I live in Georgia, right smack in the middle of the Bible Belt. My step-father and mother are both Catholic. You'd think I'd be first in line to be angrily typing up that essay on Witchvox about how persecuted I was, right? Well, believe it or not, that is most definitely wrong.
The Catholics at my parents' church are some of the nicest people I've ever met. When the priest himself came over for dinner, I had my pentacle necklace on, and he didn't try to exorcise me or cast out the demons. No, he didn't say a word about it, didn't blink an eye, and continued to laugh, joke, and praise my mother's homemade fried chicken.
A lot of my friends and teachers are Christian, and they know I'm Wiccan. They don't try to drag me to their church or get me in trouble at school. They asked me to explain about my faith to them and afterwards thought it was pretty cool, even if it wasn't something for them. Pretty much the same thing happened with my teachers. None of them tried to preach to me. The few who took any notice to my pentacle or the Wiccan book I was reading in class behaved just like my friends and thought it was interesting.
I even go to Relijournal here on Triond and read a lot of Christian essays. They're pretty insightful. All you have to do is ignore the bit about Jesus being your savior, and there are some pretty profound thoughts on forgiveness, happiness, dealing with anger, etc. I approach with an open mind, read, and then leave a kind comment praising their thoughts and telling them that a Wiccan found it interesting.
There are some things in Christianity that I actually admire. Once you look past all the things like “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” in the Bible (which actually originally said poisoner of wells instead of witch until King James came along), you find some pretty nice thoughts. “Judge not lest ye be judged” is one of my favorites, something I do say to the few radical Christians who speak out against Wicca. I also like “Do unto others…” That's basically the Wiccan Rede, people!
My point is that Christians aren't all the Pat Robertson-crazed mob ready to ruin your life until you think like they do. Most Christians are the guy who works at the grocery store that smiles at you every week or the coworker who brought you donuts the day you looked sad. Christians who actually follow the love and tolerance Jesus preached are actually not too bad.
