I said yesterday that I try to avoid politics in this blog, and I do, but something has come up that deals with both politics and religion, and I feel I have to comment on it.
A video has surfaced of a now-prominent politician that, a few years ago, while running for office, visited a church at the same time that a visiting bishop from Kenya visited the church. In the video, the visiting bishop calls the politician to the front of the church and says a prayer for this politician. In this prayer, the bishop asks God to protect this individual from witchcraft.
Some people have gotten quite upset over this video. In this country, we have freedom of religion, and Wiccans are as entitled to their religious freedom as the proponents of any other religion. I think that it is significant to point out that: A) Not all Wiccans consider themselves witches (and, before you even ask, as far as I know, none of them consider themselves to be warlocks; those Wiccans that consider themselves witches consider their men to be male witches). B) Not all witches consider themselves to be Wiccans. C) The bishop praying this prayer was not from this country, and may not have been familiar with how our religious freedoms work, and, even if he was, he was in a church—he had no reason to expect that his words would ever be transmitted to anyone who was not a member of that church, and, therefore, should have had a reasonable expectation that his words would not cause offense.
Further, I don’t know for sure whether Wiccans would actually be offended at such a prayer, anyway. I think that they would realize that such a prayer would be a plea for protection from individuals granted supernatural abilities by the devil. The Wicca religion has no devil; they believe that the devil is a fabrication of the Judeo-Christian religion. So, does it really offend them if we pray for protection from something that they don’t even believe exists? It might, simply because it is indicative of a lack of understanding of their religious beliefs. On the other hand, traditionally Wiccans have been very secretive about their beliefs, but, then again, that may have been simply from fear of persecution.
After writing the preceding paragraph, I went and did a little research. At least a few Wiccans are, in fact, offended, not so much by the prayer, I don’t think, but by the fact that this bishop is noted as a “witch-hunter” in his native country. Of course, again, we are talking about witches as being people given supernatural abilities by Satan, and Wiccans don’t believe such people exist, so they, understandably, believe that this bishop is simply persecuting innocent people. To be honest, I don’t know much about this man, not having heard of him before today, and I’m not too sure that I don’t agree with the Wiccans. What I have read about this man’s methods are at least suspect. Now, whether the politician involved was privy to this information at the time, I don’t know.
In any case, we have a situation where a politician has been criticized for something that someone else said. Would it have been “politically correct” for this person to stop the bishop in the middle of his prayer and explain to him that you can’t talk about this other religion that way? I suspect that, at the time, that probably would have cost more votes. I can certainly understand people getting upset about what this religious leader said. I could understand if people wanted to know how much did the politician know about the bishop’s activities at the time (although I doubt that we will ever truly know that). However, to level criticism based on just this one video seems a little overboard to me. I think most of us Christians would appreciate a prayer that asks for our protection from witchcraft, even if some people don’t think that the sort of witchcraft that we would want to be protected from actually exists.
A video has surfaced of a now-prominent politician that, a few years ago, while running for office, visited a church at the same time that a visiting bishop from Kenya visited the church. In the video, the visiting bishop calls the politician to the front of the church and says a prayer for this politician. In this prayer, the bishop asks God to protect this individual from witchcraft.
Some people have gotten quite upset over this video. In this country, we have freedom of religion, and Wiccans are as entitled to their religious freedom as the proponents of any other religion. I think that it is significant to point out that: A) Not all Wiccans consider themselves witches (and, before you even ask, as far as I know, none of them consider themselves to be warlocks; those Wiccans that consider themselves witches consider their men to be male witches). B) Not all witches consider themselves to be Wiccans. C) The bishop praying this prayer was not from this country, and may not have been familiar with how our religious freedoms work, and, even if he was, he was in a church—he had no reason to expect that his words would ever be transmitted to anyone who was not a member of that church, and, therefore, should have had a reasonable expectation that his words would not cause offense.
Further, I don’t know for sure whether Wiccans would actually be offended at such a prayer, anyway. I think that they would realize that such a prayer would be a plea for protection from individuals granted supernatural abilities by the devil. The Wicca religion has no devil; they believe that the devil is a fabrication of the Judeo-Christian religion. So, does it really offend them if we pray for protection from something that they don’t even believe exists? It might, simply because it is indicative of a lack of understanding of their religious beliefs. On the other hand, traditionally Wiccans have been very secretive about their beliefs, but, then again, that may have been simply from fear of persecution.
After writing the preceding paragraph, I went and did a little research. At least a few Wiccans are, in fact, offended, not so much by the prayer, I don’t think, but by the fact that this bishop is noted as a “witch-hunter” in his native country. Of course, again, we are talking about witches as being people given supernatural abilities by Satan, and Wiccans don’t believe such people exist, so they, understandably, believe that this bishop is simply persecuting innocent people. To be honest, I don’t know much about this man, not having heard of him before today, and I’m not too sure that I don’t agree with the Wiccans. What I have read about this man’s methods are at least suspect. Now, whether the politician involved was privy to this information at the time, I don’t know.
In any case, we have a situation where a politician has been criticized for something that someone else said. Would it have been “politically correct” for this person to stop the bishop in the middle of his prayer and explain to him that you can’t talk about this other religion that way? I suspect that, at the time, that probably would have cost more votes. I can certainly understand people getting upset about what this religious leader said. I could understand if people wanted to know how much did the politician know about the bishop’s activities at the time (although I doubt that we will ever truly know that). However, to level criticism based on just this one video seems a little overboard to me. I think most of us Christians would appreciate a prayer that asks for our protection from witchcraft, even if some people don’t think that the sort of witchcraft that we would want to be protected from actually exists.
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