Back to School Pagans: Minority Religions

I love the new school district we are in. Both my kid's are attending schools with a pretty huge variety of cultures, religions and ethnicities and races represented.

My son makes friends with kids from Iran. My daughter has friends who wear hijab. I've spoken to women who shared pictures of their daughters' human ceremony (it's a celebration marking a certain coming-of-age for the girls, similar to a bat mitzvah or First Communion). Both kids are sent home with papers in 3-7 different languages.

The interesting part, though, is that as a Pagan mom, I feel like I am more (painfully?)  aware of potentially stepping on religious toes. My son was making plans for his Muslim friend to join us for Pagan Pride in a year. I told him we needed to make sure his parents were okay with that first.

It seems that being a minority religion creates a kind of double-edged sword. Not only do we get to live in a culture that aggressively assumes we are Christian, but then we become so aware of how that hurts us, we go to extra lengths to not do that to others.

While this definitely makes us more empathic, we can find ourselves in some passive aggressive situations. A few that I end up in often:

• Grandparents suggesting that any reluctance on my part for letting the kids do things through their church is an unfair judgment on them or their religion.
• Family arguing that I'm at fault when I refuse to stay in communication with family members who use said communication to tell me I'm condemning my kids to Hell. 
• People telling me that my religious choice means THEY won't get to spend eternity with me in Heaven... then crying about that.
• People using the "what if you're wrong" logic, then giving me a blank look when I ask them the same question.
• People acting like my choosing a religion that is bullied and discriminated against is somehow "easy", just rebellion, or about hurting them.

The point is, Paganism is hard. We are a minority. We are discriminated against. And, in many ways, it's getting both better and worse.

But I love that my kids are exposed to ideas that aren't just Christian or our immediate family. That's something to thank the gods for.

Children & Beliefs: Teaching our kids our practices

Illustration from Pooka Pages

Why we should teach our kids our religion while we raise them? Why it is so important to embrace sharing our beliefs with our children? How to do so without forcing them or making them feel trapped by their parents' beliefs?

These are questions that the Pagan community struggles with as we raise our children in the highest numbers since Gardner published Witchcraft Today in 1954.

We are so used to seeing the effects of religious belief being framed in Christian terms. That is the world we live in.

But what does pure religious belief have to offer our kids? There are studies (here, here, here, and here) that indicate that sharing religious beliefs, activities and experiences can strengthen a family's relationships to each other. There is often more connection and communication.

Children standing with The Lady of Cornwall
in a neopagan ceremony in England.

Religious beliefs may help children better deal with the natural stresses of life by providing a sense of belonging to a group and being part of "something bigger". The routine of rituals and holidays can provide a sense of structure to a child's life.

Healthy spiritual beliefs may improve health, both physical and psychological. Religion provides a way to express the innate need to find purpose and reason in the natural world, and a way to express our beliefs in a supernatural world.

Obviously, these benefits are only seen when the religious experience is a positive one. When the religious experience is confining, restrictive or even hostile, the affects of religion can turn very dark.
Some ways that teaching religion does NOT support healthy religious beliefs include:

• punishment for not adhering to religious behaviors
• teaching by rote memorization rather than engaging with stories and games
• negative reactions to questioning the religious teachings – this can include refusal to answer or refusal to consider alternatives
• using fear as a way to reinforce belief – ie, if you don’t believe, you’ll go to hell

Leaving kids the choice is an issue that I hear a lot of. So I ask, how does allowing your children to religiously identify the same way that their mom and dad do, close the door to them asking about other religions? Or prevent them from later changing their mind?

From Raising Pagan Children

If we want our children to feel like a complete part of our families, we need to include them in our religious experiences. We can do this by talking to our kids about our beliefs, about the rituals that we practice, and about the gods and spirits that we interact with in our lives.

I will leave you with a quote from an article from UU World: “Sharing personal religious and spiritual beliefs with children is not indoctrination; it is offering the guidance they eagerly seek until they are developmentally ready to decide for themselves. If children receive vague and confusing answers time and again when they ask about spiritual and theological issues, they’ll eventually stop asking and start looking for answers elsewhere. But many of the other people your children may encounter in life will not be so hesitant to pass on their religious beliefs, opening up the possibility that the vacuum you’ve left will be filled by others who are seeking to indoctrinate them.”

Magickal Tools: If you use them, they will work...

The high chair tray is
being put to good use!

There is a half-finished staff by my front door. There is a mostly-done wand on the entertainment center. There are several skull-bead and bone pendant necklaces scattered about the house.

And this is just the stuff we make for sale, never mind the staffs, swords, wands, Tarot, and ritual jewelry and statuary on and around our altars.

Our side-by-side altars (pic taken in
the wee-small hours of the night).

The funny thing about this stuff being all over is that the kids ask about it.

"What is it for?" "Why do we have it?" "How does it work?"

Having the extra kids around, we also get the disbelief questions, also: "You can't REALLY cast spells with a staff... Can you?" To which (witch, haha) I gleefully respond, "Um, yeah, I can."

Or turn your brother into
a pink bunny...

I guess we could be like some people and keep all the precious and/or possibly harmful objects (hey, a wand is dangerous... you could shoot your eye out!) away from the kids until it is determined that they are old enough. But we would miss out on the everyday conversations about our religious beliefs.


I have to admit, one of my favorites is the periodically recurring "witches are evil" discussion. First of all, claiming that you are a witch to small children who are convinced that all witches are of the green-skinned, Wizard of Oz, gonna-getcha variety never fails to evoke a facial expression of epic hilarity.

Not a comfortable fit...
Just sayin'

Personal humor aside, most religions have some way of periodically exposing their children to the expression of their beliefs and practices. Why should we be in the broom closet to our own kids?