Tag Archives: Paganism

Remembering David Oringderff

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I met David Oringderff just one time, in a San Antonio wine bar where a bunch of Pagan-studies scholars and members of the local Pagan community met for an evening, (He drove down from Austin, I believe) It was 2004, just before the Dept. of Veterans Affairs (but not the Defense Dept., to use its old name) accepted the “Pentacle Quest,” which allowed Pagan emblems (and others) in national cemeteries.

As Selena Fox wrote in the article linked above,

“Two other international Wiccan churches joined Circle Sanctuary’s re-application with letters of support, rather than applying separately. Included was a letter from the Covenant of the Goddess (COG), signed by Rev. Kathryn Fuller, and a letter from the Sacred Well Congregation (SWC), signed by Dr. David Oringderff. Both of these churches have members who are veterans as well as members who are on active duty. SWC includes groups that meet at US military installations.”

When you read her story of the pushback against the Pagan religious acknowledgement,, you have to realize that it’s not just from bureaucrats but from the entrenched monotheistic chaplains. As a retired officer and Pagan leader, Oringdorf pushed for Pagan chaplains for years — long before SecWar Pete Hegseth came on the scene — and ultimately got nowhere.

The following eulogy was published by Cherry Hill Seminary this past week:

Columbia, S.C.—Cherry Hill Seminary is sad to learn of the death on October 6 of longtime faculty leader David Oringderff, Ph.D. Fondly called “Dr. O” by many students, Oringderff taught for the Seminary beginning in 2002, headed the Department of Pastoral Counseling & Chaplaincy for about a decade, assisted in the development of the Community Ministry Certificate, and helped the academic dean to develop curriculum standards for his department.

“But his stellar work on behalf of Cherry Hill Seminary was just one facet of David’s extraordinary life,” said director Holli Emore. “Biographies that emerge in the wake of his passing will more fully detail all of David’s accomplishments. But I knew him as a co-founder and executive director emeritus of Sacred Well Congregation, an international Pagan coalition, and as the person behind the Wiccan circle at Fort Hood, Texas, when a national media firestorm erupted.” Emore continued, “David was also active for many years with the COMISS Network on Ministry in Specialized Settings. But I remember him best for always making himself available to students, his colleagues, and to me. We could always depend on David to follow through with whatever he committed to, quietly sharing his wisdom when asked.”

Others in the Seminary community also shared their memories.

I first got to know David when he was a U.S. Army major and he requested that I become his Europe-based doctoral supervisor during his NATO posting in Europe. His dedication to Paganism and Earth-based traditions, and to ensuring that those in the military have access to the spiritual resources that they need, was outstanding. His legacy lives on in the military in the form of the Sacred Well Congregation and the generations of chaplains, students, and Pagans that he has inspired. He will be greatly missed by his friends in Europe, the States, and beyond.—Vivianne Crowley

Only last December 2025 I was privileged to present David with the Hypatia Award for Excellence in Education in recognition of lifetime achievement and his service to the Cherry Hill Seminary community. During that time, he advised and taught scores of students, and mentored the first Master of Divinity graduate.—Margo Wolfe, Ph.D., Academic Dean

As a fellow psychologist, and an early instructor in the counseling program, I respected and admired David’s leadership at Cherry Hill. David mentored and guided students to achieve successful and satisfying careers as pagan counselors. He was compassionate and sincere, and a joy to work with.—Valerie Cole, Ph.D.

As a fellow chaplain endorser, I always knew David to be friendly and truthful. A person of integrity, he was not afraid to engage myself or others of differing faiths. And I do remember him well as an endorser and colleague. I am a past Chair of the COMISS Network, and he attended during my tenure. I respected him.—David B. Plummer

David has been a close friend and trusted mentor for many years. In many ways, he served as a father figure. He will be well remembered in this realm, and may he be well received in the next.—Shane L. Nelson, M.Div.

To David’s wife, Willow, his family and the many, many people whose lives he touched, Cherry Hill Seminary extends our sincere condolences. Read more about David here

A visitation will be held from 10:00 am to 11:00 am Thursday, October 15, 2026 at Mullinax Funeral Home, Butler, Missouri. Funeral services will follow at 11:00 am Thursday, also at the funeral home, with burial in Fort Scott National Cemetery, Fort Scott, Kansas.

Fleeing with the Idols

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This was the Summer Turned Inside Out. Blogging and a lot of other things (fishing trips, home improvements, were suspended at the end of June.

Pausing on the way down from the mountains, looking homeward anxiously,

In the early morning of June 29th, a tree fell against a power line in a little 1950s-vintage mountain subdivision perhaps thirty minutes’ drive away. Local firefighters responded, but the west winds blew and the pines were thick. They called for help from nearby departments (but not mine, for jurisdictional reasons). It got worse.

The fire had the little town of Beulah in its sights. Known as the Aspen Acres Fire, it burned more than 102,000 acres (43,000 ha), destroying almost two hundred homes and many other structures, including an iconic park lodge.

But then it thought, if fires think,1 “What about those people over there? I don’t stop at county lines.” On the morning of July 2nd, we were put on “pre-evac,” which to me meant go ahead and air up the tires of the camping trailer while hoping that we did not have to go anywhere. But by late afternoon the word came down: “Go.”

We ended up on friends’ horse property outside Pueblo: they were super-helpful, Marco the dog could hang with their big dogs — but it was not home, and I had an hour’s drive to the firehouse, on the days I worked.

But I had forgotten about the outdoor shrine! I was used to one- or two-night evacuations, not two weeks,

There it was, back in the trees, with its small roofed box holding god and goddess statues, the little altar, some other objects . . . It used to be screened by junipers and scrub oaks — not any more! A bulldozer had gone within a few feet of one sculpture at the “gate,” and the sawyers’ chainsaws opened up the view.

I wonder if anyone realized what they were looking at. Meanwhile, I scooped up the images and moved to the house, because the “army” would be back.

After the fire was contained, they had to mitigate (sort of) the environmental damage they had done. All the trees and brush cut to slow the fire’s spread were piled in “slash piles.” Those had to be chipped. I cajoled a couple of supervisors into doing the chipping on site rather than hauling the branches to the central chipping spot, I wanted the chips for mulch. And I high-graded all the big pieces for firewood before the chipping crew showed up.

And they need at a minimum to dig water bars (angled trenches built up on the downhill side) in the dozer bars to divert rainwater to one side or the other that it would not turn the dozer scar into a gully.

Revegetation? That was up to me (and Nature). So off I went buying “reclamation mix” grass seed at $10–$14 per pound. I’m ready now, just waiting for first frost.

But the shrine? Maybe there’s a lesson there. Maybe it had been too concealed. You can’t see it from the road. I think about rebuilding it more with stone — I have lots of sizeable stones lying around, ripped up by dozer and track hoe. I can’t bring back the screen of trees, obviously. But there will continue to be something,

Communitas Populi Romani, a New Roman Pagan Group

Luca Fizzarotti, center, pours water on hands during a ritual with the Communitas Populi Romani, Feb. 10, 2024, near the Forum in Rome. (RNS photo/Claire Giangravè)

Luca Fizzarotti, center, pours water on hands during a ritual with the Communitas Populi Romani, Feb. 10, 2024, near the Forum in Rome. (RNS photo/Claire Giangravè)

Religious News Service notices Communitas Populi Romani, a Pagan group organized in 2013.

In the beginning, the group focused on reenactments and history, but it slowly shifted toward becoming an officially recognized religious group. There are 20 or so members, said Donatella Ertola, who joined the group in 2015 and now organizes meetings three or four times a month in the places that are closest to the original temples spread across Rome.

“We all believe in the gods, we make rituals at home, we have devotion temples at home, we have our priests and officiants,” she told RNS, adding that this is a “niche community that has been growing recently.”

But I had to laugh at this: “When I met her, she said, ‘I am pagan and vegan,’ and I thought ‘Great! I am celiac!’” said Pieri, who works as a sound technician.

Because what is the real religion of today? Diet. And however your therapist describes you in categories of the DSM-5, or its Italian equivalent.

Still I like that they are trying to reactivate old sacred places while simultaneously not feeling the need to dress up like the ancestors.

‘Paganism and Its Others’ — A New Special Issue of The Pomegranate

“Paganism and Its Others, a double issue that has been in the works for rather a long time, is finally published, including, among other things, discussion of Pagan-identified units on both sides of the Ukraine invasion and also perhaps the definitive (so far) article on Czech Pagan black metal music.

Here is the introduction by guest editor Michael Strmiska (free download).

You will find links to all the articles here.

But they are expensive, you say. You do have choices. Are you at a university with a religious studies program? If you are on the faculty, suggest a Pomegranate subscription to your library, and all the students will get online access. If you are not a professor, try to persuade a professor to recommend it to the library. Or use interlibrary loan; you should be able to that online nowadays.

If you visit a publicly supported college or university, you may still have interlibrary loan privileges as a “community member.” And even small public libraries are plugged into networks with access to all kinds of materials. Just ask. You might be surprised.

Finally, the online article preview will provide info about the author’s whereabouts. Universities have online directories in most cases. Sometimes a polite email explaining your interest in someone’s article might just get you a PDF.

What Does ‘Pagan Persistence’ Look Like?

For more than a century, scholars and Pagans (who are sometimes the same people) have debated the persistence — or not — of Pagan ideas and practices into the Chritian era. This is the question that Robin Douglas and Francis Young examine in Paganism Persisting: A History of European Paganisms since Antiquity.

Reviewer Ethan Doyle White writes in Reading Religion:

“Trying to escape the binary between the “hermeneutic of survival” and the “hermeneutic of concoction” that have historically dominated discussions on the topic, Douglas and Young outline a ‘hermeneutic of persistence,’ maintaining that “elements of paganism continued to exist in post-classical European society, constantly ready to be revived and reanimated” (2). Even while pre-Christian religions themselves essentially became extinct in most of Europe, images and ideas from those traditions persevered, allowing them to be adopted and reutilized by later individuals, some of whom considered themselves Christian, and others who were actively seeking replacements for Christianity.”

Get your library to order it or buy some expensive English electrons.

YouTube Episode Explores Pagan Music

Slovak religion scholar Michal Puchovský’s new YouTube channel, 15 Grams of Religion, offers a new video on “What Makes Pagan Music Pagan?”

Not long ago, Puchovsky published a paper in The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies, on the Pagan musician and teacher Žiarislav, titled “Actually, I’m Pagan Thanks to Music: The Role of Žiarislav’s Music in the Life of Modern Pagans in Slovakia,” which was based on his master’s thesis.

Žiarislav has his own YouTube channel, and here is maybe his best-known music video.

My Thoughts on Pagan Studies, in Podcast Form

In February I was interviewed by Robin Douglas, an independent scholar in London who has published in various places, including The Pomegranate, and is the co-author of a new book, Paganism Persisting: A History of European Paganisms since Antiquity.1

So you can hear a sort of scratchy-voiced me (winter respiratory crap) talking about the field and some of its background. Religion Off the Beaten Track is carried by a number of the podcast sites, including Apple podcasts and Spotify.

I have been editing an issue of Pomegranate on Eastern European Paganism, and a lot of the writing from that area reminds me Anglosphere Pagan studies in the 1990s–2000s. It’s what I call “scouting,” which is the first step in writing about any new religious movement: Who are they? How many of them are there? Where did they come from? Are they friendly?

And then once you have done that, the fun begins. Challenge the accepted notions, like whether contemporary Paganism(s) are the “fastest-growing religion.” Examine the interaction of magical religion and the fashion industry. It’s all wide open.

  1. Sadly, even the Kindle version is made from very expensive English electrons. Publisher’s site here. ↩︎

Does the Pagan Resurgence Start with Folklore?

“Politics is downstream from culture,” people like to say online — which is just a re-statement of something that I have long believed, that “Life imitates Art.”

Maybe I am just reflecting my online environment and the podcasts that I listen to, but folklore is suddenly big. My feed has a lot of British contributors in it; some have MA’s in folklore, which won’t get you a teaching job but maybe will give you the skills to write, make videos, and so forth.

So there is a plethora of podcasts, such as the Modern Fairy Sightings podcast, hosted by Jo Hickey-Hall, one of Ronald Hutton’s former graduate students. Zines like I haven’t seen them since pre-Internet days. One of my favorites is Hellebore, edited by Maria Pérez Cuervo, also a former grad student (fill in the blank).

So this is also niche stuff, but you have to add it up.

The Epigram, Bristol University’s independent student newspaper, just this week published an article “The Old Gods- The Resurgence of Paganism and Folklore,“

These traditions may seem to belong to another time – yet interest in paganism and folklore is growing across the globe. Shamanism, although not an organised faith, is the fastest growing religion in England and Wales, according to the 2011 and 2022 censuses. In the US, the number of Wicca adherents is now over 1.5 million. Wicca, founded in the early half of the 20th century by Gerald Gardner, is one of the most influential and popular branches of the modern neopagan movement, with a complex variety of branches, denominations and traditions across the world.

I am not sure where those numbers come from, so just consider them to be “hand-waving.” Counting Pagans is a real difficult problem.

North America’s Pagan resurgence, should one occur, is going to look different. But there are cross-overs. Just today I stopped at the nearest small-town grocery store. This guy was stocking the shelves (not one of the employees that I recognized, so maybe new), and he was wearing a big ol’ Mjölnir amulet around his neck, maybe a reproduction of the one at the linked page.

Lithuanian Pagans Gain More Official Recognition, But What Does that Really Mean?

A Romuva celebration (Euronews).

After repeated tries, the Lithuanian Pagan group Romuva, which was formally organized in the early 20th century, has received a higher level official recognition

Romuva has been granted official recognition following the Constitution and the Law on Religious Communities and Associations, as well as the Justice Ministry’s conclusion that it meets legal requirements. The ministry noted that Romuva has been active in Lithuania for 25 years [see below for why that matters] while its teachings and rites do not contradict Lithuanian laws and generally accepted moral norms. Romuva applied for official recognition on 17 May 2017, but at the time parliament rejected the move.

In 2019, [and again in 2023] the organisation appealed to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which ruled in 2021 that by refusing official recognition parliament violated the European Convention on Human Rights

Lithuania’s rulers abandoned Paganism in the 1200s (for political reasons at least partly), and the country became majority Roman Catholic. But if any European country did have a hidden “Pagan survival,” it was Lithuania. Or the nearest thing to it.

Once free of the USSR in 1990, Lithuania set up a hierarchy of “registered” religions — a hierarchy that might be on its way out. Right now, it looks like this, says Scott Simpson, lecturerer at Jagiellonian University in Poland and co-editor of Modern Pagan and Native Faith Movements in Central and Eastern Europe.

The media understandably struggle to explain the complex Romuva situation in simple and interesting terms to the average reader. They sometimes err on the side of making it sound like this is the first time that Romuva is counted as a religion at all, and sometimes err on the side of making it sound like they jumped straight to ‘established church’ (TASS has good example of that).

What has happened is that the religious organisation of Romuva, in keeping with Lithuanian law in spite of some hard-to-forgive discriminatory delay, has moved from being in the first tier (a ‘registered’ religious organisation) to being in the second tier (a ‘state-recognised’ religious organisation).  This will give them some more abilities, such as their religious marriages can automatically be counted as state marriages without the need for a separate trip to the registry office.

The change in status for the religious organisation isn’t, in theory, a change in status for the religion.  Citizens of Lithuania have freedom of religion and conscience, and can practice their religions without registration if they wish to do so. (You could call that ‘level 0’ of registration.) But what those citizens get by registering as a religious organisation is the ability to act as a legal corporate entity, for example to collect funds in an organisation-owned bank account. Of course, there is also an intangible psychological and social element of seeming like a legitimate religion when one has an official registration. (You could call this ‘level 1’ of registration.)

One of the most important metrics for making the jump upwards is to have been registered as an organisation at level 1 for at least 25 years.  Therefore, over time, there should be a small surge in requests to the Seimas for movement from ‘registered’ to ‘state-recognised’. Romuva reached that criterion long ago and yet was refused (twice!) the change in status by the Seimas.  This was a democratic vote, and yet the lack of solid objections to Romuva (that is, they were not credibly accused of crimes against the state or any other saliant wrongdoing that could make them undesirable to the Lithuanian state) means that this decision was discriminatory.  That’s not just my opinion, it was also the opinion of the European Court of Human Rights.  At least one other religious organisation has been refused in a similar way: the Jehovah’s Witnesses.  But a new government has come into power in Lithuania with a different composition of MPs and they voted this week to move Romuva to the position that they have qualified for.  (We will see if the Jehovah’s Witnesses also get another chance in the coming weeks.  Blood transfusions might be considered more an issue there.)

Presumably, although Romuva must be pleased to have been moved one rung up, they will someday want to try to move to the next rung, ‘traditional religion’. (We can call this one ‘level 3’.) It is much less clear what the procedure would be for doing that, or whether it is possible at all. The 1995 law says: ‘The State shall recognise nine traditional religious communities and associations existing in Lithuania, which comprise a part of Lithuania’s historical, spiritual and social heritage: Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, Evangelical Lutheran, Evangelical Reformed, Russian Orthodox, Old Believer, Judaist, Sunni Muslim, and Karaite.’  One possible interpretation is that you only get on that list by being named on the list in the 1995 law.  And therefore, no-one else will ever be added unless the Seimas decides to pass a new law that supersedes that one.  Romuva will want to claim that they are ‘part of Lithuania’s historical, spiritual and social heritage’ and therefore should be added.

But if Romuva make a play for level 3, they will face a much murkier set of criteria with a lot more difficulty in proving incontestably to all stakeholders that they qualify. Romuva firmly believe that they should be recognised as continuing the ancient tradition which survived nearly intact from times centuries before those other ‘traditional’ religion’s arrival in Lithuania. (Note that current scholars of ancient Lithuanian religion are not in unanimous agreement with Romuva’s conviction in more than one way.) And they believe that their religion remained hidden in Lithuanian folk culture throughout the centuries means that they represent ‘spiritual and social heritage’ par excellence. To them, it is a gross injustice that they were not on the short list to start with.  

But, because the current Romuva started their project in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and their current organisation was only registered in 1992, they will have to fight to be recognised as legally representing the same religion as existed in the 15th century. Technically, the precedence of Sunni Islam in Lithuania (where fragmentation of organisations does not mean that they lose ‘traditional’ status as a religion) means that they don’t actually need to show that this contemporary organisation is the same as that ancient organisation.

So far, so good. But they do need to show that this contemporary religion is the same as that ancient religion. (Cue discussion of the Ship of Theseus, etc.) As much as the adherents of Romuva believe in their hearts that these two things are essentially identical, their critics will have no great difficulty in finding academic experts who will call that into question and call them related, but essentially different. Academic fashions change, and different paradigms circulate today than circulated back in the 1970s. And without a very clear consensus from a strong majority of experts who are consulted on this, the Seimas has no great motivation to initiate the messy and controversial process of drafting and passing a new law specially for them.  Especially knowing that it is likely to get bogged down in an abstruse discussion of nit-picky historical and archaeological details right from the start.

I suspect that the clock is ticking on these kinds of laws, anyhow.  They are out of touch with the rest of EU law and they regularly run afoul of the European Court of Human Rights. I would bet that Lithuania tosses out the whole ladder system long before Romuva manages to climb to the highest rung.

Lunacy — A Pagan Music Classic Reissued

Download links (Spotify, YouTube, Apple) here.

Learn more about the Pagan History Project here.