← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Hilaire Belloc
Thread ID: 20848 | Posts: 6 | Started: 2005-11-02
2005-11-02 00:34 | User Profile
Interesting perspective on the neo-pagan obsession with bashing Christianity.
[url]http://www.winterscapes.com/sannion/anti-christian.htm[/url]
Is Paganism Anti-Christian?
Quite frankly, I'm sick of hearing about Christianity.
It seems that everywhere I go lately, the topic on everyone's mind has been Christianity. This wouldn't seem so odd if I traveled in largely Christian circles. But what gets me is that it's Pagans who are doing all the talking. For several days this week, the subject of ChristoPagans was hotly debated on one of my lists. Every chatroom I went into was discussing Christianity - whether it be how Christians are intolerant and bash us, how the Church supposedly stole all of its holidays and beliefs from Paganism, or the sinister plot of King James I to revise the Bible so that it justified his paranoid attacks on witchcraft. I no longer even bother trying to refute these absurd claims. It's just too much work, and accomplishes nothing in the end. Pythagoras said, don't piss against the sun, and that's about as effective as attempting to clear up the fallacies that Pagans perpetuate.
What does bother me is that Paganism itself is never discussed in these chats. Discussions about polytheism, ecology, ethics, or magic are rare. Instead, they'd rather whine about the Church. No one ever discusses the classic Pagan literature like Homer, the Eddas, the Mabinogian, or the Charge of the Goddess - instead they discuss the errancy of the Bible. We could discuss the complex interraction of multiple divine beings, but they would rather talk about how absurd Yahweh is. Instead of laying the foundation for Paganism's future, they recite a litany of atrocities that the Church is guilty of. **Perhaps the most annoying thing that they prattle on about is the immanant death of the Church, and how we will take its place.
People have been predicting an end to Christianity for about two hundred years now. When the Soviet States were in power, it looked like they might have succeeded in banishing the spectral form of Christ from their world. But Communism collapsed, and the Church has returned with a vengeance. Church attendance is up in the United States. In India, Africa, and South America, they are making thousands of converts every day. [u]Though given a run for it's money by Islam and to a lesser extant Buddhism - the Church is definitely not dying.[/u]**
If we bet on the demise of Christ, if we set ourselves up as the Enemies of the Church, if we make it an issue of Us and Them - we are going to lose. The Church is strong, it has emotional investments in the lives of the people, and it doesn't play fair.
We are a challenge to the Christian idealogy - but we mustn't make ourselves out to be such. Instead, we must argue for pluralism - a free-market world in which all faiths have their place, and are able to compete. If we play the radical, and demand people renounce the heritage they were raised in, the family customs and social rituals, if we appear too different and alien, we will never succeed. We must make peace with Christ - recognize him as one God among many. See, polytheism can do that. It can embrace foreign Gods and different cults, it can even include monotheism. But monotheism can never do that, because it is the weaker of the two idealogies. Placed side by side, this becomes evident. But if we make it an either/or issue, people don't see that - they only see what they will be losing. This is why the Church hates competition, and remakes us in the mold of Antichrists. But we mustn't accept that role. We have to be peaceful, we have to be friendly. Instead of saying, you are wrong, we should say, ah, that's a good way of looking at it. Here's another good way. And another. Now what do you think? If we attack them, they become stronger. If we make them compete in an open market, they whither and fail.
I think we must also make ourselves stronger, better able to compete in this open market. If we want people to buy our product, we must have something good to show them. So I would encourage Pagans to stop focusing so much on Christianity, and work on making ourselves better. We need to create rituals that are beautiful and moving. We need to compose works of great art. We need to develop our minds. Quality always wins through in the end.
Most importantly, we must become a nation of actual Pagans, and not just people on the fringe of Christianity. We must become indifferent to Jesus. We must drain his influence from our lives, stop letting his followers define how we'll live, what we'll be against. Those who try to invert the teachings of the Church - such as Satanists who rechristen the Christian vices as virtues, or the Feminist Wiccans who substitute a monotheistic Goddess for God, and banish everything "patriarchal" from their lives - are just as much slaves to the Church as the old Italian widow in black, praying the Rosary, because they are still playing by the Church's rules. We need to stop bristling every time we hear the name of Jesus. We need to be able to talk about Christianity without getting defensive or painting them in diabolical hues. When a well-meaning stranger wishes us a Merry Christmas, we should accept it in the spirit which it's offered, and not lecture them on being sensitive to people of other faiths.
If we are creating a true Pagan culture, with it's own beliefs, customs, rituals, agendas, and laws - it must be on our terms, not theirs. That means that many of these things will be different from Christianity, but we should not expect all of them to be. If something can only be Pagan because it is diametrically opposed to Christianity, than we are letting them define things. If we run screaming because something has the scent or shape of the Christian, then we miss out on much. No one has a monopoly on truth, and there is much that is good and wise about Christianity - we should not reject their ideas out of hand. Let's not ask, is this Pagan or Christian - but rather, is this sensible or foolish? Only when we make Christianity such a total non-issue are we free of it.
And lastly, if you would build a strong Paganism, free of persecution and fundamentalism, cultivate friendships with people from different faiths. Get to know them, let them know you. Put a face on it, so that instead of Pagan, they think James, instead of Christian, you think Jennifer. Fundamentalism flourishes because it is able to convince people that others are the Other, a faceless mass devoid of goodness and human dignity. I doubt that the people who committed the atrocious acts of 9.11 saw their victims as people. Certainly they didn't think of them as husbands and wives, sons and daughters, fathers and wives, siblings, friends, people with hopes and dreams and fears, facing the same adversities and hardships as themselves. Because if they had, I doubt that they could have done that. It's much harder to kill a man when he has a face. Which is why the ministers of evil strive so hard to paint people with that brush of anonymity - and why we must fight both to be seen as individuals, and to see others as individuals.
2005-11-02 15:49 | User Profile
The desperation fairly screams, doesn't it Hilaire? And only those who are drowning appreciate a savior.
2005-11-02 17:32 | User Profile
The antipathy of many pagans toward Christianity reminds me of the classic Chesterton line about an atheist acquaintance -- "He's the sort of atheist who doesn't so much disbelieve in God, as he does personally dislike Him."
2005-11-02 17:44 | User Profile
[quote=Hilaire Belloc]We must make peace with Christ - recognize him as one God among many. See, polytheism can do that. It can embrace foreign Gods and different cults, it can even include monotheism. But monotheism can never do that, because it is the weaker of the two idealogies.
You cannot make peace with Christ without admitting the truth. The Creator God demands that [I]His people[/I] have no other gods {rulemakers} before Him. If you deny that you deny Christ. The idea that He is one among many is a very old error, not that there are not many that make claims to being a god {rulemaker} but that there is a legitimate claim and all others spurious; and it can only belong to the creator. The creator of a thing is by definition the owner, and therefore the only one with authority to see to it's use and preservation. How can a created thing claim to be it's own owner, that's silly.
We do not make anyone antichrists {[I]against[/I] or[I] in place of[/I] Christ} they make themselves antichrists by putting themselves in the place of god {rulemakers} by ignoring {or denying} that they were created.
Christianity survives it's friends and foes not because it is an "idealogy" but because it is not {man-made}. And understand: I am not here talking about the caracatures of christianity that are so often {rightly} held up to ridicule but [I]the real thing[/I] which most people have never seen or heard.
2005-11-02 18:07 | User Profile
M-druid,
I agree that when talking about real christianity, many have never seen it. They've been handed an 'ideology' like a bill of goods. Real christianity is not a position, it's a Person. You either know Him or you don't.
So what's a Messianicdruid? You don't throw babies into spike pits, do you?
2005-11-02 22:19 | User Profile
[quote=Gregor]So what's a Messianicdruid? You don't throw babies into spike pits, do you?
I don't throw babies at all. The term is never capitalized when refering to myself. Although I haven't kept up with it as I'd hoped this will give you a start...
[URL="http://www.messianicdruid.blogspot.com"]www.messianicdruid.blogspot.com[/URL]
You can also type "messianicdruid" into a search engine and find some tracks.