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“Latent Christianity is the social and emotional baggage that sticks around even after we鈥檝e left the religion.”
– Ocean Keltoi

Many, if not most people, come to Witchcraft, Wicca, or one of the other Pagan faiths from a previous background in Christianity. This is from either being a Christian, or if not actively being one, then experiencing it through living in a predominately Christian culture — at least here in the United States. (Link to my article: Are We a Christian Nation? for more context).

Our background and experiences impact and inform how we live, make decisions, and how we view the world. As people who have left one religion and seek to embrace a different belief or practice, we will invariably bring some of that background with us. Sometimes there is good stuff found in that background and sometimes it’s toxic and traumatic. Everyone’s experience is different, but there are some things that seem to be pretty common for Pagans coming from a Christian background.

When one comes to the point of knowing the religion or practice they were doing is no longer (or maybe never was) fulfilling their spiritual needs, and they decide to leave it, it’s often a process of coming to terms with that. It involves unpacking the reasons why we left and deciding what to leave and what to keep as we move forward.

From my own perspective, I went through a couple of years of being agnostic after deciding I wasn’t cut out for Christianity. I realized while I was still pretty young that it just didn’t make sense to me. I think I officially decided I wasn’t going to be a Christian when I was thirteen, because I was already not practicing Christianity by the time I entered high school. It wasn’t until I was about fifteen that I started exploring other religions. I eventually found Wicca while I was still in high school and I dedicated to Wicca when I was seventeen. My first few years being Wiccan had a lot of the same stuff going through a break-up brings with it.

I’ve always kept journals, and because of this, I was able to look back at what I was feeling and how I was describing my new experiences as a Witch after leaving Christianity. I didn’t see it at the time how much I experienced the villainization that happens often when you break up with someone. It’s very similar — you decide that your ex was crazy, wrong, or toxic, and that’s how I viewed Christianity. To be fair, there are still a LOT of Christian beliefs and practices that I think are dangerously harmful and toxic, but not necessarily the religion as a whole. I’ve also come to recognize and appreciate the beauty and value that can be found in it. But, just as in a break-up, I had to get to the point of forgiving my ex before I could embrace this understanding.

I also didn’t realize at the time the space that my previous Christian faith was occupying in my mind and my new religious beliefs and practices. I went through a phase of reading and studying and learning and practicing Pagan Witchcraft, and still finding that a lot of it just felt like words on a page and lip service being performed that I wasn’t truly experiencing. It was very frustrating because I knew there was more to it. It clicked. It made sense. It felt right… but I still wasn’t there yet.

Not for a couple of years.

In my role as priestess, I’ve counseled and educated others who come into this path, and we talk about some of these similar experiences and backgrounds. There are two major hurdles that I’ve seen arise:

• Overcoming a fear of Hell or damnation
• Moving from a position of submitting to deity to honoring/respecting deity

It’s a process.

Trust the process.

When someone comes to me and expresses their inability to let go of a triggering belief like facing an eternity of torment after they die, I recommend doing some intensive inner work with journaling and studying. As a Religious Pagan Witch, I treat a belief in Hell as I do any other traumatic, triggering, toxic belief arising from someone’s past experience. We work through understanding why it was put there, why it’s bad/wrong/harmful, and what to replace it with. It’s not my job to convince someone they shouldn’t believe in Hell, or to convince someone they should believe in some other afterlife. It’s my job to help them work through it, offer support and suggestions and guidance as they navigate their chosen path. Ultimately, the final outcome rests with them. It’s heartbreaking to see the anguish and pain someone experiences because of an inability to let go of this fear, and ultimately they must determine if this is going to be the right path for them to walk. Your religion or practice should make you feel good about doing it. If you are practicing something out of fear of what happens if you don’t practice it, that’s a horrible way to live. Likewise, if you’re afraid to practice Paganism or Witchcraft because of a belief that doing so will lead to Hell, then you shouldn’t practice Paganism or Witchcraft.

Witchcraft is an experiential religion/practice. Meaning, the belief isn’t the starting point; the practice is. (Link to my article explaining the difference between Orthopraxy and Orthodoxy for more detail) Witchcraft doesn’t teach you what to believe. It teaches you what to do. When you do it, the experiences you have will inform what you will believe. This is why Witches more often have a deeply-rooted commitment to our path, because we came to it through experience and not through being told or taught what we should think about the world or spirituality.

This belief that a person must have the right religion in order to be saved from impending doom is peculiar to Christianity — and even within Christianity, there are different interpretations as to what guarantees you go to one place or the other when you die. In Wicca, the afterlife isn’t really that much of a concern. There are various beliefs about it, but in general (at least in my 30-ish years of experience with it), Wiccans don’t really worry about it.

Brief sidetrack on this topic: This there is only right way to do it belief can manifest in Paganism and Witchcraft as a series of mislabeled commandments and is often seen as gatekeeping. When Pagans or Witches say, “You must do it this way in order to properly honor the gods.” Or, “If you do that, it will come back to you threefold.” Or, “You must not do magic to affect someone without their permission.” Or, “You can’t jinx/hex/curse someone because of the Harm None rule.” All of this is a carry-over from latent Christianity.
It is a challenge to shift from a belief centralized on being the “One true, right, and only way,” to a belief of plurality and actually allowing for individualized understanding and being personally responsible for all of one’s choices and actions.
To be clear: Having a personal code of ethics where you commit to not causing intentional harm; where you choose not to violate another’s free will by doing influential magic or magic without express permission; where you believe in a system of Universal/Divine or “karmic” justice that will return 3x the effect of any magical or mundane action taken; or you come to a personal understanding and connection with a deity as to how you can most strongly feel and know their presence, is all perfectly acceptable and absolutely encouraged.
But— it is not for you to say that all other people must do, think, or act this way in order to be a real Pagan or a real Witch.

The reality of Paganism is that the afterlife is not the main focus of the religions. In Wicca/Witchcraft, there鈥檚 little spoken of it outside of a belief in reincarnation 鈥� specifically that if you live as a Witch, you will return as a Witch in your next life and again meet up with other Witches you have known before so that you can continue to celebrate and do magic with them. There is also an understanding of ancestral reverence, found often in the concept of the Mighty Dead, where those who held positions of honor during their life as a Witch or magical person can be reverently called upon to aid those of us following in their footsteps. Within lineaged traditions, Witches may call upon others who bore ancestral lineage to aid in magical work. This is one of the special things belonging to a lineaged tradition offers. There is also a generic sort of paradise referred to as The Summerland where one鈥檚 spirit goes for rest and renewal and to meet with our beloved dead before reincarnating.

Or if you follow any of the other reconstructed Pagan paths, you may have the belief in your soul arriving in the Duat, Helheim, Valhalla, Elysium, The Otherworld, or T铆r na n脫g, or any number of destinations. The noticeable difference is that your eventual presence in one of these places was based on your cultural experience and religious practice, and if you lived your life in an appropriate way to be rewarded or punished. It was not (is not) based on if you believe in a certain mythos or deity. Our gods care about who you are as a person and how you live your life, not whether or not you believe in them.

Which leads into the second major point: Moving away from a position of submitting to a god and into a position of honoring or working with a god.

The keyword here is RECIPROCITY, which is give-and-take. We serve the gods so that they will bless us; the gods bless us so we make offerings and give praise and gratitude to them. The tone of submission to the gods is not one often welcome in Pagan spheres and is one of the things Pagans often stress they are not doing. Is this a reaction to being in a submissive role in Christian theology?

Perhaps.

Because Christian theology centers on submission to God, and only being right if you believe in him, acts of worship and praise exist to prove to that god that your belief is sincere and you are submitting. So, if you aren’t worshipping or praising him, you aren’t a true believer, and therefore won’t make it to paradise after you die. The teaching is, “If we don鈥檛 praise or worship God, we are failing to demonstrate our submission, belief, gratitude, and love.” Since this is what the Christian god requires of his followers, that failure is an eternal death sentence.

The way this manifests as a new Pagan or Witch is often seeking out how to know which practice or belief they should follow in order to be a “Real Witch”. Pagan traditions in general don’t require submission to our gods as evidence of faith. In fact, if you ask a Pagan about their relationship with their god/goddess/gods, “submission” is the farthest thing from what they will say they do.

We work with our gods. We honor our gods. We give thanks to our gods. We ask our gods to bless us. We don’t submit to our gods. Our gods aren’t there to micromanage every aspect of our lives, requiring us to let them rule over everything, deferring all guidance and responsibility for everything that we want to have happen to be based on their will. This is one of the challenges those new to Paganism face, and sometimes it will still arise after we think it should be over.

There’s a lot to unpack when it comes to the baggage of latent Christianity, and this is really just a surface study of everything that can be there. But in my experience, these are the big ones. If this is a struggle you are experiencing, my advice is to keep at it. Keep going. Whether you commit to a Pagan religion or find renewed faith in Christianity, I hope it serves you well and is for your highest good.