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Includes bibliographical references. The problem was that she was being asked a question that is rarely discussed in contemporary Paganism. For Pagans, however, practice is at the center of their religious lives; shared practice, not shared belief, is what ties groups together.
Nor is Paganism the only minority religion in the West to emphasize practice over belief. Jewish communities can be equally diverse, with some practitioners primarily attending synagogue because of a belief in God, and others to honor their ancestors and their culture.
Similarly, attendees of Hindu devotional rites may hold a wide variety of beliefs about what the proceedings mean. In all these cases, group participation in ritual helps to maintain a community of mutual support.
Religion becomes less about what people believe about the divine or the nature of the world, and more about how they behave. The Pagan group with whom I do seasonal celebrations is typical. In many ways, we have a common worldview: many of us work in education, and we have similar political commitments and share a love of the outdoors. Yet we hardly discuss our metaphysical beliefs, and on the rare occasions that we do, there is little common ground.
To another, the gods are objectively existing beings with whom we can have a relationship, but who are evolving and changing just as human beings are. But the question is also difficult because Paganism is so diverse. As in the group I celebrate with, practitioners may hold radically different beliefs about the nature of the divine, the possibility of an afterlife, the meaning of shared ritual actions, and other seemingly key religious issues, all while relating to a single body of liturgy and ritual.
Contemporary Paganism includes hundreds of groups and traditions, each with their own ritual practices. Wicca is the largest contemporary Pagan tradition and in itself contains dozens of lineages. Further, not all Pagans belong to traditions. Pagans can practice as solitaries by themselves or eclectics drawing from many traditions. Many left the religions of their birth due to theological and ethical disagreements or, in some cases, traumatic experiences.
As a result, Pagans can be suspicious of organized religion and of anything that smacks of dogma or prescriptive doctrine. Standardized definitions of Paganism strike some Pagans as a threat to the authenticity and spontaneity of their religious practice. Pagans experience divinity in the physical world. Animists see a spirit or soul in all things or sometimes, all natural things , and may or may not acknowledge a unifying deity.
Pagans honor multiple gods and goddesses in their religious practice. Others are hard polytheists and understand the gods as individual beings, separate and unique in the same way that human beings are. Accordingly, Pagans often celebrate natural cycles and may be passionate environmentalists. The body and sexuality are treated as a sacred part of nature. See also ecotheology. Pagan identity comes from the practice of ritual. Pagan rituals often employ drumming; dance; ceremonial fires; incense; physical representations of earth, air, fire, and water; or other sensory elements.
They emphasize intuition and knowledge felt in the body. Many Pagans believe that ritual acts performed with intention can alter consciousness, and therefore, reality.
Such rituals function similarly to prayer in other religions. Pagans who practice magick often refer to themselves as witches or magicians. Pagan ethical principles often focus on relationships, and ethics are tailored to individual situations. Virtues and values are considered more important than inflexible rules. Celebration, community service, creativity, harmony, and love are often emphasized.
Pagans who look to ancient warrior traditions, such as Germanic and Celtic cultures, may instead stress honor, truth, courage, and fidelity. Pagans usually consider the traditions of other religions to be as potentially legitimate as their own. No one spiritual path can be right for everyone because people have different spiritual needs. Rather, they are emergent patterns of behavior and belief that I have observed in my fifteen years in the contemporary Pagan community— commonalities that cut across lines of group and tradition.
I do not intend this list to be employed as a litmus test for whether a group or individual is Pagan. Many Pagan groups may share only five or six of these qualities, and which five or six will vary from group to group. Despite some genuinely deep theological differences within the Pagan community, these recurring qualities help to distinguish Pagan traditions as a group from other new religious movements, such as the New Age.
Paganism has already served as a provocative dialogue partner for progressive Christians and Jews around issues of environmentalism and sexuality; what might Pagans and Buddhists, Pagans and Mormons, or Pagans and Muslims have to say to each other? This introduction to contemporary Pagan theology—or more properly, theologies—is not meant to be definitive, nor can it ever be. The strength of contemporary Pagan theology is that it constantly evolves.
Theology—the study of deity—is something we do, a practice by which we grow in understanding of our relationships with the divine, with other human beings, and with the world. It is not a matter of mere theory, but a process that calls us to make connections between reason and experience, between history and contemporary life, between our own practices and those of others.
In search of authentic spiritual experience, contemporary Pagans have focused on ritual, with effective results. Yet in its suspicion of organized religion and dogma, Paganism has not always recognized the reciprocal relationship of practice and belief: practices arise out of attitudes, and beliefs arise from the experience of practice.
Discussions of contemporary Pagan belief need not end in routinization and the creation of doctrine. Rather, Pagan theology can include expressions of our most sacred encounters, the lingering impressions of our holiest experiences.
Remaining open to new encounters with the divine, Pagans seek to retain access to mystery: experiential knowledge of the sacred that changes from individual to individual, from time to time, and from culture to culture. The wisdom of Pagan theology is in its flexibility, its willingness to honor and remember the past while seeking to engage the present moment. Introduction xv Associating theological terms with Christianity, Pagans have sometimes resisted the entire idea of Pagan theology.
Contemporary Paganism is only now beginning to develop a body of theological literature, a process that requires synthesizing the inheritance of ancient religions with modern ethical and spiritual understandings. Sadly, there is not space to explore ancient theologies here. Instead, this book will create a small intellectual bridge between the ancient world and the present by helping readers learn basic theological terms in a contemporary Pagan context.
Becoming a Theologian I have an academic background in religious studies and theology. As long as I only did theology by reading books and writing papers, though, I never considered myself to be a theologian. Around the same time, I enrolled in massage therapy school and learned or perhaps remembered how to truly be present in my body.
In my Craft tradition, the body holds a connection to the primal past that all humans share. Culture and technology have changed radically since the Stone Age, but the realities of the human body remain the same.
In ritual, I learned to engage the natural resources of my body, first to understand what it is to be human, and through the human, to also know divinity. In the midst of the many life changes that followed, I found my theological voice. The class was more than an intellectual exercise, though. It was an expression of the questions I had grappled with in my spiritual life, and an invitation for my students to struggle similarly, and perhaps even come to different answers.
I am also a Pagan theologian— not because I write books about theology, but because my experiments in belief and practice have given me a life infused with sacred presence. I became a theologian the first time I tried to explain the lived experience of my religion to someone else. If you are a Pagan, I hope this book will help you elaborate on your personal theology and that of your community.
And if you are a practitioner of another religion or of no religion at all, I hope that this exploration of an alternative religious path will both challenge and deepen your own spirituality.
How to Use This Book Since theology is an activity, readers are invited to try on the role of theologian. Each chapter includes suggestions for exercises and experiments to help readers explore Pagan theological concepts Activities.
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