Sarah M. Pike
Sarah M. Pike is Professor of Religious Studies at California State University, Chico where she teaches courses on American religions. She chairs the Committee for the Public Understanding of Religion and is a member of the AAR’s Board of Directors. Pike is the author of Earthly Bodies, Magical Selves: Contemporary Pagans and the Search for Community (2001) and New Age and Neopagan Religions in America (2004).
On December 2, 2006 Roberta Stewart, the widow of Sgt. Patrick Stewart, helped dedicate the first government-issued memorial plaque with a Wiccan pentacle (an interlaced five-pointed star) on the Wall of Heroes in the Northern Nevada Veterans Cemetery in Fernley, Nevada. She was joined at the cemetery by more than 75 friends, relatives, Wiccan leaders and other supporters. On a "You Tube" video of the memorial, men and women in military uniforms mixed with Wiccans in long cloaks. The Associated Press and the Washington Post, among others, have covered the struggle to acquire the plaque and the memorial. The news media’s interest was a result of Stewart’s well-publicized fight to get the pentacle recognized by the U. S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Although the Department of Veterans Affairs recognizes more than 30 symbols, including over a dozen kinds of Christian crosses, the pentacle is not on the list and has not been added despite at least six different requests over the past nine years. Because of the intervention of Nevada governor Kenny Guinn, the state’s VA office, which maintains the state cemetery, declared its jurisdiction over the cemetery and allowed the plaque to be placed in December. Meanwhile, in November 2006, the watchdog group Americans United for Separation of Church and State sued the VA.
The pentacle is an important religious symbol for contemporary Pagans and Wiccans. According to Selena Fox, founder of Circle Sanctuary, one of the oldest Wiccan churches in the United States, "The Pentacle is the symbol of the Wiccan religion throughout the United States and worldwide. . . . The top point of the five-pointed star of the Pentacle represents Spirit, or Soul, and the spiritual essence that is the foundation of human life. The other points represent the four other sacred Elements of Nature and aspects of human existence - Earth and the physical realm; Air and the mental realm; Fire and the behavioral realm, and Water and the emotional realm." Churches like Circle are one of the diverse kinds of contemporary Pagan organizations that provide leadership for this decentralized movement of practitioners of earth religions. Although there are many different forms of contemporary Paganism, Wicca is one of the main forms. In the United States today, the population of contemporary Pagans, including Wiccans, is probably somewhere between 250-500,000, though numbers are hard to come by because many contemporary Pagans and Wiccans practice alone or participate in loosely organized circles rather than recognized Wiccan or Pagan churches. Although their religion is sometimes confused by outsiders with Satanism, Satanism and Wicca have little in common. Wiccans have revived and adapted pre-Christian nature religions. Among their main tenets is The Wiccan Rede, which instructs its adherents to "harm none."
Wicca is recognized as a religion by many U. S. government agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Justice. In 2005, the Supreme Court heard a case brought by Wiccans and others on the constitutionality of the Religious Land Use Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) and ruled in their favor. But Wiccans have received uneven treatment in the military, in some cases experiencing discrimination and in others, tolerance and support. In 1999 Congressman Bob Barr (R-Texas) tried to shut down a Wiccan circle that met on a military base in Ft. Hood, Texas. He was supported in his efforts by Senator Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), the American Family Association, and the Traditional Values Coalition.
But the pentacle quest has received widespread support from religious leaders of all faiths, including Christians. In Christianity Today, John Whitehead, founder of the Rutherford Institute, wrote, "Whatever one’s opinion might be about the Wiccan faith, there should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that the First Amendment to our U. S. Constitution provides for religious freedom for all individuals of all faiths." The Nevada State government took a similar stance in support of Roberta Stewart when Nevada politicians contacted the VA on Stewart’s behalf and the Nevada Office of Veterans Services circumvented the VA. Members of other faiths have offered their support to Wiccans involved with the pentacle quest. This was particularly evident at the interfaith memorial service in December where a Jewish Wiccan recited a Jewish prayer of remembrance, a Comanche-Irish pipecarrier and sundancer offered a Native American blessing and a Congregational minister and military chaplain also offered a blessing. Lady Liberty League Chaplaincy Coordinator and High Priest of Our Lady of the Wells Church Rev. Patrick McCollum spoke for many people of all faiths who attended the service when he observed that "Sergeant Patrick Stewart gave his life for his country and for the principles which he and all of us hold most dear, Liberty, Justice, and Equality for all. Yet the very agencies created by our forbears to protect the sanctity and honor of those who’ve served their country with dignity, have forsaken both Sergeant Stewart and the very principles for which those agencies stand." Like McCollum, many supporters of the pentacle quest emphasize the sacrifices made by Wiccans serving in the Armed Forces and the need for rites of passage and memorials appropriate to their religious beliefs.
Wiccans have participated in the Armed Forces for many years. According to a December 3, 2006 Associated Press story by Martin Griffith, "About 1,800 active-duty service members identify themselves as Wiccans, according to 2005 Defense Department statistics." In November, 1998, Rev. Drake Spaeth of Circle Sanctuary became the first Wiccan trained minister to be put forth as a candidate for chaplain in the US Armed Forces and Circle Sanctuary became the first Wiccan church to apply for Department of Defense Ecclesiastical Endorsing Organization status.
The quest of Wiccans to have the pentacle added to the VA’s list began over nine years ago. In 1997, the Aquarian Tabernacle Church sent the first request to the VA to add the pentacle to its list and did not receive a response until 2001 (the response was that the VA was revising its requirements for adding emblems to the list). This request was followed by several others over the next nine years, including a request from the Isis Invicta Military Mission in 1998 on behalf of members of the Mission who were on active duty in the military. In 2005, Circle Sanctuary submitted an application to the VA because increasing numbers of its church members were being sent to Iraq or Afghanistan or were aging veterans. Circle also received a response that stated the procedures were undergoing revision and reapplied under the new procedures. Circle requested expedited processing because one of the its members who was a Korean War veteran had recently died and his widow wanted a memorial marker for his gravesite. Again, the VA delayed issuing a decision. When Roberta Stewart’s husband was shot down in Afghanistan in 2005, Circle appended her request for a memorial plaque with a pentacle to the application. Stewart’s husband Patrick had been a chief flight engineer for a helicopter in the Army National Guard and involved in transporting government officials, including Nevada Senator Reid and then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Over the past few years, Wiccans have repeatedly contacted VA officials and called on their Congressional representatives to put pressure on the VA. Selena Fox, Circle’s founder, met with Under Secretary Tuerk in Washington in order to convey the urgency of three widows across the nation who wanted pentacles for their deceased veteran husbands, and again the VA refused to expedite their requests or to provide a timeline for Circle’s application. Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU), a nonprofit educational organization founded in 1947 and currently based in Washington, D.C., also joined the cause. In June 2006, Aram Schvey, an attorney representing AU, wrote to R. James Nicholson, Secretary of Veterans Affairs and William F. Tuerk, Under Secretary for Memorial Affairs about the failure to approve the Wiccan pentacle. Schvey argued that the National Cemetery’s refusal to add the pentacle to its list violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Schvey also pointed out that "The Administration recognizes the emblems of numerous religions with far fewer adherents in the United States than Wicca," including Eckankar, Baha’i and Sikhism. In fact, he compares the nine-year struggle of Wiccans to have the pentacle added with a recent case where a request to have the Sikh Khanda symbol added to the list took less than three months. Because the VA did not comply with these various requests, the AU and some of the Wiccans involved decided that a lawsuit was their only course. On November 13, 2006, Americans United for Separation of Church and State sued the Veterans Administration on behalf of the Isis Invicta Military Mission, Circle Sanctuary and two of Circle’s members, Roberta Stewart and Karen DePolito, both widows of Wiccan veterans.
A December 11, 2006 press release on the Wiccan Covenant of the Goddess’s website described the December memorial celebration as "bittersweet." As several of the speakers at the service reminded those gathered, their "quest for the pentacle" has not ended.
Resources:
Circle Sanctuary’s website includes numerous links and articles about the pentacle quest (www.circlesanctuary.org/liberty/veteranpentacle/).
Covenant of the Goddess (www.cog.org)
Americans United for Separation of Church and State (www.au.org)