Neopaganism

I have chosen to write about Neopaganism for my issues paper. I will be able to narrow my topic down more if I focus on a certain aspect of Neopaganism, such as the huge incorporation of nature, witchcraft, or how it relates to early paganism from Britain. It’s difficult narrowing this topic because not a lot of people know all the specifics about it, and because there are so many different types of Neopagans themselves.

            The people I want to be my target audience is those who are critical of Neopaganism, those that don’t know a lot about Neopaganism, and those who just don’t know it exists. I want to address them in my paper because I want to help give a better understanding of this religion and help people form educated, non-biased views. I don’t want to address people who are Neopagans in my paper because they already know a lot, and I’m not trying to make them judge their own religion less harshly.

            I will be able to direct my essay towards these people that will be my audience by addressing the stases we learned in class. I can talk about the existence of Neopaganism and it’s history since it was created, then I will address what it is exactly and what Neopagans believe in. I will address their rituals as well. As to the question of whether neopaganism is good or bad, I’ll say why people should not judge it so harshly, but they should take the time to learn about it before they draw conclusions on it. The last question, what should we do about it, doesn’t really apply to my paper as much, other than I’m trying to get people to stop judging Neopagans as quickly, so I won’t talk about that one as much.

            I have a few concerns on the narrowing of my topic. I wasn’t really aware of the existence of Neopaganism before I started writing this paper, and I’m still trying to get a handle on what it is exactly. It might have been better for me to choose a topic that I was more familiar with, but it is also interesting to learn about this religion, so there are pros and cons to choosing this topic. Also, Neopaganism has so many different aspects, and it’ll be hard to stay focused on just one. And I’m worried that if I do narrow my topic down, I won’t have enough to say for eight to ten pages.