White House Aide Angers Pagans (washingtonpost.com)

White House Aide Angers Pagans (washingtonpost.com): "White House Aide Angers Pagans
Towey Suggests Groups Lack Concern for the Poor
By Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 8, 2003; Page A23
H. James Towey, director of the White House's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, has stirred up a pot of trouble by suggesting that pagans don't care about the poor.



Wiccans, Druids and other pagans across the country, along with the Washington-based advocacy group Americans United for Separation of Church and State, are demanding an apology from Towey for his remarks in a White House-sponsored online chat Nov. 26.
According to the official transcript, Towey was asked by someone in Centralia, Mo., whether pagan groups 'should be given the same considerations as any other group' that applies for government funds.
'I haven't run into a pagan faith-based group yet, much less a pagan group that cares for the poor!' Towey wrote.
'Once you make it clear to any applicant that public money must go to public purposes and can't be used to promote ideology,' he wrote, 'the fringe groups lose interest. Helping the poor is tough work, and only those with loving hearts seem drawn to it.'
Outraged pagans have since bombarded the White House and Internet chat rooms with scores of examples of their charitable activity. Particularly common, they say, are food drives in conjunction with Pagan Pride Day celebrations from New York to Wyoming, Arkansas and Nebraska.
In the past three years, Pagan Pride groups have collected 74,000 pounds of food and donated $51,000 to homeless shelters, interfaith food banks, the American Red Cross and other charities, according to the Indianapolis-based International Pagan Pride Project.

In Chicago, pagans support a battered women's shelter. In Massachusetts, they have given $20,000 for children with AIDS. Towey "obviously doesn't have his finger on the pulse of the pagan community," said Fritz Waltjen, 42, of North Hollywood, Calif. "I don't think the man was being malicious. I think he was just ignorant."

As retail manager of Raven's Flight -- "the only pagan book and tchotchke shop within a 20-mile radius" -- Waltjen is at the center of a West Los Angeles pagan community of about 1,000 people that collects food and personal-care items for the homeless on every one of its eight annual "sabbats," or holidays.

According to one major study, Wiccans -- one of several subgroups of pagans -- made up the fastest-growing religion in the continental United States in the 1990s. The American Religious Identification Survey, based on a randomly dialed telephone survey of 50,281 households by the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, estimated that the number of Wiccans rose 17-fold, from 8,000 to 134,000, between 1990 and 2001.

The survey also estimated that there are 33,000 Druids and 140,000 other pagans in 48 states. That adds up to about 300,000 people in what pagans call their "family of religious and magical paths."

Contrary to stereotypes, pagans say, they do not worship Satan or cast evil spells. Although Wiccans practice witchcraft with exotic herbs, chanting and dancing, most of their rituals and beliefs -- which a federal court recognized as a religion in 1986 -- revolve around the cycles of nature, such as equinoxes and phases of the moon. Aside from a belief in magic, the witch next door is likely to hold a pretty mainstream set of concerns -- environmentalism, gender equality and compassion for the poor, said Shea Thomas, a Hyattsville lawyer who is the chairman of Open Hearth Foundation, a nonprofit group raising funds to build a pagan community center in the Washington area.

Before heading President Bush's initiative to allow religious groups to compete with secular ones for government grants, Towey founded Aging With Dignity, a nonprofit organization that helps families plan for the care they want during times of serious illness. He also ran Florida's health and social services agency under then-Gov. Lawton Chiles (D) and served as counsel to Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

Calls to his office for comment were returned by Claire Buchan, deputy White House press secretary. "The president believes that the faith-based initiative is an important initiative that is not about religion but is about results," she said. "Mr. Towey did not intend to convey any ill will toward anyone."

Although pagans across the country have sent letters and e-mails to the White House calling Towey's remarks hateful and discriminatory, Cather Steincamp, a pagan author and activist in Richmond, said the furor has also led to "some self-criticism within our community about what we should be doing."

Steincamp said he was not aware of any pagan groups that receive government funding to supply social services. "We're not eligible for that money because, in short, we haven't applied for it," he said.

Thomas, of the Open Hearth Foundation, said Towey was half-right.

"You will not find any pagan hospitals or universities or shelters for the homeless. Capital intensive things like that do not exist yet, partly because of our size and because we're still getting organized," he said.

"But [Towey] kind of implied that we don't have a charitable heart or a charitable focus or purpose, and that's where it got insulting and inaccurate."