Pagan festivals like Wiccans’ WitchsFest USA face Christian harassment
“There have been about 30 [evangelists] this 12 months,” stated Starr RavenHawk, an elder and priestess of the New York Metropolis Wiccan Household Temple and organizer of WitchsFest USA, a road truthful held within the metropolis’s West Village in mid-July.
Over the previous seven years, barely a half-dozen of those disrupters would present up, RavenHawk stated. However the teams which have appeared this 12 months “aren’t simply protesting,” she added. “They’re collectively at warfare with us. They made that clear.”
RavenHawk stated the evangelists and road preachers walked via WitchsFest, holding up indicators and preaching via amplifiers. By the day’s finish, their presence had induced class cancellations and vendor closings.
With out formal networks of homes of worship and infrequently residing removed from fellow practitioners, American pagans and witches rely closely on assemblies with names similar to Pagan Pleasure and Between the Worlds to share info and camaraderie. Whereas some are held inside convention facilities or in lodge ballrooms, summer season occasions are typically seen and arduous to safe.
In 2016, Nashville Pagan Pleasure Day was visited by road preachers Quentin Deckard, Marvin Heiman and Tim Baptist, who marched via the occasion with indicators, Bibles and a bullhorn. In 2017, the Keys of David church protested Philadelphia Pagan Pleasure Day. In 2018, a Christian males’s group encircled a modest crowd at Auburn Pagan Pleasure Day in Alabama in an try and intimidate them.
Indoor occasions aren’t fully immune. In 2018 and 2019, members of TFP Scholar Motion, a division of American Society for the Protection of Custom, Household and Property, have been joined by Catholics in New Orleans to protest HexFest, held yearly on the Bourbon Orleans Resort. Spiritual fliers positioned underneath lodge doorways knowledgeable attendees they have been surrounded. “Your solely hope is to just accept defeat and give up your life to One who created you,” learn one flier.
On the identical weekend as WitchsFest USA, attendees on the Mystic South convention in Atlanta discovered Christian pamphlets within the foyer and on automobile home windows outdoors the lodge the place it was happening. In Texas, pastor Kevin Hendrix has inspired Christians to take a stand in opposition to the Polk County Pagan Market, held in October.
Many Pagan occasions will not be held in public areas because of this, though that has been altering over the previous 10 years as occult practices have discovered extra acceptance within the public eye.
Held in busy Astor Place, a vacationer crossroads, the day-long WitchsFest USA is among the most seen pagan festivals and, due to this fact, some of the weak.
“RavenHawk creates this marvelous occasion yearly within the coronary heart of New York Metropolis as a public celebration the place everyone seems to be welcome so long as they preserve an environment of respect in the direction of others,” stated Elhoim Leafar, who was scheduled to steer a workshop at WitchsFest USA and has attended for years.
The Christian group took up a distinguished place on one road nook because the pageant started at 10 a.m. and commenced speaking to attendees and preaching into amplification gadgets. Amongst them, RavenHawk stated she acknowledged members of the NYC chapter of Christ’s Forgiveness Ministries, a Toronto group that had despatched guests earlier than.
After her safety workforce requested the preachers to go away, RavenHawk referred to as the police as she has completed in previous years. However, for the primary time, the cops did nothing, she stated.
“The Christians say no one is being bothered,” RavenHawk was reportedly informed by the officers. In previous years, officers would relocate the preachers to the far facet of Astor Place, the place they might proceed with out using audio system, which require a allow.
This 12 months, the Christian teams have been allowed to stay on the pageant with their sound amplification. In accordance with RavenHawk, the officers referred to as the preaching “freedom of speech.” It’s unclear whether or not the teams had permits.
One attendee, Soror Da Glorium Deo, stated, “When the police had the chance to downgrade issues by presumably escorting the troublemakers off the realm, they selected to not de-escalate.”
The New York Police Division didn’t reply to requests for remark.
“[The officers] handled us as if we have been invading the Christians’ house, as if that they had extra rights than we do,” RavenHawk stated. “[The preachers] have been loud, and so they have been carrying on. In fact it was disruptive.”
When organizers moved the workshop tent away from the nook close to the preachers, the Christian teams adopted. “At a sure level, the protesters weren’t solely within the environment and corners of the occasion with microphones and banners, however inside it,” stated Leafar, whose class was canceled because of the preachers.
“We’re not publicly protesting at their church buildings on a Sunday,” he stated.
“It isn’t right, ethical or moral to harass any particular person in public or in personal primarily based on their particular person or household beliefs,” Leafar stated. He believes that this habits comes from ignorance and a “contempt for our particular person values.”
By the center of that day, two distributors left, stated RavenHawk, telling her that “they didn’t really feel secure.”
RavenHawk stated she is bored with “turning the opposite cheek.” She has referred to as town’s Road Exercise Allow Workplace, the group board and the NYPD’s ninth Precinct. “I desire a paper path,” she stated. “I wish to know precisely what my rights are.”
RavenHawk additionally referred to as Girl Liberty League, a pagan civil rights group primarily based in Wisconsin, for authorized recommendation and assist.
“The USA is based on non secular freedom for all,” stated Girl Liberty League co-founder the Rev. Selena Fox in a press release to RNS. “Protected gathering and the suitable to observe our religion is as a lot our proper as it’s anybody else’s,” she stated.
Some attendees have recommended that RavenHawk transfer the occasion to a much less public location, similar to a park or lodge.
“We shouldn’t have to maneuver,” she stated. “We fought for this location for eight years.” It took that lengthy, based on RavenHawk, for the group board to designate “WitchsFest USA” an “annual” occasion. Till then she was required to reapply yearly, she stated, enduring questions similar to, “Are you going to burn infants?”
Leafar agrees that it is very important not again down. “If we stay silent within the face of those protesters, these people who find themselves new to our group are going to really feel that they don’t have the suitable to specific themselves and pursue their particular person religion overtly.”
— Faith Information Service
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