Witchful Thinking
Witchcraft Goes Mainstream by Brooks Alexander
Witchcraft Goes Mainstream: Uncovering Its Alarming Impact on You and Your Family
Harvest House Publishers, 2004
(284 pages, $11.99, paperback)
reviewed by David Haddon
In Witchcraft Goes Mainstream, Brooks Alexander—who converted from the counterculture to Christianity in 1969 and went on to found the Spiritual Counterfeits Project—turns his attention to the accelerating self-paganization of American society. His personal relationships with neopagans in the San Francisco Bay area and his study of historical and modern witchcraft make him a reliable guide for Christians who want to love their neopagan neighbors.
But I think that his acute analysis of the subversive appropriation of elements of the Christian story by contemporary media storytellers in the course of their re-imaging of witchcraft may be just as important.
Neopagan Attitudes
Witches and neopagans themselves have found it impossible to agree on definitions of witchcraft and neopaganism, but nevertheless claim to intuitively recognize those who worship the way they do. Therefore, instead of trying to define these movements by their doctrines or practices, Alexander cites their common attitudes.
These attitudes begin with the rejection of established society and include:
• Rejection of Christian monotheism in favor of the animistic, polytheistic,
or pantheistic powers believed to be available “for enlightenment and
occult empowerment”;
• Rejection of the concept of sin and of the need for salvation;
• Rejection of accountability to any higher power in favor of “an
ethic of self-will tempered by mysticism”; and
• Inclination to goddess or nature worship, feminism, and environmentalism.
Modern witchcraft provided a haven for spiritual seekers attracted by the forces of nature and disaffected from Christianity even before the New Age movement of the 1970s. Despite its recent origin with Gerald Gardner’s Wicca in 1939, many modern witches claim to be the remnants of a pre-Christian religious tradition stretching back to a peaceful matriarchal society that worshiped the goddess.
Alexander refutes this myth in detail, and serious neopagans concerned about the credibility of their religion in the academy have acknowledged it to be untrue. But many witches still passionately believe in their myth, and Alexander devotes two chapters to sorting out the history of medieval and modern witchcraft.
David Haddon is an author from Redding, California, who has written for InterVarsity Press and Baker Book House and whose articles have appeared in Christianity Today, National Review, and Learning. He holds a B.S. in engineering from the University of California at Berkeley and an M.A. in politics and literature from the University of Dallas.
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