The hiring of a Wiccan chaplain at one of Wisconsin's maximum-security prisons has prompted a denunciation from a La Crosse-area legislator, who called the move "hocus-pocus."
The Rev. Jamyi Witch, a follower of the nature-based Wicca, which some call witchcraft, started work this week at the Waupun Correctional Institution. She had been a volunteer chaplain for two years and is believed to be the first Wiccan chaplain on the state payroll. State corrections officials said Witch was hired based on interviews, references and her background and that it would be unfair and illegal to bar her from serving because of her faith. She was chosen over 10 other candidates.
State Rep. Mike Huebsch, R-West Salem, called the hiring "a remarkable lapse in judgment by the Department of Corrections" and vowed to write legislation to cut funding for Witch's job.
"We are in a tight economy, and they are throwing away the taxpayers' money for this?" Huebsch said in a news release. "The chaplain is in the prison to provide comfort to the inmate, but also to provide the life-changing knowledge that we all are accountable to a higher authority.
"By their own admission, the Wiccan cult does not provide this," Huebsch said, "and would do nothing to reduce the recidivism so rampant in our correctional system."
The 1,200 inmates at Waupun have one other full-time chaplain, a Protestant minister, as well as volunteer chaplains of other denominations. The inmate population includes 30 Wiccans and 400 Christians, with the rest either nonreligious or practicing other religions, including those in the Islamic and American Indian traditions.
Huebsch has been a major supporter of prison chaplains. He authored budget-bill amendments that added five chaplains in 1997 and seven in the last budget.
"I've received letters from people who turned their life around with the help and guidance of prison chaplains from recognized and accepted religions," Huebsch said. "There isn't one study that I am aware of that shows that witches have reformed any prisoners."
Waupun's warden said Witch was chosen, in part, because of an extensive knowledge of alternative religions.
"Basically, a lot of it has to do with the duties and character of the individual, and Jamyi is an outstandingly approachable person, somebody that I wouldn't mind approaching on spiritual matters myself," Warden Gary McCaughtry said. "If biases are present, it's a matter for us to work through those biases."
With the variety of spiritual needs in a prison population, a Wiccan chaplain might be better equipped to help inmates than those from other mainstream religions, said nic Morrigan, a rural Sparta woman who serves as high priestess in a eclectic pagan/Wicca congregation called the Grove of the Laughing Oak.
"People are not generally raised to be Wiccan. Most people come to it from long and deep spiritual questioning," Morrigan said. That means they have explored other faiths and likely are knowledgeable about those religions, she said.
Contrary to what Huebsch said, Morrigan said most of the pagans and Wiccans she knows do "respect a higher deity." The difference, she said, is pagan deities are not punishing gods. "We don't have the fear of eternal damnation as Muslims, Jews and Christians do," Morrigan said. "The focus is a lot less on an eternal situation, but the focus is still on living a good life."
Pagans and Wiccans have a moral code, Morrigan said: "In that it hurt none, do what thou wilt."
Wicca teaches that a person who hurts another must take personal responsibility. That's a message that inmates should hear, she said.
"I think a Wiccan chaplain would be effective," Morrigan said. "I think its really terrific that Waupun has done that."
Wiccans have been ministering to inmates voluntarily for many years, said Tizzy Hyatt, development director for the Reformed Congregation of the Goddess in Dane County.
Wicca is "a very fast-growing religion, and also there's so many misconceptions about it," Hyatt said. "We're just like any other ordained folks. We have ordained priests and priestesses. Most Wiccans in general do not proselytize. We don't ever try to convert anyone."
Selena Fox, a senior minister with Circle Sanctuary, a Wiccan congregation in Mount Horeb, said she has ministered in prisons as far back as 1980 and serves as a consultant to the U.S. Department of Justice on religious accommodation for followers of other nature religions.
Fox estimated there are more than 5,000 followers in Wisconsin.
Huebsch said he will ask the Department of Corrections to reconsider its decision and re-examine the criteria for hiring chaplains.
Another state lawmaker, Rep. Scott Walker, R-Wauwatosa, said his Assembly Corrections and Courts Committee might look into Witch's hiring.
"I can't imagine that most of the inmates would feel particularly comfortable going to that individual," Walker said. "I would think, in some ways from a religious standpoint, it might actually put inmates in a position that talking to (a Wiccan) is contrary to what some of their own religious beliefs might be."