Wicca: For the Rest of Us - Christian Wicca

First, it must be made clear here that I have nothing against the beliefs of the "Christian Wiccans." However, their religion bears a dangerous and illogical name because it suggests that it is both Christian and Wiccan, when generally it is neither. Many Christian Wiccans even insist that they are practicing members of both religions, and that claim has rather insurmountable theological problems. Quite frankly, insisting on maintaining connections with Christianity and Wicca only hamstrings this belief system: better to strike off in your own new direction than to remain tied to two mutually exclusive albatrosses. Also, Christian Wicca is quite distinct from Christo-Paganism. There is nothing inherently polytheistic about Paganism (although most are), so the complications facing Christian Wicca are absent in Christo-Paganism.

Second, in defining Christianity and Wicca, I have striven for the widest logical definitions. Fundamentalists on both sides will object that these definitions are too broad, but if Christian Wicca cannot even fit within wide, generic definitions, then it certainly cannot fit within anything more narrow. For an impartial source, I turned to the dictionary,¹ which always seems like a reasonable source when debating the meaning of words:

Christianity: the religion derived from Jesus Christ, based on the Bible as sacred scripture, and professed by Eastern, Roman Catholic, and Protestant bodies
Wicca: a religion influenced by pre-Christian beliefs and practices of western Europe that affirms the existence of supernatural power (as magic) and of both male and female deities who inhere in nature, and that emphasizes ritual observance of seasonal and life cycles

The Bible is rooted in the belief that there is a single god that worshippers may worship, a being commonly referred to today as God. There are no other acceptable deities. Wicca, on the other hand, involves the reverence of two deities minimally, a god and a goddess. These are core beliefs of both religions, and they are not compatible. If you worship God alongside a goddess, then you are breaking the commandment to worship only God, and you are denying his existence as the only God. It's like saying "I'll listen to you, but only when I feel like it."

What about Mary? Mary isn't a goddess. Even if you believe that she was based on some older pagan goddess, the Christian Mary is not a goddess. She is a mortal. To elevate Mary to the godhood necessary for Wicca destroys a vitally important, even fundamental, facet of the Virgin because Jesus's own dual nature, through which he can be an intermediary between God and man, is formed through his parentage: one god, one mortal. Worshipping her as a goddess is completely against Christianity. Some Catholics effectively do, addressing their prayers directly to Mary, but that is, technically speaking, a heresy. Mary, like the saints, can work as an intermediary, but she transmits the prayers to God, who does the actually prayer answering. Worshipping her as a mortal is against Wicca, because the god and goddess of Wicca are complementary and equal. All-knowing, all-powerful God and mortal woman are in no way equal. You can't just take one theology and smack it down on top of another theology and say "close enough".

What about the Gnostic goddess Sophia? Gnosticism was branded a heresy by the Christian Church, so calling any Gnostic belief "Christian" is at best pushing definitions tremendously. Most Gnostics describe themselves simply as Gnostics. Some call themselves Gnostic Christians. But none that I know of call themselves simply Christian, because they recognize and admit the vastly different beliefs between Gnosticism and Christianity.

What about Asherah, once followed by ancient Hebrews? Note the word "ancient." The Hebrew people have been around longer than what we identify as Judaism. While the Torah is traditionally said to have been composed around 1200 BCE, codified, written copies do not show up until around 600 BCE. The Hebrews may have recognized Asherah before the Ten Commandments were handed down to them. Also, the Bible is full of incidents where the Hebrews worshipped other gods in defiance of the Commandments. Finally, even if the Jews did worship her, that, at best, makes her Jewish, not Christian.

Even if you can somehow justify multiple gods in a Christian context, there is a lot more to both religions than just the issue of deities.

Satan - Satan has no place in Wicca. Satan is an embodiment of evil, and supernatural powers within a Wiccan content are intimately a part of nature. The acknowledgment of Satan within a Wiccan context would imply that some part of nature is inherently evil, which Wiccans deny.

Jesus as Savior - Christians believe that Jesus is necessary for salvation because we are, by our nature, tainted creatures, either because we are corporeal or because of Original Sin (or both), depending on your denomination. Wicca does not accept that we can be tainted because of our mere existence. Any taint that we might bear comes from our own choice of actions, not our nature.

Original Sin - Wicca does not believe that one is held accountable for another's transgressions. Original Sin transmits the guilt of Eve to all of her descendants.

Hell for unbelievers - Wicca's tolerance for other religions makes this a nonsensical concept. And if you don't believe nonbelievers are going to Hell, what exactly is Jesus saving you from?

Evangelizing - One of the duties of Christians is to "spread the Good Word". It's not only a long standing practice - it's Biblical. That doesn't mean force beliefs upon others, but it does mean actively preaching and/or seeking out potential converts, both of which are anathema to Wicca.

Now, you can almost certainly find members of both religions who do not espouse one or more of the above points (the Christian points or the Wiccan counterpoints). The problem is, if you keep making exceptions to the "rules" (for lack of a better term here), you end up with something completely different from the original point of reference. Yes, some Christians debate the existence of Satan or even Hell. But if you take out Satan and Hell and Original Sin and commandments for monotheism and the divinity of Jesus and the need for Salvation, why are you calling whatever is left "Christian"?

The single published book on the subject, Christian Wicca: The Trinitarian Tradition by Rev. Nancy Chandler Pittman, stems from five years of:

research and comparative studies of the Pagan Wheel of the Year, the Kabbalah, and the Gnostic Gospels. The overwhelming parallels made me wonder why no one else had written such a book for magickal [sic] practitioners who uphold the Wiccan Rede, but choose to not give up Jesus as Lord.[2]

It is noteworthy that nothing in her comparative study is actually Christian, and the one Wiccan element involved is labeled as Pagan, as if the terms were interchangeable. Biblical arguments are, in fact, suspiciously missing, perhaps because, in Pittman's own words: "[m]ost of the information of any Female Deity or feminine affiliation with the Godhead is absent from the Holy Bible."[3] Instead, her "Christian" evidence stems from Kabbalah and Gnostic texts, neither of which mainstream Christians accept as Christian.[4] Therefore, Pittman exists in a Christianity largely of her own making.

Pittman's fusion of Wicca and Christianity also requires the existence of the Old Religion, which the Catholic Church supposedly subsumed by adopting its deities as saints and the Sabbats as holy days, and transforming the ancient rituals into the Mass.[5] Because Wicca is understood to be the modern form of the Old Religion, Wicca and Christianity are therefore religious blood brothers, largely originating from a single source and therefore somehow compatible. It is interesting to note here that even among those who identify themselves as both Christian and Wiccan, a bias still exists against historical Christianity. While the Old Religion naturally evolved into modern Wicca, Christianity attempted to subvert the Old Religion by force and had to make fundamental concessions "in exchange for [the pagans] accepting the Christian male Trinity."[6]

�� Pittman herself defines a Christian simply as one who has a "personal relationship with Jesus and the Holy Trinity"[7] while all but discounting Jesus's accepted teachings: "Who determines that Wicca is not an acceptable method of worshipping the Holy Trinity? Do I trust my life and my spiritual soul to British Scholars [at?] the Court of King James?"[8] Who one chooses to trust in spiritual matters is an intensely personal decision. However, to conclude that the accepted fundamental sources of a religion are untrustable is to undermine the very foundation of that religion. To throw out the authority of the Bible � and indeed replace it with texts from outside Christianity � yet continue to call oneself Christian employs a label without its substance. What Pittman is really offering is a new religion altogether, not merely new versions of older traditions.

�� Pittman's treatment of Wicca is no better, as "to follow the Wiccan path only requires me to follow the Wiccan Rede, honor the Divine as both male (God) and female (Goddess), [and] try to live by the 3-fold Law of Karma as often as humanly possible."[9] In fact, this definition comes nowhere close to defining Wicca. Large numbers of witches, Pagans of various faiths, and even non-Pagan polytheists might fall under this definition, albeit without calling the Rede and the Threefold Law by the same names.

There is NOTHING wrong with combining certain Christian and Wiccan beliefs into something new. However, if you're creating something new, why insist on labeling yourself something you no longer are? Christianity came from Judaism, but Christians don't claim that they're Jews. If you believe the Trinity to be three separate deities, that's your right. But that is NOT a Christian belief. By insisting on being both Christian and Wiccan, you've committed yourself to two incompatible theologies. Also, there's certainly nothing wrong with bringing certain Christian concepts into your Wiccan practice or certain Wiccan concepts into Christian practice. But neither of these situations results in a "Christian Wiccan".

[2] Nancy Chandler Pittman, http://www.christianwicca.org/predecessors.php. The Wheel of the Year is a cycle of eight festivals throughout the year. The Wiccan Rede states "An it harms none, do as you will."

[3] Pittman, http://www.christianwicca.org/ladygod.php.

[4] There are a growing number of people who follow the Gnostic texts. However, they generally refer to themselves as Gnostic Christians or, more often, simply as Gnostics.

[5] Pittman, http://www.christianwicca.org/wicca.php. Margaret Murray largely shaped the concept of the Old Religion in The Witch-Cult of Western Europe and The God of the Witches (Sampson Low, Marston and Co., 1933; reprint, London, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1970). Her theories were debunked in the 1960s, although some academics had voiced objections as early as the first publication of Witch-Cult. See also Noble, "Fact to Fallacy."

[6] Pittman, http://www.christianwicca.org/wicca.php.

[7] Pittman, http://www.christianwicca.org/notpagan.php.

[8] Ibid. Perhaps someone should loan her one of the numerous non-King James Bibles in existence.

[9] Ibid. The Threefold Law states that all actions return to the doer threefold. One cannot actually choose to live by it any more than one can choose to live by the law of gravity.