Pagan Theology: Paganism as a World Religion

Preface

Preface Witches and neopagans are increasingly becoming fixtures on American campuses, especially the contemporary liberal university alleged to foster “destructive experimentation with personal identity.” The associate provost of Boston University, Peter Wood, for example, does not find neopagans particularly dangerous but simply confused, deluded, frivolous, and devoid of intellectual seriousness. “Little inanities that once would have been brushed aside [by campus clergy] now settle in as opportunistic infections.”1 For critics like Wood, paganism is little more than a jumble of magical formulas and invocations to miscellaneous gods and goddesses that should be distinguished from the ethical guidance offered by Christianity , Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism. In Wood’s view, contemporary paganism is a movement that disdains any goal of intellectual coherence, and he questions its position in a university community. In a vote at Boston University among “legitimate campus religious groups, . . . the witches were cast out,” allowing Wood to feel that in this case simple piety triumphed over the “idol of Diversity” that is otherwise increasingly becoming the prevailing politically correct ideology.2 But despite the Boston University clergy’s retroaction, paganism is frequently cited as one of the fastest-growing spiritual orientations, at least in the West. While many reasons may be furnished as to why this is so (the ecological threat to the planet, a popular emergence of antiauthoritarian spirituality , or part of the information revolution itself), the question remains whether paganism can be in any way considered serious religion. The answer to this question is the purpose of this book. Part of the answer is to situate paganism as a world religion, that is, as a legitimate spiritual perspective that already exists globally. While the numbers of people who adhere to pagan religion may not be as numerically significant as those who follow the teachings of Christ, Muhammad, or Gautama Buddha, their numbers are still impressive. Although many, if not most, of them do not vii use the word pagan to describe their beliefs or practices, I contend that they hold an identifiable position of common characteristics and understandings for which the label pagan is feasible and debatably accurate. Besides examining these particular “pagan” religiosities, I also explore paganism as a general form of religious behavior. To this end, I survey some of the other major world religions to identify the kind of spontaneous ritual veneration that can be interpreted as pagan. My aim is to show the pagan affinity of spiritual behavior that might be seen as integral to human nature. I then conclude with a theological analysis that distinguishes between paganism and gnosticism as essential spiritual ideal types that differentiate most religious activity. This means that I examine paganism as, successively, a religion, behavior, and theology. To situate paganism as a theological religion and a religious behavior, we must first understand what religion is. This question is a vexing and contentious one. Despite the complexities and disagreements that the issue raises, it still is a necessary question to ask when considering whether any spiritual practice or affirmation is actually religious or whether its expression constitutes a religion. Here I contend that paganism represents what I term a root religion and that historically all other religions are offshoots and/or counterdevelopments of the root religion. Consequently, if we wish to understand any religion, we must also understand paganism as the root from which it grew. The irony in this understanding is that it precludes recognizing a root religion as being religious. In chapter 1, I examine some of the world’s living indigenous religions as constituents of a pagan religiosity that represents a major world religion . What are the shared characteristics of these practices and between them and classical and Indo-European paganisms? After initially concentrating on the “pagan religions,” in chapter 2 I look at vernacular pagan behavior: the activities of cultic response found in other, nonpagan religions . Finally, in chapter 3, I conclude with a delineation of generic paganism from a theological perspective. I hope in this endeavor to establish the concept of paganism as a useful designation for an important religious perspective. In so doing, the advantage is not only the recognition of a marginal position but also the authentication of the basic differences among the religions themselves. My reason for doing this is not to create a religious threat to established world religions but to make clearer the integral self-sufficiency of each religion. I would like to make clear that this book is in no way meant to be an encyclopedic...