My encounters with the hard-core Christians started early in my career- while I was in tech school. I was in the earliest stages of my own esoteric Path, studying Hermetic and Gnostic philosophy. Church and standard religion held no interest to me, but I was more indifferent to it than hostile. To be fair, some of the best people I knew during my Air Force career were chaplains, and one of my favorite hangouts was the Fishbowl at Keesler. I spend many a fun hour watching movies and chatting with friends there.

But I was constantly- and politely- turning away the religious prosetylizers.  When I was in civilian clothes, I would often get sharply questioned about my choice of jewelry- a simple, small, and unobtrusive Ankh pendant. "That is a Satanic sign", one righteous fellow told me after cornering me in a base laundromat. "You will go to hell if you don't renounce Satan and surrender to Christ." I ignored him, just like I ignored the tracts slid under my door, the sometimes not-so-subtle invitations to go to 'parties' which turned out to be altar calls, and the insular cliques of fellow students who were bussed to evangelical churches off base.

It got no better at my first base. There were no dormitories for us at Sunnyvale AFS, so we were housed in townhouses in Milpitas. I played the usual roomie roulette, but one roomie was extremely religious, and was always onto me about my own beliefs. "You need to accept Jesus, and turn away from the occult," she'd lecture me. I told her that she really needed to mind her own business, but she persisted in harassing me. It came to a peak when I came home unexpectedly one afternoon to find her burning some of my books. I'd amassed a small collection of metaphysical books- some rare and expensive, and she took it upon herself to 'save' me by going into my bedroom, getting the books, and burning them on the barbeque in the back yard. I raised a big stink about it, and got repaid for the destroyed books (and a deadbolt lock on my bedroom door), but I also learned my first lesson on how far these True Believers were willing to go to convert people.

The book-burning incident also motivated me to start studying these sects- mostly in self-defense, but also so I could understand what made them 'tick'. The seminal book in these studies was the now out of print "Holy Terror", by Conway and Siegelman. It detailed a lot of the mindset of these sects, and what they believed. It was totally alien and different from my own very casual Catholic upbringing. I learned that some of these sects even believed that Catholics weren't truly Christian, which totally surprised me, but also laid the foundation of understanding their particular kind of fear and intolerance. I also learned something else about military evangelicals in particular when I politely questioned my book-burning roomie's boyfriend about his priorities. Why was he in the military if he was so religious? The answer was surprising, and in retrospect, insightful: He'd joined because the military was a 'mission platform' enabling him to spread his interpretation of the Gospel to people all over the world. He'd hoped to go to Turkey or some other 'non-believing country' so he could save some souls. He didn't care about the Cold War, or defending the US. He only cared about religion, and even told me that his loyalty was to Christ, not to his superiors. I ran into a lot of that while I served, and some of the people who professed loyalty to Christ or the Bible and not their superiors or their country were in positions of power and responsibility. I wondered what would happen if 'God' told them to push the button? I never had the courage to actually ask that last question- I already knew the answer, and it contributed to some sleepless nights.

When I moved to Texas, I stayed in the dorm, and that was when some of the real harassment began. In military dormitories, your property is not private, and your quarters are prone to inspection at any time. Inspections are supposed to be to maintain cleanliness and safety. I learned that it was also an opportunity for people to snoop as well. I had a small metaphysical library with books about alchemy, ancient religions, magic and occult subjects.  Volumes started coming up missing, then mysteriously reappeared on my shelves, with religious tracts tucked into them. I didn't have a roomie, but I did have a very religious first sergeant, who had some pretty harsh views on 'unbelievers'. I found Chick tracts in my underwear drawer, and religious tracts under my pillow. My quarters was inspected and 'seeded' with tracts, and I finally complained to the commander. "Don't mind that sky pilot", he told me. The tracting slowed down, but didn't stop. My copy of "Larson's Book of Cults" vanished and never reappeared.

The dynamic changed when I moved to Germany. I did not live in the dorms on base, so the tracting stopped. But I ended up with a very religious command staff- the commander, vice commander, first sergeant and several other prominent people in my squadron were very religious, and did not hesitate to let me know about it. After being sexually assaulted by a German neighbor, the first sergeant's 'solution' was not to get the local police involved, but instead to pray over the problem. "Accepting Christ will solve your problems, because you are a fallen woman," he told me.  I went elsewhere for help.

It was in Germany that I met fellow Pagans, and it was there that some of us got together and compared stories. I was not the only person subject to prosetylization and harassment by aggressive evangelicals. My other Pagan peers reported the same problem, and an overt lack of respect, and even hostility by the Christians in their various units. We could not get dog tags which stated our religious faith. We were stuck with either 'no religious preference', 'none', or 'other', which generated more hostile questions from evangelicals. With fellowship in mind, I created the "Farwander Fellowship" which eventually morphed into the Military Pagan Network. It was meant to permit military Pagans to find likeminded people, so that they did not believe that they were totally alone.  The press got wind of this, and an article appeared in the Air Force Times about our attempts to get a little respect and recognition.

It worked: the Army Chaplain's handbook now contains a section about Wicca, the earliest versions written by me. It's since been revised, but the bulk of my work remains.

But it came with a price: my career. I never desired the limelight, and avoided it like the plague, but the infamy of being mentioned by name in those articles followed me to my next, and last assignment. There, a group of very religious colleagues was determined to end my career one way or another. They resorted to sabotage in order to get me demoted and removed from the USAF because of high year of tenure requirements. I was discharged honorably.

Wiccans and other Pagan faiths are still legally recognised in all branches of the military, but they also still face harassment, prosetylization and outright hate by the hard core Christian evangelists among them. Like other minority faiths, Pagans are constantly targeted for conversion by increasingly bold and hostile Christians, who see the military as a 'mission platform' and their participation as a religious duty.

I will talk more about these Christian Soldiers in future diaries.

For further reading:

Witches able to worshp on US Military Bases

Should the Witches be welcome?

Bush's anti-witchcraft statement