Druid service leaders, circa May 1964. Photograph: Carleton College archives
Druid service leaders, circa May 1964. Photograph: Carleton College archives
American druid: how a 1960s campus prank became a serious lifestyle
What began as a protest against a college religion requirement led to sects nationwideand, arguably, a religion
Last week, the Earth’s north pole tilted to its farthest point from the sun, ushering in the longest night of the year. For those who base their spiritual practice on the seasons, the solstice is a time of ritual and reflection, of communing with the darkness of nature and the light to come. At henges and groves throughout Britain, people gathered to mark this day: wiccans, neo-pagans of all sorts, and druids.
Druids are best known as iron age ritual workers, practitioners of an earth-based spirituality found throughout what is now England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The movement in the region still has many adherents who trace their inspiration back to these ancient forebears.
In North America, however, things are different. Modern druids on the continent can trace their origin back to what was, essentially, a college prank. It began with a tongue-in-cheek protest movement, started in reaction to an overbearing college religion requirement in the 1960s.
People celebrate the winter solstice at Stonehenge on 21 December. Photograph: Anthony Upton/AP
The Reformed Druids of North America began as “a gag, a finger in the eye of the administration”, said Howard Cherniack, one of the group’s founders. Nearly 60 years later, it’s become something much larger: a movement that has spawned new sects, “groves” across the country and, arguably, a religion.
Northfield, Minnesota, 1963
The later 1960s were a revolutionary time on American college campuses. But in 1963, freedom summer and free speech movements were years away. At schools like Carleton College, a liberal arts college in Minnesota, the administration still took a paternalistic approach that many students began to find stifling, with men and women relegated to separate dormitories (although only women were subject to curfew). Universities of the era essentially played a parental role (legally, in loco parentis). This included overseeing the students’ moral character.
“ One of the minor irritations was that we were required to go, I think six or seven times per 10-week semester, to something that would presumably be ‘spiritually good for us’,” explained Cherniack, who was a Carleton student in 1963. This would be a religious service on campus or in town, or a lecture on a spiritual topic. While some of the lectures were admittedly interesting, students resented being forced to attend, Cherniack said.
The installation of druid Gary Zempel (right), by David Frangquist (arm raised), as patriarch of one of the ‘higher orders’, through being ‘committed to the waters’ (tossed into the lake), at Carleton College, circa 1966. Photograph: Carleton College archives
Sitting in a dormitory room one night, Cherniack, along with his friends Norman Nelson and David Fisher, hatched a plan: to invent their own religion, and attempt to get credit for attending its services.
“After all, any religion we invent is no more or less true than any other religion,” laughed Cherniack.
A druid order is born
To establish a religion, you need a name. Cherniack grew up in a secular Jewish household, but said whenever his parents were asked about their religious affiliation, they would attempt to shut down conversation by answering “druid”. So he suggested that.
The group agreed, but they knew nothing about actual druids. So, to excuse themselves from authenticity, they decided on the Reformed Druids of North America.
The students crafted organizing tenets open enough not to alienate people of other faiths (“nature is good”, more or less), drew a sigil and donned some robes. They wrote a liturgy, built an altar in the college’s arboretum, called upon the Earth mother and passed around the waters of life (watered-down whiskey, in a clear violation of the college’s alcohol policy). And the Reformed Druids of North America (RDNA) was born. Cherniack submitted a public letter to the dean of students, asking how the college – which encouraged intellectual questioning within its classes – could call any established religion more valid than the one they had created. He never received an answer, but declared it a victory.
“I thought we had made a moral point, pointing out the hypocrisy of the system … and that there was no point in getting dressed up in robes and going out to the arboretum on Sunday. I preferred to sleep in,” he said.
A 1966 service at Carleton College. Photograph: Carleton College archives
Although Cherniack spent his Sundays in bed, other students continued – either for protest, or because they enjoyed gathering to hear something with the cadence of worship among the trees.
The protest worked. Within a year, the religion requirement was abandoned. But religions, like children, take on a life of their own – often in ways those who brought them into being might never have imagined.
A joke taken seriously
Although Cherniack was quite clear that RDNA was founded in jest, for another early member, Deborah Frangquist, it was not a joke, but “a deeply spiritual sense of not taking ourselves too seriously”.
Deborah and her husband, David – who still identify as druid – argued the invocations, though inspired by protest, brought together a haphazard group of college students into a ritualized space, accessing sacred questions. The focus on nature was a welcome departure from mainstream religious practice of that era.
They’re not the only ones to take it seriously – either at RDNA, or the groups that came from it. Jean Pagano is the arch-druid of Ár nDraíocht Féin (ADF), an order that split off from RDNA in the 1980s to pursue a more neo-pagan approach, and has since become one of the largest druid groups in North America. “RDNA was started as tongue in cheek,” said Pagano. “And still some people approach it that way. But the rituals I’ve seen are serious.”
David Frangquist, author of The Druid Chronicles, returns to campus to preside over an ordination ceremony for a student druid, circa 1993. Photograph: Carleton College archives
Pagano noted that tenets as simple as “nature is good” can be taken lightly, or explored as deeply as a practitioner wants. As someone who maintains daily devotional practices, Pagano said he wouldn’t want RDNA (and the groups that came out of it) dismissed because of their origin. “Regardless of its foundations, it has developed its own legs. They created something that was beautiful, functional, inspirational, and has withstood the test of 60 years,” he explained.
RDNA v actual druids
RDNA arguably became something – but was it druidry? Carleton College students chose the name because it was, in a sense, an empty vessel – they didn’t know much about the actual druids. But Ronald Hutton, a historian at Gresham College and University of Bristol who has written extensively about the druids, said honestly, nobody else does either.
“ What we can say for sure is the original druids were the main specialists in religion and magic – spiritual affairs in general – among the peoples of north-western Europe” about 2,000 years ago, Hutton said. “That’s all we can say about them with certainty.”
The problem is that the druids didn’t leave any writings of their own. And Hutton advised that the records left by their Greek and Roman contemporaries be viewed with some measure of skepticism.
Early inhabitants of the British Isles: a Caledonian, a Briton, a Pict and a druid, depicted circa 1780. Photograph: Print Collector/Getty Images
“They were writing propaganda – either glorifying druids as being incredibly wise, nature-based philosophers who could teach the Romans a lot, or condemning them as priests of savagery, ignorance and despotism, with a particularly tacky line in human sacrifice,” Hutton said.
He explained that even the very image we have of druids – bearded sages wearing cloaks and sandals – actually comes from statues of Greek philosophers that a Renaissance writer mistook to be druids; his mistaken description stuck. But this lack of knowledge has served to shape the druid legacy.
“You have all these colors on an artist’s palette from which you can pick,” Hutton said, allowing for all sorts of interpretations: “You can have wise druids, scientists and philosophers deeply in touch with the secrets of nature. You can have patriotic druids, rallying native resistance against Roman conquerors. You can have ‘green’ druids, people who hang out in natural places as part of their love of nature.”
A pair of Carleton druids, circa 1987-88. Photograph: Carleton College archives
RDNA at Carleton and beyond
According to Eric Hillemann, senior associate at Carleton College’s archives, RDNA’s approach to druidry also went through many incarnations – sometimes delving deeper into Celtic mythology or dabbling in Native American spiritual practices, and sometimes having more significant overlap with the campus Doctor Who society. But a constant was the playfulness. “They never took themselves over-seriously in any stage. A vein of humour runs through the whole thing,” he said.
Hillemann added that the Carleton “mother grove” maintained solid participation for about a decade after its founding – long after the initial protest impetus had gone. It waxed and waned through the 70s and 80s, and in recent decades has maintained a solid presence, Hilleman said, albeit never numbering more than a few dozen. But outside of Carleton, it flourished.
RDNA members – especially those who graduated in the early years – brought their enthusiasm for the practice with them as they traveled beyond Minnesota. Unsurprisingly, the first groves were in university towns, as alumni moved to cities such as Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Berkeley, California, to attend graduate school (and, apparently, recruit their flatmates into druidic practice). Members formed a national governing body, but Hillemann says that by the 1970s it had dissolved, with each RDNA grove basically operating independently.
As in all religions, things began to splinter. RDNA begat New RDNA, the Henge of Keltria, Order of the White Oak and other sects. While many have dissolved, some, like ADF, maintain solid membership across the US.
A real religion?
So what are we to make of RDNA? A protest, a surprising story – sure. But an actual religion?
Ethan Doyle White, a lecturer in folklore at the University of Hertfordshire who has written about modern druidry, said it was easy to dismiss modern druids. “It’s seen as the silly hobby of bearded eccentrics – that’s the stereotype,” he acknowledged.
But while RDNA and its offshoots may lack the patina of authenticity that time renders, Doyle White said they do a fine job meeting the (debated) criteria of an actual religion. “Is sincerity necessary?” mused Doyle White. “Maybe not.”
Druid Imbolc service in the Carleton chapel, in January 2024. Photograph: Carleton College archives
David Fisher was in that Carleton College dorm room with Howard Cherniack crafting the RDNA liturgy all those years ago, and later went on to become an Episcopal priest. While he’s quite happy with his home in the church, Fisher did acknowledge that this “unserious jest ended up a source of meaning in people’s lives”.
While he said, laughing, that he might have thought twice about his actions in 1963 if he’d known what it would become, he doesn’t regret what was created.
“Whatever it is, or might be, it met the needs of people,” he said. “People who were drawn to seeking the spirit’s presence in nature. And that seems to me to be a spiritual insight.”
