (they do) or (b) Pagans don't care (we do!), it's simply a matter of there not yet being that many Pagan groups that have access to the kind of funds needed for the kind of programs Towey would be evaluating.

Unfortunately, because there is so much prejudice against Pagans and Paganism, especially from the more fundamental Christian groups, for many people, being public about their Paganism can be a big risk. People have lost jobs or housing once it becomes known that they are Pagans, and it's sadly common that the Pagan religion of a parent becomes a factor against them in a child-custody case. In addition, I have known Pagans who have had their property vandalized or crosses burned in their yards. As a result, many people are unwilling to publically associate themselves with Paganism or Pagan groups, which can make it hard to put together a group to work on social serivce-type projects.

This, along with the fact that Paganism is still very much a growing religion, as opposed to an established one, means that many Pagan groups are quite small. In most cases, an individual group that would have the same functions as a church for a mainstream faith, has no more than maybe 15 or 20 people in it - if that. In many areas, several of these smaller church-like units (often called Covens, Hearths, Kindreds, or Groves, etc.) will band together to work on building more of a Pagan community within the area. These larger groups sponsor activities like Pagan Pride Day (usually held in September each year) or celebrations for the various Holy days that are observed each year, both to help various Pagans in the area get to know each other and also to help bring some visibility to the fact that Hey! Pagans exist! (and we're really NOT that scary!)

Oftentimes, money is raised at these larger-group gatherings for donation to various charitable causes or food-drives are held to help bolster the local food pantry.

In the past three years, Pagan Pride groups have collected 74,000 pounds of food and donated $51,000 to homeless shelters, interfaith food banks, the American Red Cross and other charities, according to the Indianapolis-based International Pagan Pride Project.

In Chicago, pagans support a battered women's shelter. In Massachusetts, they have given $20,000 for children with AIDS.

Regrettably, the stigma of being Pagan has been know to make some of the organizations Pagans are trying to help turn down their donations, as they don't want to risk having other religious groups decide that they won't support them any longer if they're going to take anything from Pagans.

As the Post article notes, however, the number of Pagans (especially in terms of those practicing Wicca, probably the larges and most well-known of the Pagan faiths) is growing, and fast.

According to one major study, Wiccans -- one of several subgroups of pagans -- made up the fastest-growing religion in the continental United States in the 1990s. The American Religious Identification Survey, based on a randomly dialed telephone survey of 50,281 households by the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, estimated that the number of Wiccans rose 17-fold, from 8,000 to 134,000, between 1990 and 2001.

The survey also estimated that there are 33,000 Druids and 140,000 other pagans in 48 states. That adds up to about 300,000 people in what pagans call their "family of religious and magical paths."

Hopefully, as the Pagan faiths continue to grow, they will become more accepted and people who share the Pagan path will feel more comfortable about working with publicly-Pagan groups, and charitable organizations will be more willing to accept Pagan donations. As long as we have officials making comment that indicate that Pagans aren't caring or willing to do work on behalf of others, however, that acceptance is going to be slow.

One thing that Towey got completely wrong, though, is in saying that "Once you make it clear to any applicant that public money must go to public purposes and can't be used to promote ideology, the fringe groups lose interest. Helping the poor is tough work, and only those with loving hearts seem drawn to it."

One thing common to almost all Pagan groups is that we don't try to promote our ideology. The idea of a Pagan group running a homeless shelter or soup kitchen and telling people coming in to receive aid that they must convert to a Pagan faith to get help, or even just making them listen to a religious lesson is laughable. For one thing, how on Earth would they decide exactly which path the person would have to accept or what God or Goddess to give the lesson on? There are so many that from a pragmatic standpoint, it wouldn't be feasible. More importantly, though, is the belief you will find in virtually all Pagan religions that there is no "One True Way™" and that individuals should be free to follow their conscience in matters of the spirit.

Yes, we will talk about our faith and are generally happy to educate someone about what it is we believe and why, but we don't then try to tell the person that they must believe it also. In fact, that's probably one of the main reasons why the Pagan faiths are still fairly small in terms of overall membership.

I have to say, though, I'm really glad to see that enough of a stink has been raised about this guys comments that it actually rated a story in the Washington Post. Sure, it's tucked away in the back pages, but a few years ago, it wouldn't even have gotten that much attention. The Post did a great job with the article, and managed to present a pretty balanced look at Paganism. I doubt we'll ever get an apology from Towey, though it would be nice. He certainly owes us one.

Posted by thorswitch at December 9, 2003 06:15 AM | TrackBack