Today there's a rather mind-boggling post over at patheos.com, entitled "Is Wicca a Christian Heresy?"  I'll just let you read it - and my comments over there - for yourselves.  In short, however, I feel it largely just reversed the tired old "Christianity was stolen from paganism" arguments, pointing to a few superficial things and confusing them for central doctrine and beliefs.

I was shopping for fake flowers in a dollar store today when another woman joined me, marveling at the selection.  She started up idle chatter about the great prices, then told me how she gave thanks to God for the great prices because, as a born-again Christian, she gave thanks for everything.

I'm not sure God wants credit for the low-paid workers in China who made these products, I thought, but kept my mouth shut.

Then she went on about how she's been a born-again for 19 years, and she understands God, but she isn't religious (by which she means she doesn't follow anything that she doesn't believe belongs in Christianity), etc. etc., and... "are you a Christian?"

"No, I'm not," I responded evenly.

She makes this overly sad face, like she was on a stage, then "hides" it like she didn't want me to see.  "What are you?"

You really shouldn't ask questions you don't want an answer to.  In that light, I consider answering to be my own little contribution to karma.  "I'm Wiccan."

Another pouty face.  To her credit, she didn't go crazy on me.  "Is that like witchcraft?"

I'm good at explaining Wicca.  I'm less good at trying to get to a useful answer working backward from questions like this.  "No, it's not witchcraft.  It's..."

"Are you like a white witch?"

Which part of "not witchcraft" didn't you understand?  Also, in retrospect, maybe my problem in explaining just came from her not letting me finish a thought.  "No, it's not like that.  It's a religion."

"What do you believe then?"

"Well, we're polytheists and..." and we don't believe in proselytizing in dollar stores.

"What does that mean?"

I'm beginning to weep for your lack of education.  "It means I believe in multiple gods."

Another pouty face.  "So, you, like, work magic thinking it's for good?"  She doesn't even let me address that one.  Perhaps she was sensing my frustration at the fact that anything I said magically transformed into a confession of wearing a pointy hat and mumbling over a bubbling cauldron.  "Well, you should own a Bible.  An authorized one though, because you wouldn't believe all the nonsense versions people are publishing today."

Who the hell "authorizes" a version of the Bible?  I didn't ask, because, unlike her, I don't ask questions I don't really want to hear the answer to.

I smile.  "Thanks, but I already own one.  A couple actually."

"Well, that's good."  And she starts going on about how awesome Christians are, as if I've never met one.

"Actually, I was raised Christian.  Most of my family still is Christian...."

"Are they born-again?"

 "No."

"Oh....they're not Christian, they're religious."  She says it like it leaves a nasty taste on her tongue and making a show of trying not to roll her eyes.  "They haven't really come to know God.  They follow all these man-made ideas, and that's not what God wants, and without God you can't really understand love and compassion."...blah, blah, blah.  Somewhere in her tirade she also bragged about insuring all of her Christian friends, so when they died they could support widows and orphans, which was just kind of creepy.

Wait a minute....you just tried, at least in your own mind, to understand what I was as a Wiccan, but you go all preachy about my Christian relatives?  How messed up is that?

And then she walked off, saving me from blowing a gasket.  A couple minutes later, however, she returns and starts right back up again.  And now my patience had officially ended.

"Ma'am, I understand you're trying to be helpful, but I'm not going to listen to you criticize people you've never even met.  Your child also appears to be rather humiliated by you lecturing strangers about religion."  Because her roughly tween-age daughter kept shamefully wandering away from the conversation.

"Oh, no.  She's just learning disabled.  She had grand mal seizures and now doesn't know how to deal with people."

Why...why on earth would you tell me that?  Why not just say your daughter's really shy, rather than give her medical history to a complete stranger?  Because, you know, she totally needs a medical condition to explain why she doesn't want to be part of this conversation.  I actively kept from responding, because I'm pretty sure whatever I tried to say would come out as "You're a terrible mother in public."

Meanwhile, the lady still has other issues to address.  "I don't mean to insult your family!  I'm sure they're very nice people.  And if they were here I would say so and hope that they could sit down and actually read the Bible, rather than just blindly following the religion in which they were raised."

And this is when I made a revelation about myself.  I'm actually pretty patient about people not understanding my religion, in part because of that amount of nonsense that is out there about it.  But I will not put up with people making ugly, stupid presumptions about my family's understanding of God.  There's just no excuse for it.  There are millions upon millions of non-born-again Christians putting a positive face onto their religion.  And to start making your criticisms personal, directing themselves specifically at my family?  Oh, no, you didn't.

"My family does not blindly follow anything. We were raised to think for ourselves.  They have studied, and made decisions on that study.  They are Christians, they do understand God, they are honestly good and charitable people, and I have nothing against them or their faith.  I dare say my mother knows the Bible; she has been attending Bible-study for decades.   She also teaches confirmation..."

"Confirmation isn't in the Bible, you know."

"Neither are cars."

Dead stop. It was like her brain just rear-ended itself, which was kind of amazing to watch. "What?"

"Cars aren't in the Bible.  Doesn't mean it's bad for a Christian to have a car." ...or a confirmation, which was my point.

She decided to have none of my logic.  "Well of course not.  Only the Amish believe that.  Or..is there another cult too?  No, just the Amish."

Great...now she doesn't even need me to have someone to argue with.  She's debating with herself.  Also, that's totally NOT the reason why the Amish don't own cars.

"So what Church does your mother attend?"

"She a Methodist."

"Oh!  Maybe she's a Christian after all.  Is she a born-again Methodist or a Baptist-based Methodist?"

What the hell is a "Baptist-based Methodist"?  I think of Methodists as being in two groups.  There are "our" Methodists, and then there's the "no drinkin', no smokin' no havin' fun kind of Methodists."  It's only in the last decade I learned there was such a thing as a born-again Methodist (George W. Bush is one).  Not sure if they are a third group or if they're intertwined with the "no drinkin', no smokin' no havin' fun kind of Methodists."

"Well, she's not a born-again," was the only answer I could provide to that rather limited question.

Pouty face again.  "She should read the writings of John Wesley.  He's got some really great stuff about all the things that religion makes us do that has nothing to do with God's plan...like the idea that the unbaptized will go to hell, as if God would send an innocent child to hell because he wasn't baptized..."

And heaven forbid my Mom actually read something of the denomination's founder before she decided to join, or like John Wesley is some secretive figure that most Methodists have never heard of.  We learned about him in Sunday School.

I kind of stopped listening as she went off on another rant.  Clearly there was no point in telling her that most denominations do not believe that baptism saves a person, or that I suspected she had no idea what Baptists believe. Heck, Mom would even agree on the whole value of personal relationship over empty ritual - if only the conversation wasn't being held in a dollar store with a stranger that didn't invite the damn conversation - but that doesn't make her a born-again, thank God.

Jonathan Dudley, a graduate of Yale Divinity School, recently posted perhaps the most straight-forward argument against condemning homosexuals in his post "Bible condemns a lot, so why focus on homosexuality?"

When the Bible-thumpers quote Exodus, the counter-argument is easy: the vast majority of Christians do not follow the Old Testament laws.  Indeed, they believe those rules were set aside with the sacrifice of Jesus.  At the very least, you have no business quoting Old Testament statements on things like homosexuality and witchcraft so long as you're doing things like eating pork and shellfish.

New Testament arguments, however, are more difficult, and these are what Dudley focuses on.  Most statements of condemnation come from Paul, and Paul condemned all sorts of things.  Yet many Christians quoting Paul on homosexuality are quite willing to disagree with him on other issues.

Also, interesting enough, Paul condemns homosexuality because it is "unnatural."  Not because God hates it.  You know what else us unnatural according to Paul?  Men with long hair.  A few churches do not, in fact, allow men to have long hair, but I've never heard any of them teach that long hair would damn them to hell, or support legislation that would take away rights from long-haired men.

Oh, and that whole God-wants-men-and-women-to-get-married approach?  Historically, the teaching of the church was that celibacy was preferable to marriage.  marriage was simply there for those huge numbers of people who weren't spiritually strong enough to remain celibate.

Hanging around on Yahoo!Answers, I come across of a lot of claims that Christianity is pagan, or at least questions of "Is Christianity pagan?"

People need to start learning the meaning of words, because no matter where you think Christian ideas originate, claiming that Christianity is non-Christian is a nonsensical statement.

As for the claim itself: sure, Christianity borrowed from pagan culture, because it was the only culture from which to borrow! New ideas always build upon old ideas.

But many of the specific examples commonly given are grossly exaggerated or even outright wrong. And, regardless, borrowing pagan ideas doesn't make something pagan. Christianity borrowed a TON from Judaism, but no one suggests that Christianity is really Jewish.

Today I may just have deep-sixed a friendship.

Yahoo, being the overly clever thing that it is, started automatically sending me a friend's Twitter posts as status updates. I haven't seen him in a while, but we cross paths every few years. Regardless, I was shocked by the hate this generally gentle man was posting over and over again about "Islamists."

Read more: Anger and 9/11 @ About.com
(Sorry, I'm not allowed to publish About.com blog posts in full on other sites)

At the beginning of this month I posted the article The Devil Made Me Do It, concerning a man on trial for murdering his wife, which he claims he did while being possessed.

A reader asked if I was actually suggesting that there might be merit in the man's claims. My answer was essentially that my opinion had no relevance on the issue.

Religion is problematic to write about precisely because much of what religious people believe cannot be proven, although they themselves may have very good reason for believing. We call those reasons "unverifiable personal gnosis." It's personal knowledge that cannot be proved to others. I believe in my gods, for example, because I have experienced their presence. I can't prove that to anyone, and MY experiences are, quite frankly, a poor reason for someone else to believe in them....

Read more:  Opinion and Reality: Unverifiable Personal Gnosis @ About.com
(Sorry, I'm not allowed to publish About.com blog posts in full on other sites)

I have just been awarded the job of writing the Alternative Religion section at About.com. (Currently, the last writer's material is still in place. I will give an update when my material goes live.) Ironically, I was turned down last year when I applied for the Wicca and Neopaganism section. In retrospect, however, this might work out for the best.

When I write about Wicca, I can't help but be involved. Even when I'm trying to remain neutral, I know the topic well enough to have substantial personal views on it. Writing about other people's religions, on the other hand, is an entirely different exercise more conducive to unbiased presentation.

When I was trying out for the Alternative Religion position, I had to write several articles, including some on Scientology. This was both a challenge and an interesting exercise. I was raised by an anti-Scientologist mother. She has a friend now in witness protection because of his testimony against the Church of Scientology (CoS), which had previously also kidnapped said friend. As I became an adult, I did some research into Scientology to see if my mother's concerns were justified (I mean beyond the kidnapping issue) and came away with the very definite negative impression of it.

Now I have to write about it, and I need to direct it toward people who are interested in practicing it. I'm not required to not say anything negative about it, but it does need to be neutral and fact-based, and I also have to write articles about what Scientology offers, how it's practiced, etc. In short, the main goal cannot be to dissuade people from joining.

I've actually found this to be remarkably easy. The CoS now has published a tremendous amount of material online, so I no longer have to work from secondary sources. I can honestly say that I have a much better idea of what Scientologists believe, which makes it much easier to respect those who believe in it. I've also been reminded that there is a definite difference between the CoS itself and the individuals who practice Scientology. I've become sympathetic toward individuals who get targeted by Anonymous (an anti-Scientology group) even though I agree with many of their concerns about the Church.

I even have objections to some of the criticisms against Scientology. For example, the alien being "Xenu" is constantly flaunted about by anti-Scientologists as an example of the religion's "silliness," even though most Scientologists are not even aware of this being. It's not a central precept. Its existence doesn't govern the day-to-day behavior or beliefs of followers. Condemning Scientology for Xenu is like condemning Christianity because Adam and Eve probably weren't real people.

Over these last couple of weeks I've been reading up Zoroastrianism and I'm struck by the centrality of the good vs. evil struggle within the theology of that faith. Zoroastrians strive to do good because it literally contributes to the order of the universe.

Personally, I've long been suspicious of good and evil dichotomies, but the more I read and empathize, the more I suspect that perhaps my real objection is to the applications of such dichotomies to various theologies rather than the dichotomy itself. I am vehemently opposed to a Satanic figure who goes around making people evil, and I generally reject the notion of people being inherently evil: people choose to do evil things, but no matter how much evil one commits, he or she may always choose goodness in the future (and vice-versa).

Furthermore, I abhor the behavior of certain neopagans who drag their Christian notions of good and evil into their new faith, declaring that Nature itself is all good and benevolent and only wishes the best for us. Even cursory knowledge of current events shows this to be false as hurricanes, tsunamis and other disasters wipe out thousands upon thousands of people.

But in writing off good and evil as solely the results of choices and free will, I am considering we may be throwing out the baby with the bath water. Evil is a powerful force to combat. It is out there. It may not be bound up in a red man with a pitchfork, and it may not be promoted by anyone specifically devoted to being evil, but there are people who effectively champion it, such as those slaughtering civilians in Darfur. There's also a danger in labelling such people as evil, because the label tends to bring along a tendency for people to stop looking at the mundane causes and reasons for such behavior. But there's also dangers in not facing the full spectrum of what an enemy is.