Dave Banack over at Mormon Inquiry   is wondering what the deeper spiritual meaning might be for the growing toleration of Wiccans and other NeoPagans in America today.  On the one hand, we demonstrably aren’t particularly dangerous to anyone, but on the other hand, our theology explicitly rejects many of the core staples of Abrahamic monotheism, and back when those staples were taken seriously, we’d end up dangling from a gibbet or being crisped by a flame.

What does it all men?  On the one hand he is right in my view that a secular society does not regard religious beliefs as worth fighting about.  To each his or her own.

But I also think we speak to deep needs that more and more spiritually sensitive people are experiencing.  By this I do NOT mean that Wicca is the religion of the future, or that it should be.  I mean something more interesting than that.

Increasingly today people are seeking a feminine as well as masculine conception, and hopefully connection, with the sacred.  Many no longer take the idea of an old guy up in the sky handing down commands as a very meaningful concept of the sacred.  Further, for various interesting reasons, we no longer look at wild nature as a challenge to conquer or threat to be feared so much as a source of solace, healing, and perspective, as well as unutterable beauty.

NeoPagans in general and Wiccans in particular base virtually all our practices on the sacredness of natural cycles and the importance of the Divine Feminine as first among equals.  Given that similar currents are flowing in contemporary Judaism, Christianity, and other traditions, the perception we are no threat, and may even be worth paying attention to, is not a sign of spiritual decline, but rather of spiritual growth.

So we Pagans are beneficiaries of two distinct trends in modern society, even as we are threatened by another.  We benefit from tolerant secularism (as distinct from Sam Harris style fundamentalist atheism .  See Chris Hedges’ take down  of this attitude.) 

We also benefit from those serious spiritual traditions who have accepted the truths of modernity and reason, and seek to integrate them into a wider and deeper spiritual framework.  We are still threatened, potentially lethally, by those fundamentalist traditions operating from pride and fear that do not.  We are safe, but alas, not as safe as I think Dave Banack believes.

It is an interesting time.