I want to know, why do you think christians persicuted wiccans and witches?

Question

If you've got any views on it, and I don't care your religion, I just want to know your ideas and theories.

Answer 1

I thought that Gardner started Wicca less than a hundred years ago---has there been persecutions in the last century?

Witches are a different story. But I don't think that we can reasonably hold current Christians accountable for the things that the Christians did back in the Fourteenth century.

Answer 2

Because they were afraid. Also because they wanted people in their churches, and they discovered that the best way to do that was through fear. They made the people afraid of these normal, spiritual people. It made the witches into something evil, something to fear.
The churches realized that to make any money, they needed parishoners. To get parishoners, they needed to make people afraid for their souls, afraid of hell.
There is so much information deleted from the bible that it isn't even funny. They have found the dead sea scrolls, which included a Gospel of Thomas, that is supposed to give a lot of good information about God and Christ, yet no one believes in it. They have been brought up afraid and they have been brought up believing that Emporer Constantine's version of Christianity is the only one and the right one.

To get back to the question, the wiccans and witches were persecuted by the christians because of fear.

Answer 3

There are many reasons why the "closed minded" Christians of "that era" and "that region" did it but the main reason like for any persecution of a people is politics. Most of the time a person would be labled a witch or wiccan in order to put them out of the picture whether it was based on what they did, believed, looked liked, said, or how much of a threat the possed to whomever/s labeled them as such.

Answer 4

I think Christians persecuted wiccans and witches for three main reasons:
1) The bible tells them that witchcraft is an abomiation, and not "to suffer a witch" Christians obeyed these laws to the hilt because they beleived in the literal truth of the bible.
2) Because wiccan and witches were a minority group that was an easy target for hatred. They were different, they were "other", so many people who were marginalised, the poor, women especially older lone women, the mentally ill, anyone who was was weaker or different was potentially a witch. Anyone who had folk knowledge of herbs and spiritual healing that didnt involve Christian thinking, was also a witch.
3) Christians feared witches, because witches were the symbol of unknown and potentially dark forces. Witches were thought to be in league with Satan. In the days of outright witch persecutions and torture/burnings, people were thought to have real powers to curse, you have to understand the medieval mindset.

The Christian church has a long and sad history of persecuting and marginalising anyone who didnt agree with orthodoxy. Hopefully that is changing slowly in some quarters.

Answer 5

The Christians persecuted any religious ideas that threatened their own.
The idea of wiccans and witches originated from the Christians persecution of the Celtic Druids near Rome in the early early days of Christianity, because the Celtic Druids believed childbirth and intercourse were sacred and were practiced as a form of worship to thier Goddess (yes they had a Goddess, not a God, as the presiding presence) and because they used herbs and scrying as a form of medicine, when the Christians believed that prayer and abstainance and belief cured all.

Wiccan and Pagan religions were both born of the Celtic Druid religion.

Answer 6

Well...

The bible states that the people of god should not allow a witch to live.

It also says the same thing about an adulterer, but it's more fun to pick on smaller groups of people who have no way to prove they are not a witch.

It is a known fact that MOST of the people who were killed in the witch trials/persecution were not, in fact, witches. It was mostly political. The real witches were smart enough to remain hidden.

Answer 7

Wicca did not exist during the persecution of heretics in the 1500s, nor did it exist during the witch hysteria of the late 1600s. Wicca was created in the 1950s by a British man named Gerald Gardner. Witches (practitioners of Wicca) have never been persecuted by Christians or by Christianity.

Answer 8

Wiccans & witches as well as most other forms of religion/spirituality are still being persecuted by Christians because of the "fear" factor. The early Christians (as well as many today) saw any other religion as a threat to their dominance and therefore if you don't believe like they do your doomed, damned and going to hell!!!! It sickens me these anitquated ideas are still around today but they are and they cause most of the hate and killing in today's society. Islam & Judaism are right up there as well......

Answer 9

DaVinci Code supporter- they wanted to oppress women in order to protect the divinity of christ. Read the book. It is quite interesting. The truth is it is because witches and wiccans were of a different religion which Christians wanted to snuff out.

Answer 10

They killed off thousands of people, mostly pagans, because they refused to convert to Christianity. From then on, anything to do with herbs, chanting and women where seen as "devil worshiping". Almost all the healers in the villages back then, were either burned at the stake, stoned, drowned or hanged. They needed to get people to fear something about it, so that they would have the support and the gold from the followers, to continue with the killings.