In a 2009 report for The Guardian, writer and broadcaster Cole Moreton speculated that paganism was “beginning to look like” the UK’s “new national faith.” At the time, there were reportedly a quarter of a million people who identified as practicing pagans—more than the number of Buddhists and almost the same as the number of Jews. That’s a massive jump from the 2001 census which recorded only 40,000 pagans in the country. Noting that many won’t call themselves such in front of a government official, The Pagan Federation claims upwards of 360,000 “committed, practising pagans,” making the group the country’s fourth-largest religion.
Across the pond, a similar story of pagan growth is emerging. A 2014 study put the number of “practicing witches” in the U.S. at a possible high of 1.5 million, more than the number of mainline Presbyterians. Two decades after a 1990 CUNY survey found only 8,000 Wicca adherents in the country, the U.S. Census Bureau reported a rise to 342,000. Ten years on, the number of Wiccans has skyrocketed to nearly one million.
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