Are Wiccans Wicked?

RELIGION IN THE NEWS

A report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media.This week’s item is from The American Family Association Online, February 25, 2008, with a headline:“Evangelical Youth Experiment with Wicca.”The following are excerpts:Janice Krouse, a senior fellow with Concerned Women for America, says it’s disturbing that many young people in Evangelical churches are experimenting with the Wicca religion.Church leaders and Christians parents, she mourns, must be ready to counter that growing interest among their youth.Krouse cites an article in Religion Journal which said youth pastors in the Southern Baptist Convention were worried about large numbers of Evangelicals taking part in Wicca, a religion that involves nature worship, stresses moral autonomy, and includes remedies and spells.Beliefs that Krouse points out are distinctly different from orthodox Christianity, not to mention incompatible with the Bible.Wiccans believe in moral autonomy that nobody can tell me what to do, and I think particularly with young people; that’s a very desirable thing.They don’t want the church telling them that there are boundaries, that there are things that they can’t do she explains.Another one is that they don’t believe in having authorities beyond human constructs, that we as individuals have the responsibility to shape our own beliefs, and there’s no evil beyond that.Some people think this goes back to the books that were so popular up until recently, and so many of the games and television programs that feature witchcraft and magic and fairy tales that have a dimension to it that if you just pull out some kind of spell you can make anything happen she says.This has really become entrenched in many of the young people’s groups and in Evangelicals in particular.

Tom:

Dave, I think it’s worth going over some of the things that Gary just mentioned from this article.And what he read, of course, are just excerpts, but I want to underscore some things.It says many young people in Evangelical churches are experimenting with the Wiccan religion. It says….

Dave:

I wonder where they get those statistics, but I guess these are the experts, they checked it out.

Tom:

From this article that this woman wrote she cites another article, Religious Journal, said youth pastors in the Southern Baptist Convention are worried about these things, so obviously it’s going on.

Dave:

It must be happening.

Tom:

Right.It says large numbers of Evangelicals are taking part in Wicca, a religion that involves nature worship, stresses moral autonomy, includes remedies, obviously magic remedies and spells.Again, it says Wiccans believe in moral autonomy, that nobody can tell me what to do.Now again, this is referring to what young Evangelicals are participating in.Dave, this seems to be, really close to what we’ve been talking about for weeks and weeks, and that is the EmergingChurch, picking up the ideas and the beliefs, the attitudes of the postmodern generation, but now we have it in an occult, or magic, or witchcraft kind of setting.Now these are Evangelical young people, Dave.

Dave:

Well, Tom, it’s nothing new, as you know.You can remember the days of the Jesus Movement, and the street people, and the hippies, wasn’t it, do your own thing?

Tom:

Right.

Dave:

And that was what they wanted—autonomy.So it’s—

Tom:

Another form of rebellion.

Dave:

That’s what Eve wanted—autonomy.And Adam was not deceived, but he didn’t want to lose his wife, so he went along with it, but then it’s a form of autonomy—and he is blamed.Sin entered through Adam.

Tom:

Dave, there’s a phrase that I think—I don’t know who came up with it, but it’s absolutely true, and that is, God has no grandchildren.

Dave:

That’s true.

Tom:

So, you know, I’ve worked with a lot of young people and that’s my heart, I have 5 children of my own, and have worked with youth.I have found time and time again that they think they are Christians because their parents are Christians.So they really, many of them have no personal, intimate relationship with Jesus Christ.Many of them don’t know the gospel, have believed the gospel, because if you believe the gospel, if you are truly born again, you’re not in this because you’re of that generation, or of that family, you’re in it because you know the Lord.How can you get involved with this stuff?

Dave:

You couldn’t possibly, if you’re a real Christian.

Tom:

Or if you were just a Christian that was in a Christian home, maybe received the gospel but were never taught.Is the Word of God central to a family that has children that are into this kind of things?I wonder.

Dave:

Well, Tom, A big part of it is the church.I’m going to blame the pastors and the youth ministers. Because you know, we tend to speak Christianese, we have our own little subculture Christians, and that works fine as long as you are all together, you know, you’re growing up in the church, and in a Christian environment and a Christian family.Get out there in the world!That’s why I’m writing some of these books that I’m writing.Get out there in the world and get a challenge.Why is there suffering in this world?Well, in fact here was an Evangelical, he had studied at Moody, and he had studied to be a pastor, and so forth, and he said the one thing that got him was—evil!Well, he says, I always explained it as, free will.God loves us, but He can’t force himself on us, so we have free will.And he said that satisfied me for a while, but then natural disasters, tsunamis, children dying in birth, born with defects, and all of that.Now, that doesn’t come from free will!So now, we had better have an apologetic for that.You had better be able to explain it because Romans 8, for example, says, the whole creation groans, being in travail.When Adam rebelled, and Satan of course, it passed on to the whole creation.There was a cosmic rebellion, there was a cosmic earthquake, and we are part of it.Now, God, for example, its not just because a little child, an innocent child—see, certain things that there are laws, law of gravity—because a certain child, a little baby falls over a cliff, God is not reaching out and stopping the law of gravity, as He would have to do, to put that child back up.There are certain things that went wrong through this rebellion, and they can only be remedied through Jesus Christ, and people are going to have to open their hearts to Him.

Tom:

Dave, you’re getting on pastors and youth pastors, and I think there is definitely a bone of contention there, because we’ve seen the church go very superficial, we’ve seen entertainment enter in to replace the teaching of God’s Word.I would bring it to the home.Sometimes, people just push their kids off on to church, whereas the church is a body of believers, and they have responsibilities in this to make sure to train their kids up, to encourage them to come to know the Lord, and to teach these things in the home!

Dave:

Right, right, and it takes diligence.

Tom:

Of course, and the payoff was, well as we have seen.You’re going to at least give your children a chance, especially if when they leave the home and go off to college, that’s where we are losing our young Evangelicals in just incredible numbers!