WEDNESDAY JUNE 4, 2025
We are your neighbors. We pay our taxes, give to charities, and abide by the law. We shop at the same grocery stores, send our children to public schools and help them with their homework, and care for family pets. We are Americans.
We are also members of Pagan religious faiths, spiritual paths that teach the sacredness of the Earth and Nature, and all living beings.
On May 30, Micah Beckwith, Lieutenant Governor of the State of Indiana, made comments on Facebook attacking our religions with falsehoods. He spoke of an attempted “Pagan Conquest,” involving “ritual child sacrifice—with glitter and hashtags.” He further warned of a “state-corporate-pagan alliance to reprogram society.”
This is conspiratorial nonsense. We Pagans have no interest in conquest, abhor the very idea of harming children, and are not involved in any plot to “reprogram society” with any states or corporations. These are lies, plain and simple.
It is supremely ironic that Lieutenant Governor Beckwith is a co-author of the Indiana “Churches’ Bill of Rights” and declares that “America was founded as and remains a refuge for churches and religious orders to practice their faiths free from governmental interference and oppression.”
Yet he, an elected state official, singles out our faith for his vitriol. Setting apart any religion for persecution is deeply Unamerican and violates the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”
To Mr. Beckwith, we say: your words are deeply immoral, contrary to the spirit of religious freedom and diversity that is supposed to be a hallmark of the United States of America, and which you yourself hypocritically endorsed in the “Churches’ Bill of Rights.”
To our fellow Americans in Indiana, we say: Mr. Beckwith’s ignorant and hateful attitudes do not reflect well upon the people of Indiana. You deserve better public servants. We call to you to speak out against his comments, publicly question his fitness for office, and consider replacing him with a leader of integrity and compassion.
Pagan Solidarity, a community of concerned people of various Pagan spiritual paths. June, 2025
