Aquarian Tabernacle Church Celebrates 25 Years

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by the ATC staff

On November 1, 2004, the Aquarian Tabernacle Church (ATC), a homegrown Seattle tradition based on English Traditional Wicca and service to the community, celebrated its 25th anniversary. This Wiccan church has spread to many English-speaking foreign countries, including Canada, Australia, South Africa, Ireland and New Zealand, where it has also been recognized as a legitimate religious tradition and granted recognized exempt status.

The ATC, sometimes just called the Tab, is the creation of Pete Pathfinder Davis, who serves as the tradition's Archpriest, along with Deborah K. Hudson, who is Archpriestess of the tradition worldwide. ATC is focused on serving the larger pagan communities by providing open public worship opportunities, education, interfaith liaison, and the infrastructure available to the followers of most faiths but previously not available to Wiccans and pagans. This includes things like major Sabbat festivals, Full and New Moon worship, a place to gather, a lending library, and many other services associated with faith communities. The ATC also sponsors Spring Mysteries, an annual recreation of the Eleusinian mysteries, its autumn counterpart, Hekate's Sickle.

In 1979, Davis and some friends set out to establish a small Wiccan retreat in the mountains near Seattle for local area pagans to worship unmolested. But it quickly became their objective to establish a Wiccan church with the recognition of the federal government and tax-exempt status and to gain tolerance, if not acceptance, by the local mainstream religious bodies. The ATC received governmental recognition in the USA in 1988 and subsequently gained IRS group exemption umbrella recognition as a Wiccan tradition in 1991. Any congregation that the ATC accepts as an affiliated group in the United States receives automatic recognition as a tax-exempt church through this group exemption.

Davis recalls, "Some have asked us why we call it a church instead of a temple, which is more pagan in its sound. Well, back in 1979 we had decided to call it `The Aquarian Temple,' but then Reverend Jim Jones, leader of the People's Temple in Los Angeles, moved his flock to Guiana and fed them all poisoned purple Kool-Aid, and that kind of ruined the word `temple' almost as much as it ruined Kool-Aid for quite a long time."

He continues, "We called it a church because that word has a definite perception in our culture, one with some valued legal status attached to it. When there is a body of words and terms that are used by the larger culture for religious institutions, there exists an almost universal respect for those institutions. We have as much right to that same level of respect as any religion, and we got it, just by using a familiar set of words. It's the old `if you can't lick `em, join `em' strategy, and it makes sense. Today, we have at least the tolerance of, if not the complete respect of mainline churches. Our active participation in interfaith activities also helped people of differing faiths learn who we are as individuals by our working right alongside them in interfaith programs. You have to pay your social dues by working with others for common goals."

Today, the church owns a nice piece of land on the banks of the Skykomish river in rural Snohomish County, on which they have built a worship site of tall standing stones, or menhirs, in a stand of old cedar trees. They have also built the Goddess Shrine, another outbuilding, and the main building housing the kitchen (for the traditional after-circle potlucks), the extensive library, the church offices, and residential space. In addition, there is a paved fire pit and drum circle. All of this is only about 50 miles from downtown Seattle.

The MoonStone Circle at the church site was constructed by Seattle area pagans in the `80s over a period of two years, using slabs of local granite found along an 1,800-foot cliff that defines the northern edge of the valley. The circle was dedicated in December 1984, in a blinding snowstorm. The area was blanketed in new snowfall and illuminated by literally hundreds of candle stubs set in the new-fallen snow. The boughs of the cedars were bending low in their heavy white mantle. The circle dedication was performed by 29 pagans, some of whom had driven from as far away as eastern Washington, Oregon and Canada. Everyone there had a part in the ceremony. It was a memorable occasion on several counts. It was two days before the cars could be dug out of the snow and people could make their return trip home!

Debbie Hudson oversees the worship and festival activities of the ATC locally. She told us, "The focus of the ATC when Pete started it was on providing for the needs of the larger pagan community ... Being able to help large numbers of people in [the] powerful, spiritual ways we are able to is the real work we do in this tradition. It's not about us, it's about everyone else. We reach out in practical ways. An example is our local prison ministry group, headed up by Barb Lauderdale. We train people in seminary and elsewhere so that they are able to help others. We've seen several pagan and Wiccan former prison inmates return to society and live decent and ethical lives as contributing members of society. There just isn't anything more rewarding than to see you've helped someone fix their lives when they were broken."

With the participation of many like-minded pagans, the ATC grew and flourished. Most noticeable was the absence of the customary frictions and infighting common to many pagan enterprises. From the very beginning, ATC was an open attendance pagan group, where anyone who wanted to attend could, without the usual need for someone to "vouch" for them. The ATC soon became known as a "safe place" for everyone and their ideas, conventional or unconventional. We believe it is that original concept of Pete's that is the major force in building the resulting community that ATC has become.

The ATC has enjoyed a much longer lifespan than most pagan churches. When we asked Pete why, he responded, "Everyone gets their chance to have their say about anything they want to address, and everyone else listens. That doesn't mean we may all agree, but at least it is an open, polite forum for ideas. We don't exclude anyone, and certainly don't define ourselves by who we won't let participate. While that sort of self-definition may be common in a lot of groups, it is also very divisive and will in time destroy any efforts to build a community."

Davis said that the ATC has a basic core group of about 45 people who are directly involved in the church activities and efforts. "Our church is made up of many people, and the organizational duties and powers are shared. This isn't a `Pete and Debbie dog and pony show.' It is about everyone participating."

Hudson adds, "The work we do is bigger than all of us, and we learn to work together happily to do this work for others who need it. Learning to `play well with others' is an important task. That's why they focus on it when you are in kindergarten. It's a lifelong job, but in so doing, we touch the divine for ourselves and for others. It's been a joy to work with Pete, and I've learned a lot from him about reaching out to others. It's amazing how much you can get accomplished if you don't worry about who might get the credit. At the ATC, we all share in it."

The ATC is a hierarchical organization, though you'd seldom notice that from the way things are done. There is a large core group who are deeply immersed in worship services, prison ministry, seminary, festival presentation, SpiralScouts youth programs, interfaith councils and many other outreaches of the church. The church has an overall membership in the Pacific Northwest in excess of 300. The Archpriestess and Archpriest oversee the activities of the church, both locally and on an international basis, through Archpriestesses and Archpriests of the church in each foreign nation where ATC has an official presence. The Archpriesthood works with an advisory group, the Red Cord Council (or just "the board"), and virtually all decisions are arrived at through discussion and compromise in the best interests of the mission of the church, basically by consensus. Rarely, if ever, has a vote been taken on anything. The Archpriesthood, however, retains the right of veto if they believe an action is not going to be in the best interests of the church or paganism in general.

At the Hekate's Sickle Festival held each Samhain, the members of the church are recognized for their efforts by receiving beads for their cords, each bead having a particular significance.

Although every member is considered a priestess or priest, to be ATC clergy qualified to minister actively to others in the larger community one must attend a four-year college-level seminary program culminating in the award of a Bachelor of Ministry degree from our own Woolston-Steen Theological Seminary, with recognized religious education status by the Higher Education Coordinating Board of The State of Washington. The Seminary also has Master's and Doctorate programs available. The ATC does not intend to try to tell anyone how they should conduct their own clergy training, but is fully committed to professionalizing ATC tradition clergy.

ATC "Firsts"

There have been a number of "firsts" in the history of the ATC. Here is a list of a few of the church's accomplishments.

In March of 1985, as a result of Davis's retention by the Washington State Attorney General as an expert witness to enlighten the federal court in Tacoma, Washington about the tenets of Wicca in a lawsuit brought by a prisoner, Wicca became acknowledged by the Department of Corrections as a religion worthy of recognition for inmates to practice. Shortly thereafter, Wicca appeared in the department's first edition of Handbook of Religious Beliefs and Practices, published for institutional chaplains.

In 1992, the ATC was accepted as the coordinating agency for the appointment of Wiccan delegates to the Interfaith Council of Washington (state), and in 1992, Davis was elected unanimously as the president of the Interfaith Council of Washington. He served two terms.

In 1994, the ATC, through its in-house publishing effort, which was then known as Pathfinder Press, issued the first of several mass-produced pagan tracts (or more correctly, anti-tracts) intended to educate non pagans and take some pokes at the fundamentalist Christian tracts published by the Jack T. Chick Publishing Company. ATC's tracts, The Other People and Heathens Idolize School Prayer were published as parodies of Chick tracts, in the exact same format and appearance as Chick, with the same purpose in mind.

In 2001, the first outdoor circle of tall standing stones was erected within the confines of the Twin Rivers Correctional Facility as a place of Wiccan worship. To our knowledge, there exists no other state-sanctioned Wiccan outdoor stone circle intended for inmate worship anywhere in the world.

In 2001, the ATC incorporated formally a young people's nature lore and woodcraft program that had been begun in 1999 as a local activity for the mother church. Because of the demand for some alternative to the Boy Scouts of America's gender bias, and in some areas its pervasively fundamentalist Christian programs, "SpiralScouts" was launched as an international organization. SpiralScouts was developed through an Internet online committee of slightly more than 500 participants, presaging its phenomenal acceptance and growth in the pagan community worldwide. The program was created in such a fashion as to allow its use by any minority faith (or no faith at all) based group as a vehicle to educate children in a particular tradition. The program is adaptable to any non-hostile religious community. As of 2004, there are more than 100 chartered SpiralScouts groups in the United States and Canada. The program continues to grow rapidly. (See www.SpiralScouts.org)

In 2000, the ATC's Woolston-Steen Wiccan Theological Seminary received authorization from the Washington State Department of Higher Education Degree Authorization Board to issue academic degrees in Wiccan Ministry under the agency's Religious Exemption regulations.

To Learn More

If you would like to learn more about the Aquarian Tabernacle Church, visit its Web site at www.AquaTabCh.org