Christian attitudes to Nature

(see also Christians: a spotter's guide)

The Gnostics believed that the world was created by the demiurge and that matter was a trap for our souls which yearn to return to the Divine source.  Grade: E.  Fail.

In contrast to the this, the Orthodox Church believed that nature was good (one of the reasons why they opposed Gnosticism), and actually continued the Jewish custom of aligning its festivals to coincide with the seasons in the Mediterranean.  For example, the date of Easter is the first Sunday after the first full Moon after the Spring Equinox.  They also have nature-related festivals like the blessing of the waters at Epiphany; they love trees; saints like St Seraphim of Sarov who liked to hang out with bears; and their patriarch recently declared polluting the environment to be a sin.  On the downside, the Russian Orthodox Church is currently suppressing a Pagan religion, and seems rather too uncritical of the current government in Russia, which has a very poor environmental record.  They also don't understand that Pagans regard the Divine as immanent in Nature.   Grade: B.  Pass

The Roman Catholic Church tends to view "creation" as being fallen and damaged because of the Fall; but on the plus side they have St Francis of Assisi (patron saint of animals and the environment; author of Brother Sun, Sister Moon).  On the down side,  they disapproved of Teilhard de Chardin, biologist and theologian, and the last Pope excommunicated Matthew Fox who came up with creation spirituality.  Grade: C. Pass.  Could try harder.

Unitarians, UUs and Liberal Quakers, many of whom are pantheists, are often environmental activists.  No talk of dominion or even stewardship here.  Many regard the Divine as immanent in Nature (not too much talk about "creation" and the "Creator" here either). Many embrace process theology. Grade: A.  Distinction.

Protestant attitudes vary from the downright Gnostic all the way to "we are stewards of the world" (which still implies that it somehow belongs to us).  Grade: D.  Fail.

Dominionists, as the name implies, believe that we have dominion over "creation" (and the Rapture's coming soon anyway)  so we can exploit and destroy the environment if we want. They're also deeply misogynistic and homophobic.  Grade: F.  Monumental Fail.

LGBT in HE

A new report by the Equality Challenge Unit says that the higher education sector needs to address sexual orientation and trans-status discrimination.

Based on a survey of 4205 staff and students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland the research, led by Professor Gill Valentine at the University of Leeds, found that institutions provide a positive space for LGBT students.

However, there are still high levels of homophobia and discrimination on campus, a factor that contributes to 20% of LGB and 28.5% of trans students suspending their studies. 33.8% of LGB staff and 41% of trans staff who took part in the research have experienced discrimination and abuse from colleagues.

So it seems that higher education is a relatively safe place to be, but not completely safe.

learning the great stories

Andrew Motion is reported as saying that children should learn the Bible at school (even though he is an atheist). What he actually said was a little more nuanced - he said they should learn the stories from the Bible, the Koran, and the Greek and Roman myths. Certainly - but what about our indigenous literature - that of the Celts (the Tain Bo Cuailnge, Y Gododdin, etc), the Saxons and Norse (the Voluspä, the Hávámál, Gylfaginning, etc)? What of the great Hindu texts like the Mahabharata, Bhagavad Gita, and the Upanishads? Or great Buddhist literature, like The Journey to the West? Or great Sufi texts (The Conference of the Birds, the Rubaiyat)? And so on.

He stipulated the Greek and Roman classics and the Bible because much of English literature is based on them; but future literature will never include stories from other traditions unless they are taught in schools.

Coldharbour Plain

Guest post by Stellar Diggins: A tale of country folk in old Wiltshire....

CHAPTER TWO

Pomona Poste came down to breakfast a little after nine to find the farmhouse utterly deserted, save for a muttering from behind Aunt Awenna Threefold's bedroom door, which she had never so far seen opened. It sounded like: "I saw somethin' NARSTY inna Museum...".  Making her way downstairs to the kitchen, she replaced the kettle on the Aga and made a pot of her precious recaffeinated coffee she had thought to bring with her.

Not liking the look of anything in the cupboards, Pomona was idly flicking through her copy of British Archaeology and waiting for her coffee to cool, when the door banged open and Amairghin Starkadder stomped in and sat down heavily, glaring at her across the table.  Pomona affected not to notice.

A silence ensued, as of the brooding tension between the waiting, round-bellied earth and the burgeoning, ballooning thunderclouded sky in the heat of late harvesting.

"I ha' scranletted a' the way down from Cursus Acre up to Barrowight Hill," said Amairghin Starkadder eventually.  

"Did you, really?" Pomona exclaimed, wondering what on earth scranletting was.

A longer silence followed, broken only by Amairghin munching his way through a bowl of ayurvedic museli.

Pomona sipped her coffee, and perused an article on a neolithic burial of someone who had been shot full of arrows who they were calling The Boscombe Bowman. Finally Amairghin pushed the bowl away from him for Ash Mistcalf the hired man, to 'cletter', as they called it, and began to roll a spliff.

"Ar." He said, affirmatively. Then, after a pause: "Could you a' done that?"

Pomona looked up from her article. "No, Cousin Amairghin, I'm sure I couldn't - and I wouldn't want to, anyway."

'Ar". Amairghin snorted. "I 'spec' you wouldn't, neither. Rather get a site supervisor in, I reckon you would, from Wessex Archaeology, an' a whole team o' diggers. Or maybe they Time Team fellers an' camera crews, an' suchlike."

Amairghin shuddered, then lit up. Then he resumed:

"Hear me, Cousin Pomona - I ha' nursed this sacred landscape like a sick mommet, man an' boy, these thirty year or more. Many's the round barrow I ha' scranletted over, an' many's the Bronze Age burial urn I've re-cremated." He blew a long cloud of green smoke across the table, as if to illustrate.

Pomona did her best to dissemble her mounting sense of horror. These Wiltshire Starkadders were even worse, more backward and ignorant, than her other cousins the Sussex Starkadders that Great Aunt Flora had told her about, before she had reformed them all with what she called The Higher Common Sense. Here they were, scranletting - was that a metal detector by the door, next to Cousin Amairghin's
wellingtons? - prehistoric artefacts on Coldharbour Plain, and - well - destroying them!

"Haven't you heard of The Portable Antiquities Scheme?" Pomona asked. 

Amairghin's eyes narrowed. "Oh, ar. We don' 'ave nuthin' to do with he. Bronze Age bones is for re-cremation, to send 'un back to uns rest, an' their jewellery - well - 'tes ours, ain't it?"

"Yours?!" Pomona declined the spliff Amairghin held out to her, with a wave of her hand. "Don't you think they belong to everybody?"

"Nah. Course not. They'm our ancestors, up Barrowight Hill, look.  They's always been Starkadders on Coldharbour Plain. So the gold torcs and amber beads an' copper alloy bracelets, is our heirlooms. Nobody else's. Not for folk to gawk at in no museum. 'Twould be flyin' in the face o' the ancestors. 'Tes disrespectful.

Amarirghin's brow furrowed in thought as he took another toke. "See here, Cousin Pomona. You'm Robyn Poste's child. You wouldn' sift her ashes out o' the bed o' the River Awen an' put 'em in a peepshow, would you? But you wears her old pentacle. No. 'Tes disrespectful, to do anythin' diff'rent. Jewellery belongs in the family."

Pomona forced a cheery smile at her eldest cousin. "Well, Cousin Amairghin, I certainly don't want your portable antiquities, and I'm not qualified to say how you should farm your land -"

"- sacred landscape," Amairghin interrupted.

"- how to look after your sacred landscape, but just think - if Uncle Dagda were to - go off on a long lecture tour - a very long, international lecture tour - about Honouring The Ancestral Dead, don't you see - the Sarsen Grove round the farm would be yours to - er - scranlett - as much as you liked. In Uncle Dagda's absence, there needn't be another Hereditary Chief Archdruid of Wiltshire."

Amairghin's eyes blazed and his saturnine face split open in a wide, toothy grin. He lurched forward, and seized Pomona's hand. "By the Goddess, Cousin Pomona, I misjudged yer! Would you - could you - talk to the old man about it? He'd never listen to me, but you -" and his voice tailed off as he sat back, drew a long lungful of weed and slowly exhaled, his ruddy countenance beaming like a child's as he
reflected on the possibilities of Pomona's suggestion.

"I'll go and talk to him this minute if you like, said Pomona. "Where would he be this morning?"

"Away with the Quivering Aspen Grove over at Herne Abbot's, picketing they television fashionistas who be feminizing the Long Giant for a wimmin's underwear documentary."

"I'll take the Range Rover, then," said Pomona over her shoulder as she made for the door. "And by the way, Amairghin - a struggling British farmer on an SMR-listed site can make a lot of money out of portable antiquities. More than the Ministry of Defence pays you for scranletting up unexploded bombs. And much more than DEFRA pay you for not immunising your cows against bovine TB. You might even be able to afford to grow some food. "

(TO BE CONTINUED)

Readers wishing to know about the adventures of Flora Poste among the Starkadders of Sussex might want to read the very great Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, of which I and the author of the above are both devoted fans.

Christians: a spotter's guide

Many Pagans seem unfamiliar with the different types of Christian, so it seemed like a good idea to write a spotter's guide.  You see, they're not all mad fundagelicals who eat Pagans...

Denominations

Episcopalians - American version of Anglicans.  Mostly liberal, welcoming to gay members and clergy.  Some acknowledge other religions as valid.  Their attitude to evangelism is that actions speak louder than words.  Some, such as Grace Church in San Francisco, have said that the mythology of other pre-Christian religions is just as valid as Hebrew mythology. 

Methodists - Most UK Methodists that I have met are very liberal and open-minded.  Started in the 19th century.  Not Calvinist, i.e. they don't believe in predestination.

Baptists - A bit more evangelical, but still unlikely to turn up on your doorstep or leaflet you in the street.  Tend to believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God, and that salvation is conferred by acceptance of Jesus as your personal saviour.  Started in the 17th century.

United Reformed (Result of a merger between the Congregationalists and Presbyterians in 1972).  Some very liberal & LGBT-friendly, but mostly believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God, and that salvation is conferred by acceptance of Jesus as your personal saviour.

Anglicans (Church of England) - Huge spectrum of belief among Anglicans, but mostly a formal liturgy with similar beliefs to other Protestants.  Cruising for a huge schism over the issue of LGBT Christians.  Have just decided that they should be more evangelical.  Oh dear.  Founded by Henry VIII when he decided that Anne Boleyn was more likely to produce a male heir than Katharine of Aragon.

Emerging church - May or may not be a good thing - no-one seems able to agree on what emerging church actually means.  Some of it looks liberal and some of it looks evangelical.  Anyway, it's postmodern.

Unitarians - Not exactly Christian as they mostly believe that Jesus was just a man and that God is One (not three).  Don't believe in original sin.  Many Unitarians identify as Christian; others are more inclined towards humanism, Eastern religions, and/or Paganism.  Many are pantheists, but others are deists.  (NB in America, Unitarians merged with Universalists in 1961 to form the UUA.)

Orthodox - Fabulous liturgy and music, apparently unchanged since the fourth century.  Lots of lovely incense.  Believe that God is both immanent and transcendent.  Don't believe in original sin or penal substitution theology.  They've known since the 4th century that the creation story was a metaphor.  But don't have women priests, and regard homosexuality as a sin.  Have married priests but seem rather keen on the perpetual virginity of the Virgin Mary.  When they do missionary work, it tends to be a lot more subtle than the other lot, as they don't want to destroy the other culture.

Catholics - The infallibility of the Pope has only been Catholic doctrine since 1875, and the celibate priests thing was only introduced in the 12th century.  But they still have  a huge hierarchy and loads of money and a history of persecuting heretics, free-thinkers, and scientists.  So the Church is pretty bad but some of the actual Catholics are pretty liberal, and invented liberation theology and stuff.  Tend to send missionaries overseas to annoy other faiths, rather than actually turning up on your doorstep.

Old Catholics - ceded from the Roman Catholic church in the 1870s in protest at the doctrine of papal infallibility.  Tend to be pretty liberal and open-minded, and not exclusivist.

Liberal Catholics - a Christian-flavoured form of Theosophy.  They believe that there is a body of doctrine and mystical experience common to all the great religions of the world and which cannot be claimed as the exclusive possession of any.

Moving within the orbit of Christianity and regarding itself as a distinctive Christian church it nevertheless holds that the other great religions of the world are also divinely inspired and that all proceed from a common source. (Wikipedia)

Metropolitan Community Church - church for LGBT people and their allies.  Very liberal, but still affirms the Nicene Creed.  Generally respectful of other religions.

Quakers (Religious Society of Friends) - there are two wings of Quakerism, liberal and conservative.  The liberals are very similar to Unitarians; many of them are humanists, and there are Quaker Pagans.  The conservatives are Christians, but still peace-loving honest folk.

Theological and social positions

Distributism - a rather interesting form of anarchism invented by Catholics.

Universalism - in its original sense this meant that everyone was saved regardless of whether they had accepted Christianity.  This is also known as apocatastasis.  In America, the Universalist denomination merged with Unitarians in 1961 to form Unitarian Universalism.  Nowadays, the Universalist element of the name seems to mean the idea that all religions are different perspectives on the same underlying truth.

Exclusivism - the idea that only one religion can be true, and the rest contain only partial truth.  Not all Christians believe that Christianity is the only truth.

Penal substitution theology - the idea that God was very angry with humanity, so he sent his only Son to stand in for humanity and be sacrificed to appease his wrath.  Not all Christians believe in this; it was formulated in the 11th century by Anselm of Canterbury as the 'satisfaction theory', and then taken up again by the protestants in the 16th century.  The alternative is Christus Victor theology - the idea that Christ's death and resurrection represents divine conflict and victory over the hostile powers that hold humanity in subjection.

Fundamentalism - the idea that the Bible is literally true.  The term is derived from a late nineteenth-century book called the 12 Fundamentals.

Evangelicalism - the drive to convert people of other faiths and none, in the belief that Christianity is the only truth, or a superior truth.  Tend to be charismatic and happy-clappy, but not necessarily.

Original sin - the idea that we all inherit our sinful natures from Adam and Eve, and that we are born sinful.

The Phoenix Affirmations - a call to repentance from ideas of fundamentalism and evangelising, and a series of affirmations about respecting other faiths, the environment, and other people.  Very cool.

Queer theology - amazingly cool theology explaining that God really does love LGBT people

Liberation theology - emphasizes the Christian mission to bring justice to the poor and oppressed, particularly through political activism. Its theologians consider sin the root source of poverty, recognizing sin as exploitative capitalism and class war by the rich against the poor.

Process theology - the idea that the Divine changes and evolves.  Key thinkers: A N Whitehead, Charles Hartshorne.  Has influenced some Pagan thinkers.

Omega Point - idea dreamed up by evolutionary biologist and Catholic theologian Teilhard de Chardin; basically the point at which the Godhead and the world are reunited.  Interestingly, chimes in with the reunion of Shakti and Shiva in Hindu theology, and the reunion of Yahweh and the Shekhinah in Jewish theology.  The idea of the Omega Point influenced Oberon Zell in his formulation of Gaea Theory (which predated Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis).

Creation spirituality - a mystical philosophy that celebrates the universe, emphasizes creativity as a key component of the universe, and believes that all people have a divine creative impulse.

Gnosticism - the idea that the physical world is a trap created by the Devil or a demiurge to separate humans from the Divine Reality.  This was anathema to orthodox Christians who believe that the world was created by God.  Gnosticism is completely the opposite of Pagan views of the world, because Pagans do not believe that we are exiles from some other realm; so whilst we may sympathise with the Gnostics and Cathars for being persecuted, their ideas are utterly alien to a Pagan world-view.

You are all individuals - finally, it's important to remember that Christians have access to teh interwebs too, so they can research other forms of Christian theology and form their own opinions; just because an individual Christian is a member of a particular denomination, doesn't necessarily mean they are signed up to its doctrines.  For example, research has shown that even among evangelicals, there is a broad spectrum of views about LGBT people, from complete acceptance to outright hostility.

Related posts:

• The privatisation of religion
  
• Theoretical models of Paganism
• No to bigotry, yes to life
• religions as software
  
• Spot the difference
  

Pagan charities?

We don't need specifically Pagan charities for general causes that are already being addressed by other charities, because:

• we're not trying to attract converts by saying "Look how compassionate we are; we're the best religion"
  
• why replicate the work of large secular charities? It would only increase administration costs and decrease the amount that actually reaches the people who need help
• we're not big enough to organise our own charities

Perhaps we do need self-administered charity audits to demonstrate that we are "doing our bit". We often get flak in interfaith contexts because there aren't any specifically Pagan charities.

We may need Pagan charities for causes that we care about that no-one else cares about; and these are the charities that Pagans have started.

Bus slogan generator

Make your own bus slogan!

There probably isn't room for my suggestion.

(Hat-tip to Steve Hayes)

agnostic bus

I donated five pounds to the Atheist Bus campaign on the grounds that I am irritated by all the evangelical Christian propaganda on public transport. A Christian friend of mine also donated on the grounds that the advert would promote discussion. Well, it certainly has, but perhaps not quite the sort of thing he had in mind.

Here's my suggestion: "There may or may not be a Divine Being or Beings, and they're probably just the anthropomorphic interfaces of vast cosmic processes, but anyway, they're on their own spiritual journey and their goals may or may not coincide with yours. They certainly can't be bothered to arrange for you to fry for all eternity on a hot griddle, so you can stop all that worrying."

But perhaps the above is not as snappy as the Atheist Bus.

Liz Williams suggests:

GOD: SHE'S NOT JUST AN OLD BLOKE WITH A BEARD, YOU KNOW!

Another suggestion from KH:

"Zeus is going to kick your pussy God's ass and then shag your women!"

Maybe we could just have a poster on the side of buses that reads: "Paganism: the religion where enjoying yourself is SACRED." Except that we don't believe in evangelising.

(Also available in Judaism, where it's a sin to refuse a pleasure, apparently, and it's requirement to make love on the Sabbath eve; and Unitarianism, which celebrates being alive.)

All this talk of buses reminds me of the short story by E M Forster, The Celestial Omnibus, which you can hear read aloud at the Library of Babel.

The title-story is a whimsical piece of fantasy which again uses a child as the means to unmask unimaginative adult pragmatism. “The Celestial Omnibus” starts with a young boy who is perplexed by the sign-post in his Surbiton street that says “To Heaven” and points to a cul-de-sac. Running up the blank alley one evening he encounters an omnibus which takes him up to a paradise where he meets all the characters from fiction and mythology that his parents and their friends talk about but do not really believe in.

~ Literary Encyclopedia

Criteria for theology

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

~ John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn

I think any explanation of the nature of the universe should be elegant and the simplest possible solution to the problem (so it could actually be quite complex, whilst still being the simplest possible explanation). Physicists often talk about elegance and simplicity as criteria for their theories about how the world works. Also I think we should distinguish between theories (large bodies of complex reasoning backed by copious amounts of evidence) and hypotheses (propositions about how the world works that have yet to be proven).

Theological explanations should also be internally consistent and logical (even if the logic is different from conventional forms of logic), as well as consistent with the fact that there are millions of people with a different explanation. Pagan theological formulations usually take into account the plurality of religious beliefs; Christian theological formulations signally fail in this regard.  For example, most Pagans say that other people are following their own unique spiritual path in their own cultures; there's no drive to convert others to Paganism (Jews and Sikhs also believe this).  Most Christians believe that Christ is the only means of accessing the Divine, and many believe that non-Christians won't be "saved" (this fails to explain why other faiths are so satisfying for their adherents).  Theologians should also practice triangulation, comparing their explanations with those of other religions and philosophies, and with science, to see if they still make sense.

Many theologians claim that theology is resistant to logic because the Divine is paradoxical: but   paradoxes can often be resolved by looking at the thing from a different perspective - like the old chestnut about "God is no where and God is now here".

a little light reading

Four interesting projects....

• Badger's Bible Project, in which an atheist reads and comments on the Bible
• Peter on Genesis, in which a Quaker Pagan reads Genesis and Exodus
  
• Blogging the Bible, in which David Plotz, who is Jewish, finds out what's really in there
• Bill Darlison, a Unitarian minister, also reads the Bible (for the 14th time)
  

Badger says:

So the Lord said, “I will destroy Man whom I have created from the face of the Earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I am sorry I have made them.” - Genesis 6:7

So, God gets pissed at Man and decides not only to kill every single person on the planet (even the newborn babies who are, one would think, blameless), but he also decides to off all the animals. Well, except fish, I would guess. They were probably quite pleased!

Anyhow, flood happens. God has a grand ole time going along undoing everything he did. Is it just me, or does he strike you as a frustrated gamer, always reloading Sims from a save point, after having done horrible things to his Sims?

Actually the Flood was caused by Ishtar when she was suffering from PMT. See Tablet 11 of The Epic of Gilgamesh. I am also mystified as to why anyone would worship a being who is described as sending plagues and floods on innocent people. Anyway, it’s all a metaphor…

Peter says:

The Bible was written by writers, and I’ve long felt that much of what those writers wanted to say has been lost, crushed, twisted, and sometimes outright perverted by later so-called “Bible based” traditions. All religious sentiments aside, as a fellow writer I feel it is my calling and my sacred duty to read through the text, not for comfort or for inspiration or for edification, but simply to hear what it is they were trying to say.

David says:

This is not a story they taught me at Temple Sinai's Hebrew School in 1980: The founding fathers of the 12 tribes of Israel lie, breach a contract, encourage pagans to convert to Judaism only in order to incapacitate them for slaughter, murder some innocents and enslave others, pillage and profiteer, and then justify it all with an appeal to their sister's defiled honor.

Bill says:

I am not against the Bible. I am just against the idea that this book – or any other book, including the Koran or the Book of Mormon or whatever – is a special revelation from God. It is probably the most irrational, dangerous and divisive idea that currently infects the human psyche. And, as Art Lester said to me last month, ‘The book-believers are the ones who will destroy the world.’ Sadly, Art might just be right. And it is our duty to challenge the book-believers, by fostering a new kind of religious consciousness with the contrary message that knowledge and wisdom are the result of human thought, human experience, reflection, reason, scientific endeavour. They do not drop down from heaven fully formed, nor are they are not the preserve of one nation or one religion or one period in history. And they are certainly not to be found in one book. To suggest that they are is to turn works of literature into loaded guns.

Bill is the author of The Gospel and the Zodiac, which puts forward the idea that the Jesus mythos was originally an initiatory mystery based on the symbolism of the Zodiac. Neat idea.

If I was going to do a Bible-blogging project, I'd start with something as near to the original as I could get: the Hebrew Tanakh in English. Alternatively, I would blog about a book that I might enjoy reading, like the Tao Te Ching or the T’ai Hsüan Ching.

Merry....

Ornamental Yule Goats made of straws, used for Yule decoration in Scandinavia.

Happy Winter Solstice (yes Virginia, axial tilt is the reason for the season)

Io Saturnalia!

Bona Dies Natalis Solis Invicti

Merry Yule

Happy Modranecht

Happy Kwanzaa

Happy Hannukkah

Happy HumanLight

Merry Christmas

Season's Greetings

Happy Sanghamitta

Happy Hanukwanzmas

Joyeux Noël

Fröhliche Weihnacht

and a huge variety of other fascinating festivals!

theoretical models of Paganism

I was wondering if Heelas and Woodhead's four categories of congregational religion were useful for thinking about Pagan and related traditions too.

Some voudouisants stress the all-powerfulness of the loa and the relative powerlessness of humans — could this be an example of a religion of difference?  And when it really focusses on experience of the loa in possession, could that be an example of a religion of experiential difference? Many Pagans speak of being chosen by a deity (and having little choice about which deity picked them) — this also seems to stress the relative powerlessness of humans in the face of divine prerogatives.

Some reconstructionists stress the similarity of deities to humanity, do not practice magic, and stress the importance of tradition — could this be an example of a religion of humanity?

Many other Pagans stress the importance of inner experience and cultivate individuality — could this be an example of a religion of experiential humanity?