The Bay Area Pagan Alliance kindly asked me to speak at their annual festival this year. What follows is an edited version of that speech.
This year's theme is "paradigm shift." In Reclaiming, the Pagan tradition I was most involved with starting in the early 1980s, the ideal of unifying Earth-based spirituality and progressive politics is a core value. But over the past few years my own stance on that has shifted markedly, and I want to explain why.
The best place to begin is with James Watt, Reagan's Secretary of the Interior from 1981 to '83. James Watt was awful, one of the worst cabinet members in U.S. history. He pursued terrible environmental policies, and he seethed with hatred toward environmentalists. Watt was also an evangelical Christian who believed in the "end times," and only wanted to assure that the earth's resources held out till Christ returned. To the end, he was engaged primarily in a religious war.
After his craziness got him kicked out of the Dept. of Interior, someone interviewed James Watt and asked what his biggest fear was about environmentalists. And he said, "that they're all secretly Pagan." That comment was a huge in-joke for me and all my friends, because of course we WERE secretly (or not so secretly) Pagan.
We were environmentalists for many sound economic and political reasons, but at the core we were horrified at the abuse of the earth's resources, and wanted to restore the spirits of the wild to the land. We wanted to protect the earth, and to do that we had to overthrow the evangelical Christian worldview. James Watt provided an excellent target, and so we built our Pagan identity around opposition to him and people like him.
But oppositional identities are tricky things to control once they get started, and recent events give us a timely opportunity to do some course correction of our own before things get out of hand. James Watt was a true believer, and in that sense he is the forerunner of everyone we see on the far right rising to political power in the states and nationally.
We've seen blatant efforts to roll back voting rights, women's health care, fair wages, due process and the right to organize. The fight is on to destroy the separation of church and state in this country. This is horrifying. If we don't vote and get involved politically, our country could very quickly revert to an oppressive theocracy, just like back in Salem in the 17th century.
But I am grateful that we can now see their goals so clearly, because it is this view down into the abyss that has caused me to change how I feel about mixing spirit and politics. In the religious right, we can see the shadow of what we might become if the shoe were on the other foot.
What do I mean by this? Zealotry begins with a deep sense of frustration at the slow pace of change. That urgency, combined with strong religious beliefs, means that we turn to a sympathetic deity or presiding force to intercede in human affairs. And of course, because our deity is sympathetic it seems to validate even our most extreme views. We have now created a closed loop of influence, within which we feel increasingly justified and self-righteous about our cause.
One thing I didn't understand when I was young is that broad cultural change happens very, very slowly. Getting involved with charismatic Pagan traditions like Reclaiming felt like having the inside track to change, and a greater collective ability to affect things. But the closed loops I experienced encouraged emotionality and discouraged analysis and debate. The more radical and inspiring the leaders, and the more doe-eyed the sycophants or initiates, the more likely that the group's tactics will be misguided at best, and at worst potentially destructive to the very people and causes they support.
It is easy to see the shadow of our own actions and beliefs magnified a hundred-fold in the religious right today. I am so very grateful that radical activist Pagans have never (yet?) been bankrolled by eccentric billionaires and thus allowed to create more harm than good in a supposedly pluralistic society. It would be hard not to see all that money and influence as confirmation that God/dess was on our side, and that now was our time to strike out against the enemies of Gaia, or any other sympathetic deity of our choice.
Fighting a religious war is no way to maintain a democracy. It's not even a great way to maintain a religion. The challenge for Pagans, today and over the long haul, is to use our spiritual beliefs to galvanize us to action, but to stay focused on the goal: a country in which politics and spirituality are NOT unified. Where the separation of church and state is intact, and everyone's basic civil rights are valued and protected.
In closing, here is what I now believe about spirit and politics:
Things that matter most require long fights. In those fights the air, fire, water and earth will support us. Community will ground us. But we need to hold our own center. So check yourself. In your heart, do you carry the flame of the true believer? If so, is there also space there for others to believe differently?
May our hearts be large enough to hold multiple possibilities of connection to Spirit, and let there also be space to listen and speak clearly; to learn from others; to be decent neighbors, citizens, parents, and friends; and through the long struggle, to hold fast to our aspirations of a more just society for all.
A version of this essay was originally published at the Blog o' Gnosis.
Follow Anne Hill on Twitter: www.twitter.com/annehill
Teo Bishop: How Do We Talk About Paganism?
Teo Bishop: Every Conceivable Jesus: A Review of "Jesus Through Pagan Eyes"
Kelley Harrell: Pagan Is as Pagan Does
John Shore: Pagans and heathens and goats! Oh my!
See also my post back in the 2010 election cycle: "If you won't vote, I don't want to be part of your revolution" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anne-hill/if-you-wont-vote-i-dont-w_b_712969.html
"Jefferson’s only attack on religion was if it assumed a political character, or because it limited the freedom of the mind, upon which the progress of the human species toward happiness depended. ... He was fully convinced that the 'priests' (Protestant as well as Catholic) had 'adulterated and sophisticated' the teachings of Jesus for their own selfish purposes."
Experience Life among the Ordinary and read more on Thomas Jefferson's Personal "Pursuit of Happiness" in the second segment of a two part series at
http://lifeamongtheordinary.blogspot.com/2012/06/thomas-jeffersons-personal-pursuit-of_17.html
Now if you mean the fundemental Churchianity that started the Cruzades 1 - 9 and this last 10th Crusade in Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Lybia and USA. That is not CHRIST, Spirituality, Peaganism.
It is simple Home Fried Churcianity and fundemental possessing of the Holy Lands religous fanatism, Hawkish Militararism, and stealing Assest for Stock Traders
Now is Al Quida and Taliban fundemental religious fanatics. NO they live their religion and are far from posperity, justice, etc lie the USA use to be but is rushing back to get more Buck out of the price of gas and labor LIKE these backward countries did and do
Even as I use all the religious and spiritual abilities I share, have; know against the conservative right wing evangelicals. I long for the day when I can simply be a friendly American again whose religion, spirituality is private, deep, and refreshing.
To those that have torn me from my private celebrations, I do not appreciate it.
Our true mighty Yowp! s are mightier than you mixing your prejudices all wrong. :)
I've actually done the real thing complete with stone on tummy and no sheep entrails. And that's what you get for phrasing the question 'Who's going to get elected and be President' like the Florida GOP wasn't electioneering... Like they are again this year. Unlike for Dan Rather, you don't want to be under the traditional penalty for getting it wrong. 'Too messed up to call.' Which was in fact correct. ;)
A common path in the New Age.
I understand your concerns that the progressives may become puritanical harridans. So can the spiritual.
Spirit of GOD dwells within, your soul, not without in a group, a building or an intellectual philosophy.
Self Realization is not a GROUP THEOPY, Group Realization.
Self Realization does parallel Individual Rights and Free Choice the influence of Christ/Buddha/Krishna/Mohammad on the FUNDEMENTAL American Politics. A perfect HARMONY and Balance of Nature and SPIRIT
Only groups and think tanks for the advantage of Race, Sex (male/female), Sexual Preference, Stock Trader Greed is where there is a SOUR in the MIX and melting of Spirit AND Politics.
When Nation States kill w/o Trials, Drone at Will, Occupy, unprovoke attack there is no Harmony of Spirit and Nature. Death to Democracy and HUMAN rights
Actually, I'm far more worried about the Christian conservative billionaires actually seeking to persecute us... And that this will mean the Pagan community like so many others in the past, may develop from this too much of a siege mentality and persecution narrative of our *own.*
Speaking of Reclaiming, Starhawk actually just had a pretty interesting blog post about how *toxic* that very mentality can be, and how that's being used to *destroy* both real electoral politics and in fact stoke all kinds of negativity in society. Maybe *that's* closer to where we ought to be putting our real concern.
If anything, MORe worried about them, since they are seldom open about their disdain for those with faith of any sort.
I'll listen. But you seem to be refusing to do the same.
We are commited to not having a theocracy - not even a pagan one. We do have an obligation to take action so that those who would create that theocracy are denied power. I can assure you that some Evangelical Christians are blinded by faith enough to legislate the entire nation into what they believe - irregardless of the outcome to those who do not share their faith.
Ultimately, each of us makes the decision of whom we will vote for. The writer is asking us to take it beyond the personal vote and get involved as a matter of faith. No different than any other group.
No one is passing laws requiring people to attend a church or believe in the divinity of Christ, the Trinity, the atonement, etc.
I'd suggest that folks on the left are more interested in having an atheist state where the amoral rule.
Not everyone is pagan, but I doubt you would hesitate for a moment to use the power of the state to impose your values on religious traditionalists. Your argument is an epic fail.
You will never have 100 percent agreement on anything. The founders never saw the Establishment Clause as extending to public morality, only theological matters.
And I don't know anyone except the most radical fringe elements of American Christianity who has any desire to transform us into puritan Massachusetts or Byzantium.
Can you cite some example of this having happened? I don't know of any religious group more private about its religion(s) than Pagans. You have to work hard at finding others like you and at finding information. We don't proselytize and are generally pretty difficult to spot. Unlike the monotheists, we don't recruit.
I think you speak out of fear. The only ones well known for using the power of the state to impose their religious beliefs on others are the monotheists. Even the Romans with all their state power were careful to not impose their religion on conquered peoples even as they imposed everything else.
Meanwhile, of course, the Christian theocrats lean *disproportionately* on politics and what's more, get their *way* as a swing vote and money-source. And they use this to quite blatantly legislate what they call 'morality' then call it an assault on their 'religious freedom' if they aren't *allowed* to impose their religious-based demands on the private lives of others.
That includes abridging my rights as an LGBT person to enjoy the equal protection of the law, the same economic realities, even tax equity.... not to mention by their own standards abridging the rights of non-right-wing churches *to* conduct marriage ceremonies which are seen by the state as having the same weight as Christian-conservative ones.
Even lately trying to conflate your idea of Pagans with your idea of 'atheists' and use this to claim that anything but Christian theocracy and corporate plutocracy is somehow 'imposing pagan atheism.'
And if the only card up your logically fallacious sleeve in that canard about paganism being even older than the 'big 3' religions, well here you go: science is older then humankind.
We're just finally getting around to discovering it. That's all.
Thanks for playing.
We Pagans aren't interest in either.
Thanks for playing, too bad you do it so poorly.
...like shooting fish in a barrel. ;-)
There is no logical proof that 'god is one'. No, judaism is not an extension of science. You lose. Thanks for playing. Vanna has consolation gifts backstage.
If this designation called God cannot be defined (i.e., remains outside of our comprehension) then nothing can be said about it. We cannot deem to possess it. No ethical system (no dos and don'ts) can be derived from this.
Then the only link we have to this is ourselves through our own being. But this link cannot be demonstrated or shown to others, It can neither be made an intellectual property nor construed as an objective truth verifiable to a community of questioning seekers. It remains subjective as an inner journey to perceive this world as reconstituted from this ineffable center.
No we have not. what we HAVE seen is the extremist political Left CLAIM these things, pointing to common sense ideas as if they come from the fantasy Far-Right they have invented as a replacement for the not-scary real conservatives.
There's neither honor nor wisdom in denialism and narrative-flipping.
"Women's health care"? You mean aside from preventing federal funds from illegally being used to destroy life?
"Fair wages"? "Due process"? "Right to orginize"?
Where, where and where? The Left makes these unsupportable claims, and yet I challenge YOU to support them, since you appear to believe them.
While Progressives like to USE those who worship the Earth in one form or another, Progressives today, like those of the '20s and '30s, hold no belief in anything greater than themselves. Indeed, they generally hold those with religious beliefs--no matter WHAT religious beliefs--in complete contempt, though they may hide that contempt if they have a NEED of those with religious beliefs.
Whose definition of pagan? Were the ancient Greeks not pagan?
Didn't think so.