Toil & Trouble
A Brief Account of the Occult at the End of Western Civilization
Newsweek magazine reports that the number of self-identified witches in the United States now exceeds 1.5 million, up from a mere 8,000 in 1990. At that high and growing number, the magazine continues, the devotees of witchcraft far exceed the shriveling membership of the “mainline” Presbyterian Church USA and just about equal the count of Episcopalians.
I am unsure what to make of such comparisons between the witches and the “mainline” Protestants. A cynic of the “Old Believer” sort might see here merely a distinction without a difference, or a welcome clarification of identities.
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Allan C. Carlson is the John Howard Distinguished Senior Fellow at the International Organization for the Family. His most recent book is Family Cycles: Strength, Decline & Renewal in American Domestic Life, 1630-2000 (Transaction, 2016). He and his wife have four grown children and nine grandchildren. A "cradle Lutheran," he worships in a congregation of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. He is a senior editor for Touchstone.
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more on history from the online archives
14.6—July/August 2001
The Transformed Relics of the Fall
on the Fulfillment of History in Christ by Patrick Henry Reardon
28.3—May/June 2015
Whittaker Chambers's Lonely War Against Godless Collectivism by Hunter Baker
31.1—January/February 2018
on Ragnarök, an Extreme Weather Event & the Paths to Conversion by Timothy J. Burbery
more from the online archives
32.6—November/December 2019
The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis by Alan Jacobs by Jesse Russell
17.6—July/August 2004
Old Science Confronts a Formidable Challenge in the Scientific ID Movement by Jay W. Richards
25.4—July/August 2012
The Corrosive & Far-Reaching Fallout of the Sexual Revolution by Anthony Esolen
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