Entry tags:

i.p.v.b.m., paganism

Unity through Diversity;

Or why I'm bothering to do this

I have a confession to make. When my friend Pax first brought up the idea of doing the International Pagan Values Blogging Month, I strongly considered not participating. I have mixed feelings about efforts at fostering “pagan unity”, and some ambivalence about neopaganism in general.

Initially, this was not so. Back in 1999 I purchased my first computer and joined the online world. Like a lot of people at that time I did so through America On Line. One of the best features of AOL in the early days was its chat rooms. There was one for seemingly any topic imaginable, and I spent a lot of time going from room to room. (A lot of time.) I met a wide variety of interesting people from diverse backgrounds, and enjoyed fascinating, in-depth conversations on a whole host of themes. (This was before the quality of AOL tanked and it pretty much became a refuge for unsupervised children, extremists, spammers, lonely malcontents looking for boob pics, and people too stupid to figure out how to work the real internet. No offense to any of my readers who may still be loyal AOL users. But, honestly, I'm sure you'll be the first to admit that I'm not so far off the mark with this.) Over the course of several months I developed a strong clique of close friends. There were Discordians, Thelemites, Druids, traditional Wiccans, Satanists, agnostics, and even a couple Reconstructionists such as myself. We had little in common aside from our misanthropy, fondness for black humor, and lack of social lives but we got along well and enjoyed the stimulating conversation we provided for each other. Of course, what really bonded the group was our mutual dislike for the rest of neopagandom.

We didn't start out hating them. Or at least I didn't. After all, several years before I had been one of them. In my defense, that's all I knew existed at the time. This was before the internet, when most of the literature on modern paganism came from Llewellyn, with its Wicca Lite bias. So I did a couple years as a “Wiccan” (though I was never a really good one) before I finally realized that it wasn't for me and began reading dense tomes on Classical Greek religion. Even before I met other Hellenic Recons online, I had dedicated myself to reviving an authentic ancient Greek religion, even if I had to do it myself. Imagine my surprise when I got online and discovered a thriving community of individuals dedicated to the same goals!

Unfortunately, while there were plenty of Hellenics on the lists, none seemed to be on AOL, so I was forced to look for regular fellowship elsewhere. I found it in the motley crew that hung out in the pagan chats, though the situation was anything but idyllic. For you see, we made up a rather tiny minority within those chats, and our voices were usually drowned out by the cacophony of newbies, spell-beggars, and delusional white-lighters. We would attempt to get intelligent conversations going on theology, ethics, history and dedicated magical practice, only to have things derailed by the rest of the people in the chat room. Fed up with the banal chatter, we would start our own rooms only to have them invaded by the Borg. That's what we called them since that's how they acted. They all spouted the same mindless drivel and pre-rehearsed clichés, and grew resentful when we attempted to get them to think outside the box. The most frustrating thing about them was their insistence that all pagans believed the same things, acted exactly the same way, and anyone who diverged from this wasn't a real pagan, but a closet Christian or troll attempting to destroy their much vaunted pagan unity. When we tried to explain that no, not all of us believed in the Great Mother Goddess [tm] or that all gods were one god; that we didn't all celebrate the same eight seasonal festivals, cast circles, perform magic, or accept the Rede as an absolute moral authority (not, of course, that there was anything at all wrong with such approaches, just that it wasn't our cuppa), we were either met with complete disbelief or open hostility. It got to be so bad that I eventually stopped coming to the chats altogether, and as a result lost touch with most of the friends I had met there.

Shortly after that I was again witness to this sort of groupthink. After some unfortunate legal battles in which people were maligned because of their adherence to the Wiccan faith - jobs lost, child custody taken away, failure to receive adequate compensation for property damage and the like - a political action committee was formed under the banner of pagan unity. Their intent was to represent all pagan religions under an umbrella organization, promoting awareness and offering legal support and defense.

The aims of the group certainly sounded noble and I initially supported their efforts. Until, that is, I began to look more closely at how they were operating and the definitions they intended to impose upon the pagan religions they would represent. Like the people in the AOL chats, they took “pagan” to be synonymous with “Wiccan”. In fact, they had even chosen a pentagram as the organization's symbol.

A number of us approached the leadership of the group with our concerns, in particular their choice to describe paganism as an “earth-centered religion”. I was less bothered by this than some of my fellows. After all, while Hellenismos has a strong civic and domestic emphasis, with some of our gods having little or nothing to do with the earth and nature, as a Dionysian and nymph-worshiper the earth has always had a prominent place in my devotions. No, my concern was that this definition was too vague, and therefore meaningless. Every religion is earth-centered, except perhaps for the Raëlians. Even Christianity emphasizes stewardship of the earth, or ought to since that was one of Yahweh's first commandments to humanity way back in the garden of Eden. So I didn't really see the point of insisting on this, especially since it was causing such flak with some of the membership.

Letters were written to the leadership, carefully and politely outlining the dissenting viewpoints, and we were basically told to fuck off - only not so considerately. All of our concerns were swept aside, few of them apparently even deserving a cursory dismissive response, and we were essentially told to get on board or go away. We chose neither.

An opposition group was formed, literature produced, and for a while many of us displayed banners in protest on our websites. Nothing really came of it, one way or another. The site was taken down, most of us removed our banners, and though the pagan unity group's site is still up, I haven't heard a whole lot from them over the years.

Clearly, then, I do not have a high estimation of efforts to foster pagan unity. First, of course, there's the fact that I just don't see much point to it. There are already groups out there dedicated to civil liberty, free speech, and protecting everyone's freedom of religion. The situation of pagans in America is not any different from that of Moselms, minority Christian sects, or even new religious movements such as Scientology, Falun Gong, or the Temple of the Jedi Order. So long as ACLU, IRLA, and kindred organizations are doing their job properly, our rights will be protected. So why emphasize paganism? Does that mean that such a group would be unwilling to support a liberal Christian church that's come under fire, or a traditional African Diasporic faith that refuses to accept the designation of pagan? If so, I wouldn't want to have anything to do with that group, since it would not not be promoting universal liberty but rather separatism and factionalism.

Secondly, and most importantly, unity should never come at the cost of our own individuality. We may have common goals, and even shared principles and history - but that in no way makes us the same. True unity begins only with the acknowledgment and acceptance of our differences. It must be rooted in interfaith dialogue and an openness to hear what all participating members have to say and contribute - including those members who hold a dissenting view.

I am on the mailing list for an interfaith group in San Francisco. They sponsor the “Lost and Endangered Religions Project”, which the members of Neos Alexandria support, and to which we have donated some of the proceeds from the sale of our Bibliotheca Alexandrina titles. (You can find a link to our donation there.) In the newsletter they quoted sociologist Robert Wuthnow, who in his book America and the Challenges of Religious Diversity, wrote:

  

The greatest barrier to pluralism in the United States is not the expansion of differences in our midst, but our reluctance to acknowledge that there are indeed differences. We want all positions to be equally plausible and any disagreements to be matters of taste. In the case of religion, many Americans blithely assume that all religions are pretty much the same, worshipping God in ways that are only trivially different. As one community leader observed, “There is a kind of shallow understanding that all religions are basically alike. People really don't want to roll up their sleeves and dig because `Well, if basically all religions are alike, why do I need to study them, why do I need to learn about them?”

The newsletter went on to add:

 

By its very nature, interfaith encounters involve differences— of belief, of tradition, of worship. Creating relationships of authentic pluralism involving people of diverse traditions cannot be based in suppressing or denying those differences. Neither can it simply allow those differences to explode into hostile conflict. Rather, it requires shaping an environment and developing skills that can hold the diversity, honor it, and channel it into a shared respect and common purpose. That is why the Interfaith Center at the Presidio has sought not only to be a safe place for religious traditions to meet, but has focused on developing group skills like Appreciative Inquiry and on finding ways to further the community's understanding and respect for our many traditions.

 

- Bay Area Interfaith Connect, How Pluralistic Should We Be?, Monday, June 1st, 2009

I couldn't agree with that sentiment more, and that is why I am opposed to efforts at homogenizing our religious traditions under an ill-fitting umbrella.

I am a Greco-Egyptian polytheist, not a pagan. Especially not when pagan is taken to mean “essentially Wiccan”. There are those who would claim that Greco-Egyptian polytheism is a pagan religion. Depending on my mood, and how they're using the term, I might even agree with them. I am less bothered by the connotations of the word pagan than others I know - as I have discussed here - but even accepting the validity of the statement, it is not generally how I prefer to describe my religion. After all, it doesn't really tell you anything about what I believe or do, whereas Greco-Egyptian polytheist does a much better job of it, though even that feels too general sometimes. Describing me as a pagan is pretty much equivalent to telling someone that both a lemon and a grape are fruit. Sure, the statement is factual enough, but our querent will still know nothing of the taste and texture involved, or the myriad other differences between the two.

So, then, you may be asking, why on earth did you decide to participate in this venture, Sannion, considering your strong feelings about the matter?

Well, it's very simple, really. My friend Pax isn't like the Borg drones I met in the AOL chats, or the folks behind the pagan unity campaign. He's not interested in mushing us all up together, enforcing uniformity of thought and action. If anything he's trying to accomplish the complete opposite of that objective. He is starting with the common denominator of our shared status as adherents of pagan religions and asking us to discuss what that really means. To examine our core beliefs, shaped by our various traditions, and to explore the values, ethics, and morals that we hold so dear. He is trying to show that no one group has a monopoly on such things. For some time now Christianity has succeeded in representing itself as the supreme arbiter of values in the world. (Or rather, some Christians have done this, since the truth is they are just as diverse as pagans.) In fact, for many pagan has come to mean godless, immoral, and hedonistic. We still find books that teach that the Classical world was morally bankrupt, a den of savage inequity before the arrival of the virtuous and unjustly persecuted Christians. This is even more galling when such claims come not from apologists for the Church - where one might well expect to find them - but self-proclaimed secularists and agnostics. I have even seen fellow pagans, who really ought to know better, assert that things like charity, brotherly love, and compassion are cultural debts we owe to Christianity, completely ignorant of their presence among pagan antiquity. (Come on people, read your Plutarch and Seneca for Zeus' sake!) And, sadly, when people do consider contemporary pagan morality it is usually only through a Wiccan lens.

It is my sincere hope that the work that Pax is doing here will help change that. Already I have seen contributions from Hellenics, Kemetics, Asatruar, Anglo-Saxon Heathens, Celtic Traditionalists, Thelemites, Neo- and British Traditional Wiccans, Feminist Witches, Shamanists, and general pagans. No doubt there are many others participating as well, of whom I am not familiar - and I hope by the end of the month there will be hundreds, if not thousands of others chiming in and sharing their own unique thoughts on these important issues.

This, my friends, is a pagan unity that I can stand behind, one where we can find a common ground that does not come at the cost of our own individuality. And that is why I, as a Greco-Egyptian polytheist, am proud to add my voice to the chorus of those singing the praises of our all-important pagan values.