“Christians have often denied the Gospel; yielding to a mentality of power, they have violated the rights of ethnic groups and peoples, and shown contempt for their cultures and religious traditions: be patient and merciful towards us, and grant us your forgiveness!  We ask this through Christ our Lord … let us pray for women, who are all too often humiliated and emarginated, and let us acknowledge the forms of acquiescence in these sins of which Christians too have been guilty.”

In the lead-up to these apologies a group of prominent Pagans (including Selena Fox, Oberon Zell-Ravenheart, and  Philip Carr-Gomm) asked the Pope to apologize to “Witches and Pagans” harmed by the Inquisition.

“…for more than a year now, the Vatican has publicly indicated that the Pope plans to make a broad-ranging international as well as interfaith apology for the Inquisition. According to press coverage, this Vatican-initiated apology is to be to Protestant Christians, Jews, Muslims, and others. Thus far, Pagans have not been specifically named, even though practitioners of Pagan folkways in Europe were prominent among those persecuted by the Inquisition—especially on charges of witchcraft. Pagans, scholars, Christian clergy, and others have joined together in writing the Pope with hopes that this historic international interfaith apology is indeed inclusive, and that the apology extends to Nature religions practitioners as well as to Christians, Muslims, and Jews.”

It is highly debatable that there were scores of “Witches and Pagans” (as we understand the term) still around during the time of the Inquisition to be tried for heresy so their “prominent” victim-hood is rather in doubt, but this was 1998-99 before the dramatic rise of (readily available) Pagan scholarship and books like “Triumph of the Moon” and various witch-hunt debunking books seeped into the general Pagan consciousness. Still, the group claimed a victory of sorts for the apology to “ethnic religions” and the whole issue generally faded into the background.

Now, flash forward to Pope Benedict XVI issuing recent apologies for clergy sex abuse scandals and promoting a Holocaust denier, prompting Pagan activist and On Faith panelist Starhawk to enter the apology queue.

“…if apologies are being given out, Witches would like one. It’s more than time that the Catholic and Protestant Churches both apologized for centuries of persecution of Witches, Pagans and those they deemed ‘heretics’ for believing something different than standard dogma. How about an apology for the Papal Bull of Pope Innocent the Eighth, in 1484, that made Witchcraft an heresy and unleashed the Inquisition against traditional healers, midwives, and any woman unpopular with her neighbors for being too uppity? It’s high past time to apologize for the Malleus Maleficarum, a vicious document written by two Dominican priests in 1486 that created a whole mythology of Satan worship, attributed it mostly to women, and unleashed a wave of accusations, torture, and judicial murder that have haunted us ever since. An apology won’t do much good, now, to those accused, tormented, and destroyed because someone coveted their property or needed a local scapegoat, nor to their children left motherless or fatherless centuries ago. But it might clear some air.”

This leads religion writer and Catholic convert (and Beliefnet blogger) David Gibson to accuse Starhawk of wrapping herself in a cloak of victim-hood, distorting history, and ignoring the Jubilee apologies. He also, strangely, makes this all about the witch-related killings in Africa (which Benedict XVI recently commented on).

“But it is also important to examine one’s own conscience before judging another. And while “witches” (or those who are slottled in various related categories) are too often victims, and the pope acknowledged that in Africa, the “imagination, intution, and magic” that Starhawk cites also fuel terrible abuses and horrific crimes against innocents in Africa and elsewhere. The pope also spoke against that. Did Starhawk? Perhaps she or her clan spoke out against abusive withcraft and superstition and neo-paganism during the papal visit to Africa, but I didn’t see it.”

Gibson making this about African witch-related killings when Starhawk never brings up the subject makes him seem a tad defensive (and he’s also wrong that modern Pagans haven’t addressed the issue), and his blog post prompts resident Beliefnet Pagan blogger Gus diZerega to weigh in on the subject.

“And so I am not convinced that the African examples Gibson would have us denounce are properly criticized.  Maybe, maybe not.  All I know of them is what their detractors have said. When those describing them are also associated with an institution having a long history of distorting and maligning indigenous spirituality, I’ll reserve judgment as to whether we are getting accurate information on those African examples … I think while we all must acknowledge the dark sides of our respective histories in order to inoculate ourselves against the disease of self-righteousness, the true task of our time today is to build our communities on what is best in our own traditions, and let others do the same in theirs, relying in Interfaith to promote mutual respect, while enabling friendly relations with different religions to marginalize those within any particular tradition who seek to gain power within their own community  through sowing divisions and distrust towards others.”

Gus diZerega’s reasonableness seems to disarm Gibson a bit, making him take a more thoughtful tone.

“Beliefnet’s own Gus diZerega, author of “A Pagan’s Blog,” has a very thoughtful (he’s nicer than I am, that is) response to my post below on Starhawk calling on Pope Benedict XVI to apologize for the church’s persecution of witches. I appreciate his response, both spirit and in content … in his wrap up I was put in mind of how all religions can get tarred by the actions of the few, especially leaders, or the misdeeds (or worse) of those fringe or even mainstream few who claim to be acting in the name of their tradition. Even though they are hardly doing so.”

If I were to take a meaning from these recent exchanges, perhaps it would be that the age of Pagans demanding apologies from large Christian institutions should come to a close. Instead, we should take the example of Gus diZerega here and focus on mutual communication, responsiveness, and understanding (facilitated in part by a new-media paradigm that encourages more open discourse). Demanding respect and equal treatment because we exist here and now in secular societies that guarantee us religious freedom, not because we might have existed during a time of persecution hundreds of years ago. I’m far more worried about injustice now than whether some poor woman persecuted centuries ago was really a Witch or not. I don’t need a persecution narrative in my Paganism.

SF Weekly interviews Sister Edith Myflesh from the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and discusses the group’s popularity, charity work, religious diversity, and what real-live nuns think of them.

“…the sisters have no affiliation to any one creed. Some are pagan, some Jewish, even some practicing Catholics. Despite the church’s stance that the order “mocks” women who’ve taken traditional religious vows, Sister Edith swears the nuns she’s met have been nothing but supportive. “They get what we do,” she says, explaining that the tasks of the female clergy – caring for the sick, raising money for charity – have a lot in common with the sisters’. And like parishioners going to confession, Sister Edith has found that people blurt out the most personal things to a member of the order in full makeup. “When we look like that, we’re not human anymore. We become mirrors for people to project onto,” she says, recalling the times she’s given relationship advice to strangers.”

More subtle hints that as religion becomes ever-more female dominated boundary maintenance and the castigation of blasphemers will slowly lose its importance, replaced instead with a more pragmatic stance regarding the usefulness of holy fools?

Over at his Beliefnet blog, Gus diZerega gives a three-part argument (part one, part two, part three) against a “Pagan clergy”. In his final installment, diZerega argues that completely severing matters of faith and religion from government control (marriage, military, prison chaplaincy) will serve us far better than trying to construct an institutionalized clergy model.

“To sum it up, as our numbers increase we will need a larger professionally trained group of Pagans who can do some of the kinds of counseling work that Christians do through their clergy.  But we do not need that kind of institutionalized status to do it, and our traditions and the core of who we are will be safer if we do not seek it  We are on much safer ground to invoke the issue of religious freedom, now that we are widely recognized in the courts and among many religious leaders as a legitimate spiritual practice.”

DiZerega seems to assert that Pagan religious leaders should stick to ritual, rites of passage, and teaching, while other Pagans should pursue academic experience in counseling and medicine (and I’m assuming, legal arbitration), avoiding the  (corrupting?) confluence of power and influence usually associated with the monotheist clergy/laity model. Indeed, according to diZerega, the entire modern concept of “clergy” can contaminate us in our search for mainstream respectability.

The lesbian-focused site Lez Get Real features a short e-mail conversation with Pagan author Deborah Blake concerning Wiccan and Pagan attitudes towards homosexuality.

“First of all, in answer to your question about homosexuality–in general, Pagans accept all paths, very definitely including homosexuality. My step-daughter is gay and a Pagan. In fact, many gays, lesbians and transgenders are attracted to Wicca and Paganism in part because it is such an accepting religion. There is absolutely nothing in our beliefs that says that alternative sexuality is bad, forbidden or in any way “lesser” than more conventionally accepted sexuality.”

Always nice to see more communication between the LGBT community with the modern Pagan community. While there are a variety of attitudes within different modern Pagan religions concerning LGBT-folk, I would say that the vast majority are fully accepting and welcoming to gays. Indeed, as I’ve pointed out before, gay marriage is very much a Pagan issue too.

Over at Letter From Hardscrabble Creek, Chas Clifton passes along the news that HBO’s “Rome” may rise again as a feature-length film.

“A feature version may be in the works to wrap up the unresolved plot strands of the award-winning HBO/BBC TV series Rome, which dramatised the dirty-politics underside of Rome’s transitional period from republic to virtual monarchy amidst civil war.”

As much as I enjoyed the series, I thought it went (historically speaking) off the rails towards the end of its second season. I mean, they couldn’t even give poor Cicero his famous last words! Still, the sets were fantastic, and the religious elements engaging, so I suppose I’d fork over the cash to see a big-screen version should it actually come about.

In a final note, if you want to know how hard it really is to uncover Pagan news on a daily basis, check out the Pew Forum’s examination of religious news coverage in 2008.

“Throughout much of 2008, the media generally seemed to follow two patterns in its coverage of religion. First, religion reporting was often episodic, clustering intensely around big events such as the pope’s visit and religion stories related to the 2008 holiday season. Religion stories also faded quickly from the headlines. Second, the angle of religion coverage frequently gravitated toward controversies, such as Barack Obama’s relationship with Jeremiah Wright and stories about the clergy sex-abuse scandal that surfaced during the pope’s visit. This was particularly problematic for the presidential and vice-presidential candidates, who were inundated with questions concerning their faith.”

All in all, only 1% of mainsteam media coverage focused on religious news (on par with education, immigration, and race), and nearly 40% of that centered on the Pope’s visit to America. Considering the huge impact faith and religion have on the world, you would think it’d be a bit higher. If it weren’t for the Internet, blogs, and Google scouring every online news source, I doubt we’d hear much at all concerning minority faiths.

That’s all I have for now, have a great day!

“It was a very familiar world to me, radiating a comforting otherness that I eased into without resistance, though with a characteristic and somewhat wearisome anthropologist’s eye. The clothes, the body types, the mannerisms, the brusque humor and goofy geekery that similarly mark SF fandom and the fetish scene—all bespoke a parallel world, or, more accurately, a collective desire to construct a parallel world. This has always seemed to me to be one of our more noble imaginative operations, and one not unlike magic—the spell of subculture. This familiarity seemed at once a sign of strength—this is a scene with legs, however hairy—and inertia, especially given what seemed to be a relatively small number of attendees in their teens and twenties. But despite the grey beards and the magnificent number of spreading waist-lines, the scene seemed vital, engaged, and playful enough to balance out the portentious poses struck by so many mages and priestesses.”

MagickTV, who has been doing all sorts of admirable primary-source reporting lately, was there and interviewed author/activist M. Macha Nightmare about Pantheacon, her work, and Cherry Hill Seminary.

Beliefnet’s new official Pagan blogger Gus diZerega was also there, and has so far filed several thoughtful reports from various talks and presentations at the event. This includes a fascinating account of his work with The Lost and Endangered Religions Project (LERP).

“One might wonder why make the effort to protect traditions so close to extinction. I think we are uniquely able to answer this question. Because the sacred is immanent within the world, each tradition represents a way of approaching it, a way valuable because it sacralizes human life in a unique way.  Were these traditions to die out because their members have found something more satisfying,  I for one would have no problem with that development.  But that is not what happened.  They were suppressed or destroyed either by secular moderns or by people acting in the name of a monotheistic religion.  The West in particular has taken so much from these people, LERP is an opportunity to give back.”

Naturally you can also find an assortment of posts full of excitement, exuberance, and thankfulness from first-time attendees to long-time veterans of the convention.

“It rained almost nonstop for the entire span of Pantheacon.  Pretty much every conversation contained expressions of gratitude, as most Pagans were cognizant of the serious threat of drought hanging over California. The rain fell as a blessing on the land and as a blessing on this year’s conference.”

Feel free to post links to your own P-Con wrap-ups and thoughts in the comments. I’m very much looking forward to finally attending next year’s con for the first time. Maybe I can get some fellow Pagan bloggers together and do a panel? We’ll see how it goes. It’s clear that Pantheacon represents some of the wider Pagan movement’s best impluses, and functions to help create a healthy and vibrant future for our family of faiths.

Gus diZerega

I need to emphasize that this is A Pagan’s blog.  We are a spiritual tradition whose members are held together by common practices far more than by common beliefs.  It has always been so in Pagan cultures.  From Classical times to the traditions of African Diasporic religions of today and those of our indigenous peoples as well, broadly Pagan traditions have always been of this nature.  NeoPagans be they British traditional Wiccans, Celtic Reconstructionists, Asatru, Druids, or any of many other new traditions, may appear bizarrely eclectic and turbulent from a scriptural perspective, but we fit right in with our own history.  We do not much fight or argue over dogma, unless someone ventures to speak for us all on those matters.  I do not want to try.

I couldn’t think of a better candidate to start off a more productive relationship between Beliefnet, the various faith communities represented at that site, and the wider Pagan community. Gus is author of “Pagans & Christians: The Personal Spiritual Experience”, and co-author of the much-praised “Beyond the Burning Times: A Pagan and Christian in Dialogue”. A veteran Gardnerian Wiccan with 25 years of experience under his belt, he is also a political scientist who is helping to start a new online academic journal. I advise my readers to head over to the new blog and say hello, add it to your blogrolls, and particiapate in this new venture (I’ve heard rumours that if this goes well, they might want to add more Pagan voices). For more about Gus and his beliefs, check out my recent interview with him.

Gus diZerega

I think there are a number of reasons. It’s a complex matter. First, we have arisen within a Christian culture, a very self confident one, and we explicitly reject its Abrahamic spiritual tradition as being good for us. Not only that, we look to the pre-Christian past for inspiration and grounding. We represent the rise of something Christian leaders thought they had vanquished long ago, and we should never forget that initial vanquishing involved the sword far more than persuasion. Add religious liberty and the outcome would have been far different. For the most rabid of our attackers, our reappearance also seems evidence that we are in the end times, a time of religious war, at least for the likes of Dispenastionalists.

It matters that many of us have ‘fallen away’ from our childhood Christianity. In my experience, strong believers of secular ideologies are least tolerant of those who once shared their views, and now differ. I suspect it is no different here. We saw the ‘truth’ and rejected it, which from a believers’ need for certainty, is worse than being ignorant.

In addition, modern Paganism locates the sacred in the world as well as above it, fundamentally challenging Christianity as it has usually presented itself. Many lay Christians are potentially sympathetic to our position because it is in accord with their own experience of the sacred. We didn’t come up with terms like “God’s country,” after all. Experience has often been at war with dogma in Christian history and our emphasis on almost anything but dogma is very hard for dogma to rebut or dogmatics to tolerate.

Our emphasis on divine immanence also undermines many dimensions of conservative and Fundamentalist Christian theology. Most of the world’s major religions emphasize a salvational or similar purpose for us in this vale of tears. We reject this spiritual problem as relevant for us, and so our challenge is deeper than our rather small numbers suggest. We open a very threatening door that others might pass through.

For example, we honor the Divine Feminine as first among equals. That portion of the Christian community that most viciously attacks Pagans also has also most thoroughly eliminated the feminine from their image of the sacred. They have almost nothing to offer women spiritually beyond preserving their ignorance that alternatives exist to their psychological and spiritual misogyny.

More liberal Christians are now seeking to inject or rediscover the feminine into their conception of deity. Our existence has encouraged many within the Christian community to recognize the feminine face of deity. But doing so strikes at the core of fundamentalist theology which privileges divine power over divine love. So we are a double threat, first by our example, second, by others encouraged by our example to recognize a stronger feminine role in their own tradition.

We also recognize the sacred as it manifests within the forces of nature, and our holy days explicitly honor natural cycles and seasons. As I explained in Pagans and Christians, even the Old Testament shows a powerful ecological ethic. It does not find nature to be sacred, as we do, because the tradition generally sees nature as God’s artifact, but most certainly the sacred is seen to manifest through nature. This aspect of Christianity has been largely ignored until recently, excepting small but important examples like Saint Francis.

But modern right-wing Christianity is deeply committed to dominating nature, subjugating it, and in its most pathological forms, using it up since we are supposed to get a new earth after Armageddon. Their God is a God of will and domination, and they seek to replicate these characteristics in their relations to the land and towards people who differ from them. Our very existence helps expose the poverty, narcissism, and arbitrariness of their view of the sacred, and for many people we provide an attractive alternative to such stuff. This kind of Christian will always be threatened by us.

But this implacable hostility is not true for all Christians. Philip Johnson certainly is not guilty. We Pagans need to remember that Christianity is incredibly diverse. I myself have come to think of Christianity as a umbrella term for a variety of competing monotheisms, a kind of closet polytheism: pick the God you want so long as it is male, and worship only it. Catholics, Southern Baptists, Pentecostals and Methodists worship very different Gods. Their Jesus figures differ as well. That is why Pentecostalist Pat Robertson could describe Methodists as being in the spirit of the Antichrist. It is why whenever I offer a criticism of Christianity, I seem always to be told that that is not true for all Christians. Probably nothing is true for all Christians except their use of the name.

Now many Christians are innocent of the problems I outlined above, other than the polytheism issue, but these are not the ones you asked me about.

Your book, “Pagans & Christians: The Personal Spiritual Experience”, which came out in 2001, sought to “reconcile” Paganism and Christianity. Now, with the publication of this dialog in 2008, do you think we are any closer? Is there more understanding and trust between our faith communities?

Let me dispel a possible misunderstanding. The term “reconcile” was not mine. I will be very happy with mutual toleration. A great many Christians believe their old claim that they are the only way by which people can be saved from Hell, and as Christians they have a duty to ‘witness’ in order to save us. Pagans by contrast do not believe we are the only spiritually valid path, nor do we believe we have any duty to bring the truths of Paganism to others. If others are interested, we are happy to invite their participation, and unlike earlier times, we can now be public. We do not go door to door, we do not stand on street corners with literature or megaphones, we do not finance missionaries, we do not attack other spiritual paths if they leave us alone.

I did offer a pretty straightforward Biblical interpretation that pointed directly towards spiritual pluralism. If that or something like it were accepted, reconciliation would follow as they recognized the legitimacy of multiple paths. But that choice is theirs.

So the real task of reconciliation is on the part of Christians, not Pagans, because we have no problem with Christianity so long as it respects our own religious freedom. Christians need to recognize they are one (well, many) spiritual path among many others, of which Pagans are only one.

In fact a great many Christians are coming to this recognition. Christians getting involved in interfaith work discover their path is far from the only one speaking to sincere people in spiritually valid ways. They take their discoveries back to their own faith communities. The fundamentalists who attack interfaith claim it is part of a plot to create one world religion, but anyone actually involved knows this is delusional or dishonest. We are all learning to respect one another, and when that happens, no reconciliation is needed.

As a result of many Pagans getting involved in interfaith dialogue, today we can see we have made incredible strides in dispelling false beliefs about who we are and what we do, and among the more liberal Christian community We have also forged many strong personal ties of affection, regard and respect. There we have seen enormous progress.

On the other hand, and here I speak of the United States only because I do not know whether this madness strongly afflicts other cultures, the eruption of an aggressive fundamentalist, authoritarian, politicized Christianity has increased the level of nasty rhetoric and potentially also of nasty actions against us. Christianity is bifurcating between traditions who recognize they are part of an irreducibly religiously plural world, and those who see themselves in a life and death struggle with beliefs different from their own. This latter group is powerful, but I think they have over played their hand, and so I am optimistic that the positive changes will ultimately count for more than their hatred, and that the needed reconciliation will mostly take place.

In the section on interfaith work, you said that Pagans can be of great service to the larger spiritual community. Could you elaborate on what qualities make Pagans so well-suited for interfaith activities?

As a religious community, we are relatively unusual in being free from that orientation, thoroughly conversant with modern values, and unusually well represented in the computer and internet technologies so useful in building interfaith networks. I know these traits have helped interfaith work in California and even more droadly, and I would imagine they would be equally helpful elsewhere.

Because of our openness to the validity of other spiritual paths, Pagans are well suited to be “honest brokers” in interfaith discussions. In addition, we have already played a significant role in empowering many aboriginal and indigenous spiritual communities in part, at least, because we do not look down on them as primitive or ignorant. After all, much of what they do, we do. In general, the stronger the interfaith community; the safer the Pagan community.

In your conclusion, you say that Paganism “decenters” religion, just as spirituality “decenters” the self. Could explain to my audience what that means, and how this phenomenon within Paganism differentiates us from Christian religion?

When I said spirituality decenters the self I meant it puts our personal concerns in a larger and deeper context, the largest and deepest we two leggeds can encompass. When I am focused on my own self as separate from everyone else, I can end up obsessing over even very tiny slights or misunderstandings, growing them into mountains of resentment and anger. We probably have all had the experience of focusing on some problem, making it a Big Deal, and we then see someone in a wheelchair. What seemed so big suddenly becomes very small. Spirituality puts everything we experience not only into a bigger context, it is a context characterized by meaning, compassion, beauty, and love. Such has been my experience anyway. So the self ceases to be the center of our universe once we begin to grasp this larger context.

Paganism does the same for religion by demonstrating one can be genuinely and deeply religious without saying my or any other path is best, and that every religion as we practice it illuminates only a portion of the whole divine picture. We free ourselves from equating genuine spirituality with a particular path or expression of the sacred. Instead, it is a quality of engagement found within many paths.

Think of your family. You are likely very devoted to your family without thereby thinking all other families are inferior. They are simply not your family. Same with religion. Now think back how grim the world was when people honored and trusted only their families. Where such attitudes survive, as in Southern Italy, they contribute to suspicion, violence, and oppression.

Religions are different recognitions and celebrations of humankind’s encounter with that which is superhuman. They are perhaps the most fulfilling expressions of human creativity in this world, bringing together all of our arts, our philosophies and theologies, our hearts and our minds, all in a recognition and honoring of the sacred that underlies and manifests in our reality.

To pick another mundane example, each religion is akin to a composer of beautiful music. It is as silly to confuse a composer with music as it is to confuse a religion with spirituality.

Now that you have engaged in this dialog with Philip Johnson, in what ways do you feel you have deepened your understanding of Christianity? Has it altered how you envision them in any way?

I was quite taken by his evident sincerity and with the good will underlying this sincerity. Philip Johnson challenged in a happy way the impression I had formed that most evangelicals were arrogant, regarding others’ spiritual and religious practices as Satanic errors or a sign of deep and catastrophic ignorance. The best of them were good people but very narrow in their appreciation for others.

Before working with Philip the only significant exception to my unhappy conclusion were a very few people I had had the pleasure of meeting who were associated with the Spiritual Counterfeits Project. Philip Johnson and Lion Hudson Press have sensitized me further to the great complexity of the evangelical community.

We will probably never agree on the ultimate nature of spiritual reality, but we don’t have to. Philip may still think I am destined for hell, I don’t know. But I am convinced he is willing to leave that issue and its outcome up to me and God.

His example makes me more optimistic than ever before that we will be able to live together with mutual good will and respect.

In the book’s “responsive thoughts”, Lainie Petersen criticizes you for “raising the specters” of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell in the section on culture wars. Do you think Pagans overestimate the influence and power of these men (and men like them)? Is it “unfair” to name-check the most “bombastic” of fundamentalists when engaging in a dialog?

I do not think it is unfair at all. If I did not mention them, they would be the 500 pound gorilla in the closet. Why did I not address them? They have largely defined what Christianity is in the American media for many years. It is a false picture, promoted by the corporate press for political reasons, as well as lazy and craven reporters who have lost all competence in doing their job, and right wing politicians using them to split the public so they would get what Pat Buchanan described as the ‘bigger half.’ But it has been the dominant picture nonetheless.

Second, so long as a religion claims to be fundamentally more true than any others, it will encourage a certain kind of narcissistic believer to lord it over everyone else. Give those people access to political power and you have the possibility of their creating Hell on earth. In terms of how they would want to treat others the only major difference between people like that and the Taliban and Al Qaeda is lack of sufficient power.

Third, the culture war is basically an assault on the feminine in the name of a pathological masculinity, a masculinity that is not only out of balance, it denies that balance is even an issue because the feminine can be ignored. At its core modern NeoPaganism is a recognition of the feminine as equal to the masculine in ALL things. And so the culture war waged by so-called ‘Christians” and their secular right wing allies is at its core an assault on what is must central to our spirituality.

Fourth, the rest of the Christian community seems for the most part to have not denounced what is done and advocated in its name. They should not be surprised that we treat these people as Christians. They themselves do.

Christians cannot have it both ways. If the ‘Christian’ right, including certain conservative Catholics, are considered legitimate Christians, and they spread hatred and lies about us, and have access to political power, in self-defense we will focus on them and the threat they poses. If other Christians strongly denounce these people publicly, and reject what they do as Christian, then on matter of dialogue we can spend much more time on more interesting topics.

From excommunication to shunning, Christians have a variety of ways of demonstrating someone is no longer a member of their community. It is past time they did so with these people.

If you could transmit just one idea or fact about modern Paganism to Christians, what would it be?

We are not trying to proselytize. We certainly are personally committed to our own path as a good one for us and are happy to share it. But it is of small moment to us whether you join us or not. If you do – welcome! If you do not, we wish you fulfillment wherever Spirit may lead you. Get your house in order and then, if you want, visit ours as a guest.

Now that this book is out, what is the “next step”. What advice would you give Christians and Pagans wanting to continue the work begun in this book?

Get involved in interfaith work in your local communities. False beliefs about us are best dispelled through personal contact. It is easy to believe falsehoods about people we do not know. And of course that cuts both ways. The Christians you meet in interfaith work will be among the most committed and caring in their community. So it is a win-win situation for us all.

One of my fondest memories is organizing an interfaith tree planting in Berkeley, California. Each religious group conducted their own planting in their own way. But we planted them together. The dark forces unleashed by those worshipping power and domination are best undermined when we do not divide ourselves into exclusive communities looking distrustfully out on everyone else. That is why those forces seek to sow distrust. We all have our own communities, and that is as it should be. But we can leave our doors open to the neighbors.

[Stay tuned for "part two" of my "Beyond the Burning Times"-themed interviews. In the next installment, I'll be interviewing Christian theologian Philip Johnson.]

Previous Wild Hunt interviews: Jeff Sharlet, Brendan Cathbad Myers, Rita Moran, Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone, Phyllis Curott, Tim Ward, Lupa, J.C. Hallman, Margot Adler.
]]> http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/09/interview-with-gus-dizerega.html/feed 2 http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/03/christian-attitudes-towards-paganism.html http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/03/christian-attitudes-towards-paganism.html#comments Sun, 23 Mar 2008 17:01:00 +0000 Jason http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/03/christian-attitudes-towards-paganism.html Today is Easter, the holiest day in the Christian liturgical calendar, and most Christians will be out attending church and engaging in family get-togethers. So I thought this would be a good time to look at some upcoming and recently published books that look at Christian-Pagan relations. While most titles of this sort still treat modern Paganism as an insidious evil to be rooted out, there does seem to be some softening in position, and at least one volume that engages in real dialog.

We will start with the most hostile of recent works, Linda Harvey’s “Not My Child: Contemporary Paganism & the New Spirituality”, which uncovers the “casual occultisms” that lead teens to “radical” (and by inference, dangerous) Pagan spirituality.

“The author compares the modern version of ancient practices – “neopaganism” – to core biblical principles and exposes the flaws, including the gender and sexuality risks inherent in these radical new beliefs. The fingerprints of evil are all over what appears to be innocent packaging of youth activities and entertainment.”

People like Harvey represents those ultra-conservative groups within Christianity who believe that any social changes not mandated by the Bible are precarious evils to be battled at all costs. In their view, the rise of modern Paganism confirms all that they fear: the resurrection of Christian-persecuting pagan Rome (usually led by the Antichrist). A persecution narrative that they cling as tightly to as some Pagans do the myths regarding the “Burning Times”.

Slightly less hostile in tone is “Generation Hex: Understanding the Subtle Dangers of Wicca” by Marla Alupoaicei and Dillon Burroughs (not to be confused with the 2005 book on modern magick) . While the book talks about Paganism as something one becomes “caught up” in due to “spiritual hunger”, they at least claim to interview several Pagans in the process of writing the book.

“In Generation Hex, Marla Alupoaicei and Dillon Burroughs explore the history, culture, and practices of Wicca. As part of their research, they interviewed travelers to historic Salem, Massachusetts, consulted practitioners of leading neopagan conferences in the Pacific Northwest and Canada, and dialogued with several current and former adherents of Wicca and other forms of witchcraft to evaluate the past and present of this growing spiritual tradition.”

If “Not My Child” represents the “isolationist” camp, then books like “Generation Hex” (and “Wicca’s Charm”) strike closer to something very like engagement with modern Pagans. You could call it “limited (or impaired) engagement”, where one or both camps are hostile, or are engaging in dialog in order to ultimately debunk (or demonize) the position of the other.

Which brings us to an upcoming book that promises a full and open dialog between Pagans and Christians, “Beyond the Burning Times: A Pagan and Christian in Dialogue” (out now in the UK). The book, edited by John W Morehead, is a wide-ranging discussion between Pagan author and political scientist Gus diZerega and Australian Christian theologian Philip S. Johnson on a variety of social and theological issues.

“A fascinating dialogue between a Pagan and a Christian. Gus DiZerega, an American pagan and and an academic engages in debate with Philip Johnson, an Australian Christian theologian. The two debate questions such as the nature of spirituality, who or what is deity, how humans relate to the divine, the sacred feminine, gender and sexuality, and the teachings and claims of Jesus. At the end of the book another Pagan writer comments on what Philip Johnson has argued, and another Christian comments on what Gus DiZerega has argued. Paganism is acknowledged as the fastest growing ‘religion’ in western Europe and this book helps readers to engage with it and with orthodox Christian belief.”

Here we have (in theory) the most positive manifestation of Pagan-Christian relations. Respectful (and mutual) discourse without either camp using the opportunity to fear-monger or “score points” on the other. While “Beyond the Burning Times” may not lessen the tide of books from the previous two categories, it certainly represents a way forward from hostility and isolationism. Views that won’t do either side much good as modern Paganism continues to grow. Expect to hear more about “Beyond the Burning Times” as it reaches its American publication date (June 20th).

Have a good day, and may my Christian readers have a happy Easter.
]]> http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/03/christian-attitudes-towards-paganism.html/feed 1 http://wildhunt.org/blog/2007/12/heading-wrong-way-into-mainstream.html http://wildhunt.org/blog/2007/12/heading-wrong-way-into-mainstream.html#comments Sat, 29 Dec 2007 15:10:00 +0000 Jason http://wildhunt.org/blog/2007/12/heading-the-wrong-way-into-the-mainstream.html Wiccan author Gus diZerega (“Pagans & Christians”, “Beyond the Burning Times”) gives an account of a public Solstice ritual, and the elements within it that troubled him concerning how modern Pagan faiths (specifically Wicca-derived models) may be changing themselves to become more palatable to a mainstream audience.

“Every new spiritual movement faces the challenge of enabling people unfamiliar with it to partake of its message, its approach to celebrating and connecting with the sacred. What is important is what is new, and what is off-putting and most easily misunderstood to others is also what is new. The more familiar the practice the more accessible the tradition – but at the same time in promoting greater accessibility the tradition might lose what it truly once had to offer. This dilemma is unavoidable when a tradition grows. How a religion handles this task is vital to its future. History is replete with people seeking to institutionalize their spiritual tradition to make it “more relevant” to ever more people, and in the process losing track of its initial message … During this Solstice Sabbat I saw this danger raise its head for the NeoPagan community.”

So what did he see and experience that troubled him? First off, the ritual leaders stopped the active involvement of participants to present a “short sermon”.

“The Sabbat’s major organizer strode forward and gave a “short sermon.” This was the speaker’s own description, not my interpretation of them. Sermons are a central aspect of Christian practice. They imply a specific kind of relationship between deity, the sermonizer, and those hearing the message. Deity is distant. The sermonizer is an expert at theological interpretation, at least compared to the audience, who are essentially passive receptacles … Like any viable spiritual practice, sermons have their strengths and weaknesses, but their strengths are not in keeping with Pagan approaches to relating with the Divine, and their weaknesses undermine the vitality of Pagan spirituality.”

This was followed by a “guided meditation” in which standard scientific explanations for life on earth were laid out for the attendees. The author claims that it was so free of religious elements that Richard Dawkins would have enjoyed it. These two elements, according to diZerega, effectively canceled out the Pagan elements of the ritual and could pose a disastrous harbinger of “mainstream” modern Paganism.

“Changes like these when repeated and institutionalized are how a religion with a new focus is gradually tamed, and brought into harmony with the status quo. If sermons become a component of Pagan ceremonies, participants will increasingly be called upon to become passive vessels filled by whatever words the preaching Priest or Priestess feels called upon to say. If the altered awareness of trance and ecstasy is replaced with hypnotic introductions to scientific orthodoxy, we end up being more dependent on the competence of those giving the sermons and less on the Gods.”

I encourage you to read the entire essay, to fully understand diZerega’s concerns and critiques. The inclusion of a sermon (with left-leaning political messages) and a science-heavy creation story seems to fit right in with your basic humanist-friendly Unitarian-Universalist service. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with such a structure, but as diZerega points out, it comes from a fundamentally Christian understanding of religion and doesn’t accurately capture the modern Pagan mode of practice.

I wonder if any of my readers have experienced similar public rituals? Do you think there is a danger that modern Pagans are watering-down (or altering) practice to make it more palatable to a mainstream audience? If so, what should our reaction be?
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