The Plight of Pagans in the Military

By Jennifer Willis | June 20, 2012

Stefani Barner likes to say she is married to the military. She lives in Eastpointe, Michigan, 10 miles from Selfridge Air National Guard Base, where her husband Robert is an aircraft mechanic. The Barners are also practicing Pagans—a faith often ill at ease with military culture. Robert’s co-workers have “jokingly” suggested the couple worships the devil. While serving two tours in Iraq, he was subjected to attempts at Christian evangelism from other troops. Once, a Commissary worker even asked the Barners if they sacrificed goats. But for Stefani, the most egregious comment came from a military chaplain. He told her and another Pagan military wife, if he had his way, “You people wouldn’t even exist here.”

Her experiences with religious intolerance in the military resulted in her book, Faith and Magick in the Armed Forces: A Handbook for Pagans in the Military. Though far from the witch-hunts of the past, Pagan stereotypes continue to be problematic, but perhaps even more so within the U.S. Armed Forces. Though there are now military chaplains for many minority religions—Buddhism and Hinduism included—Pagan military chaplaincy can’t seem to get off the ground, and until recently Pagan veterans could not have the pentacle—the symbol of their faith—inscribed on their tombstones in military cemeteries. But with increased accommodation of minority religions and a push for greater religious tolerance in the ranks, life could be changing for Pagans in uniform. “Things have improved,” Stefani says. “I think that we still have a long way to go, but that’s true for many, many minority faiths.”

Pagans—also, Neo-Pagans or sometimes Witches—practice contemporary forms of earth-based spirituality. There are multiple forms of Paganism, including Wicca, Druidism, Shamanism, Asatru and Heathenism, all of which remain fast-growing faith groups in the United States. From 2001 to 2008, the American Wiccan population increased more than two-fold (from 134,000 to 342,000), and the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey estimated there were nearly 700,000 Pagans and Wiccans in the United States. In 2007, the Pentagon counted more than 1,500 self-identified Wiccans in the Air Force and 350 in the Marines, but no numbers were tracked for the Navy or Army, which are much larger branches. Members of Circle Sanctuary—a Wiccan church based in Wisconsin that serves Pagans globally—puts the current estimate of military Pagans around 10,000, but even that number is a guess.

Retired U.S. Army Major Michelle Boshears—herself a Green Craft Wiccan—says those numbers reflect only active duty military who claim Paganism as their religion on official forms. When Boshears served 15 years ago, the only option for Pagans was to mark “No Preference” or “Other.” For that reason, she estimates that the numbers of Pagans in uniform could be closer to 20,000.

http://religionandpolitics.org/2012/06/20/the-plight-of-pagans-in-the-military/