I am a pagan too and I have faced the same kind of discrimination. Here’s what I think it is…
Many religions are “clubs” where you have to do the same thing as everyone else, dress like everyone else, think like everyone else, or you don’t belong.
What is so remarkable about pagans is that there really is no “club”. Most pagans I know are solitary practicioners, mostly because of the prejudice.
It’s an ancient idea to hate pagans and most people don’t even get to know the person behind the pentagram necklace, or the triple goddess moon. They just see something different and it scares them.
More power to you to wear your religion proudly. Keep doing what you’re doing and be proud of it. Before there was Jesus, there were pagans. There’s nothing wrong with accepting all people and not forcing your religion on anyone. If anyone approaches you and starts preaching, simply suck it up, listen, and then say, “Thank you for your (name removed by moderator)ut.” Remember the first rule of paganism - “And it harm none, do as you will.”
It would do some people some good to live by that rule.
The last thing in the world you want in a religion is something you can “wear proudly.” If your religion does not humble you–as Wicca undoubtly does for some–then keep looking.
As for it being remarkable that pagans have no “club”, I’d say rather that it is more of a “we don’t have a club”-type club. There is widespread identification with persecutions of people that were persecuted simply because they were different, rather than because they held similar beliefs. For instance, there is no reason to believe that the “witches” in Salem actually practiced anything like paganism. Also, there are quite a few people who like to pretend that they learned their paganism as it was handed down by someone’s grandmother. There is little evidence that these claims are true, but it shows that even pagans like to think that the particular way they worship and view the cosmos is part of something greater and older than they are. There is no reason for a pagan to get on a high horse on those accounts, then.
As to ritual: many of us have been to weddings where the bride and groom made up the vows and the ceremony. Very few will tell you that this reliably leads to anything particularly inspiring. Novelty in ritual, rather than being scary, is more reliably likely to be self-indulgent, trite, and difficult for anyone other than the author to endure. So it may be that a religion with solitary practitioners gives one that “advantage”, too. Do not think that it is only Christians who can come across as arrogant, then.
Now, this is not to say that paganism is simply the religion of people who want to be odd and not be told what to do, but it is a very attractive religion if that is your bent. “And it harm none, do as you will” leaves the definition of “harm” conveniently wide open. Again, serious practitioners of Wicca recognize that as a serious spiritual peril, and take the charge seriously: “what evil you do, comes back to you three-fold”. A great many less serious practioners do not take the rule so seriously. As for Christians, a Christian would of course know that to leave you ignorant of the Gospel would be to your harm. By your own first rule, a Christian is duty-bound to witness to you. If that’s your rule, you kind of have to let the rest of the world play by it. You have to admit “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is a tougher standard to meet than “Do no harm, then do as you will.” In the latter, you may not do any harm, but there’s nothing saying you have to do another soul in the world any good, either. Halliburton and Walmart, two very “persecuted” businesses, may be convinced they do no harm, and therefore do as they will. Who may accuse them, then?
Again, a more serious practioner of Wicca finds far more to their own maxims than meets the eye. The Holy Spirit blows where He will, so opening yourself to the divine can do that to you. If your Wicca hasn’t opened you to the possiblity that Christians mean you well by their witnessing, a little more time in meditation may be in order. If paganism doesn’t at least make you big-hearted, after all, what is the use of it? It is like wetting yourself in the dark. You feel all nice and warm, but who else notices?
I hope you become a Christian, and a very good Christian. Why? Because there is one God, who is love, who made all creation from nothing and found it good, a God willing to become a human and die, and a God whose breath, image, and Self animates humanity, a God who has consecrated both living and dying by His Life and Death, and that is the truth. The cosmic wonder and power that nature has witnessed to you so far is only a fraction of that truth. If you search Christianity openly and honestly, and in all true honesty cannot accept it, though, I hope you will at very least become a very good and big-hearted Wiccan for having tried. I hope the sentence against us for witnessing that truth as badly as we often do is not too severe.
And if you won’t search it openly and honestly…why not? Leave no path to the truth rejected out of hand, dear one. That would not be a very Wiccan thing to do, would it?
I am praying for the OP.