Why Do African Americans Need their Own Website on Wicca?

                                                        By Jeanine

Long before I started practicing Wicca over thirty-five years ago, and when I was a young teen I was a member of a small church. We were religious about going, of course, every Sunday, some days during the week, and during some holidays like New Years Eve. I sang in a very small church choir, and was sometimes the lead singer. However, most of the days that I sat in church I was in total conflict. Although the Christian church was, in those days, and is today, considered the heart and soul of the African American family I struggled to find it in my heart. Listening to the music of the church was good and uplifting. What was troubling to me was when the preacher began to preach. Sure African American preachers are the epitome of effective messengering, charisma or bringing the message because of their liveliness, and the rallying and their sing-song presentation. But, for me, it was the message that was so troubling. “Eve is evil and you female is Eve” and “Your only salvation is through the “Man upstairs” and “Be submissive to your husband and be submissive to God.”  The truly conflicting messages to me was “You can only go to heaven if you accept Jesus as your lord and savior” and “No matter what you do in your life- as long as you accept Jesus as your lord and savior on your death bed you will be forgiven and join all the life-long saints in heaven.”

The problem I had with all of this is that Adam ate the apple too, I did not believe in submitting to anyone, and especially my husband, and as far as I could remember I always thought of God as a female, because I believed that God was inside me. At least I knew there was some female God somewhere, along with a male version. It took many years for me to understand I was not sinful for what I thought. I was just different, and different is not wrong. Because the bible is so embedded in the African American lifestyle, I am sure that there are many African Americans, male as well as female, who have similar ideas, feelings, internal conflicts, and fears of straying from the only belief system anyone close to them believes in and practices.

Since religion is the life and light of the human soul I sometimes imagine what it would be like if African American had more of an option to their spirituality, and how much progress there would be in our culture. I believe it is important to have alternative religions in a culture. It is good to know that we are not machines
and that we are human with various perspectives and various ideas. History shows that when human beings, in any culture, are inhabited from expressing personal insight then dark-ages develop, artistic flow is stagnated, human oppression initiates, human growth and evolution is impeded.

Breaking any tradition is difficult even if the tradition prevents a person from flying in the direction that they feel they were born to go. Support groups have a tradition of bringing like minds together, because they are reassuring, give resources and ideas, help a person in changing direction, give social support when it is needed, and it affirms the belief of the seeker. As an African American who had no support system when I discovered Wicca over 18 years ago I began one of the first, if not the first, social websites on Yahoo called African American Wiccans. I was ecstatic when people began to join, but in those days no Black person admitted that they were Wiccan or a Witch. The few who did admit to practicing said that they practiced more of an African Diasporic religion and preached how Black folks need to come to that. As time went on more members joined and the admission to being a Witch or a Wiccan began to flow. Later, I was happy to find other website groups developing to help me with the struggle of being a Black female and a devotee to the Goddess. The question have always been to me if others felt the way I do. 

In starting this blog and the African American Wiccan Society without exclusion, because all are welcome. I do believe it is important to give direct support to people of color, because giving affirmations to people who have none is a very sacred, necessary and precious thing to give.