| I don't have any scientific data to back this up, but it's a safe bet that most Americans are far more interested in the occult than in Methodism, Episcopalianism and Presbyterianism all rolled into one. Think of it like this: sales for Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol versus sales for Will Willimon's United Methodist Beliefs: A Brief Introduction. Willimon's got a two-year headstart, but do we really need to do the numbers? Even if I picked a work of mainline religious fiction—and Abingdon, an imprint of the United Methodist Publishing House, has just such a new line—its titles still aren't breaking into the New York Times best-sellers list. Notwithstanding popular interest in occultism (the word sounds so bad—better to use supernatural, mystical or even folk religion), there's little about it in the news media other than secondary reporting. In other words, there are stories to explain the popularity of Dan Brown's books and TV shows like Warehouse 13 or Medium, but there's little coverage of actual on-the-ground people, practices, events and trends. That's why I stopped to listen when I heard an NPR report that mentioned the Five Percenters. Turns out that the music video for Jay Z's "Run This Town" is thick with occult allusions. (That's yet another secondary story, but. . .)
Backtrack for anyone unfamiliar with the Five Percenters: it's a breakaway movement from the Nation of Islam which teaches that only 5 percent of the world's population know the truth. Most popular among African American urban youth, its message is spread through local academies, word of mouth and hip-hop. According to the NPR report, Jay Z isn't a follower, but he uses a familiar Five Percent greeting "Peace God" in the video. He also wears a sweat shirt emblazoned with "do what thou wilt," the central maxim of occult bad-boy Aleister Crowley's path to spiritual development.
There's a lot of this going around—Dan Brown is just the edge of the wedge. More intriguing is how marginalized communities use esoteric teachings for affirmation and empowerment: hip-hop borrowing from Five Percenters is one example, just as some women make use of Wiccan tools such as circles, crystals and moon rites. And there are probably equally fascinating permutations among other affinity groups that are hungry for a sense of prestige and power.
As Jon Butler reminded us in his landmark book Awash in a Sea of Faith, American religion—and particularly American Christianity—has always been a roiling stew of staid institutionalism and the occult, of elitism and radical democracy.
The only thing surprising about the current uptick in our enthusiasm for woo-woo religion is that we should find it at all surprising.
Diane Winston
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