Paganism and the Threat of Assimilation
www.freewebs.com/witherlins/thewitchesballad.htm
When a new spiritual tradition becomes established within a society, both are changed. In a way this is like when one of us enters on to a spiritual path. While certainly changed in the process, we cannot each help but give our practice and beliefs an individual interpretation. This is the core reason spiritual traditions diversify over time, as is certainly the case with NeoPaganism.
At the individual level, this growing diversity often reflects the richness of individual encounters with the sacred. As such, I think it is a good thing. That’s probably good because whatever I might think about this happening, it takes place within every tradition anyway.
But to say that diversification at the individual level is good does not imply that diversification due to societal impact is also good. Sometimes it is bad, and sometimes it is very bad.
This negative side is particularly the case when a culture assimilates a new religious tradition, one of the worries that triggered my Solstice post. Usually a new religion’s initial adherents will be people dissatisfied with their society. It speaks to them of something otherwise missing, as Paganism most certainly spoke to me. The nature of reality takes on new dimensions, dimensions that do not fit with the dominant cultural norm, and creating pressure for it to change.
But as a new tradition grows it incorporates larger numbers of people who are much less critical of their society. This growth therefore adds at least two new groups to its religion’s constituency. First are people who while less at odds with their society, are attracted anyway to the growing religion for one reason or another. It is with this group that the new tradition’s transformative powers have their greatest potential. In joining, people learn new ways of relating to Spirit, others, and themselves.
The other group numbers those identifying their careers with the religion’s success. In seeking to promote its growing numbers they will seek to address people at the level of their own knowledge and values. The most familiar examples are the Christian appropriation of Pagan holy days for their own celebrations and observances. To a point I think this is both unavoidable and desirable. Spirit is everywhere and can be honored everywhere.
But this approach can be carried too far. If it happens, the new tradition can lose sight of what it originally was. Before it happens there will be legitimate debate as to where such a line may lie. But we know the line exists ands that the world’s major religions have repeatedly stepped across it. Here are several examples.
Early Christianity disproportionately attracted women, slaves, and the poor. They were generally the least appreciated members of Classical Pagan society, and therefore potentially the most open to thinking about spirituality in new ways. When under Constantine and his successors Christianity was assimilated into the Roman Empire as an integral part, even a preferred part, it attracted very different people. Many were mostly interested in successful careers and being Christian now helped whereas once it had hurt. As they and others joined, the church transformed itself into a bulwark of imperial power and an avenging force against those deemed doctrinally mistaken who threatened the new ecclesiastical hierarchy.
Ironically, the first people persecuted by the church in Rome were other Christian sects. Later anyone who differed from what called itself “orthodoxy” became victims as well. Pagans and Jews became victims. Completely lost from sight was Jesus’ message of love, his dislike of religious and social hierarchy, the value of forgiveness, and much else. It was interpreted away as completely as George Bush’s lawyers have interpreted away the Constitution.
Mohammed abolished slavery and raised the status of women, many of whom exercised considerable authority while he was alive. After his death but in his name slavery became reestablished. It still exists in some Muslim regions. The treatment of women declined to the low level it had existed in the barbarian Arab tribes before Mohammed’s teaching. Yet these people call themselves Muslims, followers of the Holy Koran. In fact they assimilated the Koran into the tribal values the Prophet had denounced.
My third is from memory as the relevant book is 3000 miles away in storage. Some time ago I had been , indeed I still am, impressed with many of the Buddhists I met. It seemed to me then that perhaps here was a spiritual path that was superior to others, a view Buddhists eagerly encouraged. I began reading more about it. When reading a history of medieval Tibet I came across an account of where the Dalai Lama of the time sent troops to kill the Panchen Lama of the time. I know of nothing in the Buddha’s teachings to justify such actions, even if carried out “compassionately.” And I know of plenty to argue otherwise. But the Buddhists I met were akin to Wiccans I know, spiritual outliers in their society. In medieval Tibet their own ecclesiastical hierarchies were in power, and constituted the path to success for would be members of the Tibetan elite.
In our own country the early Baptists allied with Jefferson and Madison to separate church and state. They also opposed slavery and sought to increase the status of women. But when northern Baptist missionaries went South to spread their gospel, they discovered that the movers and shaker of Southern society disliked such values. They changed their tune in the name of saving souls. Seeking to save souls, they lost theirs as Baptism in the South assimilated into a religion welcoming slavery and the deep subordination of women as the “will of God.” As to their historical alliance with Jefferson and Madison, well the less said the better.
I think I am on good grounds to say that any significant institutional and doctrinal alternation of a religion away from its original teachings, at least in societies based on hierarchy and domination, weakened or destroyed those teachings. If my statement is an over statement, it is not one by much. And so I am in the seemingly paradoxical position of not opposing people’s personally based modifications in practice and even doctrine while at the same time vocally and insistently warning against cultural assimilation.
Why is this a seeming paradox? Because we cannot be removed from the societies of which we are a part. Not mentally, anyway. All of us have been deeply and powerfully molded by our society. We embody and reflect our culture. So we cannot help but have our individual interpretations reflect the society and culture within which we live and which helps make us who we are. But I oppose cultural assimilation.
I think the way out of this confusion begins in asking whether a particular modification or adaptation reflects an individual’s personal spiritual experience, or whether it reflects an effort to make that path more relevant or easily accepted by OTHER people. The more it is the latter, the more it is to be looked at suspiciously because it is adopted strategically, and not simply representing a expansion of the heart or a personal spiritual insight.
Genuine spirituality enlarges our circle of care, as I explained in my previous post on Spirit and Politics. In doing so it changes us. In so doing it weakens the cultural norms that divide people from one another, provoking suspicion, or justifying war and violence. We are then able to renegotiate our relation to our culture from a position of greater compassion, kindness, generosity, and love than we had earlier possessed. To the degree we do this culture is reshaped by the actions of individuals with a stronger connection to the sacred.
When the norms and institutions of the culture are stronger, the reverse happens and the religion is appropriated by the culture to strengthen it, on its terms. Religion becomes a bulwark in defending the cultural status quo. It serves the interests of power and of ecclesiastical organization. The people and organizations involved increasingly confuse secular mundane goals with those of Spirit. The actions of Catholic clergy in covering up child abuse is a good case in point.
In scriptural religions those parts of the text able to be interpreted to strengthen authority, subjugation, and obedience are emphasized, whereas the more transformative parts of the text are neglected. Hierarchy replaces the community of practice. Jesus never mentioned abortion, and it is highly debatable whether he mentioned gays. They were certainly not his priority. But he continually criticized the rich and their selfishness as well as the necessity of ministering to the poor. And he apparently practiced what he preached. Of course that kind of thing challenges Mammon, the real god our society worships, although in Christian drag.
The Challenge to Pagans
Paganism is not scriptural and so the challenge assimilation presents us is different. We are a religion of practice more than dogma, and so it is here that the threat lies. We have many practices that often can lead a person into a direct encounter with a deity. How people interpret their encounters is their own business. But during the encounter they can be transformed in ways they find valuable, as was true for me.
Our society is deeply suspicious of such encounters. Its secular dimension regards them as fakes or evidence of derangement. Its Judeo-Christian side regards them as real but demonic.
As a culture we elevate our day to day mundane awareness to be the human norm and usually the human ideal. As an ideal it is challenged only by the belief that blind faith is superior, a complete turning off of the mind’s ability to think for itself. Those Christian traditions that brought their followers into personal ecstatic experience have lost or downplayed it. The Quakers quake no more. Pentecostals safely hem in their ecstatic encounters with rigid ideological interpretations, ensuring that the threat of personal illumination in unexpected ways is kept safely corralled. The ecstatic aspect of Christianity was not central to it, and even if it had been, would likely have been discouraged for when someone can listen directly to Spirit, their need for a Priest withers.
NeoPaganism has its first popular roots in the 60s. For the first time millions of young Westerners sought deliberately to alter their awareness not to retreat from their emotional and intellectual sensitivity as with alcohol, but deliberately to cultivate a still greater sensitivity, the better to gain greater insight into reality. Meditation, entheogens, trance, ritual – all these practices and more began entering into the experience of millions during this time. And that wave of spiritual opening has by no means flattened out.
The utter irrationality of our “War on Drugs” indicates the fear our society as a whole has of gaining nay deeper understanding of itself. Both of its major sources of authority about the nature of reality fear altered states of awareness. Reality can be learned only through mainstream science or, alternatively, by reading a book.
We need to be wary of dissolving this unique dimension of Pagan spirituality in the name of seeking greater respectability. For us to do so is like artists allowing the color blind to control the contents of their palette. It is way too easy to keep our words and forms while emptying them of content.
This will happen to some degree anyway as we become more respectable, for people will want to get involved who are not much interested in encounters with deities. And such a dimension to our practices offers a safe haven for people who are just looking around, undecided if what we do is for them. But it must never become the dominant dimension or we lose sight of who we are and how we can contribute.
So I do not mean to inveigh against Pagan-lite practices among people who only want that kind of experience. They can be both valuable and fun dimensions of our practice. But I want to warn the rest of us to treat them with care. There is a great ego charge in acting as priest or priestess before several hundred people, a charge often greater than that we feel in the intimacy of a coven. That is the attraction that feeds the danger.
Those of us who have tasted deeper levels of encounter and transformation face the challenge of maintaining and making available these other deeper ways to those who ask. I believe the way to accomplish this is to be particularly protective of those aspects towards our practice that are both central to us and LEAST easily co-opted into more familiar religious and organizational forms.
I think there are two. First and foremost is our focus on the Gods as approachable, and able to be directly experienced, whoever we think They are. Drawing down the Moon is central to what Wiccan identity has been. Similar approaches enabling us to encounter the Gods exist in other traditions.
Second is a focus on covens, groves, and similar small groups. These groups are too small and often evanescent to support a professional “clergy” or indeed any powerful hierarchy. If someone is a member of a tradition and has a falling out, he or she has the option of forming their own independent group that will flourish or not as they and the Gods determine. Such groups have no appeal to careerists.
The encounter with deity changes us in ways our society cannot easily control, and covens and similar groups are too small to support professional priests and priestesses.
If these two practices are preserved and strengthened, I personally do not care what other things might arise from our tradition’s closer encounter with American society and culture. But if we focus instead on big public Sabbats, and during them do not focus on the Gods, as was the case with the Solstice ritual I criticized, we may have a lot of fun eight times a year, but at a deeper level we will be irrelevant. And we will deserve to be.
I’m no fan of using Christian stuff in Neo-Pagan Craft. And I’m no fan of how our dominant culture
seems to declaw most movements toward alternative goals.
What I’m getting at is that the assimilation, the possibilty of assimilation, is, in part, inherent
in the dominant culture we all are bearers of, even before we are bearers of a counter culture.
When I was first investigating Neo-Pagan Craft, there were not many books available. Then, maybe because we are a literate culture, more and more authors wrote more and more books. Specialty publishers issued more and more books. *Wicca*
is a category in most big bookstores these days.
Even if the content of the books is the same (I’m not saying it is), I think that the very availability of all these books took some of the
sting out of the Craft movement’s original message, which was more alternative when deeper in the cultural underground.
Still, I’m not a fan of not having books, either.
It’s difficult to hold on to some of our Craft values and insights, because taking part in the dominant culture supports the values and insights of the dominant culture. When once, for instance,
I wrote just to share my vision of Craft for it’s own sake, once I get to be published, I tend to write more and more to make a living from writing about craft. Or to support my image of myself as
an author as the dominant culture defines that role.
Thanks for making me think about this stuff, Gus!
Comment by Pitch — January 16, 2008 @ 1:54 pm
I am responding to both “Paganism and the Threat of Assimilation” and “SPIRIT and POLITICS, a Pagan View” in one comment because each contains a key paragraph that is directly contradicted by my practice, and I regard that practice as no threat at all to the integrity of neoPaganism.
From “Paganism and the Threat of Assimilation”:
“I think the way out of this confusion [between tolerable individual modifications of a tradition and unacceptable cultural assimilation] begins in asking whether a particular modification or adaptation reflects an individual’s personal spiritual experience, or whether it reflects an effort to make that path more relevant or easily accepted by OTHER people. The more it is the latter, the more it is to be looked at suspiciously because it is adopted strategically, and not simply representing a[n] expansion of the heart or a personal spiritual insight.”
This flirts with the fallacy of the excluded middle, because it is entirely possible to do both, and do them strongly.
I am a Unitarian Universalist Pagan, a UU since 1955 (Sunday School level) and a Pagan since 1987. As part of my priesthood I do three annual UU Pagan services for my UU congregation: Samhain, Yule and Beltane. We’ll focus for this purpose on Samhain. The format is not one I would offer my coven, but is laid out in the form of a standard service in the cycle of worship from a UU pulpit – Order of Service, hymns and readings from the UU Hymnal, story for the kids, etc. After being settled into a receptive frame of mind by a guided meditation on the dead, each person present is invited to write a note to their dead, and the notes are gathered and burned in a wok in front of the congregation, fulfilling a promise in the liturgy that “no other living eyes will see” what is written. A little final poem about how healing can be as slow as smoke or as fast as light, and we’re through.
Done properly, the service/ritual is very affecting. Everyone has issues with their dead, even with the long dead, and often there are recent deaths with which those present may still be grappling. We’ve had people show up with their notes pre-written. I’ve been approached by a UU who told me she usually goes to a local high-church Episcopal cathedral on the anniversary of her father’s death, but didn’t feel the need after this service. UU Pagans in other churches around my region and across the country have adopted it for their UU congregations, to wide acceptance.
A Pagan unfamiliar with UUism who walked in the door for this service would say, “They’re doing Samhain – not the way I’d ever do it, but it’s Samhain.” And if s/he were more familiar with UUism s/he might add, “…and they’re doing it, not talking about it.”
I picked Samhain as my first effort to translate Pagan holy days into UU liturgy for three primary reasons. One is that it is (imho) the most important one.
Another is that UUism, while good about death and good about dying, is not very good about the dead, probably because we’re so reasonable we have no consensus on where they are. This service fills a hole in the spectrum of UU spiritual offerings which, along with the fact that it imposes no particular theology, is probably the reason for its wide acceptance among mostly non-Pagan congregations.
Thirdly, the fact that I was able to put together the ancillary liturgy out of the UU Hymnal is subtly didactic, showing the folks that “Earth-centered stuff” is already in their tradition. (I did this out of the old hymnal from 1964, before the inclusion of “Pagan stuff” in the 1993 hymnal.)
The flagrant purpose of the service is to make the benefits of Pagan spirituality available to a wider audience, most of whom will never become Pagan (except, of course, for the few who do), by making their chosen religious institution, a UU congregation, serve their spiritual needs better – exactly what your cited paragraph warns against.
Yet there is no threat to the integrity of Paganism in this service. It may be Pagan Lite, but it’s UU Heavy, and serves as a bridge of both spirit and understanding. I regard it as a worthy contribution to both neoPaganism and UUism. That apart, it does nothing to advance my career in the mundane sense.
From “SPIRIT and POLITICS”:
“Religion and religious ritual help us grasp this larger context [of our embodied lives as seen from a wider perspective]. We can enter more explicitly into a sacred space. But to do so the ritual must transcend politics, focusing on the eternal, the universal, on that which puts the mundane into an appropriate perspective. It must takes us as far from immersion in the political world as after the game life removes us from the world of gaming.”
The debacle of the 2000 presidential election infuriated enough members of my coven that I composed a ritual about justice. The principal invocations were of Ma’at and Thoth, Egyptian deities of natural justice and the written record respectively. The premise of the ritual was that justice and law have gotten out of touch with one another, that laws are administered without justice, and that justice must sometimes be sought outside the law. The core of the ritual was a series of examples, some of which I prepared beforehand, but the whole thing would have flopped if the coveners hadn’t had examples of their own to add. They came through as I was confident they would, and we raised quite a bit of energy.
The Working was to reconcile Ma’at and Thoth, to bring justice and law back into some kind of accord. I can’t claim early success – the USA Patriot Act and the Guantanamo detention center have come along since then – but who knows how long these things take.
Efficacy aside, this ritual was effective as liturgy and was steeped in politics from start to finish. It offers no threat to the continued Pagan focus on communion with the Deities.
I’m in general agreement with your concerns about Paganism losing its mojo or incorporating things contrary to its essential nature through contact with the larger culture. But I don’t see the need for the specific prohibitions you would set up on Pagan practice. I think Paganism has a long way to go before it becomes a strong enough player on the cultural scene to have any political temptation to incorporate toxic stuff; I don’t expect to see it in my lifetime (I’m 66 and diabetic). It’s too soon to be setting up fences on our practices.
I agree with your positive prescriptions against loss of mojo, in keeping a focus on the Deities and keeping covens small. Maybe things are different on the West Coast, but large Sabbat gatherings in the Midwest aren’t about to drive the coven out of business any time soon; the experience, while it can be quite uplifting, isn’t intimate enough. Some folks are bound to try an intermediate institution – a non-ephemeral Pagan congregation meeting in its own or rented space with all the institutional impedimenta that this implies – and I think we should wish them well and see how they do. Again, I have strong doubts this will ever displace the coven.
I am posting this in the comment space of one column and leaving a reference note in the other.
Comment by Baruch Dreamstalker — January 18, 2008 @ 1:33 pm
I want to thank Dreamstalker for her/his criticisms. (I love the praises I get as well – but they normally don’t give me hooks to extend the conversation!) Criticisms and suggestions help me better refine the points I am trying to make and sometimes lead me to change my mind.
Before elaborating, I want to say that I have always liked CUUPS, and have even spoken at some of their events both locally and nationally. But CUUPS was light years from my mind when I wrote the post.
The UU does not have Pagan origins. Its liturgical framework is based on Christian forms. I was once honored to be asked to give a “sermon” at a UU church in Massachusetts and the format brought me back to my Christian past. So while CUUPS is of course Pagan, it is a part of a larger association that is not and chooses to work within their framework. This is the opposite of the situation I was addressing. My focus was on explicitly Pagan traditions possessing a traditional coven and ecstatic dimension.
Now to more specific comments:
ASSIMILATION
First, it sounds like a WONDERFUL way to conduct a Samhain ritual in a non-Pagan or only partially Pagan setting where Pagans are not “in charge.” Better by far than my “sermon.” But from my perspective the only really Pagan dimension was the ritual. I did not feel anything spiritually Pagan in my sermon, though it was intellectually so (and actually quite political).
I think Dreamstalker is reading me as more sectarian or narrow than I am. I do not see how it in any way undermines Pagan practice and I for one would love to have been there.
I think Dreamstalker also misunderstands me because s/he read my argument that changes in Pagan rituals made to attract others should be viewed “suspiciously” to imply blanket disapproval. I did not mean that which is why I used the more cautious word. My purpose was to warn that down that road comes trouble if it is not pursued wisely. I apologize if I gave the wrong impression.
Let me give a Samhain example from my personal experience.
For some years I participated in Reclaiming style public Samhain Sabbats. While I liked them and even helped on occasion, one element consistently bothered me. One of the directional altars always honored the new births of the year. This watered down, even denied, the deeper significance of what Samhain is all about, but I’m sure it also made some people feel better. To me it was sort of like having a Beltane or Brigit altar honoring the ancestors who have passed on in one quarter. Good intentions, bad timing, blurred message and impact, and a serious caving in to a bad cultural attitude.
I think our society is in deep denial about the meaning and sacredness of embodiment. Pagan practice can be a much-needed corrective to that. But I think it can be such a corrective by directly embracing ALL aspects of embodiment, and the people involved in organizing the Sabbats I am describing chickened out.
The UU service and Sabbat sounds far superior in this deeper respect to the Reclaiming one.
POLITICS
Dreamstalker also takes me to task for making prohibitions on politics in covens, and gives counter examples such as the ritual involving Ma’at and Thoth. Actually I would have had no problem at all with that ritual - though I would expect that its impact would be light given the considerations I made in the post.
Am I contradicting myself?
I don’t think so. The issue between us arises at least in part because I was thinking of large Sabbats (and small ones for that matter) which are traditionally ritual celebrations as contrasted with traditional coven work which mixes honoring the deities, perhaps ecstatic experience with them, and getting things done. Dreamstalker is describing coven work that I would likely enthusiastically participate in – but not for every Esbat.
Covens are working groups whereas Sabbat celebration are not. That is why being close knit and sharing a common will is so important. There is necessarily a deeper mixing of the sacred and mundane in coven work than in Sabbat celebrations, be it with a political twist, a healing, helping someone get a job, or what have you.
But even here going political can be a potential problem when the goal becomes abstract, like “justice.” It boils down to “be careful what you ask for…” A small group may share a common meaning as to what justice is in a given context, but the larger the context and the more complicated the situation, the messier it gets.. And deities may have still different perspectives. . . .
Let me give one VERY politically incorrect example.
Bib Laden committed a grave act of injustice against over 3,000 people on 9-11. Why did he do it? Well, he says that his reason for targeting us is not our “freedom” as The Chimperor claims, but our occupying Islamic lands and supporting horrendous dictatorships, which we did and do. Brutally.
He probably sees himself as an agent of justice against a collectivity grown too powerful, self-absorbed, and brutal to care about its impact on other people, one that disrespects his brand of Islam (and every other brand for that matter). I think an honest person would say Bin Laden has a point, even if his methods are unacceptable and murderously unjust to his victims.
What constitutes justice is messy sometimes.
(Please, I do NOT want to get into a long discussion of Islamic terrorism – I am giving a bounded example. If the discussion extends farther it actually strengthens the point I am trying to make. My personal politics on these matters is to minimize political interference with other peoples in ALMOST all cases.)
There is a tension between communion with deities and doing practical magick, and every coven needs to work that out as best it can. I would never set myself up as an authority to tell coven what they can and cannot do. But there is nothing amiss with saying “be careful…”
COVENS
Finally – out here in the west and also in many of the Pagan Pride and similar events I have attended in the east and in Canada, I have been impressed/worried with the growing proportion of solitaries to covens. Even Covenant of the Goddess, which was formed as an association of covens, now has a large solitary base that apparently in many cases is happy to remain solitaries, because they want greater say so in COG decisions. (I am no longer a COG member, I forgot to renew – so I am not in this fight. But while a solitary, if I were a COG member my vote would be with maintaining the bias in favor of covens.)
So while I have only my own experience to go on – it seems to me that we are mostly growing through a increasing number of solitaries. I may be wrong – covens may tend to focus on their own affairs and solitaries are more interested in larger gatherings. But the COG situation gives me pause here.
And to prevent being misread – I am not anti-solitary, at the moment I am one myself. But I think it is and always will be a second –best.
And again, many thanks to Dreamstalker for these interesting arguments. I hope my reply has narrowed the
Comment by Gus — January 19, 2008 @ 2:01 pm
Pitch’s comments about books are interesting and important. Books are a problem in scriptural religions because they give us messages free from context. Lots of mischief comes from that weakness. For us the issues are different but problems remain.
Paganism is a religion of practice and experience far more than a religion of belief. As one might think from my BTW background, for a long time I was very skeptical of Wicca 101 books, even dismissive. My attitude is more mixed now.
I agree that the easier information about us becomes the less edgy we seem in others’ eyes. That’s probably really good. I’ve lost jobs because of my beliefs. And in one case one of those most responsible then came to me for a healing…
Due at least in part to books that kind of thing is far less likely at least in civilized parts of the US.
Also, we do not have enough teachers to accommodate all who are interested, and I see no alternative to books in this case. And yet, to fulfill their promise they need to lead the learner into experiences books cannot relate. This is difficult, and it can be dangerous or at least upsetting.
So sooner or later a more experienced person seems necessary if a person is to progress very far in our way.
Hence my perpetual plea that stable covens offer outer court training.
Comment by Gus — January 19, 2008 @ 2:29 pm
First, I am a “he,” but I appreciate Gus’s prudent treatment of an unfamiliar craft name. And as a matter of fact it is probably more likely that a UU Pagan active in both spheres would be female, but as it happens this one isn’t.
A quibble: I was using short-hand to describe my Ma’at-Thoth ritual as being about “justice.” It was a call for Ma’at and Thoth to be reconciled, for justice and law to get back together over their current estrangement. If the 9/11 attack is framed as a blow for someone else’s justice, it is an egregiously lawless effort at justice – just what my Working was against, not for.
Of course I am still subject, as are we all, to the caveat of being careful what one wishes for. In this case, it would be a form of international law strong enough to discipline and discourage American support for despotic governments in Muslim lands. Since I have always supported the option of stronger international law over the current state of international anarchy, I don’t find that something to dread.
I could understand the new-births altar at Reclaiming’s public Samhain Sabbat in terms of the newborn being the reincarnated formerly dead. But it does take the emphasis off dealing with the individual’s and the community’s dead; my issues with my late father concern my Dad, not some youngster in Tashkent or Sao Paulo. I do not see how inclusion of the new-births altar is some kind of assimilation into the larger culture, however; the latter does not accept reincarnation.
As a result of a serious migraine problem with sunlight, I haven’t been to public Sabbats or Pagan Pride Days in several years, so I can’t check Gus’s impression of a prevalence of solitaries over coveners against my own experience. I would actually be more concerned over Pagans whose sole involvement with Paganism is attendance at public Sabbats, festivals and PPDs. The quality of their sacred experience is hostage to the competence of organizers, rather than rooted in an ability to join minds with fellow coveners. Next most seriously, I would worry about solitaries whose only knowledge is what they find in books, ie, who never hook up with a teacher. What they are getting is hostage to the competence of authors with whom they may have correspondence but no intimate communion. It’s my impression that it is very easy these days to become a books-only solitary.
I would be disappointed if Paganism became mostly a movement of solitaries rather than covens, but I have to identify that as arising from my personal preference for the coven, not from any studied concern about the quality of the Pagan experience.
Comment by Baruch Dreamstalker — January 20, 2008 @ 1:20 pm
A few more comments.
First, I am a life long Neo-Pagan Craft practitioner. I have, in essence, no experiential or *preparing to become* background with Christianity. What I know about Christianity (also the case for the other Abrahamic religions) comes from grown up study conducted with the outlook of somebody looking from without.
Not to suggest that my judgements are unbiased. But they are, almost entirely, unencumbered by any *used to be a Christian* baggage. Nothing about my practice has anything to do with making Neo-Pagan Craft accessible to Christians or to converts with a Christian backgraound.
Second, I find Neo-Pagan Craft and creedal Christianity incompatible across a range of basic tenets. For one, Craft (as I understand it, at least) does not hold that humanity is inherently sinful and requires the intercession of an incarnate Redeemer to achieve heavenly salvation. For another, Craft is polytheistic.
Third, it strikes me that I’m far more concerned about Neo-Pagan assimilation of elements from the dominant Christian culture than I am about similar borrowings from other spiritual traditions. *Jewitches* don’t make me fret as much as *Christopagans.* And I happily make homages to Tantic and Hindu deities and practices.
I think that it’s because I find Craft and Christianity more or less in opposition, metaphysically, cosmologically, that I do fret about Craft assimilating Christian anything.
I recently found myself talking about how come Craft should not incorporate even such attractive Christian notions as *Grace* as we account for relationships with Deities and Guardians. Because grace implies not-grace in that relationship, and I don’t find any not-grace in Craft.
I suppose, for me, Craft remains a realm of counterculture. I’m resisting it’s incorporation in the dominant culture, even in the benign region of the dominant culture.
Comment by Pitch — January 26, 2008 @ 1:11 pm
Interesting discussion.
Just a few points about UUism and Unitarianism. there has always been a strong non-Christian, even Pagan, thread in Unitarianism (and a strong Unitarian thread in NeoPaganism), beginning with one of the 3 founders of the modern denomination (Joseph Priestley, who was a deist). Iolo Morgannwg, one of the founders of modern Druidry, was a Unitarian. In 1833, Unitarianism received a strong input from Hinduism via Rammohun Roy and the Brahmo Samaj (Hindu pantheists). And Chas Clifton’s research has shown that early North American NeoPaganism was strongly influenced by Transcendentalism (invented by Emerson after he read the Vedas and Upanishads, and taken up by liberal Unitarians and Pagans alike). That’s merely a cursory glance over the connections - I am sure there are more. So saying that UUism is Christian is a bit of a stretch if you ask me.
Comment by yewtree — January 29, 2008 @ 9:24 am
On the off chance that Pitch’s comment about making the Craft accessible to Christians or seeking converts with a Christian background is by implication about me, I should explain that Uniarian Universalism is a Christian context only historically, and actively at a very few UU churches within the 1,000+ nationwide. Christians are a minority in UUism — actually, everybody is, with Humanism (religious non-theism) being the largest minority, Pagans (aka “Earth-Centered”) next, and Buddhists and Christians smaller still (mid-1990s survey). Most UU churches follow an Order of Service based on the Protestant model, but you will often find the terms de-liturgized: Benedictions are “Closing Words,” hymns are “Songs,” etc.
I think folks who get into a special state about Christopagans are often mixing up religion and church. It is very difficult to be a Pagan within the confines of a Christian church. But it is perfectly possible to be a Pagan who resonates to the example and words of Jesus of Nazareth, regarding him as a prophet or guru. Christopagans should not raise any more hackles than Jewitches, Buddhopagans, etc.
Comment by Baruch Dreamstalker — January 29, 2008 @ 2:25 pm