Three Paradigms in Emerging Christian Witchcraft

Abstract

Over the past five years, the emergence of something called Christian witchcraft has alarmed many who have heard of it. Ethnographic research has shown that it is a product of many things: religious deconstruction, decolonization, and even popular culture, but the effect seems to have been one of empowerment for women and queer folk, a healthy respect for other religions, an assertion of agency and consent within religion, and a decentralization of authority in those places where it exists. The informal, popular form of religious deconstruction has created this room for Christian witchcraft, but religious decolonization has played a key role in how the various forms of Christian witchcraft have categorized themselves, and these categories have closely mirrored pre-existing categorizations developed by Dorothee Sölle: orthodox, liberal, and radical.