Status
Written by the founding members and published in March 2017. Ratified by the members at Disting 2018. Reaffirmed without amendment at Disting 2025.
The statement
Heathen Women United holds that Heathenry is open to every person who is sincerely drawn to it. No one is more or less entitled to honor the gods because of their ancestry, skin color, nationality, sexuality, gender, age, or ability.
- The gods call whom they call. We do not presume to tell the gods and goddesses whom they may speak to. A person who hears that call and answers it in good faith is a Heathen, and we will treat her as one.
- Ancestry is not a qualification. We honor our ancestors, as Heathens always have. But honoring one's own forebears has nothing to do with ranking other people by theirs. We reject the claim, sometimes called folkish, that Heathenry belongs to people of northern European descent alone.
- That claim has no basis in the old religion. The peoples who first honored these gods had no concept of race in the modern sense. They traded, married, fostered children, and settled among other peoples from Greenland to the Black Sea, and they counted as kin those who joined their households and kept their customs.
- All women are welcome among us. Trans women are women. Lesbian, bisexual, and queer women have always been part of Heathenry and are part of this fellowship at every level.
- Welcome extends beyond women. Nonbinary people who feel at home in a women's fellowship may join as full members. People of every gender who share our aims may stand with us as Friends of the Hearth.
- Welcome has to be practical. We will do what we can to make our gatherings accessible to disabled members, to parents and caregivers, to those with little money, and to those who cannot be open about their religion.
- There is one thing we do not welcome. We will not associate with any group or person that uses Heathenry to promote racism, misogyny, or contempt for others. Hospitality does not require us to host those who would drive our other guests from the hall.
Why we say this
We wish this statement were unnecessary. It is not. A small number of groups continue to present our religion as a heritage reserved for one kind of person, and because such groups attract attention, many people who would find a home in Heathenry assume they would not be wanted.
They are wanted. Our members include women of African, Asian, Latin American, Indigenous, Middle Eastern, and European descent. They include women whose families have kept Yule for generations and women who first heard the names of the gods last year. What they have in common is that they were called, and they came.
What this asks of members
Every member agrees to the Hearth Pledge, whose second and third commitments this statement spells out. In practice we ask members to welcome newcomers warmly, to challenge exclusion when they meet it in their own communities, and, before joining or promoting any group, to check that it does not restrict membership by ancestry.
For guidance on recognizing groups that do, see our Statement Against Extremism.