The Next Thing You Know, It's A Movement

The Wild Hunt has a fascinating post up about a new study of Australian religions. Specifically, modern Paganism is growing at a faster rate than any other faith grouping in the country.

"Amongst those religions on the rise are Buddhism (up 79% since 1996), Islam (up 40%), Hinduism (up 42%), Pentecostalism (up 11%), 'nature religions' including Paganism and Wicca/witchcraft, (up 130%), and Scientology (up 37%)."

A growth rate of 130% is pretty amazing. It's not clear from the post whether these are people leaving traditional xian churches or of they're former atheists or agnostics. Some of the growth may come from "cradle Pagans," people who have been raised as Pagans, the way that i was raised as a Catholic. Some of them may be people who have been Pagans for some time but only now feel "safe" to identify themselves as such.

The Wild Hunt concludes: So while some may debate as to whether or not modern Pagan faiths are the fastest growing in America, it seems certain that there isn't any doubt in Australia. Combine this new data with the continuing rise of modern Paganism in Britain (not to mention Europe in general) and it seems clear that modern Pagan faiths have long passed the "tipping point" of being a mere fad or small cult(s) destined for the margins. As our loose grouping of faiths emerge among the world religions it should be interesting to see not only how the monotheist faiths react to us, but how we interact with other polytheist faiths in the world.

What makes this question especially interesting is Paganism's general lack of organizational structure (something that I love about it, but that worries lots of others). How do "we" react with others when there's really no formal "we" involved??? I guess that's what we're going to find out.