Photo by Dan Farrell on Unsplash

Some have asked why we attend events like Paganicon. After all, we are Christians, not pagans. Some of the leadership at Paganicon asked us the same question; why were we attending their event? They were concerned we might stir up trouble. We have covered this in previous articles like “Walking in Their World,” “Mission to Paganistan,” and others. The answer is fairly simple. We want to know what it is that Pagans truly believe? As we point out in both of the linked articles, the best way to find out what someone believes is to go where they are and ask them directly. We also were interested to know if they came out of some sort of Christian tradition, and if so, what caused them to leave and how did they come to embrace one of the various pagan groups. We were not there to accost anyone. Their workshops are another good way to understand pagans and their beliefs and practices. The Western world and even churches are very quickly adopting pagan ideas, and it behooves us to understand why.

Paganicon offers a variety of workshops, such as “Money Drawing Magic.” It turns out that their teaching on that subject is not all that different than the Word Faith/New Apostolic Reformation’s teaching concerning acquiring wealth. Another workshop, entitled “Coming Out as a Pagan,” covers the question of whether a pagan should or should not let their family and friends know of their new faith commitment, how that might be done, and how those they care about may react.

As it turns out, many of those that are now embracing a variety of neopagan beliefs and practices grew up in or had at some point been part of a church. There is, as John Daniel Davidson’s puts it in his article, America Becoming Less Christian Is A Problem For Everyone, an ongoing “de-Christianization of American society.” He comments on a recent headline from an article by Pew Research Center, “Decline of Christianity in the U.S. Has Slowed, May Have Leveled Off.”:

It’s easy to misread the study, or misapprehend what’s important about it, which is that the de-Christianization of American society is not going to stop anytime soon, in part because it’s being driven by a younger, less Christian, increasingly neopagan cohort of Americas as older Christians die off without being replaced and aging Christian parents fail to pass the faith onto their children. Pew itself seems to misapprehend its own survey, giving it the rather optimistic headline, “Decline of Christianity in the U.S. Has Slowed, May Have Leveled Off.”

Quite a few pagans that we have had the opportunity to speak with at events like Paganicon or the Parliament of the World’s Religions or Burning Man feel betrayed, angry, or, as one of the organizers of Paganicon put it during a conversation with us, have experienced “spiritual trauma” for a variety of reasons. One I spoke with was raised in the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church, but was caught up in the Quiver Full movement. As we spoke, it became clear that she was also very familiar with Bill Gothard, who is closely tied to the Quiver full movement. The faith and the God she rejected based on her experiences was most definitely not the God of Scripture, but she was not interested in discussing it more fully.

Others may not have really known much about the faith they were rejecting. One woman I spoke with grew up Roman Catholic but said she never really understood it. Catholicism was her family tradition, but she believed there had to be something more; in her search, she eventually embraced Wicca. She hasn’t told her family yet. She also said she really likes Jesus. I asked her if she realized Jesus and the apostles were calling the nation of Israel to repentance while He walked the earth. I went on to say that Jesus offered redemption from sin and is the one who died to pay the debt for our collective sin and raised Himself from the dead to defeat death itself. She was interested and said she did not recall hearing these things before. We spoke for a while and I was able to share the gospel. I am not sure what she will do with it, but perhaps God will water that seed.

The reasons given as to why so many of those we spoke to had left their respective churches are many and varied. For some, it is tied to an unbiblical view of God being an authoritarian, abusive God that they perceived was taught and practiced in the churches of their youth. For others, they had a vague, uninformed idea about God as a result of little or no deep biblical teaching. And let’s face the fact that in a young person’s mind, and many new Satanists are young, they may view Christianity as something “old” while Paganism seems shiny and new. Some had come from churches whose mystical practices, though alleged to be biblical, were not all that different than the mystical practices of the paganism they have embraced.  Some people found more acceptance and community among the pagans. One of our team spent time in the hospitality room of the Satanists, and one of the first things the Satanists told him was that approximately 50% of their members are LGBTQA+ and Transgender. Modern Satanists are essentially atheists who do not believe in God or Satan, demons, or angels. Suffice it to say, they do not accept the churches moral teachings. To them, there is only the physical realm and therefore, no objective transcendent moral or ethical code. Minnesota Satanists explain their view on worship:

If we were to worship anyone, we would say we worship ourselves and those we care about.

They continue to explain why, in their view, members are attracted to them:

Just as it is common for Christians to accuse other groups and individuals of actively worshipping the Devil, many of our members are “othered” and told that they are “less than” because of differences they cannot control, such as race, gender identity, or sexuality. This is heavily influenced by the moral panic of the 80s and 90s—also known as the Satanic Panic—that stoked public fear of a widespread conspiracy of Satanists infiltrating society and engaging in the Satanic ritual abuse of children. The Satanic Panic created further isolation of individuals who fell outside of the social norm and often resulted in them being unjustly accused or even prosecuted for being what the Panic at the time thought of as a Satanist, with neither proof nor trial.

We have addressed the “Satanic Panic” of those days in “Walking in Their World,” and “Beware the Rumor Weed.” Their complaint about Satanists being maligned or even falsely accused of heinous crimes is unfortunately true, and quite a few wrongheaded Christian leaders and churches, and/or supposedly “Christian counselors,” eventually lost credibility as a result of making false accusations concerning, without a scrap of evidence, Satanists – or rather those accused of Satanism – allegedly sacrificing babies on altars and similarly horrendous accusations. Very sadly, in those days, it was not completely uncommon for pastors, priests or elders – or even one’s parents, to be defamed as Satanists, allegedly sacrificing babies in church basements. Some were imprisoned. Often these wild tales were recovered via “hypnosis” during so-called counseling sessions. A lot of “allegedly Christian” “firsthand account” autobiographies were published about people who were harmed by Satanists or who were allegedly former Satanists themselves that had become Christians, telling their stories in books sold at “Christian bookstores.” Remember the fictitious tale of being a High Priest of Satan in Satan Seller by Mike Warnke or Laurel Rose Willson under the pen name “Lauren Stratford” being a baby breeder in a Satanic cult in her book, Satan’s Underground?  That was truly an insane era in many ways.

Thankfully, most of that very faddish movement was discredited around the turn of the Millennium and has now passed from the scene. We give no defense of what transpired in those days, and in fact, we and others exposed it at the time, as noted above. Yet, what can’t be denied is the great rise of paganism in our culture presently, as exhibited at Paganicon, which does represent the “de-Christianization of American and Western society as a whole,” as described in Romans 1:21-25. As the Apostle Paul writes:

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

We have often pointed out that the time we live in is more like the First Century pagan culture, which early Christianity challenged, and over three centuries transformed. As Davidson pointed out, parents and churches need to pass on the faith to their children and also act as ambassadors to an increasingly de-Christianized culture. While many are still fighting atheism, which of course is needed, they are in many cases missing the new growing “spirituality” of our times. It is refreshing to find in John Daniel Davidson’s article, America Becoming Less Christian Is A Problem For Everyone a public voice in a secular publication that is seeing the same issues we have been raising for three decades:

There’s much more to unpack in the Pew survey, like the decline of Christianity occurring simultaneously with a growth in “spirituality,” which suggests the future of the West will not be one of atheistic, secular materialism but of re-enchantment and neopaganism. But for now, it’s enough simply to be honest with ourselves, and with the data, and acknowledge that we are rapidly de-Christianizing. Once we accept that fact we can begin to think clearly about what it means for our country,

And, we might add, once we accept that fact we can begin to think clearly about what it means for the church.Ω

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