Pagans Create All-Digital Credit Union

Paganism is not considered a popular religion – at least not yet. But the number of pagans in the U.S. seems to be growing. And because of this emerging trend, there is a group of pagans who are working to someday serve the financial needs of this new national field of membership through a proposed Pagan Federal Credit Union.

American Religious Identification Surveys conducted by Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., determined that in 2008 there were an estimated 682,000 Americans who identified as Pagans or Wiccans. Six years later in 2014, the Pew Research Center reported approximately one million to 1.5 million people identify as Wiccan or Pagan. Wicca is generally considered a modern pagan religion based on pre-Christian traditions whose followers practice witchcraft and nature worship.

“Paganism is an umbrella term and includes many polytheistic/pantheistic faiths, including Wicca, Druid, Heathenism and many forms of other polytheistic religions,” Lawrence Lerner of Seattle, Wash., one of the credit union’s organizers, said. “At the end of the day, we are an earth-based religion. We look for equality of all and for all. We worship many gods and we look at ourselves and at others as stewards of the earth. We look for balance in ourselves and in nature. Until you really find that balance in yourself you can’t have it in the rest of the world.”

The Gypsy Thread, a blog that covers pagan rituals, poetry, paranormal insights, herbal medicine and pagan history, lists at least 15 reasons why paganism is gaining in popularity. One of them includes the freedom for anyone to develop their personalized metaphysical connections with the earth and the universe.

According to a Gypsy Thread post, “Paganism is the original environmentalism movement; we care more about the planet than you’d ever imagine. Most pagans work with the energies of all living things and the planet itself – that’s something valuable and we take care of it.”

The idea of forming a financial institution for pagans began with Oberon Zell of Salem, Mass., a city widely known for the witchcraft trials from February to May 1692, during which time more than 200 people were accused of delving with the “devil’s magic.” Fourteen women and five men were hung, one man was crushed to death and five people died in jail.

Zell is considered a national pagan celebrity and is a self-described modern Master Wizard, author and speaker. He is one of the founders of the San Francisco, Calif.-based Church of All Worlds, which claims to be the first pagan church in the U.S., founded in 1968.

Lerner, who is a Wiccan priest, has known Zell for many years.

“He and I and many others in the community met in Toronto in November 2018 at the Parliament of the World’s Religions where we had a lot of discussion about this,” said Lerner, a technology executive consultant who, according to his LinkedIn profile, developed blockchain venture funds; created 25% year-on-year revenue growth in consulting practices at PwC, Cognizant and UST Global; and helped launch Canada’s first equity crowdfunding company.

“He’s [Zell] a supporter, but he knows that his skills lie elsewhere, and he’s been very vocal about bringing people to the [credit union] group and supporting it,” Lerner said.

Jason Fletcher of Akron, Ohio, who works as business banking professional, said he recalls reading one of Zell’s Facebook posts that suggested pagans should have their own financial institution. So Fletcher, who is a pagan priest, decided to help organize the credit union effort by opening the (Proposed) Pagan Credit Union Project on Facebook in October 2018. The site, which has already attracted more than 630 members, shares information about the credit union and encourages others to support and help with efforts to obtain a federal charter.

“He [Zell] makes a post saying Pagans should have their own bank,” Fletcher wrote in a post introducing the Facebook group page. “Intrigued, as I had almost nine years in banking at that point, I read on. Let me tell you, there were a lot of nay-sayers. In fact that sentiment dominated the comments. I was the one banker who made a comment and said ‘Let’s do this!’ and here we are. My primary motivation in creating the Facebook group was to get the conversation started. Period. Now that we have been talking, I realize this is about serving the Pagan community and making it stronger. Why shouldn’t we have our own credit union after all?”

Beth Laf, a pagan priestess, who lives in West Virginia and operates an online herbal business, said she became involved in organizing the credit union because thousands of small business owners, who are also pagan and sell all kinds of pagan products, have experienced one type of discrimination or another.

“As far as within the banking industry, even with attempting to get small business loans, we’ve been unable to get credit because we’re told by [bankers], ‘Your business isn’t big enough,’ ‘You don’t really fit with our profile’ or ‘You don’t work year-round,’” Laf explained. “Having been openly pagan for well over three decades, this is not a new story within our community. We hear this all the time.”

She also noted a Pagan Pride Day event in West Virginia earlier this year was met with protesters. “That wasn’t unexpected, but even in more open areas where people are more liberal, we still end up experiencing [protesters] on a more regular basis,” she said.

Laf believes pagan small business merchants would be open to joining the credit union and possibly encourage their patrons to join the financial cooperative as well.

The pagan merchants market books; jewelry; clothes and shoes for men, women and children; candles; incense; lotions; cookbooks; tapestries; toys; artwork and other accessories for the office, home and pets. Amazon lists at least 25 categories under paganism and neo-paganism.

A Salem-based small business owner, who runs a natural recycling company and joined the credit union Facebook site, suggested access to cash via a national ATM network would help attract people to Pagan FCU.

“Salem, Mass., with a bunch of Pagan and Witch Businesses, burn through ATM cash like wildfire,” he recently wrote. “This is a real need that would have value to a large number of businesses that benefit from the mainstream.”

Lerner said the organizational phase of Pagan FCU has just begun. Organizers are working to form partnerships with large and midsize pagan churches whose members would be open to becoming members of the credit union. Lerner estimated there are a few hundred pagan churches throughout the country.

“We’ve already talked to a number of them and the Church of All Worlds has already signed a letter for the NCUA,” Lerner said. “What we’re looking at is to get to that magic 3,000 number that the NCUA likes, because they say if you can find 3,000 people who say, ‘I think the [credit union] is a good idea, then that’s good enough for them, because that is sort of the minimum viable size.”

Pagan FCU will be an all-digital cooperative that will offer traditional financial products and services, including specialty products that its organizers think will appeal to their members.

One of those specialty products could be a microloan of less than $3,000.

Because Lerner works in the fields of finance and payments, he said he knows that microloans are becoming increasingly popular across all segments of the population, including small merchants who sometimes need a competitively-priced micro loan to keep their doors open during temporary business lulls.

As far as raising capital, organizers plan to secure grants and leverage other methods to raise enough funds. Lucky for Pagan FCU, Lerner has extensive professional experience in technology and raising capital.

As the founder of LERNER Consulting, his firm specializes in bridging the business and technology needs for early stage to mature companies. Among other positions, he served as chief technology officer for fintech startup FrontFundr, which created “investing as a platform” for Canada’s first equity funding company. He designed and delivered a technology platform, enabling FrontFundr to raise $6 million in first eight months for clients.

Lerner said Pagan FCU’s main office will be based in Washington State.