We heard about it with Harry Potter in spades: that J.K. Rowling's beloved series about witches and wizards would somehow corrupt the minds and religious practices of youth all over the world. We heard about it with Philip Pullman, too, that somehow his magnificent trilogy "His Dark Materials" was going to turn kids into atheists.
But apparently Buffy the Vampire Slayer (three cheers for Buffy!) really is turning women and girls toward Wicca--and a recent British study called, "Women and Religion in the West: Challenging Secularization" by scholars Kristin Aune and Giselle Vincett, proves it.
A new entertainment blog picked up the story:
"Hollywood actress Sarah Michelle Gellar's hit show 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer' has been blamed for 50,000 women abandoning traditional Western religion to study paganism. According to the recent British study published in Women and Religion in the West, young women have taken an increased interest in practicing witchcraft after Gellar's hit TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer hit the mainstream."
Apparently, the entire Church of England "declined to comment."
Long live Buffy! (And Spike! Sigh.)
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The presence of occult ideas in the mainstream media is nothing new. I'm not sure it is fair to point a finger at a single source rather than make a broader appraisal of all media influences on the situation in addition to the wide array of other factors involved in religious conversion aside from media exposure. As noted in a recent work on teen Witches by scholars Helen Berger and Douglas Ezzy, media exposure alone does not a newcomer to Witchcraft make. It may encourage exploration of the Neopagan religions but it does little else but provide a cultural orientation which exposes people to the idea. They still have to seek it out on their own and many abandon the path after a few years to take their spiritual quest in another direction. What makes someone stick with it? It's a complicated mix of previous values, general cultural orientation, and personal experience. I'll mention one thing in particular though.
Some of them stick with Neopagan religions because they are put off by the sort of religious intolerance exemplified by Schowy's post within some sectors of Christianity, in essence throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I can't say I blame them, though; the extreme bigotry of some Christians is truly appalling and makes them all look bad; particularly since Jesus clearly taught love and acceptance.
I never got into Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but I went through a pagan phase during my early university years because I found myself feeling very alienated from the faith in which I'd grown up. I'm not sure I see how the study can prove that the show *causes* kids to take up Wicca (as opposed to "Kids more likely to be interested in Buffy are also more likely to be interested in Wicca). It seems to me like it would be a very complicated tangle of causal factors.
In any case, I came back to Catholicism because I ultimately decided I found Wicca even more alienating. But I do know some people who stayed with their new-found New Age faiths and are organizing a life around it. I do not consider them "lost to the dark side", any more than I'd say the same about someone who was Jewish, or Hindu, or agnostic. Or whatever. And I wonder, Schowy, what Jesus would think of the phrase, "If you're not with Him, you're against Him". It seems to cast a lot of people as the enemy when in reality they're maybe still making up their minds, or just not sure. If I remember my Bible correctly, He took a far less judgmental point of view when He met people who weren't quite committed to a Christian frame of mind.
When people cross over the "dark side", they are looking for a sense of power that usually is lacking at the local Christian congregations. It is one thing to speak, teach, or preach about how powerful God is and another to experience that power. I am not saying this is the only reason but Satan uses the influence of power, fame, and fortune to draw people from God.
What believers must do is to shine the light of Jesus in the darken world they live in and pray for those who are entangled with paganism. :)
Well, lets look at traditional Christianity & Wicca and how they impact a young woman's life.
Christianity worships an all male diety. Most Christian churches reject any feminine form of God. In Wicca she is offered a female Goddess with a male partner. Both Goddess and God are necessary.
In the Christian scriptures she is blamed for humanity's fall from grace. In wicca she (and all people) stand on their own taking responsibility for what they do.
As a Christian she is expected to attend church and support the all male leadership. In Wicca she will be trained to be a leader on every level.
In most Christian churches she may be asked to lead music and fundraisers organized by men. In Wicca she will be expected to lead and organize anything that needs doing. In Christianity, as a woman, she may or may not be allowed to speak and teach. In Wicca she will, as a woman, be expected to learn to speak boldly.
Is it any wonder that many women (and those of us who respect them) have turned to Wicca? Wicca respects women and men. In empowers us is ways that the religions of Abraham cannot.
And if Buffy is turning young women towards Wicca...good for her.
Greenman
Greenman
Greenman,
Those are all excellent points you made. I am a spiritual seeker who has done a fair amount of exploration myself, and Wicca and other Pagan faiths are among those that I have studied. The Wiccan concept of a God AND Goddess always made a lot of sense to me, because how can divinity be ONLY male or ONLY female? I remember, back when I was 14 years old and was talking to a Christian minister for the first time, one of the first questions I asked him was "Does God have a wife?" When I heard about Wicca, that question was answered.
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