Does he have a point?

[Sage Rainsong]

I was going to work this into my other thread about podcasts but I think that this could be an interesting discusssion. On the latest episode of the Pagan podcast deo's shadow (http://www.deos-shadow.com #32A at the time of this post) features the host speaking about a funementalist Christian "infiltrating" a Druidic ritual. While the attitde of these people is irritating, and their fears are amusing, I think that they may have brough up a good point worth. Essentially, the host (of the fundamentalist segment) made Paganism look like this loose assortment of feel good rituals and you can just believe whatever they want to believe. Do you think that there is some truth to this? Why or why not? Is this a good thing or a bad thing? If you think that Paganisms' relativism is a good thing how can Pagans address this particular concern that many seem to have that Pagans are too vague about their beliefs ethics ect..?

[Nitefalle]

Just as with anything in Paganism, it really depends. Most public rituals are designed for anyone to show up, which means participants could be of any faith, any experience level, so they are usually quite general and vague in terms of deity / structure. So from that perspective, perhaps they do seem to be just "feel-good" rituals for the vague masses. I think that to gain a better perspective, an "outsider" (ie, non Pagan) would have to go to many different rituals, held by many different paths and faiths, in order to say "This is how Pagan rituals are done and here's what I think of them". Otherwise, it's like going to one Episcopal mass and saying "This is how all Christians do things and I am going to pass an opinion on it".

[Xentor]

I'm pretty certain that those who follow specific trads aren't mixing and matching their rituals.

[Zibblsnrt]

Essentially, the host (of the fundamentalist segment) made Paganism look like this loose assortment of feel good rituals and you can just believe whatever they want to believe. Do you think that there is some truth to this? Why or why not? Is this a good thing or a bad thing? If you think that Paganisms' relativism is a good thing how can Pagans address this particular concern that many seem to have that Pagans are too vague about their beliefs ethics ect..?

For quite a few people, I'd say it is true - I've seen my share of self-described pagans very actively pick and choose elements of whatever more because they match their purse than because they make logical, philosophical or emotional sense. When belief systems become a matter of aesthetics more than, well, belief - or worse, then belief systems are chosen primarily because they're not some other system - I think there's a problem.

As for how it can be addressed? I don't really think it can. For one thing, "pagan" isn't a monolith; it's a pretty broad and incredibly multifaceted community with a lot of mutually incompatible views. (Try to get Wiccans, Asatruar and Discordians to agree on anything. I'll wait.) I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing, though; I don't believe in the idea of overarching "pagan philosophy" or whathaveyou, since the term's supposed to be an umbrella rather than a specific descriptor.

That said, I'm just happy whenever I encounter someone whose worldview and philosophy are internally consistent. That's too much to ask in many instances, but I tend to ask it of people anyway.

[David19]

I think it's true to an extent, that some Pagans do use a lot of "feel good" rituals, or don't take a very serious approach to their religion and just think it doesn't matter.

But, this isn't true of all Pagans, there's a lot of Pagans who do rituals for devotion to their gods or god, for a specific occasion (festivals, rites of passage (e.g. Wiccaning, coming of age, birthdays, etc)), for a specific person (living or dead, etc), etc, and who do take a serious approach to their religion i.e. don't treat it as all just a game or that they can just pick the parts of a religion they like and make the rest up (e.g. someone who might like the Hellenic religion, takes the gods, then just says they all seved "The Goddess" before the "big, bad men" came along, etc).

Cool thread, BTW ;).

[juliaki]

What's amusing to me is that Kirk Cameron and the other guy who did the "infiltration" are huge 10 Commandments proponents.... and yet, one of those commandments is against lying. How exactly does one "infiltrate" a ceremony (i.e., going in under falsehoods) without breaking that commandment, I'd wonder...

[Garnet Heart]

I dunno...I listened to this a few days ago, so it's not the most fresh thing in my mind, but the way I see it is this:

We can't have it both ways. We can't have Paganism be a set of paths that attract people who are sick and tired of having dogma shoved down their throats and have it simultaniously be a set of paths that have clear and coherent rules and structure. You can't be non-dogmatic and dogmatic at the same time. Now, of course, many paths of Paganism do have established ways of doing things, some of which have been around for a quite a while, compared to more eclectic paths. I may be totally wrong, but I kind of thought that Druids were more inclined than some other paths to have structure, so the wishy-washy answers given by the guy who was so rudely spied upon kind of left me cold. At the same time, I don't see Pagans as a whole getting our act together as some sort of unified group with a unified stance on the things Cameron et al. were asking about (deity, purpose, etc.), but then...do we really need to? I don't care to put on a good front of togetherness for some people who just want to bash me anyway. I dunno. I'm probably just confused in general, but I'll be interested to hear what Deo and Mandy say about it next week.

[Nitefalle]

What I want to know is.....how the f*** does Kirk bloody Cameron "anonymously" infiltrate ANYTHING??? He's Kirk Cameron!!! He's famous! And famously Christian! I'm so surprised the guy he was interviewing didn't recognize him.

[DarkDancer]

I have mentioned this segment to several people over the last few days (it irked me) and I always preface it with the cfact that Kirk Cameron is a rather hard core born again Christian and more than one person has been surprised by that.

[Nitefalle]

I guess they haven't seen his E! True Hollywood Story :lol:

[Garnet Heart]

I'm going to go ahead and make the embarassing admission that I had *no idea* who Kirk Cameron was before listening to the DS episode, and I couldn't pick him out of a lineup. I've never seen Growing Pains in my life. Is that really weird???

Edit- I see, it was on in the mid-eighties. I grew up in England, and that show wasn't on there!

[Fiamma]

I was going to work this into my other thread about podcasts but I think that this could be an interesting discusssion. On the latest episode of the Pagan podcast deo's shadow (http://www.deos-shadow.com #32A at the time of this post) features the host speaking about a funementalist Christian "infiltrating" a Druidic ritual. While the attitde of these people is irritating, and their fears are amusing, I think that they may have brough up a good point worth. Essentially, the host (of the fundamentalist segment) made Paganism look like this loose assortment of feel good rituals and you can just believe whatever they want to believe. Do you think that there is some truth to this? Why or why not? Is this a good thing or a bad thing? If you think that Paganisms' relativism is a good thing how can Pagans address this particular concern that many seem to have that Pagans are too vague about their beliefs ethics ect..?


At the moment, i'm commenting only so that I remember to do so earlier. I am fairly intimately fmailiar with the situation- I was not at this ritual, as I am on the opposite coast, but I am a member of the Druidic organization involved, and after this happened, I exchanged a few emails with a couple of the infiltraters.

[Glory]

Essentially, the host (of the fundamentalist segment) made Paganism look like this loose assortment of feel good rituals and you can just believe whatever they want to believe.

God, don't you hate it when people believe different things and are allowed to do so in one setting? I sure do! Heathens!

Okay, kidding, I get the point. I myself went to a Druid ritual, and yeah, it was pretty vague. But that was because half the people that attended were an assortment of Wicca and other kinds of pagan. Hell, I went, and I sure as dandy don't practice druidry. Was the ceremony vague? Yes. Was it quite "hippie"? Sure.

But I believe it was intentionally so to incooperate the possible belief systems that some of the attendees would have held, to make people feel comfortable. People like that "infiltrator".

So no, I don't really think the guy has a point. He's coming from a mindset that religion is a strict, immobile thing. That isn't what paganism, or any religion for that matter, is. EVERYONE practices differently, even if they appear the same, like Catholics or Orthodox Jews, because we are all different people with different ideas, attitudes and degrees of belief.

EDIT: Edited to fix some mistakes in this post. But I would also like to point out that there are many Christian organisations who are the equivalent of this - they incooperate different kinds of Christianity and therefore base it around the simple belief of God and Jesus. And they play their guitars, and tell stories, and hold hands. So what's the difference between that and a pagan group coming together over the belief in season shifts being significant, and playing their guitars, telling stories, holding hands?

[Fiamma]

I was going to work this into my other thread about podcasts but I think that this could be an interesting discusssion. On the latest episode of the Pagan podcast deo's shadow (http://www.deos-shadow.com #32A at the time of this post) features the host speaking about a funementalist Christian "infiltrating" a Druidic ritual. While the attitde of these people is irritating, and their fears are amusing, I think that they may have brough up a good point worth. Essentially, the host (of the fundamentalist segment) made Paganism look like this loose assortment of feel good rituals and you can just believe whatever they want to believe. Do you think that there is some truth to this? Why or why not? Is this a good thing or a bad thing? If you think that Paganisms' relativism is a good thing how can Pagans address this particular concern that many seem to have that Pagans are too vague about their beliefs ethics ect..?


I have listened to the webcast of the group that secretly taped the ritual...this occured last fall at Mabon, so it's been some months and I only heard it a few days after the fact.

I remember listening to this and one of the things that really struck me, aside form the anger at what happened- and what it essentially boils down to is that the trust of many people was violated at a ritual held by a grove of the organization to which I belong. They didn't know and therefore had no control, but dimes to doughnuts there are people who will never attend another of their rituals because of this.

That aside, the one thing that really struck me was the things that some of these pagans said. I was embarassed at some of the answers people gave to the questions asked of them. They either didn't seem to know, or care what they were saying. Sure, it's tough to be put on the spot but at least try to sound like you care? I know that if I have trouble putting something into words, or figuring out how to explain what I'm thinking, I'll just say so- "Look, this is something that I have a hard time explaining to other people, but I'm going to do my best blah blah blah blah..." But what I remember was a lot of "uh, well, it's like uh well..." I can't really say that I blame them for mocking some of the things that were said- at the very least, I totally understand why these folks were not taking the interviewees seriously.

At this point to give more specific answers and address some of the actual comments, I would have to go back and listen to the broadcast and quite frankly, I don't feel like doing that. (If you have any quotes, feel free to post them and I will happily provide further commentary) I was very angry for some time after the fact, and actually exchanged a couple of emails with two of the individuals responsible for the secret taping of this ritual which, while interesting, of course got nowhere in the end.

I have noticed that a lot of pagans don't really seem to be able to- or interested in- explaining what they believe very well. Even when talking to other pagans. Many will just spout a few standard soundbite generalizations ("I'm pagan because I don't think it's right to tell people that they're going to hell." "I'm pagan because I believe in the all-loving mother goddess" "pagans don't worship gods, we work with them") I really believe that a deficiency in speaking intelligently about religion has contributed significantly to pagan religions not being taken seriously by so many in mainstream religion. The lack of interest in learning to do so only serves as a means by which we shoot outselves in the proverbial feet.

[Nitefalle]

I completely agree, Fiamma, and the host of the show, Deos, said as much after playing the Kirk Cameron bit. I couldn't believe the guy KC was interviewing was so......ineloquent. I thought, "THIS guy led a ritual for the ADF???" I guess I just have higher standards for Druids, knowing that usually they're very well spoken, well-read people. What's more, the guy knew he was being interviewed! Maybe that made him really nervous, but I would have tried a little harder, personally.

Anyway, I do agree that in terms of public relations, Pagans usually do themselves and their fellows a disservice, taking advantage of the relativism of Paganism to not have to explain themselves if they don't want to. What can we, as a community, do about that?

[Ben Gruagach]

I'd like to emphasize something Glory said -- that the vagueness and mishmash approach happens in the Christian community too. Having Christians criticize Pagans for something that they do themselves seems rather hypocritical to me.

If we look at the larger Christian community they have the whole new-age Christian section, the various "dumbing-down" segments that water down their religion for different target audiences, nudists (http://www.naturist-christians.org/), prudes, and everything under the sun that you might want to look for -- it's there somewhere!

Christian groups are notorious for picking and choosing what to believe and what to ignore in their own Holy Bible. For instance, Leviticus is cited frequently (http://www.fallwell.com/selective%20quotation.html) to justify anti-gay attitudes yet they ignore all the other edicts in Leviticus against eating shellfish (lobster, crab etc.), against wearing cloth made of mixed fibre types, that slavery is OK.

Certainly Pagan groups still generally have a bit of growing-up to do at least when it comes to speaking with the media and in some cases working out their philosophy so it makes sense as a whole. But Christians themselves are hardly perfect in this matter either. There are plenty of Christian kooks out there too who don't understand the most basic things about their own faith and who can't speak coherently in public about it either.

[Zephyrstorm]

I agree with Fiamma. Many need to learn to explain what they believe and why they believe in a way that sounds more articulate than what happened here.
Or at least our leaders should be well spoken.

Not many of the average practitioners of any faith or spirituality can express their beliefs very well. There are "feel good" Christians, and Buddhists, and Hindus, and on and on. I hear one of the local Christian radio shows gripe occasionally about their brethren that are just "using" the Bible and God to feel good about themselves.

And this is even more difficult when you are dealing with a religion or spirituality that places an emphasis on Mysteries. Oathbound or not, it's hard to put some of the things that we have sensed and experienced into words. Outsiders can percieve both silence and mystery as an inability to explain, if we aren't careful.

I still think there are ways to be able to articulate what we each believe in a sensible and open way, but it requires a lot of thought and consideration.

[Meadhbh]

If your going to have a public ritual then you can't complain who shows up. You should be perpared for people to have questions after the ritual and if you aren't up to those questions or people going as far as saying nasty things about your ritual than you shouldn't have open rituals. Its as simple as that.

[Fiamma]

I'd like to emphasize something Glory said -- that the vagueness and mishmash approach happens in the Christian community too. Having Christians criticize Pagans for something that they do themselves seems rather hypocritical to me.

If we look at the larger Christian community they have the whole new-age Christian section, the various "dumbing-down" segments that water down their religion for different target audiences, nudists (http://www.naturist-christians.org/), prudes, and everything under the sun that you might want to look for -- it's there somewhere!

Christian groups are notorious for picking and choosing what to believe and what to ignore in their own Holy Bible. For instance, Leviticus is cited frequently (http://www.fallwell.com/selective%20quotation.html) to justify anti-gay attitudes yet they ignore all the other edicts in Leviticus against eating shellfish (lobster, crab etc.), against wearing cloth made of mixed fibre types, that slavery is OK.

Certainly Pagan groups still generally have a bit of growing-up to do at least when it comes to speaking with the media and in some cases working out their philosophy so it makes sense as a whole. But Christians themselves are hardly perfect in this matter either. There are plenty of Christian kooks out there too who don't understand the most basic things about their own faith and who can't speak coherently in public about it either.


This is absolutely true.

I think though, in my experience at least, the reasons seem to differ. Many Christians are convinced that they've got it right and that they already are speaking intelligently about their religion.

Many of the pagans that I've encountered who won't/can't speak intelligently of their religion are of the attitude that being able to explain things reasonably is akin to having to justify oneself, or that it'll make them like Teh Eevul Xians. Which is not the case at all, but they can't say anyhting much more than "Paganism is just about what feels good and what you want." Which is just not acceptable to me.

Lunch break over...have fun kids!

[Libris]

I haven't checked juice for updates in over a week, I think this is one I haven't heard. I'll post back after I listen to it :)

ETA: I haven't listened to it yet, but I read in the above posts that this was an ADF ritual and I have to say, as a member and dedicant that private ADF rituals are very structured and purposeful. The study programs for the ADF are very thorough and require each dedicant to clearly define for themselves their beliefs and understand the ADF's views on ritual, worship and ethical practice, so I'm really surprised that the leader of an ADF ritual would apparently be unable to answer such basic questions clearly. I'll have to listen to this and write back.

ETA2: I'm listening to it now and its pretty sickening... Typically in ADF rituals, especially deities from only one pantheon are worshiped. Welsh, Scottish, Vedic, Dianic, Norse, Irish etc... The main purpose of such rituals are to offer sacrifice (art, food, wine etc...) to one's patrons. This ritual, being public seems to be much more inclusive and does not work in any single pantheon. One of the purposes of ADF is to train members to serve as local clergy for those who want group ritual (ADF and other paths). I think public rituals are structured to be as inclusive as possible (which does IMHO make them loose much of their potency but allows pagans from all paths to participate). Still, it would be really nice if they were able to coherently explain their personal belief system... though I'm camera shy myself so I don't know how coherent I'd be if I were being taped :-/