This press release was issued prior to the Parliament to announce the participation of Covenant of the Goddess.

Such renowned religious leaders as the Dalai Lama, Mother Theresa, and the Archbishop of Canterbury-as well as the head of an organization representing practitioners of the religion known as Witchcraft or Wicca that originated in pre-Christian Europe-are scheduled to address the second Parliament of the World's Religions, to be held Aug. 28 through Sept. 5 in downtown Chicago at the Palmer House Hilton hotel. The first Parliament was held in Chicago in 1893.

The Wiccan group, the Covenant of the Goddess, is an international umbrella organization with member congregations or 'covens' throughout North America, Europe, and Australia. The Covenant is one of the over 200 Parliament cosponsors, including many mainstream religious and interfaith groups. "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.

"In a similar fashion, the 1893 Parliament provided a forum for the introduction of Eastern religion into Western culture," she added. "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," Curott continued.

Women make up two-thirds of the Covenant's clergy, called Priests and Priestesses, 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. 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.

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 the 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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