Allie Martin -
Janice Crouse, a senior fellow with Concerned Women for America, says it's disturbing that many young people in evangelical churches are experimenting with the Wiccan religion. Church leaders and Christian parents, she warns, must be ready to counter that growing interest among their youth.  
Crouse cites an article in Religion Journal which said youth pastors in the Southern Baptist Convention were worried about large numbers of evangelicals taking part in Wicca, a religion that involves nature worship, stresses moral autonomy, and includes remedies and spells -- beliefs that Crouse points out are distinctly different from orthodox Christianity, not to mention incompatible with the Bible. 
"... Wiccans believe in moral autonomy -- [that] 'nobody can tell me what to do.' And I think particularly with young people ... that's a very desirable thing; they don't want the church telling them that there are boundaries, [that] there are things that they can't do," she explains. "Another one is that they don't believe in having authorities beyond human constructs; that we as individuals have the responsibility to shape our own beliefs and there's no evil beyond that." 
Crouse, who directs Concerned Women for America's Beverly LaHaye Institute, says the interest in Wicca can be traced to recent books featuring witchcraft and similar topics. 
"Some people think this goes back to the books that were so popular up until recently, and so many of the games and television programs that feature witchcraft and magic and fairy tales that have a dimension to it that if you just pull out some kind of spell you can make anything happen," she says. "This has really become quite entrenched in many of the young people's groups and in evangelicals in particular." 
According to Crouse, "earth worship" -- as she describes Wicca -- appeals to people who do not want to be bound by any book of authority or have imposed on them any requirements to be "believers."
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