Witches, And Druids, And Pagans….. oh my :-)
Neopaganism growing quickly
Give them that old-time religion — ancient religion — and then watch an exploding population of modern pagans give it contemporary twists.
Their numbers roughly double about every 18 months in the United States, Canada and Europe, according to the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance.
Neopaganism, whether a careful reconstruction of ancient practice or a completely modern interpretation of ancient lore, is now among the country’s fastest-growing religions.
People, especially teens, are rejecting what they see as the “autocracy, paternalism, sexism, homophobia and insensitivity to the environment” of some more traditional religions, the Canadian group concludes.
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Rejecting the “autocracy, paternalism, sexism, homophobia and insensitivity to the environment” of some more traditional religions ‘eh…. that’s gonna get a whole bunch of conventional knickers in a lot of unconventional knots ain’t it?
…. they never were much for constructive criticism were they.
The ever dwindling power of the conventional church is something that I personally get a great deal of satisfaction from, personal faith and religion is a wonderful thing, until people believe that they have the right to foist their personal truths on to the rest of us…. at which point they make the jump from believer to authoritarian bigot.
Never fear though my monotheistic brethren, Pagans (unlike yourselves) are a very tolerant bunch, and there is an upside you may not have considered, halloween Samhain is gonna be a heck of a lot more fun in a few more years than it is right now :-)
Trackposted to Stop the ACLU, Perri Nelson’s Website, third world county, McCain Blogs, The World According to Carl, Shadowscope, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Big Dog’s Weblog, The Amboy Times, Leaning Straight Up, and Conservative Cat, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
I’ve always felt that the problem is power, not a particular faith or category of faith. When a governing body with a legal mandate to use the force of arms becomes linked with the belief that one is the possessor of the sole and universal truth, that force will almost inevitably be used to oppress those whose religious beliefs do not jibe with those of the state.
It’s not about monotheism. India is predominantly polytheistic, and various extreme Hindu parties have intermittently used state power to murder or persecute Muslims.
From the wild excesses committed in the name of Sharia within Islamist states today to Spanish expulsion of Jews in the sixteenth century, from the forced conversion of natives in the Americas to the murder trains exchanged post-partition by India and Pakistan, state power wedded to state theology is a terrible thing. The United States, Canada and much of Europe enjoy our current state of relatively good governance (bitch about it as much as you want) due in part to the fact that our governments are secular. The fond neocon fantasy of American military power linked to their peculiarly primitive version of Christianity is a pretty terrible vision.
Not to be rude to my very good pagan and Wiccan friends, but I’ll suspend judgement on your essential niceness until you guys get your own county. Then we’ll see how long the warm and fuzzy lasts.
The United States, Canada and much of Europe enjoy our current state of relatively good governance (bitch about it as much as you want) due in part to the fact that our governments are secular.
Don’t forget that secular atheist governments can also be repressive. Paganism in the Roman Empire wasn’t very tolerant of Christians. It was tolerant of everything except people who claimed to have a universal truth, and who would not bow down to the state gods. Some Nazis and racists practiced a form of paganism.
It’s not about religion or non-religion. Dissent is persecuted. That is the way of the world.
“Don’t forget that secular atheist governments can also be repressive.”
Absolutely. The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany both spring to mind.
But there’s something particularly odious about persecution by those convinced that they are doing it in God’s name, with God’s blessing.
Re: Nazi Germany - “Gott mit Uns” is not the sign of an atheist government with a Catholic leader, even as many in the government practiced a kind of Germanic mix of pagan and Christian ideology. They were supported by both the indigenous Catholic and Protestant churches. Hardly what one would call an atheist or even secular government.
But the point that is taken - there are Catholic anarchists and atheist neo-cons (Christopher Hitchens for instance).
However, in general, highly hierarchical religions that claim to hold the monopoly on universal truth and that all other religions are not only wrong, but evil, are more likely to be repressive and support repressive governments and states, than open pragmatic religions. These are people more likely to do the persecution of dissent than more individualistic, nature based religions.
And history bears this out.
That the pagan Roman empire persecuted Christians does not excuse 1700 years of Christians doing to everyone else, supposedly in the name of a “loving God”.
To my mind, it seems that people who bow to the idea that something happens or is caused by the supernatural, rather than the natural and who seek to use that belief to hold power over others, are the problem.
There is little doubt that some Nazis practiced a form of Paganism, it’s something that is brought up almost every time a Christian enters a discussion on the subject - if that is relevant to the discussion then so is Hitler being a Christian, if you read Mein Kamph you will find him saying things like
I can quote a lot of this type of material…. so …. is Nazi Paganism still relevant to the discussion about the growth of Paganism today SUZANNE?
Would it also be worth my while discussing how God fearing Christians in North America used the bible to justify their ownership of slaves? Or how racist property ownership laws, legal rights, and marriage laws, were enacted by governments in (supposedly) civilized and God fearing western societies?
Christians then, as now, had the nasty habit of assuming that they were superior, and therefore better than, Pagans. It’s not just that they refused to bow down to the state — they out-and-out demeaned and insulted the Pagan gods at every turn. Until the Christians came along, Rome had always made accomodations for other gods and cultures whose forms of worship were defferent from the Roman pantheon. But Christians were not content to simply live alongside the Roman gods. They brought their persecution upon themselves, and then they wallowed in their own martydom.
No need to wait; I’ll tell you up front: I’m not necessarily nice at all. In fact, I can be downright nasty when someone tries to force their own margins and boundaries into my life. And warm and fuzzy only works for me when there’s a blizzard raging outside my window.
Wouldn’t mind having my own country, tho’. You can visit. Dinner at eight.
I think workship of God(s) only leads people to give up on one another. As soon as you accept/decide/become enlightened about some greater being pulling the strings behind the cosmic curtains, you have ceded at least part of your control over your situation and the situation of your society to a faceless deity who may or may not come to the rescue.
If people spent as much time looking for real solutions to their problems as they do to reading the Bible, the Quran, the Torah, or any other religious literature, going to church, preaching the gospel, going door-to-door, or writing about it on the internet, the world would be a much better place.
I may believe in a God, I’m still not sure (depends on my mood), but I will never cede control over my life to him/her/it/them.
You should revisit your Pagan studies, the Gods do not necessarily control things at all - nor do they really want to.
If they don’t control things, then whats the point?
How do Pagan deities come into being? What distinguished them from common-folk?