You can take ALL of Frogland and SHOVE IT!
cuhulin

"Andrew Oakley" wrote in message
...

[snip]


What I found really odd everywhere I've been in the USA (Huston, NY,
Boston and California) is that there is virtually no pagan/wiccan
culture.


The majority of SW preachers would say that most US Christianity is
paganism. Of course, these guys don't often have actual buildings for
churches, and have to broadcast across the entire hemisphere in order to
scrape up the meager contributions in order to buy one more day's SW time at
about a dollar a minute.

Brother Stair voices the Christianity/paganism viewpoint well. If you can
hear him, I suggest you tune in the weeks before Halloween and Saturnalia
(Christmas).


and the local government council in my parent's village recently
gave a grant to rebuild the pagan meeting place in the forest


Wow. I wonder what the religious activists would say about that. On one
hand, they're all for government subsidizing a religious interest. On the
other hand, if they get school prayer, the kiddies might end up praying to
the wrong God(s).


Additionally in older towns you get dedicated
witchcraft shops, selling books, ingredients, and a larger range of
trinkets.

I have to think there's something like that in Chicago, although I'm not
sure. I have known people who've claimed to be pagans, but that was back in
the 70s post hippie era.


Also my wife is really into
pagan crystals, and I could only find one shop in the whole week I was
driving through California which sold crystals, and that was a geology
shop, not a witchcraft shop.

Were you in San Francisco? I have the impression that would be the most
likely place for pagan stuff, at least the old world pagan stuff. I think a
great many Americans who find themselves attracted to alternate religions
look into Native American culture or Buddahism. Oh, yeah, let's not forget
another favorite target of the SW preachers -- the Freemasons.

I'll bet there's plenty of items of a Native American religious interest in
the US Southwest.


Maybe this is the Catholic influence? But there are lots of European
countries which are predominantly Catholic too, such as France, and
they don't have this huge imbalance between paganism and new
religions.


The Catholics often co-opt paganism. For example, Mexican Catholics
celebrate "The Day of the Dead". This celebration goes way back to the
Aztecs. The Mexican Americans I talked with said it's still more Aztec than
Catholic.

To a large degree, American culture was formed in the Colonial days by
Protestants, particularly the then newest sort of Protestants such as the
Puritians and other Reformed Christians. Purifying their church (and
government!) from non-scripturial and pagan influences was a high priority.

Frank Dresser