From the BBC:

Druidry is to become the first pagan practice to be given official recognition as a religion.

The Charity Commission has accepted that druids’ worship of natural spirits could be seen as religious activity.

The Druid Network’s charitable status entitles it to tax breaks, but the organisation says it does not earn enough to benefit from this.

The commission says the network’s work in promoting druidry as a religion is in the public interest.

The move comes thousands of years after the first druids worshipped in Britain.

Druidry was one the first known spiritual practices in Britain, and druids existed in Celtic societies elsewhere in Europe as well…..

BBC religious affairs correspondent Robert Pigott says that with concern for the environment growing and the influence of mainstream faiths waning, druidry is flourishing more now than at any time since the arrival of Christianity.

Druidry’s followers are not restricted to one god or creator, but worship the spirit they believe inhabits the earth and forces of nature such as thunder.

Druids also worship the spirits of places, such as mountains and rivers, with rituals focused particularly on the turning of the seasons.

After a four-year inquiry, the Charity Commission decided that druidry offered coherent practices for the worship of a supreme being, and provided a beneficial moral framework.

The decision will also mean that druidry will have the status of a genuine faith.

Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, was inducted as a Druid in 2002, an act which shows a surprising degree of prescience on his part. It provides him an employment opportunity for when the time comes – perhaps it has already come – when the Church of England is no longer recognized as a religion.