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To my knowledge, there is a single book and website written by a Christian Wiccan. That website has changed multiple times, rendering my original footnotes useless. As of May 25, 2014, the websites domain is expired, leaving nothing at all to be referenced. This is why most quotes here have no source notations.
There is also an article about it atReligiousTolerance.org, which lists my original article on the matter among others as Essays, covering a wide range of viewpoints a few are quite negative.
My opinion on this topic is absolutely negative, but it is informed opinion, built upon the words of author-founderNancy Chandler Pittman and experience with others who follow it. Ive yet to meet one who can offer a sophisticated explanation of their beliefs (instead getting things like I believe in Jesus and nature) or solid understanding of how diverse concepts are being coherently united. Rather than pursuing a truth, Christian Wiccans seem primarily interested in straddling two religions without making profound choices on how they understand the world, and that is what I criticize.
Defining Christianity and Wicca
The first issue is the name Christian Wicca. E very believer Ive encountered believes Christian Wiccans are both Christian and Wiccan. In fact, most forms are true to neither Christianity nor Wicca, and it certainly cannot be true to both.
To avoid debate of exactly how one defines these religions, I turn to theMerriam-Webster Dictionaryfor the most general of definitions of the two faiths:
The Bible is rooted in the belief of a single deity, commonly referred to as God. There are no other acceptable deities. Wicca, on the other hand, involves the reverence of two deities minimally, a god and a goddess. If you worship God alongside a goddess, then you are breaking the Christian commandment to worship only God, and you are denying his existence as the only God. If you attempt to be a monotheistic Wiccan, you lose the polarity and unity of separate halves that is fundamental to Wicca.
The All
ReligiousTolerance.org attempts to reconcile the difference this way:
Many Wiccans (perhaps most) also believe that there is a single ultimate deity which/who is unknowable. A common Wiccan saying is that All Gods are the ONE GOD. This deity is sometimes referred to as The All or The One and is often visualized as having two aspects: a male facet who is called the God and a female component, the Goddess. (source)
Not quite.
At least some Traditional Wiccans recognize a concept known as the Dryghten, which is an impersonal power, an energy from which things came, but, again,that is not the Christian God.
Mary as Goddess
Most commonly, Christian Wiccans try to fit the Virgin Mary into the role of Goddess. The problem is Mary isnt a goddess in Christianity. In fact, to elevate Mary to godhood destroys a vitally important facet of her. Her son, Jesus, acts as an intermediary between God and man through his dual nature of being both mortal and divine, and that nature is defined by his parentage: one mortal (Mary) and one divine (God the Father).
Worshiping a mortal as a goddess doesnt work in Wicca either. God and Goddess are equal. God and Mary most certainly are not.
Sources of Sin
The concept of a savior is anathema to Wicca. Salvation is necessary because of inherent flaws in humanity, traditionally brought about by the Original Sin of Adam and Eve. Wicca does not accept that we can be tainted by mere existence. Any taint we might bear comes from our own choice of actions, not our nature. We do not bear responsibility for the actions of others, and only the individual can make right his or her personal transgressions.
Many other concepts are important although arguably not foundational, such as the existence of Satan. In Christianity, Satan is an embodiment of evil, and supernatural powers within a Wiccan context are intimately part of nature. A Wiccan acknowledgment of Satan would imply that some part of nature is inherently evil, which they deny.
You cant just take one theology, smack it down on top of another theology and say close enough.
Redefining Definitions
Are those definitions too rigid? There are always exceptions, but the above points are very central and agreed upon by most. Even so, most important here is the number of exceptions necessary to make this fusion work.
Trinitarian Wicca is the correct name of the tradition often generalized into a practice called Christian Wicca. Trinitarian Wicca is a path of American Wicca (or Non-British Traditional Wicca) that works exclusively with the Christian Pantheon. There are no church trappings or conflicts with the Bible, because we work directly with the Gods and Goddesses; church dogma does not have a place in our ritual structure. Concepts such as the original sin, salvation, baptism, heaven, hell, and Satan have no place in Trinitarian Wicca. (Nancy Chandler Pittman as quoted atReligiousTolerance.org)
Yes, some Christians debate the existence of Satan or Hell. But if you take out Satan and Hell and Original Sin and commandments for monotheism and the need for salvation, why are you calling whatever is left Christian? The result is something new. Theres nothing wrong with new, but it shouldnt be packaged as something it isnt.
Why People Attempt to be Both
There are four general scenarios where I find people attempt to be both Christian and Wiccan:
There is nothing wrong in being Christian. If that is your path, embrace it.
The Origin of Christian Wicca
Christian Wicca is the brainchild of Nancy Chandler Pittman. According to one of her old websites, her book, Christian Wicca: The Trinitarian Tradition , stems from five years of:
research and comparative studies of the Pagan Wheel of the Year, the Kabbalah, and the Gnostic Gospels. The overwhelming parallels made me wonder why no one else had written such a book for magickal practitioners who uphold the Wiccan Rede, but choose to not give up Jesus as Lord.
Problems here include
Biblical arguments are suspiciously missing here, perhaps because, in Pittmans own words:
[m] ost of the information of any Female Deity or feminine affiliation with the Godhead is absent from the Holy Bible.
Correct. Goddess figures are not a part of Christianity. If youre looking for a goddess, Christianity isnt where you should be looking. Thats not a flaw in the religion. Its simply a fact.
To throw out the authority of the Bible and, indeed, replace it with texts from outside Christianity yet continue to call oneself Christian employs a label without its substance. What Pittman is really offering is a new religion.
In short, Pittman exists in a Christianity largely of her own making.
The Old Religion
She explains the connection between Wicca and Christianity via the theory of theOld Religion, which has been debunked for many decades. Because Wicca is understood (by her) to be the modern form of the Old Religion, and the Catholic Church to merely be theOld Religion with a Christian veneer, Wicca and Christianity are therefore religious blood brothers, originating from a single source and therefore somehow compatible.
Even if they did come from the same source (and they dont), that doesnt make them compatible. Christianity comes from Judaism, and Islam comes from both, but there are still fundamental differences between the three.
It is interesting to note that even a person identifying herself as both Christian and Wiccan still has abias against Christianity. According to Pittman, the Old Religion naturally evolved into modern Wicca, but Christianity had to subvert the Old Religion by force and make fundamental concessions in exchange for [the pagans] accepting the Christian male Trinity.
Pittman herself defines a Christian simply as one who has a personal relationship with Jesus and the Holy Trinity while all but discounting Jesuss accepted teachings:
Who determines that Wicca is not an acceptable method of worshiping the Holy Trinity? Do I trust my life and my spiritual soul to British Scholars [at?] the Court of King James?
Her specific mention of the King James Bible makes me wonder why she doesnt just work from another translation of the Bible.
As for who determines if Wicca is an appropriate vehicle for honoring the Trinitybasic definition of words is all that is required. Wicca has no Holy Trinity, and what it teaches is contrary to Christianity. That clearly makes Wicca a poor vehicle.
In later versions of her website, Pittman explains that Trinitarian/Christian Wicca was never meant to be Christian. Instead, its a Wiccan tradition influenced by Christianity, which is pretty contrary to her older website. Regardless, the explanation really doesnt change much: the Christian ideas she attempts to inject into Wicca dont work well in Wicca.
Responsible Eclecticism
There is nothing wrong with combining certain Christian and Wiccan beliefs into something new. However, if youre creating something new, why insist on labeling yourself something you no longer are? Christianity came from Judaism, but Christians dont claim theyre Jews. If you believe the Trinity to be three separate figures, (Father, Son, Mother) thats your right. But that is not a Christian belief. By insisting on being both Christian and Wiccan, youve committed yourself to two incompatible theologies.
Also, theres certainly nothing wrong with bringing certain Christian concepts into your Wiccan practice or certain Wiccan concepts into Christian practice. But the choices should make sense just like any other belief system. Can a Wiccan follow Jesuss ethical teachings? Absolutely. Can a Christian worship outdoors, creating their own sacred space? Of course. But neither of these situations results in a Christian Wiccan.