Perhaps the most erudite commenter on religion of my lifetime, the late Christopher Hitchens, once said:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him will believeth in anything. – Hitchens 3:16
In 1963 at a small, liberal arts school in Northfield, Minnesota called Carleton College, students faced a dilemma. Carleton had been founded by the Congregational Church, a Calvinist branch of protestant Christianity, but by the 60s had become a non-denominational institution with students from a wide variety of backgrounds, including Jewish, Christian (Catholic and protestant), agnostic, and atheist. However, non-denominational did not mean “secular,” as the student handbook still required attendance “at the College Service of Worship or at the Sunday Evening Program or at any regularly organized service of public worship.”
(The Rise of Wicca and Paganism in America, Chas S. Clifton)
A number of students, including Howard Cherniack, Norman Nelson, and David Frangquist thought this rule unnecessary in a modern educational environment, so they invented their own religion and designed services to meet the school’s requirement as a protest. Now, if you’re going to establish a religion, you first need a name. Howard Cherniack had grown up in a secular household, but whenever his parents were asked about their religious affiliation in conversations, they would respond by answering “druid” to avoid arguments and the inevitable proselytizing by zealous believers that often follows; so he proposed that, and his co-conspirators liked it, but they knew nothing about actual druids, and not wanting to give the school’s administration an excuse to dismiss their “beliefs” as lacking authenticity (and therefore not meeting the worship requirement), they decided to call themselves the Reformed Druids of North America or the RDNA.
They devised a set of beliefs that were generic enough not to spark controversy or offend people of other faiths, such as “nature is good,” but they needed more.
All the best religions have a logo – think star of David or the cross – so they drew a sigil to represent the Reformed Druids (the circle with the two lines through it at left).
A sigil is a pictorial representation of a spirit empowered by the beliefs of the believer to achieve specific outcomes or goals. Still, something was missing. Before we even get to the designing a worship service, you’re gonna need robes, and an altar; so they donned their bathrobes and put a table in the college’s arboretum to serve as their altar. They then wrote a liturgy which called upon the Earth mother to “bless” them while the priests gave them shot glasses filled with the waters of life (which was watered-down whiskey).
Voilà… the Reformed Druids of North America (RDNA) were born.
Norman Nelson would later explain, “The sole motive was to protest the requirement, not to try for alternatives for worship… There was never any intention to mock any religion; it was not intended that RDNA should compete with or supplant any faith. We tried to write a service which could be attended ‘in good faith’ by anyone.” They called their meeting place in the arboretum “the grove,” signed the worship attendance slips of students who came to their “services,” and instructed them to hand in the slips to the dean as proof they’d fulfilled their obligation per the student handbook. The thinking was that once the administration was confronted by the silliness of a bunch of students running around drinking whiskey handed them by officiants in bathrobes and calling it a religious service, they would be forced to show how the RDNA differed from, oh, let’s say Catholics, who drank wine given them by priests who wore outfits that seem made-to-purpose today but were actually derived from the ordinary daily civilian clothes worn by everyday citizens of the Greco-Roman world.
The RDNA believed that this juxtaposition of their well-crafted protest with traditional/mainstream religious services would demonstrate a hypocrisy in the college’s worship requirement as it would be impossible to say that the Reformed Druids were not worshipping, and that this would force the college authorities to validate their activities as public worship or drop the policy. A year later, at the end of the 1964 term just before summer, the college recognized its untenable position and dropped the worship requirement.
But a religion had been born, and religions take on a life of their own – often in ways those who brought them into being might never have imagined. RDNA’s founders were stunned to discover that demand for druid services continued even after the college requirement had been dropped! And those who attended RDNA services at the Carleton grove, especially those who graduated in the early years, brought their “beliefs” and rituals with them as they traveled beyond Minnesota and founded new groves on the campuses of graduate schools or back in the hometowns they returned to. The Carleton grove became known as the “mother grove,” and Reformed Druids formed a national governing body, but it petered out in the 70s, with each RDNA grove today operating independently. And just like every other religion that is or ever was, the Reformed Druids splintered into separate sects emphasizing different beliefs and/or practices, such as the New Reformed Druids, the Henge of Keltria, the Order of the White Oak, Hasidic Druids of North America, Reformed Druids of Gaia, the Order of Mithril Star, and the Missionary Order of Celtic Cross/Reformed Druidic Wicca, among others. Today, regardless of the sect, one need only profess two core beliefs to be a Reformed Druid:
- One of the many ways in which the object of Man’s search for religious truth can be found is through Nature.
- Nature, being one of the primary concerns in Man’s life and struggle, and being one of the objects of Creation, is important to Man’s spiritual quests.
There has been a great deal written by and about the Reformed Druids of North America, including:
- 1964 The Druid Chronicles (Reformed)
- 1966 Black Book of Liturgy
- 1966 Green Book of Meditations (first edition)
- 1974 Green Book of Meditations (second edition)
- 1976 The Druid Chronicles (Evolved) (first edition)
- 1994 Orange Book of Apocrypha
- 1996 A Reformed Druid Anthology
- 2004 The Carleton Druid Collection
- 2004 The Druid Chronicles (Evolved) (third edition)
- 2004 A Reformed Druid Anthology 2 (Main Volume)
- 2005 A Reformed Druid Anthology 2 (Green Books Volume)
- 2005 A Reformed Druid Anthology 2 (Magazines Volume)
- 2010 The Druid’s Path (first edition)
They’ve only been around for six decades; give them two millennia and I’m sure these will all find their way into some sort of inspired seminal text, or “bible” one might call it. If you’re interested in finding out more, or finding a grove near you, visit their website by clicking here.
Okay. Enough. I could go on. But it’s silly, right? I mean, my hat is off to those Carleton students for devising a brilliant and well-thought-out protest, and one that achieved its goal. But beyond 1964? Really?
The Australian-born, London-based journalist Andrew Mueller has said of religion that choosing one, “is no more or less weird than choosing to believe that the world is rhombus-shaped, and borne through the cosmos in the pincers of two enormous green lobsters called Esmerelda and Keith.”