Updates!

The Pagan Pride Project is a non-profit organization that sponsors local day-long events throughout the world to help foster pride in Pagan identity through education, activism, charity and community. You can find out more at Pagan Pride Project Website

The Kansas City Pagan Pride Day organization is a Missouri Nonprofit Corporation (N009965626) and a proud affiliate of this national organization. We have sponsored a local Pagan Pride Day event every year since 1999. Every year the event continues to grow providing the local Pagan community a day of fellowship, workshops, lectures, music, and ritual. This event has also raised thousands of dollars in cash and supplies for many local non-profit organizations to include the Hope House, Wayside Waifs, Harvesters, Rose Brooks Center, Solace House, Ronald McDonald House, SAFEHOME, and the Southwest Boulevard Family Health Center.

The overall driving atmosphere of a Pagan Pride Day event is one of fellowship, community, and acceptance. As is common with many Pagan events, it is requested that strife be left behind upon entering and that a general atmosphere of safety and peace be maintained during the event. For those who may be new to any of the many Pagan paths, Pagan Pride Day is often an event which leads to great transformation through the simple discovery that they are not as alone as they perceived themselves to be initially.

We try to keep our purpose balanced through the inspirations of Air, Fire, Water, and Earth:

• Air: Education
  
  We're never going to be able to practice our spiritual paths openly if we don't give the public accurate information about what we do and do not do.

• Fire: Activism
  
  People aren't necessarily going to go out of their way to find out what Pagans really do. We have to have the courage to act on our convictions and do what we need to do.

• Water: Charity
  
  We know that what we do returns to us. We need to demonstrate this by offering compassion to our communities where it is needed. When we share our own abundance, we show that we trust the Gods to share abundance with us in return.

• Earth: Community
  
  We're never going to be able to practice openly if we don't know anyone else in our local Pagan communities. We need to weave networking webs in our cities, in our towns, in our rural areas. We need these webs to support one another. That support will also show those who would restrict our practice that we are not just a few isolated wackos, but are a growing congregation of people who adhere to a faith that, while different, is as valid as their own.

As shown by the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), new religious movements which include Wicca and self-described Pagans are continuing to grow, more than doubling in size since 1990. Almost every estimate states that there are over a million self-described Pagans in the United States, with many claiming significantly more.

Though there are a variety of definitions for Pagan, the following definition is for the purposes of the Pagan Pride Project. Others may define themselves or their group in different ways, and that's OK. Some groups that fit the categories we list may not call themselves Pagan, and that's ok too - that's why we say that first and foremost the definition of a Pagan is someone who self-identifies as a Pagan. But the following was created in order to have a functional definition to help educate the public about the spiritual paths we cover:

Definition:

For the purposes of this event, a Pagan or NeoPagan is someone who self-identifies as a Pagan and whose spiritual or religious practice or belief fits into one or more of the following categories:

• Honoring, revering, or worshipping a Deity or Deities found in pre-Christian, classical, aboriginal, or tribal mythology; and/or
• Practicing religion or spirituality based upon shamanism, shamanic, or magickal practices; and/or
• Creating new religion based on past Pagan religions and/or futuristic views of society, community, and/or ecology;
• Focusing religious or spiritual attention primarily on the Divine Feminine; and/or
• Practicing religion that focuses on earth based spirituality.