{"id":2384,"date":"2010-10-04T17:14:44","date_gmt":"2010-10-04T17:14:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2010\/10\/druids-get-official-ok-in-brit.php"},"modified":"2010-10-04T17:14:44","modified_gmt":"2010-10-04T17:14:44","slug":"druids-get-official-ok-in-brit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/10\/druids-get-official-ok-in-brit","title":{"rendered":"Druids Get Official OK in Britain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>LONDON (RNS) Druidry, the pagan worship that has been practiced on these shores for thousands of years, on Friday (Oct. 1) gained recognition by the British government as an official religion after a four-year legal battle.<br \/>\nThe Charity Commission, established by Parliament to regulate charities in England and Wales, released a Sept. 21 decision that the worship by druids of spirits in the natural world could be viewed as a &#8220;religious activity.&#8221;<br \/>\nThe decision means druidry, often derided by some as the province of mystic crackpots, now has the status of a genuine faith in Britain, alongside more conventional religions such as Christianity, Judaism and Islam.<br \/>\nIn pragmatic terms, it also means the druids now qualify for valuable tax breaks, in the same way as the other, more established faiths.<br \/>\nThe Charity Commission&#8217;s 21-page decision concluded that the Druid Network is &#8220;established for exclusively charitable purposes for the advancement of religion for the public benefit.&#8221;<br \/>\nCommission officials estimate that current members in the Druid Network total about 350 (each paying about $15 a year in dues), although the BBC claimed in a report seven years ago that the ancient faith was practiced by as many as 10,000 worshippers across the land.<br \/>\nDruidry in Britain lists eight major festivals a year, including worshipping of the summer solstice amid the ancient stone monoliths at Stonehenge.<br \/>\nPhil Ryder, chairman of trustees for the Druid Network, told The Daily Telegraph newspaper in London that winning official recognition had taken four years, &#8220;a long and at times frustrating process.&#8221;<br \/>\nOne major complication, he explained, was that the Charity Commission at the start &#8220;had no understanding of our beliefs and practices, and examined us on every aspect of them.&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8212; Al Webb<br \/>\n<em>Copyright 2010 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LONDON (RNS) Druidry, the pagan worship that has been practiced on these shores for thousands of years, on Friday (Oct. 1) gained recognition by the British government as an official religion after a four-year legal battle. The Charity Commission, established by Parliament to regulate charities in England and Wales, released a Sept. 21 decision that&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Druids Get Official OK in Britain<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/10\/druids-get-official-ok-in-brit\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Druids Get Official OK in Britain\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"LONDON (RNS) Druidry, the pagan worship that has been practiced on these shores for thousands of years, on Friday (Oct. 1) gained recognition by the British government as an official religion after a four-year legal battle. 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The Charity Commission, established by Parliament to regulate charities in England and Wales, released a Sept. 21 decision that&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/10\/druids-get-official-ok-in-brit","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2010-10-04T17:14:44+00:00","author":"aroan","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/10\/druids-get-official-ok-in-brit","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/10\/druids-get-official-ok-in-brit","name":"Druids Get Official OK in Britain","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-10-04T17:14:44+00:00","dateModified":"2010-10-04T17:14:44+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/c6e65092118456e72064bc1332984cfc"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/10\/druids-get-official-ok-in-brit#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/10\/druids-get-official-ok-in-brit"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/10\/druids-get-official-ok-in-brit#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Druids Get Official OK in Britain"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/c6e65092118456e72064bc1332984cfc","name":"aroan","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/f35\/f3587d75a20cb88f1c76fd277ee82fc5x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/f35\/f3587d75a20cb88f1c76fd277ee82fc5x96.jpg","caption":"aroan"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/aroan"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2384\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}