Not What You Were Told
Your niece comes home from college and tells you she is a witch. She doesn't mean the green-faced kind from a cartoon. She lights candles at the full moon, keeps a small altar, pulls a tarot card every morning, and says she has never felt more at peace. She also tells you she doesn't believe in the devil. On that point she is telling you the truth.
Much of what Christians have heard about witches is wrong. Wiccans do not worship Satan, and most do not believe he exists. Satanism is a separate thing, and they resent the confusion. If we get that wrong, we lose the right to be heard on anything else.
A modern nature religion, begun in England in the mid-twentieth century, that honors a Goddess and a God, keeps the cycles of the moon and the seasons, and practices ritual magic. Its followers, men and women alike, often call themselves witches.
The American Religious Identification Survey counted about 8,000 Wiccans in 1990 and about 342,000 in 2008. Pew's 2023-24 survey put Wiccans and Pagans together under one percent of American adults. But the wider world of witchcraft reaches far past those numbers, especially among the young. Wicca makes no claim to be Christian, so it belongs here among the world's religions. This study sets out what it teaches, what Scripture says, and what professing Christians have done, because all three must be faced honestly.
No one should read this afraid, and no one should read it angry. Your Wiccan friend is not your enemy, for we wrestle not against flesh and blood (Ephesians 6:12).
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For Deeper Study
- Goddess Worship, Witchcraft, and Neo-PaganismAmazon Craig S. HawkinsA short evangelical guide from the Zondervan Guide to Cults and Religious Movements series.
- The Triumph of the MoonAmazon Ronald HuttonThe standard history of modern pagan witchcraft, published by Oxford. Secular and long.
- In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692Amazon Mary Beth NortonA detailed history of Salem by an American historian. Secular.
- The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern EuropeAmazon Brian P. LevackA standard textbook on the European trials. Secular.
- Foxe's Book of MartyrsAmazon John FoxeThe classic Protestant record of those who died for the faith, from the early church to the English Reformation.
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The New Age and Modern Spirituality
The New Age is a loose family of modern spiritual beliefs, from the divine self and reincarnation to astrology and energy healing, that repeats the serpent's oldest promise and is answered by a holy Creator and a crucified Savior.
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