Wiccans move into small-town Bible-Belt-ish Christian community in Illinois.
They set up their own school.
Chaos ensues.
The Christians meet in the local high school’s gym to discuss what to do:
As more than 150 people filed into the shuttered high school Wednesday night for the meeting, Andy Thomas, youth minister at the Rossville Church of Christ, said residents had a spiritual responsibility to drive the witches out. If they didn’t, he said, young people were in danger of being pulled off the Christian path.
“Rossville has fallen on hard times,” Thomas said. “The school closed. This is a popular place for meth. We’re like, ‘Great, now a witch school.’ It feels like we’re being attacked.”
It gets better.
The high school brimmed with excitement as night fell and old and young filed into the gym.
But when Robert Kurka, the featured speaker, stepped to the lectern, an unexpected thing happened. Instead of leading a pep rally against the witches, the professor at Lincoln Christian College and Seminary delivered an academic lecture comparing Wicca and Christianity.
The Wiccans were not dangerous, Kurka said. They simply adhere to a flawed religion.
“I know you’re thinking, ‘This is amazingly dry,'” he said. “But when you sit down and take the spin off, you start to see that this is not that interesting.”
Kurka encouraged the crowd to try to convert the Wiccans rather than drive them away.
Yep. This should end well.
Neither side gets points for intelligent soundbytes:
“We don’t want [the Wiccans] to go in there and get potions to put hexes on their friends,” said Deb Robling, co-owner of a beauty salon on Chicago Street. Robling, also one of Rossville Church of Christ’s 230 members, helped organize Wednesday night’s meeting.
…
[CEO of Witch School International Donald] Lewis said he believes a mother goddess gave birth to the world and can take a variety of forms—”like Jesus or nature or even Mickey Mouse.” He said he believes in reincarnation and communicating with the dead. He said he also believes in magic, and openly calls himself a witch.
Which side do you take? (And you have to take one.)
Do you support the paranoid Christians trying to drive away a non-existent threat? (I promise the Wiccans’ hexes won’t do anything…)
Or do you support the Wiccans who believe in pseudoscience like talking to the dead and reincarnation and offer a course in their school on “zombies”?
*sigh*
(Thanks to Ben for the link!)
[tags]atheist, atheism, Wicca, Rossville[/tags]