Lewis/Sects and Stats, 6. Demise of the Teen Witch Fad

Paganism’s rapid growth was big news during the first decade of the new millennium. At the time, I wrote a piece on the “Pagan Explosion” that examined this growth through the lens of census data. By the end of the decade, however, it was clear that this rapid expansion had fallen off, and the movement appeared to have returned to something approaching a normal pattern of growth. What actually happened was that shortly after the turn of the millennium, the Teen Witch fad temporary inflated total numbers of self-identified Pagans. After the fad ended, explosive growth also ended. In this chapter, I analyze what transpired via a juxtaposition of survey data and more recent census data.