Free Republic

Ah, Christmastime. Manger scenes and mistletoe, trees and tinsel, Santa and celebration, gift-giving and gratitude...and the ACLU roasting traditions on an open fire. Sadly, the last thing has become as much a seasonal expectation as the others, and the ACLU's  practice of suing our culture into oblivion has gotten a lot of ink. Yet there is another attack on Christmas -- actually, another attack on Christianity itself. This less well-known attack could ultimately prove more damaging than the usual atheistic assaults. And it's embraced by religionists themselves. I'm sure you've heard the charges. Christmas is a "pagan holiday," they say....

A new study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life reveals some startling differences between Republicans and Democrats on issues of spirituality and supernatural phenomenon. The study, "Many Americans Mix Multiple Faiths," reports that a significant number of Americans practice a mixture of religious beliefs, and "many also blend Christianity with Eastern or New Age beliefs such as reincarnation, astrology and the presence of spiritual energy in physical objects." The report is not specifically about partisan differences, but the results of the study are broken down by party affiliation, among many other categories. And the news on...

Fifteen-year-old Katarina Keen won't sing along to "Silent Night" or "Listen to the Stars," two Christian songs planned for her choir's upcoming Christmas concert at Borger High School. But she will sing "Jingle Bells" and "A Carol in Winter." Katarina and her family are Wiccan. The Borger High choirs have given a concert every December, with traditional religious Christmas songs, but this is the first time in director Johnny Miller's 23-year career that any Borger student had issues with the religious themes in the music, he said. A concert at 2:30 p.m. Sunday will feature a ninth- and 10th-grade choir...

Real Witches Practice Samhain: Wicca on the Rise in U.S. More Americans Are Wiccan, and Will Celebrate Samhain, Not Halloween, Saturday By RUSSELL GOLDMAN Oct. 30, 2009— Patti Wigington is a soccer mom. She is the vice president of her local PTA. And she's a witch. This Saturday while her neighborhood outside Columbus, Ohio, is crawling with costumed witches in search of candy, Wigington and a group of other local witches will not be celebrating Halloween, but the new year festival Samhain, which also occurs Oct. 31. In her backyard, Wigington and six other local women who make up...

In the early centuries of the first millennium A.D., before missionaries such as St. Patrick and St. Columcille converted them to Christianity, the Celts practiced an elaborate religion through their priestly caste, the Druids, who were priests, poets, scientists and scholars all at once. As religious leaders, ritual specialists, and bearers of learning, the Druids were not unlike the very missionaries and monks who were to Christianize their people and brand them evil devil worshippers. As a result of their efforts to wipe out "pagan" holidays, such as Samhain, the Christians succeeded in effecting major transformations in it.

MINNEAPOLIS—Members of Minnesota's pagan community are celebrating their pride with a weekend's worth of activity. "Twin Cities Pagan Pride 2009" is being held Saturday and Sunday at the Sabathani Community Center in south Minneapolis. Events include an opening ritual, a keynote discussion on "Pagans in the World," a workshop on charms and spells, an "Introduction to Slavic Heathenry," a discussion of Wiccan ethics, and children's [snip] Pagans generally honor or worship a deity or deities from pre-Christian or tribal mythology, practice religion that focuses on earth-based spirituality or focus spiritual attention primarily on the Divine Feminine.

Time to sell your real estate, rid yourself of cherished possessions and purge the evil tendencies of your wicked soul. The world is scheduled to end in late 2012 — at least, according to New Age scholars who look to a 2,000-year-old Mayan calendar for guidance — and it’s time to start preparing. The Mayans, who were scattered across southern Mexico and Central America from about 2000 B.C. until the Spanish conquest of the 17th century, are noted for astronomical insight and for their “Long Count” calendar, which comes to an end, or perhaps resets, on Dec. 21, 2012. Cue...

A coven of witches is accusing the Roman Catholic church of religious persecution after being banned from using a parish social centre for a Halloween gathering. Sandra Davis, High Priestess at the Crystal Cauldron Sandra Davis, the "high priestess" of Crystal Cauldron group in Stockport, Greater Manchester, said she was shocked to be told that the pagan group was not considered to be compatible with the church's "ethos". Mrs Davis, 61, booked Our Lady's Social Club in Shaw Heath, Stockport, for the group's annual "Witches Ball" due to be held in October. She hoped to attract up to 150 people...

COSTA MESA–Leaders from a variety of religions and belief systems declared today that they will continue to fight for same sex couples to marry. Although the 10 speakers outnumbered spectators at a press conference at Fairview Community Church in Costa Mesa, Christians, Pagans, Jews and atheists alike still pushed to get their message heard: overturn Proposition 8. "Bigotry…and exclusion are not faith-based family values," said AJ Blackwood, a Unitarian Universalist seminary student. The speakers are part of the Orange County Equality Coalition, a group that was formed when the ballot measure to ban gay marriage was introduced last summer.

...but it will be up to the Supreme Court to make a final determination as to whether a 7-foot cross remains standing in a California desert to memorialize war veterans. The cross was first erected in 1934 in what is now the federally protected Mojave Desert Preserve by a group of veterans...w Veterans today say this war memorial and others like it across the country that use religious symbols are under attack by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)...>p> But the civil liberties group says the cross is offensive to Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim and other non-Christian veterans.... "If the plaintiff...

Thursday April 2, 2009 "Abortion is a Blessing": US Episcopalian Lesbian Minister Appointed to Head Prestigious Seminary By Hilary WhiteApril 2, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Katherine Hancock Ragsdale, an openly lesbian minister in the American Episcopal Church, has caused a stir on the internet with a sermon, posted to her weblog, in which she called abortion a "blessing" and called for the suppression of rights of conscience for health care workers. In her sermon, titled, "Our Work is Not Done," she wrote that there should be no restrictions whatever on abortion: "If we were to find that, while we were...

Wassup, pagans? Me and the rest of my heathens plan to gather Saturday in Redwood City to celebrate the change of seasons. Well, I might not be there, but the the Druid posse should be in full effect. I don't mean a rival to the now defunct Taliban gang. I mean reconstructed Celtic-religion adherents from the Fellowship of Druidism for the Latter Age. I got the word as a member of the San Jose Pagan/Magick Meetup Group, although I admit I've yet to attend a face-to-face event. It's more a matter of motivating the body off the couch than encouraging...

A reporter for The Nation magazine reported today that the President Barack Hussein Obama support group Code Pink held a witchcraft ceremony to 'cleanse' the White House on President Bush's last full day in office.One of Code Pink's leaders, Jodie Evans, was an early financial supporter of Obama's, serving as a bundler for his campaign and donating the maximum to his primary and general election campaigns, as well as thousands of dollars to the Obama Victory Fund. Code Pink also organized get out the vote efforts for Obama.Code Pink's affiliation with witchcraft was present at its creation--a Wiccan who calls...

The report claims more than 50,000 women a year have deserted their congregations over the past two decades because they feel the church is not relevant to their lives. It says that instead young women are becoming attracted to the pagan religion Wicca, where females play a central role, which has grown in popularity after being featured positively in films, TV shows and books. The study comes amid ongoing controversy over the role of women in all Christian denominations. Last month its governing body voted to allow women to become bishops for the first time, having admitted them to the...

While Senator Barack Obama struggles to keep the public in the dark about the nature of his pro-U.N. Global Poverty Act, a recent "Bay Area Interfaith Leaders' Luncheon" was held to lobby for Senate passage of the bill, whose cost has been estimated at $845 billion. An actual witch who spoke at a "Pagan Pride" festival in San Francisco was one of the listed participants. The witch, known as the "Elder Donald Frew" of the "Wiccan Community," was interviewed by the Reverend Don Lewis of "Witch School International" for a "reality" show called "Magick TV" and is shown talking about...

PLANTS deserve respect, a group of Swiss experts says, arguing that killing them arbitrarily is morally wrong - except when it comes to saving humans or maybe picking petals off a daisy. In a report on "the dignity of the creature in the plant world", the federal Ethics Committee on non-human Gene Technology condemned the decapitation of flowers without reason, among other sins. Still, commission member Bernard Baertsche suggested the body weighed such cruel acts on a case by case basis, noting "the simple pleasure of picking the petals off a daisy might suffice as a reason". Similarly "all action...

Can you summarize the reason for the title, Pagan Christianity ? Sure. The title neatly packs the entire point of the book into two words. Pagan Christianity is actually an oxymoron . . . both terms carry concepts that are mutually exclusive. And that is precisely what we have on the earth today. Modern Christianity, whether Protestant or Catholic, is a blending of pagan and Christian practices and mindsets. The book demonstrates that virtually all of the practices of the modern church have their roots in pagan culture rather than the Word of God. The book contains over 1100 footnotes...

“Paganism” is a term fraught with all sorts of connotations. It originally meant something like “country dweller,” “rustic” or even “hick.” That’s because (contrary to popular myth) Christianity did not spread among the Hee Haw-watchers of antiquity, but among the city dwellers and urban folk. The very last people to receive the faith were the rural folk who clung to the worship of the old gods and the customs of their ancestors long after Christianity had become thoroughly established in the cities. So the term originally referred only to “country folk.” However, because the country folk were devoted to the...

This looks like a good resource: When the day's news is about "witches," many Americans reflexively conjure up images of ugly, wicked hags from stories like "Snow White" and "The Wizard of Oz" – or more recently, the smiling "good witches" of Harry Potter books and films. But none of these fictional fantasies has anything to do with the real thing. The real thing – that is, the stunning phenomenon of more and more American housewives, students, professors, and even soldiers self-identifying as "witches" – is the topic of the January edition of WND's elite monthly Whistleblower magazine. Titled "WITCHCRAFT...

Former Episcopal Priest Explores Christianity and Druidry in New Novel http://www.bloggernews.net/112455 December 17th, 2007 by suzanne evans On March 22nd 2005, The Rev Walter William Melnyk was forced out of the priesthood of the US Episcopal Church after facing charges of “holding private opinions inconsistent with the teachings of the Church.” This allegation, effectively a heresy charge, ended his 23 year-strong vocation as a priest, even though his only transgression was to look into Celtic Christianity and its connection with pre-Christian Druidry. Now, Walter William Melnyk has delved further into those links in a new novel written with Druid priestess...