Elizabeth Prata
I lived in Maine for 30 years. The Gospel is so needed in Maine. Maine has one of the highest proportions of Pagans and Wiccans in the United States. Data from the Pew Research Center shows that 4 percent of Mainers identified as Pagan or Wiccan in a 2023-24 survey, the highest amount in any state. This is double from the previous Pew survey, conducted in 2014.
Why this growing popularity? An article in The Maine Monitor explains,
Researchers like Marilyn R. Pukkila, a research librarian emerita at Colby College and eclectic Pagan, attribute the growth in part to the second-wave feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s, where many were interested in the idea of the feminine goddess at the center of Wicca, and in the independent nature of its rituals, which attracted women and LGBTQ people who felt shut out by Christianity.
The Maine Monitor isn’t the only media outlet linking Wicca with feminism. Here we have The Christian Post’s research. There are actually more Wiccans than Presbyterians in the US, according to the Christian Post article from last month
“The actual practice of witchcraft today presents a bit differently. It is still predominantly practiced by women and has been entangled with feminism and female empowerment since the 1960s. Today, there are more self-identified Wiccans in America than Presbyterians, and that does not include those who practice witchcraft without identifying with Wicca. In fact, there are even those who self-identify as Christian witches, though that is somewhat unsurprising in a culture of self-identification where people hold “whirled-views” more than coherent worldviews.”
I remembered the excellent episode of the Just Thinking podcast where co-hosts Virgil Walker and DB Harrison covered this issue in their episode on Feminism, (#140) and quoted the book “Twilight Goddess: Spiritual Feminism and Feminist Spiritualism”, quoting,
“The widening appeal of Goddess theology and spiritual feminism in the present day may reflect perennial relevance in these traditions. The resurgence of these interests in the modern West is taking place in an era in which religious aspirations are dovetailing with social and scientific concerns about the rights of women and our relation to the earth.”
Though one can go on for many pages listing the reasons feminism has wrought ill upon our society, and mourning its unintended (or perhaps intended) consequences, we need to acknowledge one of the consequences of feminism’s pagan philosophy is its link to earth based paganism, including Wicca.
There are standards to enter Christianity. Believing in Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension is critical to that first step. We must repent of our sins to Him on whom we believe. He alone is qualified to forgive them, having absorbed God’s wrath for our sins on the cross. Christianity indeed ‘shuts out’ all sinners, as mentioned in the quote above. It only accepts repentant sinners. You cannot enter Christianity with your sin. It only accepts God as the center of worship. Not creeping things, not the creation, only God, for He is holy.
Portland Maine Druid Paul Ridlon was featured in a Maine Monitor article explaining why the rise in the wiccan and druid religion in Maine, where we read,
“He was raised Catholic and remembers early in his life being taught by nuns that God is in all people, which he compares to his belief today that everything has a spirit.”
This is one danger with thinking that Catholicism is part of the faith. It isn’t. It is a false religion that teaches falsely. Whether Mr Ridlon interpreted the teaching wrongly, or whether the nuns taught wrongly (either and both are possible), the errant thinking that God is in all of us, AKA ‘we are all children of God’ illustrates the fatal flaw if the thought is taken to the end point. Here is a good example of how a false religion or a false doctrine leads people astray.
We are all made in the image of God, but only when we confess our sins to Jesus, believing on His life, death, resurrection, and ascension do we become indwelled by God’s Holy Spirit.
We are not all children of God. We are children of wrath and stand condemned already. Just after the famous verse in John 3:16
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
We read in John 3:18,
Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. (ESV).
God did not give Jesus to us unreservedly. We must believe in Jesus and Jesus only. Why worship the earth when it is God who created the earth?
In Matthew 23:16-22, Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for their shift in worship, thinking they found a loophole that didn’t obligate them to God. Don’t swear by the temple, swear by the gold of the temple. Don’t swear by the altar, but by the offering on the altar. Don’t swear by God’s throne, swear by heaven.
Jesus said, “You blind men, which is more important, the offering or the altar that sanctifies the offering? Therefore, the one who swears by the altar, swears both by the altar and by everything on it. And the one who swears by the temple, swears both by the temple and by Him who dwells in it. And the one who swears by heaven, swears both by the throne of God and by Him who sits upon it.”
Wiccans who believe they are doing something good by worshiping the creation and not the creator are making the same mistake.
Therefore God gave them up to vile impurity in the lusts of their hearts, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for falsehood, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. (Romans 1:24-25)
The Creator is blessed forever, and so is anyone who has repented of their sin and confessed Him as Savior.
