I will make a slight distinction between Paganism and path that I follow, which is Wicca. Wiccans are Pagans, but not all Pagans are Wiccan. A Pagan, as defined by Webster, is "not a Christian, Moslem, or Jew; heathen." And "a person who has no religion." This definition is one of the stereotypes carried over from the Middle Ages, which also equates Wiccans with Satanism. Originally the word "pagan" meant a country dweller, just as "heathen" meant someone who lives on the heath, a term given to uncultivated and forested land. Webster defines "heathen" as "a person regarded as uncivilized, unenlightened, irreligious". These are terms still used by many who equate any religion other than the three major ones to be "primitive" in nature.
 

The term "Pagans" is a collective one. Pagan religions today are, for the most part, reconstructed religions. They are religions that have incorporated the beliefs, symbols, practices and deities of other ancient religions and cultures. Wicca is based upon ancient Celtic beliefs, which go back 3000 years although there are some Wiccan practices that may be far older. Wicca is an earth-based religion that celebrates the seasonal cycles of the earth. There are many similarities between the Pagan religions, which include Shamanism, Druidism and the Norse Odinists. But there are also many differences. There is no one Pagan religion but as many distinct paths as there are Christian denominations. The followers of Asatru, a religion based on Norse gods and lore, consider themselves "Heathens" because they believe that their traditions are so different from the other Pagan faiths that they should not be considered "Pagan".
 

The Graduate Center of the City University of New York estimated in 2001 that there were 134,000 Wiccans, 140,000 Pagans, and 33,000 Druids in the United States. This is believed to represent only a fraction of the total however, due to many Pagans being reluctant to admit their faith to strangers. The number of popular books on Wicca and Paganism would seem to indicate that the numbers of Pagans, or at least the number of individuals interested in Paganism, is much larger. Of these totals approximately 11% are 17 years of age or under, 25% are 18 to 25, 40% are 26 to 39, 23% are 40 to 59 and only 1% are 60 or over. An interesting note is that 86% are registered to vote as compared to 50% of American adults generally.
 

While the statistics are beginning to show an increase in the number of people identifying themselves as Pagan in the United States, Christianity as a dominant religion is beginning to fade. In the US the number of adults who identify themselves as Christian is dropping by 10 percentage points per decade. In the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe, according to the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, a Canadian organization that monitors religions and their current status in the world, "Christianity has been largely abandoned". In Canada the figures are similar with only 10% of residents regularly attending church. I do not, however, believe that one can equate church attendance with religious identification. This statistic is not especially valid in my opinion. It is believed that by 2020 Christianity will become a minority religion in the United States, while the country becomes more religiously diverse.
 

However the establishment of Christianity as the state religion in the US will make the transition from a predominately Judeo-Christian country to one of diverse religious ideas, one filled with massive conflict.
 

Before I address the issues of church & state, and persecution in particular, let me briefly touch upon the belief systems of Pagans in general. We do not believe in Satan—Satan is a Judeo-Christian god and not one that any Wiccan or Pagan recognizes. We do not believe in the Judeo-Christian Hell. We do, for the most part, believe in reincarnation and that the soul returns to learn time and again until it figuratively graduates. Each lifetime is a different class and classroom. While we do not recognize Satan as a god of evil we do recognize that evil exists—but that evil comes from humankind. I believe that a lot of the evil perpetrated comes from young souls, not necessarily young souls in young people either, that have not been successfully socialized as yet. We do recognize a place that the soul goes to after death to await the next incarnation. Some of us call this place the Summerland.
 

We believe that there is One Divine Power but we also see this One Power as being made of both male and female characteristics. To make The Divine more personal many of us will see the various parts as individual Gods and Goddesses. We do not believe in one old white haired man in the sky as the One God but in a variety of gods and goddess who have distinct personalities that have been compared to the facets of a diamond. We do not recognize a god of jealousy, of fear. We are not browbeaten with the message that unless we submit, that "loving" god will forever torture us.
 

We do recognize a Goddess of toleration, a Goddess of creativity—not abuse, a Goddess who does not condemn but who teaches and recognizes our failures in life as simply life’s lessons. Likewise we recognize a God of creativity—a God that inhabits the wilderness and brings fertility to the animals and fields of the earth.
 

Some writers have stated that we are, in reality, the gods we worship. This is true to the extent that we are part of creation and thereby part of the Power. However this is a simplification. I do not think that we simply visualize, and thereby create, our gods. For me, the Goddess and the Horned One, are real. I have given them an identity that helps me connect with them, but they are. They would exist without a name or the simple trappings that I give them to form a physical dimension.
 

One of the very important differences between Pagans and those followers of patriarchal religions is that Pagans do view nature, and all of the animate/inanimate residents of nature, as sacred. Recently a local Baptist minister stated that the ills of our world were a result of mankind worshipping the creation rather than the creator. I think we all agree that you can’t separate one from the other. In fact, such a separation, which has occurred since the Judeo-Christian onslaught of the followers of the Great Mother, has resulted in the wholesale destruction of plant and animal species, the majority of the rain forests, and the continued plunder of the earth’s resources. This degradation of nature is a root cause of the world’s ills. We practice our religion by our continued diligence, by our fight to save the last refuges of the rainforests, and the Old Growth Redwoods, some of us practice our faith by refusing to eat the flesh of animals, and by our recycling efforts. We practice our religion by viewing our natural surroundings with the awe and wonder that our forebears did.
 

We practice our religion by recognizing that we are simply part of the scheme of things. We are part of the whole. We are not the owners of the world, or of other people, or of the deer and other wild animals that populate our woods.
 

It is the small things that we do in life that have a cumulative effect of greatness. We create greatness and ultimately live our beliefs by being healers, gardeners, teachers, students, parents, writers, artists, environmentalists’…anything that reflects a creative power rather than one of dominance, greed, destruction or fear. There is no room for such manmade powers of darkness.
 

Pagans today take on many forms. They are accountants, teachers, government workers, mechanics, truck drivers, and soldiers. They are students, children, parents and grandparents. Pagans are liberal in environmental causes because they view the Earth and the animals and plants that live upon her as sacred creatures. Pagans are tolerant of other viewpoints and believe that everyone has the right to worship the way he or she wishes—to choose the path that is right for them without interference or being told that they will go to hell if they don’t believe in the Judeo-Christian God.
 

The old stereotype of Pagans, and of Wiccans in particular, worshipping the devil is being replaced with the knowledge that Pagans are peaceful, believing in the rede that "An ye harm none, do as ye will".
 

In order to fully understand the problems faced by Wiccans, and others in a predominately Christian society, first you must become aware of the basic differences between Wicca and Christianity. Some of those differences are:
 

• The equality of men and women is accepted in Wicca and both may be priests or priestesses. Christianity for the most part reserves any positions of power in the church, the family and society in general, for males.
   

• Christianity establishes a hierarchy in its religious structure. The Pope is the supreme leader of the Catholic faith and each protestant organization has its leadership as well, usually invested in a single male. Paganism has no such structure. Some Druid Groves or Wiccan covens may have a high priest or priestess who acts mostly to facilitate and to teach, not to dominate. Pagans and Wiccans need no intermediary between themselves and their deity and because of this there are many solitary practitioners.
   

• Wicca generally accepts all sexual orientations as normal and natural. Christianity typically has a negative view of sexuality.
   

• Wiccans recognize a cyclical nature of time while Christianity views time as linear.
   

• Wiccans do not proselytize and Wiccan teachers will not normally give instruction to anyone under the age of 18 unless the individual is a child of the instructor, or the child has requested instruction and the parents have agreed. Many Christians believe that it is their duty to God to instruct the rest of the world, even other Christians, in their brand of Christianity.
   

• Wicca is an oral tradition and has no text that corresponds to the Bible.
   

Acts of violence and intolerance toward Pagans is further fueled by a lack of understanding and tolerance by other religious groups, educational institutions, and our state and federal governments. The Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance stated that they "remain concerned that oppression and violence (directed toward Wiccans) may increase in the future, for a variety of reasons:
 

"Many lies and much misinformation are still circulated among some Christian sources about Wiccans. Neopagans, including Wiccans, are often accused of being Satanists, engaging in degenerate sexual practices and child abuse. Such accusations have circulated for millennia against religious minorities (including Christians themselves). However, for Wiccans today, the untruths do not seem to be dissipating.
 

"Some Christians may feel threatened because of the increased religious diversity in the U.S. and Canada, and by the gradual reduction in the percentage of adults who consider themselves Christian." The Ontario Consultants also note "Wicca is growing rapidly. It is doubling is size about every 30 months. This greatly increases the opportunity for conflict. Wiccans are increasingly becoming more public with their religious identity, their beliefs and practices." Some of these conflicts have come to a head with the vandalism and destruction of Pagan places of worship, the vandalism and forced closure of Pagan businesses, the harassment of Pagan children by their Christian peers and the use of ill-framed laws to prohibit equal expression of religious beliefs. It is not uncommon for school districts to prohibit students, or teachers, from wearing the pentacle as an expression of faith but permit the cross or Star of David to be worn freely. The normal rational is that the pentacle is a "gang symbol". Any gang member I have seen prefers to wear the cross but this is never addressed. At one school board meeting on this subject in New Mexico a minister in attendance said of a high school student who was prohibited from wearing her pentacle:
 

"We’re not wanting to deny this woman’s right to worship whatever she says she worships. Our whole point was, nobody has the right to promote violence in our school system. If it’s about a symbol, change her symbol."
 

The pentacle has never been a symbol of violence. The five points represent the four elements, earth, air, fire and water, and the fifth represents spirit. Would this minister change his symbol because the fiery cross has been used to terrorize blacks and others since the civil war, symbolizing hatred and violence?
 

This school policy has been found unconstitutional time and again but it takes a threat of a lawsuit or intervention of the ACLU to persuade the school boards to reverse their stands. On a per capita basis there are more hate crimes and acts of violence directed toward Wiccans than toward any other faith in the US. The numbers may have changed in recent months due to the targeting of Muslims for acts of intolerance. In contrast, notes the Ontario Consultants, "conflicts between Christians and Wiccans seem to be largely unidirectional. Wiccans appear to have little or no concern about the religious beliefs, practices or activities of Christians, except when it involves oppression of fellow Neopagans or of other faith groups."
 

Even though the established Judeo-Christian framework of religion in this country is beginning to fray, the framework is still inflexible. Pagans, actually any non-Judeo-Christian individual in the US, are subject to the insidious discriminatory practices that are clothed in the flowery American rhetoric of the extreme right.
 

Here are a few examples of these practices, found in legal documents from around the nation:
 

From the Massachusetts’ Declaration of Rights comes this article, which appears to provide protection only to Christian denominations:
 

"...every denomination of Christians, demeaning themselves peaceably, and as good subjects of the commonwealth, shall be equally under the protection of the law"…
 

From the state Constitution of North Carolina:
 

" Disqualifications of office. The following persons shall be disqualified for office: First, any person who shall deny the being of Almighty God...."
 

Tennessee's Bill of Rights: Article 9:
 

Section 2. " No person who denies the being of God, or a future state of rewards and punishments, shall hold any office in the civil department of this state."
 

Obviously these laws are antiquated and may be considered by some to be "quaint". However should one fall victim to these articles it is a long and expensive venture to overcome them. More insidious is that the intent of these laws still finds their places in the hearts of men of power. In 1999 then governor of Texas George W. Bush, in response to the military’s practice that gives Wiccans equal religious standing with mainstream religions, said "I am committed to the First Amendment principles of religious freedom, tolerance, and diversity. Whether Mormon, Methodist, Jewish, or Muslim, Americans should be able to participate in their constitutional free exercise of religion. I do not think witchcraft is a religion, and I do not think it is in any way appropriate for the U.S. military to promote it."

while only a small fraction of Christians exhibit the intolerance that I have illustrated here, it is through this lack of tolerance and understanding that all of us here today are threatened. The majority is tolerant and respectful of other beliefs. However it is the vocal minority lead by extremist that endangers religious freedom in this country. I strongly support the right of everyone to believe as they see fit. I believe that every individual should have the protected right to believe in any or no god, and worship or not worship in whatever manner they wish. No one has the right to force a religion upon anyone or make laws that attempt to regulate belief and personal conscious. To do so creates a society of fanaticism, which destroys free thought, liberty, personal expression and the ability to satisfy the human need to explore and to find meaning within ourselves.