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It is like saying that Anton Zander LeVey had a place in Christianity because he used Biblical references in his Black Mass.

Though I am highly critical of the organization that put this report out, Pagans and Prison describes the motives of why some neo-Nazis are turning to Odinism. It's nothing new in their circles, actually.

Just a few observations here. Re: Hitler, he was an occultist, and the Nazi party was born out of the Thule Society, which was an occultic group. He was obsessed with Eastern mysticism as well as with Christian icons. In his autobiography, Albert Speirs, Hitler's architect, notes that Hitler told his men to remain in good standing in the Church as a political necessity. Nothing in his philosophy, however, can be legitimately tied to the teachings of Jesus Christ.

That's not to say that the Church, either the RCC and the Protestant (Lutheran), were guiltless. Hitler was enabled by 1800 years of anti-semitism combined with the political expediency of those in the pulpits. Furthermore, Hitler remained a Catholic in good standing, and to this day has never been formally excommunicated for whatever reason. The debates on why aren't particularly germaine to this conversation, so let's not get off track here.

To me, Hitler remains an example of what happens when occultism merges with Christianity in the presence of lukewarm pulpits and achieves high power. It's not a pretty picture, and I think we'll be seeing it again soon.

Now, DC, you don't like being grouped together with Hitler, and I respect that. However, it's a bit more difficult to separate modern paganism from their human-sacrificing spiritual ancestors, since today's pagans tie themselves to the Druids, et. al., in order to say that their faith is older than Christianity.

The closest parallel you can find in Christianity are the witch hunts of centuries later. However, no Christian today claims the Inquisition as their spritual forebears--we claim Jesus Christ. If you want to try to take us to task re: His teachings or actions or those of His immediate (first generation) followers, that's fair game. Likewise, if you want to claim spiritual descendence from some other documentable source, it's also fair to ask us to look at that source instead of the bloody practices of the Druids.

Candidly, I'd argue that we should look at fruits as much or more than sources. Christianity, when men stopped adding their own traditions and got back to the source, produced the most free, most prosperous nation in the history of Mankind, and the further we get from that Christian root, the more we're going to lose those blessings. Please tell us what pagan cultures you consider to be examples of the good fruits of your belief system so that we can consider it and judge for ourselves.