Goddess Worship, Witchcraft and Neo-Paganism (Paperback)

~ Craig Hawkins (Author), Alan W. Gomes (Series Editor) "Witchcraft is one specific form of occultism..." (more)
Key Phrases: drawing down the moon, contemporary witchcraft, occultic practices, Spiral Dance, Witches Bible Compleat, Grand Rapids (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

This volume of the Zondervan Guide to Cults and Religious Movements discusses Goddess Worship and the impact native religious traditions of Europe and tribal traditions from North America have on Neo-paganism.

From the Publisher

Fast, informed answers to the challenges of false religions This is an age when countless groups and movements, new and old, mark the religious landscape in our culture. As a result, many people are confused or uncertain in their search for spiritual truth and meaning. Because few people have the time or opportunity to research these movements fully, the Zondervan Guide to Cults and Religious Movements series provides essential information and insights for their spiritual journeys. The second wave of books in this series addresses a broad range of spiritual beliefs, from non-Trinitarian Christian sects to witchcraft and neo-paganism to classic non-Christian religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism. All books but the summary volume, Truth and Error, contain five sections: A concise introduction to the group being surveyed An overview of the group's theology--in its own words Tips for witnessing effectively to members of the group A bibliography with sources for further study A comparison chart that shows the essential differences between biblical Christianity and the group Truth and Error, the last book in the series, consists of parallel doctrinal charts compiled from all the other volumes. Three distinctives make this series especially useful to readers: Information is carefully distilled to bring out truly essential points, rather than requiring readers to sift their way through a sea of secondary details. Information is presented in a clear, easy-to-follow outline form with menu bar running heads. This format greatly assists the reader in quickly locating topics and details of interest. Each book meets the needs and skill levels of both nontechnical and technical readers, providing an elementary level of refutation and progressing to a more advanced level using arguments based on the biblical text. The writers of these volumes are well qualified to present clear and reliable information and help readers to discern truth from falsehood.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Zondervan (March 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0310488818
• ISBN-13: 978-0310488811
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.2 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #423,772 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Accurate, but not Complete, September 13, 2005

By	AdelaMae - See all my reviews

As a polytheist myself, I am wondering if the reviewers who accuse the author of misrepresentation and bigotry have actually read the book. Hawkins presents neopagan theology and practice thoroughly and well, with constant reference to respected primary texts from within the pagan community. He has obviously spent a great deal of time researching neopagan views and, with a few rather minor exceptions, presents them with as much accuracy as any neopagan would.

That said, I was under the impression from reading the description that this book would be mainly concerned with providing Christians with solid logical rebuttals of neopagan arguments, and was very surprised to find that it does not. It is not that Hawkins' arguments against neopaganism are inadequate - they simply aren't there. With two exceptions, Hawkins simply sets factual statements of what neopagans believe against factual statements of what Christians believe or what is asserted in the Bible. (Those two exceptions are the very interesting epistemological critique of neopaganism on pp. 32-34 and the section applying the "problem of evil" to polytheism, panentheism and pantheism on pp. 44-46, which unfortunately ignores the fact that Christianity suffers just as much from this argument as neopaganism, if not more.) Hawkins does not provide an argument for the truth of Scripture, which strikes me as very odd considering that such arguments do exist and his book is essentially useless as a witnessing tool without one. His Biblically-based arguments cannot function on their own without some other argument establishing the Bible as a reliable source.

That said, the information Hawkins presents on neopagan and Christian beliefs is generally quite accurate, and this book would certainly be a useful supplement for Christians who already have a grasp of some arguments for the reliability of the Bible. I can find little fault with the section at the end describing approaches to take when talking to neopagans about Christianity, and I would generally make the same recommendations myself. Neopagans would do well to read the epistemological critique I mentioned above (pp. 32-34), since responding to these objections would go a long way towards clarifying neopagan ideas of truth, belief and justification.

Generally, I can think of much worse treatments of neopagan religions in the literature of Christian apologetics and I would be pleased to learn that a Christian friend was reading this one.

23 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Hawkins and Gomes Fail to Convince, July 9, 1999

By A Customer

Neopaganisms are profoundly syncretist beliefs that usually include pantheism, belief in an immanent deity, monism, veneration of female divinity, and respect for the earth around us. Hawkins and Gomes admit that it is difficult to try to proselytise us. Let me be charitable here- at least the authors do not confuse us with satanists. However, most neopagans will not find the biblical exclusivist and closed interpretative community claims to be at all persuasive. They do not realise that charismatic Christians also place an emphasis on spiritual experience, and moreover, the Hart-Devlin debate of the sixties can deal effectively with objections to relativism and pluralism. It all goes something like this- there are a core of consensual foundational moral principles that we can all agree on, but many contemporary biomedical and sexual ethics issues are the subject of keen debate. Many pagans would also argue that Hawkins and Gomes do not do their homework on neopagan ethics. If they did, they would acknowledge that ecological concern and gender dialogue are staple elements of our ethical framework. They might be heartened to find out that many pagans share their concern at suicide as a disruption of immanent divinity and a community of lived faith (see Starhawk, The Pagan Book of Living and Dying). They might be happy to learn that we do venerate some biblical content -the Book of Esther shows the folly of ethnic and religious absolutism, for example. Nice try. However, I suspect few neopagans will actually be converted by this booklet.

6 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In Response to the Celtic "Witch Witch" and others..., January 31, 2005

By	J. Ruehs (Glendale, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

For starters this book was published by a Christian publishing company (Zondervan) and is really for the most part intended for Christians to use to compare Christianity to neopaganism. Since Hawkins and Gomes come from a Christian worldview it makes sense that they don't spent time defending the "validity" of the Christian faith since that is not their intent. The implication that the Christian faith is indeed the "true" faith is something that is "implied" in the text since, once again it was published by Christians for Christians. This is not to say that the book doesn't have value as an "apologetic/evangelism" tool, because it does and is intended for that as well, but from the point of view of the Christian using it not necessarily the neopagan picking it up and reading it.

The thing that Celtic Witch and the other "negative" reviewers have to get over is that Christianity makes an "absolute truth" claim. Christians make that claim, because Christ made the claim about himself in John 14:6. We don't believe that neopaganism is a path to God in whatever shape/form/etc. that people take him/her to be. Another big problem that Christians have with neopaganism is in its use of magick, which is condemned in the Bible. Any kind of occultic worldview whether it be New Age, Satanism, Wiccan, etc. butts heads against Christianity, because of the "truth claims" they make which contradict what Christianity teaches.
Celtic Witch and the group most likely are not going to agree with the "truth claims" of Christianity, but they have to understand that we don't agree with the claims of their neopaganistic beliefs either. I am not a relativist nor do I believe that relativism is really a tenable belief. Therefore I don't believe in this "every path leads to God" nonsense that many people promote. Everyone has a worldview (even if that worldview is that they don't believe in worldviews). How we understand whether one worldview is true over and against another deals with issues of coherence and correspondence to reality and the like. Although this is not the place to discuss this in its entirety I would guide people to Geisler's "Christian Apologetics" book on more information concerning coherence and correspondence. Beware neopagan you won't like what you read!