People accused of witchcraft in America aren’t executed anymore (we are 300 years and a First Amendment away from Puritan Massachusetts). These days they just lose their jobs.
Don Larsen discovered this the hard way. A year ago, Larsen was a Pentecostal Christian minister serving as an Army chaplain in Iraq. But then he converted to Wicca, whose members are self-described witches, and applied to become the first Wiccan chaplain in the U.S. armed forces. (more…)
After a rocket-propelled grenade struck Army Sgt. Patrick Dana Stewart’s helicopter Sept. 25, 2005, in Afghanistan, his widow, Roberta, faced religious prejudice.
Roberta applied to have the symbol of her husband’s faith placed on his grave marker in Nevada, but the Department of Veterans Affairs refused. The VA does not recognize Stewart’s religion, Wicca, often called witchcraft. (more…)
Few bureaucrats can subvert a well-intentioned principal like the separation of church and state with the hypocritical bombast of school administrators. But when they actually succeed in making religious fanatics seem rationale, well now that’s an achievement worthy of an OFF/beat Idiot of the Year nomination.
Donna Brewer, of Willow Hill, Pennsylvania, is suing Abington School District, claiming that her 10-year-old son’s “rights to religion and free speech were violated” because he was not allowed to wear a Jesus costume during his school’s Halloween parade. The federal suit was filed on her son’s behalf by the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal group that believes in spreading the Gospel through “traditional family values.” It further claims that since costumes were mandatory and many students chose to dress as “witches and ghouls” (i.e., pagan costumes), Willow Hill Elementary violated the fourth-grader’s equal protection rights. (more…)
Minneapolis, MN - Oblivious to an icy, spitting wind, Vietnam veteran Al Hensel held high an American flag as he and three fellow vets marched Saturday into a circle of birdseed laid out in front of the State Capitol in St. Paul.
Hensel, 53, of Minneapolis, who served in the Marine Corps from 1971 to 1973, was among about 150 pagans and Wiccans who rallied Saturday to urge the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to add the Wiccan pentacle to the list of 38 religious symbols approved for use on military-cemetery gravestones and other markers. Participants — women and men, old and young — came from Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa. (more…)
Don Larsen was, by all reports, an excellent Army Chaplain. When he was a Pentecostal Christian, that is. His superior while he was in Iraq, Chaplain Kevin L. McGhee, called Larsen “the best” out of the 26 chaplains he supervised. But then Larsen applied to change his religious affiliation to Wicca, and the Army railroaded him out of Iraq and out of the Army.
The whole sordid story is extensively detailed in a recent article in the Washington Post which (though long) is well worth reading for anyone interested in the subject. (more…)
The night wind pushes Don Larsen’s green robe against his lanky frame. A circle of torches lights his face.
“The old gods are standing near!” calls a retired Army intelligence officer.
“To watch the turning of the year!” replies the wife of a soldier wounded in Iraq.
“What night is this?” calls a former fighter pilot.
“It is the night of Imbolc,” responds Larsen, a former Army chaplain.
Of the 16 self-described witches who have gathered on this Texas plain to celebrate a late-winter pagan festival with dancing, chanting, chili and beer, all but two are current or former military personnel. Each has a story. None can compete with Larsen’s. (more…)
Sioux Falls, SD - An inmate serving life in prison for a torture murder that sent two co-defendants to death row wants a federal judge to approve a toy sword and other items and privileges for the practice of an ancient European religion.
Darrell Hoadley, of Lead, who was convicted of murder for his part in the 2000 slaying of Chester Allan Poage near Spearfish, filed the handwritten complaint in U.S. District Court. He lists himself in court documents as counsel elder of the Asatru religious group. (more…)
Americans aren’t shy about invoking their First Amendment rights — especially over issues of religion and values in public schools.
Over one 10-day period in January, I heard from Wiccans in North Carolina upset about school Internet filters filtering out information on the Wicca belief system; a student in Florida challenging a school speech code; a teacher in Utah worried about school censorship of a religious T-shirt; and a California parent concerned about the accuracy of religious material used to teach Thanksgiving. (more…)
A federal lawsuit filed by Wiccans against the Department of Veterans Affairs will proceed despite a request by the VA that it be put on hold for perhaps as much as a year.
The lawsuit, filed in November, accuses the VA of coming up with “excuse after excuse” for more than nine years for not putting the Wiccan symbol on grave markers of veterans who were members of that religion. The department does not allow Wiccan religious symbols on veterans’ headstones in national cemeteries. (more…)
