Above the woman’s fireplace hangs her wedding picture, taken in a Lutheran church years ago. Below it, on the mantelpiece, is a small Wiccan altar: two candles, a tiny cauldron, four stones to represent the elements of nature and a small amethyst representing her spirit.The wedding portrait is always there. But whenever someone comes to visit, the woman sweeps the altar away. Raised Southern Baptist in Virginia and now a stay-at-home mother of two in this Washington suburb, she has told almost no one — not her relatives, her friends or the other mothers in her children’s playgroups — that she is Wiccan.
Among the most popular religions to have flowered since the 1960s, Wicca — a form of paganism — still faces a struggle for acceptance, experts on the religion and Wiccans themselves said. In April, Wiccans won an important victory when the Department of Veterans Affairs settled a lawsuit and agreed to add the Wiccan pentacle to a list of approved religious symbols that it will engrave on veterans’ headstones.
But Wicca in the civilian world is largely a religion in hiding. Wiccans fear losing their friends and jobs if people find out about their faith.
“I would love to be able to say ‘Accept us for who we are,’ but I can’t, mainly because of my kids,” said the suburban mother, who agreed to talk only on the condition of anonymity. “Children can be cruel, and their parents can be even more cruel, and I don’t want my kids picked on for the choice their mommy made.”
I suppose what interests me most about this story is the way it demonstrates the need to believe in something. Most people who leave behind the religion of their parents do not leave behind a practicing faith, but gravitate towards something on the margins of "respectability." There really aren't many flat-out atheists.
3 comments:
Liberalpastor, you have just confirmed what I suspected...you don't read my posts very often. (And more rarely comment on them.) Look back before your previous post and you will see this article.
Well, it could be that I just missed it because I read the blog earlier in the morning than you posted ;) And although I read lots of blogs I rarely if ever comment on anyone's posts.
Fair enough...And thanks for commenting ;-) !
I often feel following "the path of the blog" is just so much like one hand trying to clap. Without the exchange of a dialague there can be no learning and no sense of community. It seems to me it must be an awful lot like standing alone on a Sunday morning facing an audience without time for a discussion afterward.
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