This Press Release describes COG activities at the Parliament of World's Religions.

The head of an international organization representing practitioners of the religion known as Witchcraft or Wicca, is scheduled to address the Parliament of the World's Religions at 10 a.m. Sept. 2 in the Palmer House Hilton Hotel in downtown Chicago, where the gathering - expected to attract over 5,000 people - is being held Aug. 28 through Sept. 5.

The Wiccan group, the Covenant of the Goddess, will also celebrate a traditional Full Moon Ritual or "Esbat" on Aug. 31 in connection with the Parliament. Exact time and location are to be announced. According to the Institute for the Study of American Religion, Wicca and related Neo-Pagan traditions represent the fastest-growing religions in the United States today.

"At a time of growing concern about the environment and the status of women, the Parliament has chosen to accept an ancient earth-based, explicitly Goddess-centered religious practice into it ranks. We are both honored and encouraged," noted Covenant First Officer Phyllis Curott, High Priestess of the New York City-based coven, Circle of Ara.

One of the over 200 Parliament cosponsors, including many mainstream religious and interfaith groups, the Covenant of the Goddess, is an international umbrella organization with member congregations or "covens" throughout North America, Europe and Australia. This Parliament marks the centennial of the first Parliament of the World's Religions held in Chicago in 1893, which provided a forum for the introduction of Eastern religion into Western culture.

Titled, "The Divine Union of Spirit and Nature: Wiccan Wisdom and the Environmental Crisis," Ms. Curott's presentation will examine the Wiccan tenet that physical and spiritual well-being are united and grounded in a deep and abiding connection with the Earth and its natural cycles. She will also lead an interfaith panel discussion on "The Divine Feminine: The Goddess and the World's Religions" on Sept. 1 at 10 a.m.

"Many Eastern, as well as other world religions, contain the seeds of their own ancient and more Goddess-oriented traditions. Goddess worship is beginning to come full circle, and we hope to forge interfaith understanding and alliances based on this once widespread concept of a feminine deity," Ms. Curott continued.

Women make up two-thirds of the Covenant's clergy, called Priests and Priestesses, Ms. Curott said. "The traditions and practices of Covenant members express a deep and abiding spiritual connection to the earth and its natural cycles, as well as an experience of the divine as feminine and often masculine, as well," she noted.

Precise figures on the number of Wiccan practitioners are nearly impossible to obtain due to the decentralized nature of the religion and the traditional secrecy - inspired by centuries of systematic persecution and lingering prejudice - surrounding its practice. "Our theology is based on intuitive experience, rather than received doctrine, while it is grounded in the wisdom that all life is sacred and interconnected. Nature is the very embodiment of divinity, as well as our greatest teacher," Covenant Co-Public Information Officer Michael Thorn explained. "The Covenant is non-hierarchical and governed by consensus," he said.

Many Witches maintain that the religion was kept alive during what is known as the "the Burning Times" in Medieval and Renaissance Europe by word of mouth and family ties. Wicca resurfaced in modern times after anti-Witchcraft laws were removed from the books in England in 1951. The practice of Wicca took hold in the United States in the early 1970's, in part as a result of the growing women's and ecology movements of the era.

The Covenant of the Goddess was incorporated in California as a nonprofit religious organization on Oct. 31, 1975, to secure for members the legal protections enjoyed by members of other religions.

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