Lately, I’ve been getting bored with people using Fundamentalist Christians as rhetorical punching bags… but it’s just so damned easy. Especially when they start running off at the mouth about pop culture and alternative religion. Via AltReligion, here’s yet another tantalizingly stupid article about Harry Potter, Halloween, Wicca and the occult’s lure for teenagers. As invigorating as it might be just to slaughter this entire article wholesale, I wanted to focus on just one section where they are actually addressing the problems with Christianity that lead young people away from it. Most of this consists of quotes from a fellow named Steve Russo who wrote a book called Protecting Your Teen from Today’s Witchcraft: A Parent’s Guide to Confronting Wicca And the Occult.
“This is an experiential generation. They are seeking power to change lives, power to feel special … They are looking for control. ‘You need to control your destiny,’ which is just one more variation of the lie Satan has been perpetuating since the beginning of human history.â€
Because teens focus on the experiential, they are seeking relationships and a spirituality that is real, said Russo, an evangelist who has appeared on numerous national radio shows, including Focus on the Family. Helping to fuel their exodus from Christianity, he said, is the fact that many adults, including their parents and church leaders, can’t articulate to young people the dynamics of a victorious walk with the Lord.
“They don’t know what they believe, why they were living it, and were leading powerless lives,†Russo said teens have told him. “I don’t think they were far off.
What I don’t get is: if there is such a clear understanding of what’s leading people away from Christianity, why aren’t they fixing those inherent problems, rather than trying to slap an anti-occult band-aid across the bleeding wounds of Christ’s mystical body?
Based on what this article is saying, teens (and others, presumably) leave the church because they are looking for a direct religious experience which makes them feel special and gives them control over their lives. The people quoted in this article seem to want you to believe that these things are totally nuts! But they’re perfectly natural. In fact, they are attributes of what to me seems like a really healthy sense of spirituality.
Rather than give people pointers on how to incorporate these natural and healthy human drives into their spiritual lives as Christians, the only thing this article offers is a “Parents Beware” list of things to watch out for that might (or just as easily might not) indicate your teen has gone over to the dark side:
- Teens pull back from them and perhaps some of their old friends.
- There is a dramatic change is behavior.
- The teen has occult books, especially “A Book of Shadows,†a diary used to maintain spells, incantations and spiritual contacts.
- Unusual amount of candle wax in their room
- The presence of ornate knives or ceremonial daggers
Sheesh! I’m surprised they didn’t just come right out and put “Listens to rock music” or “Watches Buffy the Vampire Slayer” at the top of that list. The first two items on this list are normal teen behaviors. The last three simply indicate a desire for an authentic religious experience. In my mind, the best route for parents to take with kids like this is introduce them to the roots of the Christian religion and it’s rituals, and show them how it all comes out of a common root, and explore why we even have religion at all. I could just have a totally warped perspective on all this, but it seems to me like if you’re really a Christian and have devoted your heart to Christ, then exploring and probing these realms not only doesn’t harm you, but actually strengthens your understanding of spirituality.
I recognize, of course, this is probably a journey through faith that most parents wouldn’t know how to undertake with their children. And that’s why we have authors like Steve Russo, to put together guidebooks for busy parents to aid them in areas like this. But come on, we must be able to put together something better than what’s being offered here. If so many Christians are so damned curious about the occult, how come nobody’s really exploring this in anything but a fearful way? Seems like anybody (okay maybe not anybody) could swoop into this book market and put together a hip manual for teens and their parents to explore the roots of their faith which includes alternative religions. Shockingly, I’m only seeing one book about Christian Wicca, and no books about Christian “Magick”. What gives? Why isn’t anybody tackling this? Is it because Wiccans are scared of Christians and Christians are scared of Wiccans? That’s crazy though, because when you get down to it, this shit’s all the same.
But then, that’s coming from somebody who runs a website called “Pop Occulture.” I guess I’ll just have to be the one to write this book and inject something actually useful into the discourse in this area (although, maybe this is what all the Da Vinci Code/Mary Magdalene stuff is really doing culturally). I wonder if I could trick mainstream Christians into letting me onto their radio shows?
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ASSOCIATED CONTENT @TMBCHR (Auto-Generated)
- Competing Christian Myths
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- Obese Wiccans, Part 2
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12 Comments
Have you checked out this guy. I intend to get his books sooner or later, but they are self-published and I’d prefer to buy through Amazon or a similar service. But it looks like fascinating stuff, so I’m sure I’ll cave in.
There is a Christian occult tradition, there just aren’t that many specific how-to’s. Anyone interested has to piece together much of it on their own.
I really don’t understand why there aren’t more how-to’s and more things which explicitly bridge this gap. It seems like it’s just waiting to be filled in in contemporary (oc)culture…
I think that the biggest reason for the divorce between Xianity and the occult tends to be that movements like the GD incorporate Xian symbology, and that practices like Hoodoo incorporate Vodoun into everyday life but remain nominally Xian. Xianity tends towards mysticism, if you ask me–look at pantheist movements like the Quakers and the Brotherhood of the Free Spirit. Xianity seems very much in a “devotional” method, rather than, say, a Theurgic one. I can’t really figure how a mainline, protestant Xian would flip over into casting spells etc.
I can see Wicca latching onto Xianity, but not vice-versa. Wicca is, after all, an engineered, reconstructionist religion–it’d be easy to add on to that. Many European folk practices resemble Vodoun in that they are nominally Xian, but in fact syncretic. This is a difficult topic because it’s so fuzzy. At what point does one move out of one category and into another?
Well, I wonder if the connection might be in prayer. When does a prayer become (or stop being) a magical act?
prayer and meditation never stop being magical. they are the things that create the world we live in. christianity robotises neurotic people into cubicle existance. once you wake up and start asking questions you will piss of dogmatic sunday plank-riders, especially if you have a genuine neurological orgasm and you can allow the experience as part of normal existance. religions have thier higher teachings which are hidden or occult by definition but they aren`t for consumption by the masses. the masses get hypnotising dogma and pressure to donate to keep the roof on the church.
young people are naturally drawn to magic and the occult because the modern church patronises the shit out of them. kids aren`t stupid. they have an emerging unserstanding of things. they are people and they want to be part of the magic.
“Is it because Wiccans are scared of Christians and Christians are scared of Wiccans? That’s crazy though, because when you get down to it, this shit’s all the same.”
Very well put, TIm. Thank you.
As I’ve said earlier, the idea that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene is not an historical fact but rather a mythic nod to the fusion of radicalized Roman Judaism with older traditions of the Divine feminine.
One assumption that lies at the base of mainstream Christianity’s fear of all other paths is the idea that every human is a slave who exists only in order to control and be controlled by others. The Christian’s is the only moral path because his is the only “good” controller. The biblical man as the “head of the family” controls his wife even as he is controlled by god. Pure top-down hierarchy. Fundamentalist Christianity does not recognize the sovereignty of the individual. To be sovereign, one must have control over oneself. This state of being is reserved only for the one at the head of the pyramid: Jehova, the “most high” god. Everyone else takes orders or is condemned to labor in an illusion.
My mother is a fundy who watches televangelists all day. Whenever I lay some ideas on her that she is afraid of she asks “where I’m getting them” or “who I’ve been listening to”. In her paranoid worldview, ideas are never generated by the thinker, only borne by him in service of another–who ultimately is either a slave of God or Satan. If she doesn’t recognize an idea as having come from the authorized Christian catalogue, she immediately ascribes it to Satan. Fundamentalists are deathly afraid of alternative paths because such paths may provoke original (or at least independant) thought, which can result in personal sovereignty, which is an affront to their god because it threatens his power structure.
I think it was on Rev Max’s site years ago that I first encountered the question “if ‘Jehova your god is a jealous god’, then who is he jealous of? Who else is there?” I think it’s either us (potentially, at least) or the other gods, and that’s why I tend towards polytheistic gnosticism.
When Russo says the possibility of controlling one’s own destiny is “just one more variation of the lie Satan has been perpetuating since the beginning of human history”, what he really means is that it is one more nagging suspicion that exoteric Christians have been straining to supress since the beginning of their indoctrination. When you ask why they aren’t “fixing those inherent problems, rather than trying to slap an anti-occult band-aid across the bleeding wounds of Christ’s mystical body”, I think it is because they are drones who can only traffic in pre-approved ideas from that metaphorical catalogue of Christian concepts I mentioned earlier. They know they are at a disadvantage on the field of ideas because it is blasphemous for them to engage in original thought, but the “enemy” can do all the depth thinking it wants to. The best they can do is ignore the enemy (”get thee behind me, Satan”) and give themselves over with more zeal to the controlling words of those higher up the pyramid then themselves. It’s all very hive-like.
I really don’t think that’s an accurate statement to say that assumption is at the basis of Christianity, even if it might reflect your own anger or resentment over the acts of certain Christians.
I can only go on my experience, and I’ve never met a professed Christian whose faith didn’t act as a buffer between himself/herself and other people. When I contemplate the modern, mainstream system of Christianity, (including its political arms, not least of which is Russo’s employer Focus on the Family) it really looks to me like a machine whose primary purpose is to produce people with the controller/slave mentality.
I think it takes honest communication between multiple individuals to get at the truth when looking for a solution to a shared problem. If you’re a fundy, there are some places your mind just isn’t allowed to go. That includes too far outward and too far inward. So you’re crippled when it comes to fixing problems in the way you and your bretheren operate.
As a fundy you can’t consort with Wiccans to find out why their spirituality feels more “real” to teens, or in what ways it operates to produce individuals with whom relationships seem more “real”. What if the answer is “Through communion with natural sprits we feel a comraderie with nature and an increased affinity for other humans, who are manifestations of this nature?” Well, you can’t apply that insight because your system doesn’t allow you to see spirits in trees. Your god is jealous of other spirits. You aren’t allowed to look outward to Wiccans or inward to yourself, either. If you looked inward you’d be in esoteric country, where it is necessary to question exoteric law. Perhaps there you would find a way to use Wiccan philosophy to bolster or accentuate your faith.
John Taylor Gatto (I think) said something like this: “The primary goal of a system is always the continuance of the system, not the accomplishment of its stated goals.” When I look into mainstream Christianity all I see is a system working only towards the continuance of itself in its current incarnation. Change might be possible through the actions of an esoteric vanguard, but the high level controllers in the current system are getting so fat and happy they’d surely put the kibosh on that in a second.
That’s precisely what I’m saying. By insisting that Christians are all slaves, etc you’re never going to encourage them to have honest communication with you, and you’re knowingly mixing up facts with impressions and grudges
This is definitely true for some forms of fundamentalist Christianity and I think it’s useful to articulate it this simply and clearly. Czyx isn’t saying *all* christians are this way.
Yes, I’m not saying that all Christians are slaves, but that the religio-political system which subsumes them encourages over/under control relationships and is exceedingly good at propagating such relationships. These imbalanced relationships retard individual growth which is necessary for enlightment, gnosis, generation of a soul, whatever.
The Christian system is only a system, beholden to the rules of any system. It’s survival is paramount, so it ignores its own content if that content threatens its own existence. For instance, the kingdom of heaven being “inside you” and the presence of God existing where only “two or three are gathered”, seem to be anti-system messages in that they encourage introspection and play down member-attracting mass pageantry respectively. This is good stuff which a wise person of any religion should be able to utilize, but the Christian system knows better than to focus on it.
If Christians want to get anywhere with people (especially teens) who left the fold because they thought the religion was empty and beyond redemption, it is imperative for them to see the worst in Christianity or else they will be unable to see it from the viewpoint of those who hated it enough to abandon it. Most religions encase their truths in a shell of fundamentalism which is designed to carry the core teachings through long ages of human ignorance. A problem occurs when the insides dry out and no one can remember them. Then you’re left with a bunch of people carrying out rituals and spouting dogma they don’t understand: “parents and church leaders” who “can’t articulate to young people the dynamics of a victorious walk with the Lord” as Russo says.
Even a Christian has to admit that biblical teachings indicate the statistical majority of so-called Christians are false. Matthew 7:22 says “Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” Multiple bible versus allude to the minority “getting it” while the majority doesn’t. A true Christian who hates false Christianity the same way Jesus did should see this hatred as something he or she has in common with the ex-Christian who has chosen another path. It was most likely a false Christian or a series of them who soured the ex-Christian on the religion.
Exploring shared hatred of false Christianity with a Wiccan (ex-Christian or not) would be an enlightening and clarifying experience for both parties. In the Hagakure it says “[It is] inconsistent to hear something of the Way of Confucius or the Way of the Buddha, and say that this is the Way of the Samurai. If one understands things in this manner, he should be able to hear about all Ways and be more and more in accord with his own.” I take this to mean that the Christian may never be able to convert the Wiccan, and vice versa, but after an honest dialogue (where even the discussion of hatred is not taboo) each will come away having grown in wisdom and committment to his own path. The Christian may have to let go of his desire to make a conversion, (an impulse perhaps demanded most strongly by the system) but certainly his faith will be strengthened and deepened by the encounter. Afterwards he will be a better counselor to those Christians thinking of leaving the faith.