Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth for the Colson Center on John Stone Street. The witches are back and it's not even Halloween. Practical Magic 2 opened on September the 11th and was the top-grossing film that weekend. In less than a week, in fact, it topped the $30 million mark domestically and the $50 million mark worldwide. Though some films about witchcraft are horror movies, there are many others, like Practical Magic and Practical Magic 2, that portray witches as good, misunderstood healers who are the objects of unjust persecution.
Themes of sisterhood and solidarity are featured in most of these, though older tropes of family curses and love spells and inherited power are often included too. Practical Magic 2 fits the whole formula. The actual practice of witchcraft today, however, presents just a bit differently. It's still predominantly practiced by women and has been entangled with feminism and female empowerment since the 1960s. In fact, today, there are more self-identified Wiccans in America than there are Presbyterians.
And that does not even include those who practice witchcraft without identifying as a Wiccan. In fact, there are even those who self-identify as Christian witches, though that would make no sense, except in a culture like ours where self-identification is everything and people hold more worldviews, W-H-I-R-L-E-D, than they do coherent worldviews. Even a casual search of witches, such as in the online discussion forum Reddit or the online marketplace Etsy, reveals that black magic is not so uncommon today. Over 5,000 items dealing with curses are currently for sale on Etsy right now. While witches claim mostly to practice lighter healing stuff of white magic, there seems to be plenty of an appetite these days for hexing.
for revenge as well. Witchcraft seems to gain new legs every few years or so, in fact. Typically, it's spurred by pop culture. The first practical magic movie was released the same year as the charmed television series. Even the Bewitch series from the 1960s did a lot to sell the Wiccan image to the American population.
And certainly Harry Potter drove an awful lot of interest in spells and hexes and witches, though at the time, many Wiccans disavowed the series because its moral lines were too clear and too obvious. Today, of course, the reason that many Wiccans have disavowed the most popular book series of all time has more to do with author J.K. Rowling than her content. Her clear and articulate defense of women, especially during the incursion of trans-identifying men into their private spaces. Has lost her a lot of fans.
And that's the difference this time with the resurgence of interest in Wicca and paganism and pop culture witchcraft. because we are a society captive to the critical theory mood. The narrative these days is not so much about the existence of the supernatural or our ability to attain power. It's about the perceived oppressors who are evil and the perceived oppressed who are victims. It's a mood that is ripe for justifying things like revenge, even if that means hexing and cursing and practicing other dark things.
And especially if such curses are not really black magic, but instead for the good of the oppressed and the bad of the oppressor. Recently, many so-called white witches came together to curse President Trump, just as they had Charlie Kirk just before his murder. And despite their claims that they don't perform black magic, they justify these things in the case of perceived grievance, which can be found, of course, these days, anywhere and everywhere. From large-scale oppressions claimed by modern feminism to a fear of President Trump's presidency to accusations of hatred and bigotry leveled at someone like Charlie Kirk as a lead figure of the political right, to someone getting the job you wanted to a boyfriend dumping you. Yes, Etsy has curses for all of these scenarios and more.
The rise in witchcraft is also a symptom of the West's loss of religiosity. It was G.K. Chesterton who famously said, when men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing. But they then become capable of believing in anything. Witchcraft engages the imagination of and also provides meaning for an otherwise meaningless society.
Whereas faith once gave people a stable source of identity and a place within the cosmos, it's now pop culture that addresses the void that's been left by a rampant and dominant secularism. Depictions of witches as confident and positive models of autonomy and self-assertion feed into its attractiveness. as does the cultural emphasis on authenticity, living your real life, asserting who you really are on the inside. And that's really the message of Wicked. Elsbeth refuses to live a lie and acts according to her beliefs and values, rather than giving in to cultural and political pressures.
Contemporary witchcraft is, in other words, a critical theory religion. It's built on perceived victimization, grievance, and revenge. Christians have something far better to offer than this. The gospel's offer of forgiveness for us and its call for us to forgive others can give us hope for something beyond grievance, something better and beyond petty revenge. Our actions certainly matter, but we don't control or create or manipulate the feelings of others.
We need not see ourselves only as victims, but we are in service, not to mere power, but to a person who is an all-powerful, all-loving, and can certainly be trusted with our obedience, all good. God. It's a way better story than what critical theory or Wicca has to offer. And the very best part is, of course, it's true. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint.
Today's Breakpoint was co-authored with Dr. Glenn Sunshine. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave us a review wherever you download the podcast. And for more resources or to share this commentary with other people, go to breakpoint.org. As a new school year begins, classrooms across the country are filling up again.
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