The work on my thesis has officially begun. I have my committee, I paid my fee, and my classroom at Cherry Hill Seminary is set up. I’ve contacted various Pagan organizations to ask if they might run my survey in their newsletter. [I’ve had a yes and and a no, and am waiting on the rest to reply.] I’ll be heading to the New York Fairie Festival at the end of June to collect more data. The festival isn’t strictly Pagan, but the people who camp for the weekend usually are, and the after hours activities are great fun. If you happen to be there, I’ll be the woman walking around pushing a big yellow bicycle cart with a cat inside. [Yes, I’m bringing my cat. Yes, he’s an experienced camper. Yes, he’s friendly.]
I’ve mentioned before that the thesis is less about my education and more about getting data for my book, The Case for Paganism. [Although I’ll be very happy to at last complete this process. One more class in the fall.] According to Pew’s surveys on religion, membership in mainstream churches has been dropping for decades. The assumption is that people are leaving Christianity, and we often hear that Pagan numbers are growing. The truth is, there’s no clear data to support either assumption. People are leaving churches, but do they then become atheists or move on to another religion like Paganism? That was my path. I could never have been an atheist. [I’m a soft polytheist.] But saying that Pagan numbers are growing is at best, speculative. For that, we would need to have population-level, longitudinal data on Pagans.
Population level means at least 1000 people would need to respond to requests for information. Estimates on Pagan numbers based on the US census and Rand surveys suggest our numbers are around 1 million to 1.3 million in the US. Longitudinal means the request for data would need to be answered every 5 to ten years consistently enough to see trends.
I already got one ‘no’, and from one of the larger organizations in the US, so I doubt I’m getting 1000 responses. Fortunately, I don’t need that many for a thesis, or even to publish a paper. But I’ll admit, the data would be cool to have.
So why should we care? Pagans are primarily solitary. The only population-level survey that has thus far been done on us was achieved by Helen Berger, Ph.D., with assistance from Andras Arthen of Earth Spirit community in Massachusetts. I filled out that survey and was happy to have been able to contribute. Berger published her extensive and detailed data in a thoroughly dry book, and then followed up with a second very dry book on solitary Paganism. [According to her research, 60% of Pagans don’t primarily practice in groups.] But she’s not telling a story and isn’t here to entertain. Berger’s work tells us about ourselves with facts that are grounded in the physical world. Lacking that grounding, we run our lives on stories that won’t serve us.
As a writer of fiction, my stories must have hard rules. Even mythology and fantasy have rules. Without rules, there is no story. Well-done research can tell us what the rules are for the stories of our lives. If mythology tells us anything, it’s that we ignore the rules at our peril. With the power humanity now commands, this is more important than at any other time in history.
We need to know who we are.
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In 2020, according to Pew, Americans stopped leaving their churches. Whether the long trend is reversing itself or simply pausing, isn’t something we’ll know for a few years. I’m betting on the former. There are tremendous benefits to having a religious practice and I’m observing a revival of Christian faith, something that’s wholly ignored by the mainstream media.
That matters to Pagans. One of the questions in my survey is why people left the religion in which they were raised. [So far, my limited data is showing that’s usually Christianity.] Hostility to questions about dogma is a big reason and modern pagans are usually well-aware of how our pagan spiritual ancestors were treated by the Christian church.
We don’t want that to happen again.
The broad literature on religion that describes the benefits of some form of religious practice include,
Lower overall rates of anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation, and the biomarkers associated with stress
Lower levels of risky behavior such as smoking and drinking
decreased mortality risk
Decreased loneliness
Faster recovery rates for those who are ill or injured
Slower cognitive decline
Reductions in PTSD reactions and existential anxiety [especially among terminal patients]
2-3 times more friendships
Increased social capital
Are there limitations on these results? Certainly. Yet, they shouldn’t be discounted. I doubt that any of this literature has included Pagan groups, but even with so many of us being solitary, these benefits are recognizable. I’d not have survived an abusive relationship and raising a troubled step-daughter without my Pagan religious practice: the solace of public ritual and private communion with my gods and guides.
But HOW Pagans practice is different than how Christians worship. We experience the divine differently and don’t want the right to continue to do so interfered with. When Christians say ‘We are a Christian nation,’ this raises the hackles of Pagans. Justifiably. We don’t want to be persecuted. But the data says that religion is too useful to humanity to go away [sorry atheists] [That’s a lie. I’m not sorry.] and that Christianity has stopped loosing group adherents.
Ignoring the facts won’t serve us well.
Another fact: there are ideologies far more dangerous to Pagans than Christianity.* Communism/marxism has the aim of eliminating all religion, and islamists would behead us right along with the Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists. Christians who practice what Jesus taught have reason to stop and have a conversation. This isn’t true of islamists. Western values - the values that specifically give Pagans the space to practice in a majority Christian culture - are a mix of Christianity and classical paganism. Western values have made us powerful and wealthy beyond the imaginings of our ancestors. Those values have given women the option of having a role besides that of mother or virgin priestess. Those values have protected women from being forced to literally cover our faces and bury our identities beneath the will of the men in our lives.
I don’t have to agree with any given Christian teaching to see that they’re better allies in religious freedom than islamists or marxists. That means I need to talk to them. Ideally, it means we all do. Pagans are a tiny minority. Annoying as it is, that means we have to spend time explaining ourselves.
My goal is for The Case for Paganism to provide some tools for us to do so.
*I don’t think that most of Christianity is an ideology, but it can certainly lean that way, depending on the person or group. Nor are Pagans above being ideological.
If you’re curious about Paganism/Heathenism/Wicca/Druidry, please feel free to message me and I’ll be happy to answer questions.
Selina Rifkin, M.S. [Nutrition], LMT, has been Pagan since she was 14 [which was a long time ago] and been to Hades in a handbasket. More than once. This has given her some opinions. She has direct communication with her gods and they’ve always given her answers when she asks. [One does have to ask.] Like most of her generation [X] she’s okay with snark. Most days she tries for good writing. But the snark, and side comments creep in. Be warned.
Pagan Organizations