KZBlog

The World Forum of Spiritual Culture, which I assume is not to confused with the Congress of World Religions, has inviteda pagan representative for the first time. Patrick McCollum, who is director chaplaincy at Cherry Hill Seminary, is a follower of Wicca, a pagan nature-based religion, and the first Wiccan chaplain to be recognized by the US government. He is also likely the first pagan or Wiccan to be invited to participate in a major religious conference in Kazakhstan.

While Kazakhstan is famous for hosting three Congresses of World Religion and bringing together representatives of various sects of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Shintoism, Hinduism, Taoism, even Zoroastrianism, I do not believe that there have ever been any pagans or animists, despite Kazakhstan’s own shamanic roots. So this should be very interesting. In my experience, new and alternative religions have not taken a strong foothold in Kazakhstan’s society the way they have in Western countries. While there are self-proclaimed witches or magicians, they tend to be seen not as a religion per se but as practitioners of magic or fortune tellers (or frauds). So it will be interesting to see how Kazakhstani take the participation of Mr. McCollum.

Jimmy Carter, Prince Charles, Al Gore, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela and Kofi Annan have all been invited. The goal of the Forum is “to find a solution to the systemic crisis of the modern civilization by realizing the priority of spirituality and culture above all other public values.”