By John W. Morehead
At the beginning of 2025, Paul Louis Metzger reached out to me and asked if I’d contribute a series of blog posts for the year. I said I’d be happy to and sketched out an outline of the topics I’d tackle each month. As the last quarter of the year approached I lost track of my writing schedule, and it dawned on me mid-month that I hadn’t sent anything for October. This post was originally going to focus on another topic, but events that happened in Salem, MA, led me to shift gears. Although this post finds its origins in a dispute related to Halloween, I won’t enter the annual debate on whether Christians should participate in it or write it off as demonic. Instead, I want to use this essay to draw attention to events that connect to my previous entries in this blog post series, and along the way to vent my frustrations over the behaviors of my fellow Christians, while also hoping to persuade some of them to a better way.
Every October you can count on the debate among Christians on Halloween. This includes articles claiming it is occultic and demonic and should be avoided, if not actively opposed; articles by those claiming to be exes (whether occultists, Pagans, witches, or Satanists), who warn of Halloween dangers and tell tales of their escape from darkness; and the occasional article arguing that the holiday gets a bad rap. Unfortunately, there’s another Halloween tradition that you can count on each year, and that is Christians using the holiday to target Pagans and others in the name of sharing the Christian faith. “Target” may seem a harsh word, but if the reader will be patient, it will become apparent why I use the word.
Halloween is a major event in Salem, MA, sometimes referred to as “Witch City.” It is celebrated all month long, bringing tourists from across the country, and providing an opportunity for the city’s Pagan and occult community to celebrate, pursue their spiritual pathways, and earn a living. For some Christians, Salem functions like shooting fish in a barrel: they use the public presence of those they see as the epitome of spiritual darkness as an opportunity to engage and oppose, many times harshly. Some see this as a form of evangelism, but to others it is a form of spiritual warfare that they may feel is also evangelistic somehow.
This played out as Halloween 2025 approached. A major Pagan media outlet, The Wildhunt, published a story on Christians disrupting a psychic fair and witches market. They wrote:
On Monday evening, October 27, a group affiliated with Philip Renner Ministries entered the Witch City Psychic Fair & Witches Market, an annual event hosted by Christian Day, Brian Cain, and the Witches of Salem. Day and Cain are owners of Hex. The fair, held throughout October, features licensed psychics, readers, and artisans offering services and goods in the city’s pedestrian mall
According to witnesses, members of the ministry entered private vendor areas, disrupted psychic readings, and anointed tables, photographs, and other materials with oil, ultimately desecrating an Ancestor altar — a ritual act they later celebrated online.
My understanding of this disruption was further shaped by Christian Day, mentioned in the story above, who shared on Facebook his ongoing frustration with the actions of Christians representing Philip Renner Ministries. This included posting a link to an Instagram video of the ministry members. Day shared on social media, as well as with me in a phone call, that psychics and Pagans felt attacked. Christians came into their business space, and a space they considered sacred, and engaged in practices that felt threatening, especially with heightened political and religious tensions in the ongoing wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk. These events were reported to local police, but in Salem harassment and vandalism are not criminal.
Unfortunately, this is not the first such instance of Christians being very aggressive in their evangelism. There is a long history of this in Salem, but it has happened to Pagans outside the Halloween season and Salem. I’ll share just two examples. In May 2019, Christians paid for a plane pulling a banner with an evangelistic message to fly over the grounds of the Florida Pagan Gathering to disrupt the concert. In May 2021, Religion News Service reported on Christian Street preachers who stood outside Heron Michelle’s metaphysical shop and shouted sermons that disrupted business. (See my conversations with Heather Greene and Heron Michelle on the Pagan reaction to this.)
I could list additional examples of Christians harassing Pagans in the name of evangelism, but this is not the only religious tradition in which my tribe behaves badly. I saw this years ago when I first moved to Utah to pursue seminary studies. I attended the Manti Mormon Miracle Pageant put on by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This was a sacred performance held outside on LDS Church grounds, but standing nearby on public property was a group of evangelicals who shouted sermons on bullhorns and held up signs that were often perceived as derogatory of aspects of LDS history and beliefs.
I watched with dismay as my fellow evangelicals often caused reactions of anxiety, frustration, and anger, sometimes causing local police to get involved to stop impending violence. In my analysis this is more a contest of religious identity and boundary maintenance than evangelism. Then there are the Street Preachers who go from city to city, venue to venue, holding up signs and shouting sermons of judgment against various targets, such as Muslims in Dearborn, MI. There the preachers held up a pig head (religiously unclean for Muslims) on a pole, seemingly to antagonize Muslim attendees of an Arab Festival. This too led to a violent reaction.
Whether it is Pagans and psychics or Latter-day Saints or Muslims or anyone else, there is a segment of the Christian population that engages in what I consider to be problematic and aggressive behavior toward religious others. I appreciate that for many this is considered a form of evangelism or spiritual warfare, but I still find the ways in which this is done very troubling. Some of my previous entries in this blog series touch on aspects of this, from failing to follow the example of Jesus in multifaith encounters, to how we interpret the Bible in relating to others, to literally demonizing others and considering them the embodiment of monstrosity. With this post I’d like to mention two other items for the reader’s consideration.
First, I think my fellow Christians need to step back and self-critically rethink their methodology. Why do they do things the way they do? If you really want to persuade Pagans and psychics about the Gospel so that it sounds like Good News, then I submit that entering the sacred space of others and using prayer and oil anointings in weaponized fashion will harden the reaction against you. It will hardly be persuasive. This leads to me to my second consideration, and that is that Christians are being needlessly confrontational. For some reason many Christians think that the forms of engagement described above are the best way forward. But they’re not. It fails to live up to good biblical examples, such as Paul in Acts 17 with his contextualized message to the Athenian philosophers, an example worthy of continued reflection for contemporary circumstances.
Also, this confrontational approach fails to consider positive examples of contemporary trailblazers who have gone before. Here I’m thinking of the late Pastor Phil Wyman. Phil lived in Salem for many years. He developed relationships with Pagans and trained Christians on how to lovingly relate to and engage Pagans in truly Christlike ways. This resulted in Phil gaining the respect of Salem’s Pagans, and becoming a welcomed Christian presence during the city’s Halloween festivities. You can learn more about the way of Phil and why he did things in the way that he did by watching my conversation with him about his book Love Big or Go Home. The title of this last book of his summarized it all. Love big—not harass big—or go home. Pastor Phil has since passed, but he left Christians and Pagans alike a legacy that must not be forgotten. My hope is that Christians like those affiliated with Philip Renner Ministries might be willing to rethink their understanding of the Bible in light of both the history of the Christian Church’s engagement of others and the model left by those like Phil Wyman, so that we can truly love our neighbors and generate good will instead of fear and defensiveness.
John W. Morehead is the Executive Director of the Foundation for Religious Diplomacy, and the Director of its Evangelical Chapter (Multifaith Matters). You may contact him at johnwmorehead@msn.com .