I have read a great deal of modern pagan and/or neo-pagan writings; and have some acquaintance with such people. Indeed at one time, for several years and some twenty years ago-plus, that is what I might well have called myself.
This movement is, unfortunately, permeated and motivated by a resentment against Christianity that ranges from cold contempt to burning indignation - a phenomenon that leads to the deep and perception-structuring bias I have termed "anything but Christianity".
I have recently been exploring some different and new (to me) avenues and individuals within the neo/ pagan world; and was again struck by this structuring bias.
This anti-Christianity is expressed so strongly that one would suppose that the writers and speakers had been brought-up in either a medieval theocracy or the Puritan Geneva of Calvin - or (often) some unholy combination of the two... Instead of actually having been raised in one of the overwhelmingly atheist-materialist nations of the West; during the 1940s, 50s, or 60s!
Furthermore, this is combined with depictions of the pagan past so fantastically wishful that they seem to have derived from Pollyanna wearing rose-tinted spectacles in Disneyland!
Anything and everything bad in reports of the pagan past is ascribed to spiteful Christian misrepresentation; anything and everything good about past Christian societies is attributed to residual paganism!
What seems to be happening is that these folk are approaching "paganism" from within themselves: in a creative spirit directed at individual participation...
While simultaneously regarding and representing Christianity in the most literal, institutional, external terms; focusing on sometimes-real but "worst case" scenarios of tyranny, cruelty and atrocity; and making their definitions and descriptions of "Christianity" citing the most childish and/or obviously-manipulative time, places, and sources.
They subjectively engage-with "paganism" in highly positively-selective, personal and optimistic fashion; while adopting a detached, cynical and condemnatory attitude to negatively-selective, cut-and-dried, "Christianity".
While this is very, very obvious to me (especially given my history); almost by definition there is no persuading against such attitudes - which are common to much of modern life; and which pagans share with the mainstream of atheist materialists.
Yet is is atheist materialists who run this world and have done so for many decades; and atheist materialists therefore are, or ought to be, the real spiritual enemies of sincere pagans...
In other words, by their revealed preferences and their ludicrous insistence on fighting dead battles and wars that Christianity lost long ago; pagans (despite any counter protestations) are actually of-the-Left and of-the-mainstream.
Pagans indeed share the characteristically and definitively Left fundamental concern with this-worldly hedonism and therapy - i.e. seeking personal pleasures and happiness here-and-now, alleviating personal miseries and suffering; justified by a utilitarian altruistic ideology of "making this world a better place".
What I eventually did, and would suggest to others; is that they instead approach Christianity in something of the same positive, subjective and engaged spirit with which they approach paganism; which ought to be a spirit of discovery and creativity.
8 comments:
i've noticed this too, and it is amusing at times and disheartening at others (depending on the intelligence of the expositor). as i see it, the reason why they won't approach anything christianity with the same creativity is the same reason christians won't approach anything else with reverence that is not sanctioned by the orthodoxy. that is, they believe they are 'following', not creating. until they understand they are creating, and must be creating, they won't allow themselves the freedom to go beyond their prejudices.
@Laeth. You are correct about Christian church "orthodoxy"- but that also applies to every other religion. And the fact that there is a pretty wide range of "Christianity" (especially if Mormonism is considered) *ought to be* enough of a clue, to someone who was positively motivated; instead of someone motivated by de facto hedonism - self-justified by resentment.
oh yes, no doubt, it applies to everything. i just don't care about hindus or muslims or even western pagans, because their religions are antithetical to freedom. christianity shouldn't be. it IS the religion of freedom (or should be, if it is about following Jesus). that's why i single it out and it bothers me more. (it just occurred to me that pagans' specific distaste for christianity is a sort of recognition of this fact too, albeit manifested in a very unhealthy way; still, maybe it is better to hate with a purpose than flatten everything with lukewarmness; maybe it is wishful thinking on my part, but i believe it will be easier for the former than for the latter after they die).
@Laeth "I believe it will be easier for the former than for the latter after they die"
Yes, this is something I also have thought about. If someone wants what Jesus offers, but rejects following Jesus because of a false understanding of what that means, then they can change their mind after they know better - after death.
Pagans may misrepresent and reject Heaven in a way that seems to go beyond false understanding - they say they want nothing more than to keep reincarnating into this world as-is.
This is a doctrine unlike any ancient pagan doctrine I have ever heard of - but perhaps that does not matter so much as the idea that it is actually wrong to hope for a world without evil and death. In some cases this is evidently because they value some evil more than anything else (sex, coercive power, whatever).
In other instances because they seem to find a Heaven based on loving-creation and what that presumably entails to be... boring.
Boring in the same way that Heaven seems boring to many adolescents compared with sex, drugs, rock and roll, fighting, killing, tormenting or suchlike. The kind of individual, apparently common, that quotes with apparent relish and approval that phrase: crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.
I don't suppose that anyone who genuinely (rather than as a pretentious affectation) regards this as representing their highest values; would want salvation, resurrection, Heaven.
Lukewarmness is, after all, a sign of weak motivation - and therefore suggestive that the Real motivations is for something very different - but maybe suppressed or concealed.
"Furthermore, this is combined with depictions of the pagan past so fantastically wishful that they seem to have derived from Pollyanna wearing rose-tinted spectacles in Disneyland".
That's brilliant and hilarious!
@M - Glad you liked it - I enjoyed writing it!
Well, it's basis of any ideology. "Our ideology x is good, every time it was not was because of some divergence, or it is an deceit, but ideology y is really bad and the core of all bad things jn the world". But I guess neo-pagans are right when they say that Christiany isn't true traditional religion, it was a progressive(not in the neo-lib sense) teaching untill it overcame Roman Empire and established itself as a state religion.
@Ap - I think you are making an assumption that I do not share, that "modern" (approx post 18th century) Men are essentially the same as Men of c 2000 ya - in the way they think, and perceive the world. I believe that there have been great changes, such that there were not and could not have been a "progressive" religion (whatever you mean by that!) 2000 ya.
My point about neo-pagans is not that they behave like "ideology" - which term you are apparently using in a way that *includes* religion (whereas I would have that that an ideology was what came *after* religion, as a term for a secular belief system that excluded the divine. To conflate religion and ideology is to argue from an atheist-materialist assumption that religions are just ideologies).
But the point about modern pagans is that they are Not like religions of the past (nor, indeed, like exclusivist ideologies such as communism); because they are positive towards (and often draw upon) a wide range of "other" religions than their own paganism - reserving a special animus almost exclusively for Christianity.
In this, they are following the Leftist ideology, which is Not an evolutionary development of Christianity, but instead a non-religious reaction-*against* Christianity.
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