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Witch School leaves Illinois this weekendOct 30, 2009 (Chicago Tribune - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Since the Witch School set up shop in tiny Rossville two years ago, some of the Christian flocks in this former factory town have protested and prayed that the pagans would pick up and leave. Some even sprinkled the wheels of their cars with holy water and cruised around the Illinois town to ward off witches. Their prayers will be answered Halloween weekend when the handful of teachers and staff from the school pull up stakes and move where they feel more welcome: Salem, Mass., the site of the infamous witchcraft trials more than three centuries ago. "This area is not real conducive to the occult," said the Rev. Adam Taubert, pastor of First Baptist Church in nearby Hoopeston, where the Witch School operated before moving to Rossville. "I don't know if they were trying to create controversy. Some people try to stir up things to promote themselves because it's free publicity." The Rev. Donald Lewis, chancellor of the Corellian Nativist Tradition, the distinct brand of Wicca conjured up by his great-grandmother in central Illinois about half a century ago, said controversy was never the mission. Publicity might have been. He believes in spreading the gospel of his faith -- an evangelical tenet that rubbed some Christians in Rossville the wrong way. "I believe that spiritual knowledge is given to us to share," said Lewis, co-founder of the Witch School. "When you don't share it, you're kind of really abusing the reason it was given to you." Sharing might be easier in Salem, where witchcraft has become something of a cottage industry. Ed Hubbard, co-founder and CEO of the Witch School, said he underestimated the difficulty faced by the school when it relocated to Rossville, about 125 miles south of Chicago near the Indiana border. The largely online school has about 40,000 students registered for its introductory clergy-training course and more lighthearted fare about zombies, vampires and Harry Potter. But an online audience is hard to maintain when Internet service repeatedly crashes for a week at a time and local vendors are discouraged from providing technical support, Hubbard said. "The churches can scream and yell, but I thought at the end of the day if you proved yourself a good neighbor, people would get past that," Hubbard said. "I learned that's not true."Robert Kurka, professor of theology and church and culture at nearby Lincoln Christian University, said he hopes rural Internet woes, not neighbors, drove the Witch School to seek a more urban setting. "People who take the Bible seriously and responsibly understand that the method of dealing with people you disagree with is to pray for them, not prey on them," he said. Taubert said he thinks the Witch School's departure has little to do with the neighbors and more to do with the market for its merchandise. Hubbard doesn't deny Salem offers better business opportunities, particularly in the weeks before Halloween when thousands of visitors show up. But Salem is symbolic too. "The place where the most persecution occurred has become 'The Witch City,' " he said. "Maybe there's hope for us everywhere else." --Manya A. Brachear To see more of the Chicago Tribune, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.chicagotribune.com. Copyright (c) 2009, Chicago Tribune Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |