By Catherine Carr

Religious leaders from around the world converged on the shore of Lake Michigan this past summer for a convening of the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago. For one week, the McCormick Center, which normally plays host to auto shows and pop culture conventions, was filled with priests, pastors, monks, nuns, rabbis, imams, swamis, and various other devotees of world religions.

For one week, the conference rooms and main stages were filled with speeches and panels on the topics of women’s rights, the rights and wisdom of indigenous peoples, and the grave threats to human rights posed by environmental destruction—including inequity of access to food, water, and the massive combination drought-and-famine which has millions of people currently facing starvation or relocation in the Horn of Africa. (The Horn of Africa situation, by the way, is the largest humanitarian crisis currently in progress, but has received almost no mainstream news coverage in the West due to the lack of money or oil located in the affected regions. You can learn more about it and donate to relief efforts at ConcernUSA.org if you feel so inclined.)

This year’s Program Chair, in charge of coordinating programming for the physical gathering itself, was world-renowned witch and Pagan author, Phyllis Curott. Multiple Pagan groups marched in full regalia in the Parade of Faiths alongside Chinese Buddhists and Zoroastrians. The very first blessing of opening ceremonies was given by Rev. Laura González, Priestess of the Goddess and Circle Sanctuary Minister. The Pagan Faith Room in the Faith Room hall was a constant hive of activity, bustling with warm conversation and talks on subjects ranging from knot magic and tarot reading to indigenous religions and the majesty and complexity of the Milky Way Galaxy.

How did witches and Pagans, groups still marginalized and sometimes openly demonized in the United States, come to play such an outsized role in this Parliament of World Religions?

One obvious answer lies in the Parliament’s official theme for 2023. Defending Freedom and Human Rights has always been a principal concern for witches and Pagans, who overwhelmingly see their religion as a people-powered one which seeks to empower individuals to commune with the Divine and the world around them without the need for approval or assistance from authority figures.

The specific humanitarian concerns of women’s rights, the rights of indigenous peoples, and environmental destruction have always been at the forefront of the Pagan mind, stretching back to the days when these subjects were almost universally unpopular among mainstream churches in the West. The Pagans of the Goddess movement and modern animist witches have, in a very real way, been training for this shift in the priorities of the global religious community their whole lives. And now it seems that a growing number of other religious groups are willing to take their cues from the religious leaders who are most well-versed in the science and theology of these most pressing matters.

“My church has a Wiccan priestess say the opening blessing for us during Earth Week,” one Catholic who attended Parliament told me. “The bishop doesn’t know—I imagine he wouldn’t be too happy about it—but we didn’t feel like it would be right for us to hold services dedicated to honoring and preserving the Earth without Wiccan participation.”

To understand the significance of this moment, we must first understand what the Parliament of World Religions is and how it came to be. We’ll then explore how Pagans got their first position on the Parliament Board and the inspiring story of how marginalized groups can become powerful when they work together and uplift each other.

Parliament Begins

The first Parliament of World Religions was held at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, not far from the location of this year’s Parliament event. The World’s Fairs of the 18th-20th centuries can be thought of as the beginnings of globalization and futurism. Driven by advancing technology, world leaders and business magnates began to take seriously the idea that the future could, and should, be different from the past.

The nations and cities who hosted World’s Fairs sought to show off their own visions of the future and the wonders that were possible with the skill of their local engineers and inventors. People from around the world flocked to these displays of forward-thinking ambition At the World’s Fairs, they learned not only from the designated presenters but also from each other.

In Chicago in 1893, it was proposed that the religious leaders who had traveled across the world to this common destination—no small feat decades before the invention of the airplane—should meet to get to know each other and discuss the pressing problems facing the world.

The first Parliament of 1893 helped to begin the exchange of religious ideas between the East and West. In attendance was one Paul Carus, a German-born Chicago local whose family publishing operation became involved in publishing translations of Buddhist and Hindu sacred texts into English and distributing these for sale in America. This publishing operation evolved into today’s Carus Books and Cricket Media.

Another Chicago local who was present at the 1893 Parliament was Caroline High-Correll, a member of the High-Correll family who in the 20th century would syncretize their blended Scottish-Cherokee magical traditions with Wicca and found the Correllian Nativist Wiccan Church. Today the Correllian Church oversees shrines around the world, many of which teach both Wiccan and local indigenous spiritual ideas and practices.

In the 1980s and 1990s, a look at the world’s humanitarian problems, combined with the now obviously inevitable march of globalization, led to the proposal that what was then known as the Council for a Parliament of World’s Religions should reconvene to discuss the pressing humanitarian issues which modern society now had much more knowledge of—and much more power to solve. In 1993, over 8,000 religious people from around the world gathered once again in Chicago to foster a spirit of camaraderie and understanding as well as to discuss working together to solve pressing humanitarian crises. The 14th Dalai Lama attended and gave the keynote speech.

As a result of this meeting, the Global Ethic, a moral manifesto depicting the human rights ideals shared by all religions who participate in the Parliament, was written. A Sourcebook for the Community of Religions was also authored as a consequence of the 1993 Parliament convening. This religious textbook was unique at the time, and is still rare today, in that each entry was actually written by practitioners of the religion in question. This was undertaken with the intention of minimizing the misunderstandings and misinformation which so often come about when one culture’s only source of information about another’s religion comes from outsiders whose own understanding of the religion is lacking.

The Parliament convened again in Cape Town, South Africa in 1999, with Nobel Prize-winning anti-apartheid Anglican theologian Archbishop Desmond Tutu as a keynote speaker. This convening resulted in the creation of “A Call to Our Guiding Institutions,” an open letter to religious, governmental, and educational institutions around the world as well as businesses and media companies, to reflect on their role in shaping the world of the future on the eve of the millennium. Another book, Gifts of Service to the World, which chronicled over 300 humanitarian and community service projects from around the globe, was also published.

In 2004, over 9,000 attendees gathered in Barcelona, Spain to discuss ways in which religious communities could address pressing issues including the mitigation of religious violence, access to safe and clean water, the care of refugees, and the elimination of debts carried by developing countries. Attendees were asked to not merely talk about these issues, but to take action to solve them on the local or global stage.

The pattern of choosing especially pressing issues for global attendees to discuss and plan action on was followed by future Parliaments in Melbourne, Australia in 2009; in Salt Lake City in 2015; in Toronto, Canada in 2018; the virtual Parliament held entirely via a video chat platform due to Covid in 2021; and the return to Chicago in 2023.

Recent Parliaments have continually reevaluated what humanitarian issues are most crucial to the world’s future. Since 2009, consistent themes have included a strong emphasis on women’s rights, the rights of indigenous peoples around the world, and humanity’s responsibility to be good stewards of the Earth in order to avert human rights crises caused by environmental destruction. These themes seem to have set the direction for the Parliament’s work in the 21st century, with virtually all member religions agreeing that these concerns are of utmost importance to the world today.

The prioritization of these issues helps explain the outsized Pagan presence at Parliament, but I still had many questions about how a family of religions which are so marginalized in religious spaces in the United States became so influential within this group of religious leaders who gather to fight for human rights. I spoke to Angie Buchanan, the first Pagan to serve as a trustee on the Board of the Council for a Parliament of World Religions, to get some answers.

The History of Pagans at Parliament

From the very start, Pagans recognized the opportunity presented by the Parliament of World Religions. Representatives of at least five American Pagan organizations attended the 1993 convening. Amid the blessings of the world religions, Fellowship of Isis co-founder Lady Olivia Robertson played her sacred sistrum and said a blessing to the Goddess on stage as part of the opening Plenary to mixed reactions of approval and disapproval from the other religious groups in attendance.

Rev. Angie Buchanan was one of the Pagans in attendance in 1993, alongside representatives of the Pagan and Goddess movement organizations EarthSpirit, the Covenant of the Goddess, Circle Sanctuary, the Correllian Nativist Tradition, and the Fellowship of Isis. One of the most important tasks that fell to attendees of the 1993 Parliament was choosing a representative to participate in the writing of the Global Ethic on their behalf.

Representatives of EarthSpirit, the Covenant of the Goddess, and Circle Sanctuary agreed to unite behind one candidate: Deborah Ann Light, a Wiccan priestess who was active in environmentalism, feminism, and interfaith work. Light became one of the 125 global religious representatives who contributed to the process of writing the Global Ethic. She proposed that the Parliament use a consensus process similar to that used by the Covenant of the Goddess to ratify important organization-wide decisions in order to ensure the buy-in of global religious organizations to the ethic’s vision for a better world. This proposal was ultimately accepted, and the consensus process was used to obtain approval from representatives of more than 125 religious organizations for the Global Ethic’s contents.

The Global Ethic was authored by Catholic theologian Hans Küng, at the request of the Council, with the assistance of Peace Council founder Daniel Gómez-Ibáñez and Catholic vicar for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs Thomas A. Baima. The forward-thinking document lays out in detail a vision of a world in which all people are liberated and empowered. Light, an avid devotee of Goddess spirituality, was among those who suggested to Küng that the word “God” should not appear in the document, as this would imply that any organization that signed the Ethic was endorsing worship of the same deity or supreme being.

Instead of focusing on a divine mandate as the primary motivation to make the world a better place—which would be a shaky proposition, since religious organizations exist who insist that their God is against human rights—the Global Ethic which resulted from this consensus process focuses on uplifting the community of humanity for humanity’s sake. The document has been signed by representatives of 125 religious organizations from around the world, including the EarthSpirit, the Covenant of the Goddess, Circle Sanctuary, Küng’s own Roman Catholic Church, and the Dalai Lama’s Gelug Tibetan Buddhism.

Pagans played an important role in the creation of the Global Ethic as a truly universal endorsement of human rights, and the next logical step was for a Pagan to sit on the board of the Council. Unfortunately, there was a problem. Under the rules of the Parliament Board, only an existing board member can nominate a new board member for a vacant seat. And in 1993, none of the members of the Parliament board knew any Pagan leaders well enough to vouch for them.

This changed in the years to come, as Buchanan and other Pagan leaders remained involved in interfaith work. Buchanan came to know local Baha’i leaders through her work, and they became convinced that there was a need for her Pagan perspective to have a voice on the Board. The Baha’is, who were a critical part of the reconvening in 1993, did have a seat on the board. In 2002, Baha’i board member Yael Wurmfeld nominated Buchanan for the position. The nomination was accepted, and she became Parliament’s first Pagan board member.

Buchanan’s actions and experiences in the years to come confirm the power of interfaith dialogue and mutual support. After being nominated through the support of another religious group, Buchanan was able to draw upon the Earth Traditions community, a Pagan Church which she co-founded, to raise $7,000 for Robert Houndohome Hounon of Benin, the Supreme Spiritual Leader of the Great Council of the Vodun Hwendo tradition, to travel halfway around the world to attend the Melbourne Parliament in 2009. She was also able to work with the Parliament board’s Native American representatives to try to root out cultural appropriation among self-proclaimed U.S. Pagan leaders.

“At first,” Buchanan recalls, “I was assigned to work on the programming committee with the Native American board member who was reluctant to work with me. In the 2000s there were people trying to submit modified indigenous ceremonies and lectures to the Parliament program. Most were claiming to have indigenous knowledge and [tribal] initiations when they didn’t, and even making false claims about what indigenous peoples believed. But when she saw that I was equally appalled by this and that I refused to endorse or approve such programming, we reached a mutual understanding and respect for one another, and we were able to work together to ensure that both our traditions were respectfully and truthfully represented.”

The effect of having a Pagan on the Parliament board was powerful. In 2004, Buchanan arranged for Donovan Arthen, a 16-year-old Pagan who had been attending Parliament since the age of 6 with his Pagan parents, to introduce himself as a Pagan to the gathered crowd of 10,000 religious leaders from around the world as part of the opening Plenary. Arthen proudly told the assembled leaders that “Pagan” means “people of the Earth” while many Pagans in the audience, who had seen their religion reviled as devil worship for the last century, quietly wept.

Buchanan’s work also helped resolve a significant point of misinformation and misunderstanding between American Pagans and the Greek Orthodox Church. For decades in the Pagan community, popular lore has held that the Greek Orthodox representatives present at the 1993 Parliament walked offstage in protest, and subsequently stopped attending Parliament, when the Goddess was invoked in the opening blessing.

What I did not know until I interviewed Buchanan was that this was not the whole story. In reality, the Greek Orthodox delegation had been told by a source that they trusted that local Pagans had performed an animal sacrifice in a public ritual shortly before Parliament. They walked offstage, not just in objection to the Goddess being invoked, but in objection to the inclusion of a group which they believed was practicing cruelty to animals in the name of their religion.

This was not clarified until Buchanan, a former law enforcement officer, investigated the matter by interviewing those who were present at the ritual and scouring back issues of local news outlets to determine if there was any truth to the allegation. Unsurprisingly, there turned out not to be: the ritual in question was a Full Moon celebration facilitated by Andras Corban Arthen of Earth Spirit Community in Massachusetts. No witnesses or written reports of any kind could be found backing up the rumor. Buchanan was able to reach out to the Greek Orthodox community to explain the misinformation, ultimately resulting in the Greek Orthodox withdrawing their objections to Pagan participation and beginning to participate in Parliament again.

Buchanan stepped down from the board in 2010, but not before nominating Rev. Andras Corban-Arthen of EarthSpirit, in 2006, and Phyllis Curott in 2008, to join her. In 2023, Curott served as the program chair organizing the entire 2023 Parliament of World Religions program. Curott has since served as Vice Chair and Program Chair, and has been instrumental in ensuring that indigenous and female voices be given high priority at Parliament gatherings.

One Hundred and Thirty Years Later

One hundred and thirty years ago, religious leaders from around the world met in an effort to find common ground and to strategize about how to make the world a better place in the future. Thirty years ago, this effort resumed again with the Divine Feminine being honored on the world stage before an audience of 8,000 global religious leaders.

Since 1993, a major shift toward focusing on women’s rights, the rights of indigenous people, and good stewardship of the Earth has put these issues at center stage. Pagans have continued to turn out in increasing numbers to contribute their thoughts and knowledge to the global religious discussion on these matters, often challenging the theological and economic basis for the oppression of women and the exploitation and destruction of the Earth.

This year, I witnessed firsthand the power of Parliament to foster peace and understanding. More than one Pagan in attendance reported to me that a fellow attendee had reported, “You’re my first Pagan. But I still like you. Maybe I should come to one of the Pagan panels.”

I handed a copy of my own Pagan theology book to a Christian pastor from California who reported that his congregation was endeavoring to become more trans-friendly. It was an utter joy to see the faces of solitary Pagans and other people with LGBTQ+, feminist, and animist leanings light up as they came to the Pagan faith room and found faith elders who were friendly to their cause and had decades of experience living a religious life which embraced the spirits of the land and the totality of human experience.

On Tuesday night, local Pagans hosted a ritual outside the Parliament venue. The choice to be outside was significant: it placed us under the new moon and meant the ritual could be open to the public. About a hundred Pagans and Pagan-curious people attended as Pagans from half a dozen traditions spanning four continents spoke blessings and invocations in four languages.

The ritual was a microcosm of the good work done by Parliament itself. The ritual facilitators included Rev. Laura González, who in addition to being a Priestess of the Goddess and Wiccan Circle Sanctuary Minister is also a practitioner of the indigenous Mexica religion. She chanted the Spirits Blessing in a variant of the Nahua language while beating a shaman drum. She was followed by Rev. Rolando Gomez Comon, a Correllian Wiccan and indigenous Filipino practitioner, who spoke the Ancestor blessing in Tagalog.

They were followed by representatives of the American Pennsylvania Dutch community, who sang the blessing to the north wind in Pennsylvania Dutch, a South African Wiccan who invoked the spirits of the south, and Wiccans from the Aquarian Tabernacle Church on the west coast and the Correllian Nativist shrines on the east coast who invoked east and west respectively.

Seeing the Pagans gathered in their widely varied ceremonial regalia, speaking their languages from around the world, was a potent reminder of the work that Parliament is here to do. I could not help but remember how well-suited Pagans, with their polytheistic, animistic, and ecofeminist theology were to do the work Parliament had set out for itself.

While Parliament as a larger body had been endorsing feminism and the rights of indigenous peoples for years, I had to admit to being underwhelmed by some of the efforts I’d seen in 2021. While 2021 included an “indigenous peoples” track, about half of the presenters on it had been Christian pastors who identified themselves as indigenous because of their ethnic heritage but did not believe in or practice indigenous religions. Some of the participating major world religious organizations still teach that women are not spiritually suited to be clergy and so could not hold positions of real decision-making power within their religious organizations.

How can such groups hope to solve the oppression of women, or the eradication of indigenous beliefs and the corresponding wisdom about maintaining right relationships with the Earth, by themselves?

The answer is they can’t. But that’s not what was happening here. Pagans did not ask the indigenous people present to give up their relationships with the spirits of the Earth, or with their ancestral gods—far from it. Pagans tend to enthusiastically embrace and preserve knowledge of all spirits since their theology innately teaches that there are countless spirits and all must be honored to maintain right relationship with the world as well as humanity’s spiritual growth. Pagans are never likely to tell women they cannot lead or receive divine revelations, and Pagan gender theology has maintained the view that all forms of consensual sexual and gender expression stem from legitimate and beautiful divine callings since ancient times.

The challenges facing the global religious community are great as wealth inequality continues to skyrocket, and ongoing environmental destruction threatens the basic access to food and water of more and more people. With the resulting hardship and desperation creating an environment of anger and fear, frightening movements which see civil rights, environmentalism, and religious diversity as manifestations of weakness and immorality are on the rise globally again.

But the fact that people who venerate the spirits of the land and the Divinity of all genders have been embraced by the Parliament of World Religions is a very encouraging sign. It is my hope that all who read this history will consider becoming involved in their local interfaith councils and other organizations, where the opportunity exists to form alliances between marginalized and major world religions and work together to solve humanitarian problems.

In the past when movements of fascism have threatened, there have not been strong, organized majorities of people who refuse to accept the infringement of any human rights. There have not been strong majorities who understood the value of the land and our fellow species for their children’s future. There have not been so many marginalized groups who recognized their essential kinship and supported each other despite any differences between them.

The work that is happening now in the Parliament of World Religions, and in interfaith and Pagan communities everywhere, assures us of one thing: this time, when the darkness comes, we will not be alone.