Responses

barcofthebluebard answered: One of our cohort on the hill has told me I’m being a fool for being a Christo-Pagan, quoting scripture (of course). What would you suggest as the proper response?

Well, I don’t know if what I would say would be “right,” but here’s what is going through my head…

Firstly, I am always defensive when people quote scripture to tell you how to live your life.  It’s invariably a brand of cherry-picking, as pretty much any biblical passage can be refuted with another biblical passage.  Similarly, I know very few scripture-quoting Christians who uphold the “rules” in the Bible that don't mesh with their own lifestyles, like Kosher diets, ritual cleansings around periods and wet dreams, etc.  The Bible’s weird, right?  I hear hypocrisy.

Secondly, while not really knowing what passages they’re drawing from, Pagan religious practices probably look as different from biblical times as Judeo-Christian practices do today.  Not only do biblical texts reflect the prejudices of the folks who wrote them (which we readily denounce when it comes to anti-women, anti-LGBTQ, and pro-slavery passages), but those prejudices were against a group of people whose practices have changed just as much as their own, so EVEN IF our spiritual ancestors had a point about ancient Pagans, that point might not be relevant today.  Like, I wouldn’t assume someone has an attitude problem because their great great great grandmother did.  Too often folks use biblical passages as if nothing has changed since the time they were written.  

Like criticisms of “Pharisees” in the gospels, the anti-Pagan passages may not reflect the criticisms of biblical characters, but rather later generations who sought to shape a narrative based on their lived experiences of religious and political conflicts.  The Pharisees weren’t even active, really, in Jesus’ time, and Jesus was mostly in line with their views, anyway.  He would have been in conflict with the Saducees, but it was the Pharisees that first century Christians were in conflict with during the time that gospel texts were written (post Temple), so Jesus’ narrative ends up somewhat altered and anti-Pharisaic words get put in his mouth.  Again, that Bible thing is weird and complicated, so most folks’ dogmatic claims that are justified by scripture are more reflective of personal prejudices “protected” by scripture passages pulled out of context.

The Hebrew Scriptures, in a variety of places, use a variety of names for God, some of which are plural, that are indicative of Jewish polytheism.  Your tradition is certainly different, but oftentimes criticism against other traditions is rooted in arguments for elective monotheism and THE ONE TRUE GOD… except read that Bible.  There is polytheism all over it.  In fact, one of my undergrad professors (who is Jewish in personal practice and SJSU’s expert on the Middle East and cultural anthropology) suggests that YHVH (a name commonly used for God) represents an earlier pantheon, with each letter representing Ugaritic gods (mother, father, daughter, son… I have more on that if you are interested).  The YHVH tradition is not exclusively monotheistic, so to suggest that Christians should be is silly.

That’s more refute-style, but the more positive use of biblical narrative for your case would (in my view) be that whole Christian movement thing.  The entire history of Christianity is one of schism.  I mean, Jesus wasn’t even a Christian!  He was a Jew!  It was later generations who decided to split off and NOT be Jewish– to do things a bit differently.  Protestant Reformation.  History of USA.  In my view, denouncing Christo-Paganism is just as silly as it would be for me to denounce Presbyterianism.  I’m not Presbyterian and the Presbyterians do their stuff differently and think differently about certain things, but we’re cool.  Religion is moving and changing all the time.  We need to denounce religious positions as wrong when they begin to harm people, but you and your fellow Christo-Pagans aren’t harming anyone.

Also: as far as more over-arching themes go, the Bible seems like it’s about love and people searching for God (failing at times).  But if God is about Love, I don’t see how what you’re doing is wrong or foolish.

The last thing I’m thinking about is that “Women shouldn’t speak in church!” stuff from the Pauline texts (perhaps a non-authetically-Paul one?  Timothy?  I forget).  One of my professors in undergrad (Brent Walters, he has a Bible show on KGO Sunday mornings) said that that passage reflected a first century reality that was less about gender than we think today.  He suggested it was because Pagan priestesses were converting and speaking in worship spaces.  He said that these new converts didn’t quite “get” the Christian thing yet (hadn’t completed Catechism or whatever) and were saying things “wrong,” hence the passage asking them to stop speaking.  This may have been a case of my professor trying to make Paul sound less sexist, but what I glean from this is that people were already mixing Paganism and Christianity in the first century.  You have a historical tradition that is longer than many of us can claim.  Paul may have found it a bit disruptive, but Paul said a bunch of dumb stuff that we dismiss because Paul isn’t Jesus, he’s just a first century Christian who happened to write a bunch of stuff down that got saved.

Anyway, those are my thoughts for how to refute that kind of exclusivism.  Also:What the Hell?  Who does that?  Why do you care?  Mind your business.