A Love Letter to Christians

From a Pagan, and with some cautions

I’ve been reading Pagans and Christians in the City: Culture Wars from the Tiber to the Potomac by Stephen Smith. He cites numerous sources for his opinions. While a scholar of history might argue his points about life in Ancient Rome, I certainly don’t have the skill to do so.

It seems the polytheists of the time were a licentious lot. At least the men were. Roman wives were less so - Augustus’ daughter, Julia, aside - and pretty much everyone but married women were available to men for the purpose of relieving their desire. Such desire was considered natural - as long as it was not done to embarrassing excess - and release was considered a sacred offering to the gods. While this aspect isn’t often mentioned in such tomes as Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, it’s one of the things Christians find deeply unpalatable about ancient paganism.

As a Pagan, I agree, although for different reasons.

I'm a soft polytheist [which means I interact with different gods but feel them as connected.] That being said, I honor anyone’s devotion to their deity. I believe our current cultural problems are the result of thinking there's nothing out there that we can’t perceive with our five senses.

This is bad for us psychologically. We are hard-wired to connect with god. The work of Andrew Newberg and Eugene D’Aquili demonstrated that we have a specific place in our brains where we [can] experience a merging of self with the all. I’ve been noticing for over ten years that people treat certain beliefs with the same fervor as a religious evangelist. If we don’t fill that place of wonder and exploration with the good and the beautiful, then something jumps in to take up the space. That something is fragmented and dark. That's why people act as if environmentalism, veganism, socialism, and other isms are religions, and politicians are our priests.

However, putting things besides diety in that space is a poor substitute. It feeds political power without giving any peace or happiness, let alone a genuine understanding of how the world works and what we can accomplish in it. Faith in the goodness of god - or even just something unknown that is bigger, wiser, and better than humans is what will pull us out of this spiral. So by all means Christians, proclaim your devotion to spirit. It’s a blessing for all of us.

I only hope that Christians will not fall into the same trap as those they are trying to displace by suppressing different opinions and experiences.

Having spent some time working toward a Master of Divinity, I’ve done some reading and writing on theology, including modern Pagan theology [yes, that exists.] It’s also been an interest of mine since I was 14 and trying to figure out why my Presbyterian confirmation meant nothing to me. One of my problems with Christianity was that it seemed monotheism took all that was good and assigned it to one god.

This wasn’t original to Christianity. [although I didn’t know that back then] Zoroastrianism did it first - around 650 BCE, dividing good and evil into Ahura Mazda and Angra Manyu. Clearly, the idea is powerful because Zoroastrianism still exists.

It was Judaism that created an agreement between God and humans to follow a specific set of rules. From a theological standpoint that.was an impressive religious innovation. In the ancient world, it’s what tied the Hebrew people together against astounding odds, and continued to do so for thousands of years against profound adversity.

But it was universal redemption, brought by Jesus, that was the theological innovation that made monotheism accessible to non-Jews. The other thing that Judaism and Christianity brought into focus was the importance of the individual. This concept is what eventually eliminated legalized slavery in the Western world.

Place these ideas in one of the most densely populated areas of the time [population density matters in the spread of ideas], and they changed the world.

But all religions have their flaws and Christianity is no exception. Before Christians condemn other religions, they would be well served to look inside their own house and be sure that they are following their own precepts. Jordan Peterson, a psychologist and now public figure, advocates for making sure your own house is in order before trying to help anyone else, and I think that’s good advice. We are limited beings and time is our only capital.

Christians who claim Pagans worship Satan are displaying theological ignorance. Some of it is well-meaning. Some of it comes from fear, and the outcome is no better for Christian communities than it is for the people they summarily expel.

I’ve known far too many Pagans who experienced abuse, pain, and hypocrisy at the hands of Christian parents, and even Christian religious leaders. This behavior is what sent them into the arms of pagan gods. Not everyone who experiences such abuse becomes Pagan, but I’ve heard too many stories like this, especially in the Appalachians and the South.

Another flaw I see in Christianity is the failure to acknowledge the unseen world, or to attribute all experience of that to something evil. This is simply inaccurate. I don’t deny that the unseen world can be dangerous. But good walks there as well as evil, often in the form of angels but also in the form of ancestors, and land spirits. Experiencing and being in communion with such beings, does not by definition, increase the likelihood that one will behave in a way that could be defined as evil.

The gods of Egypt embodied the natural world, with all its terror and darkness, and yet built a civilization that lasted for centuries. The gods of ancient Greece embodied both the good and the bad of humanity. The religious beliefs of the ancient Greeks did not prevent them from developing philosophies that eventually were adopted by Christianity. Augustine took the philosophy of the Greeks and embedded it in Christian practice and belief.

It was Augustine who declared that the myths and stories beloved of the Greco-Roman culture were meaningless lies because he thought Roman rituals were meaningless. [It is debatable whether those rituals were without meaning since they were a mainstay of daily life in the empire.] But myth is no more meaningless than the stories told in the Bible. Both are rich in symbolism and guide us toward how to be the best we can, if we’re willing to listen.

As Joseph Campbell discussed in The Hero With A Thousand Faces, and Dr Peterson points out in Maps of Meaning, myth, fable, and story are paths to understanding ourselves and our place in our culture. Modern Pagans are often creatives. We love stories and myths. And we love telling those stories in art, in song, and in performance.

Story is how culture is shaped, and how we define who we are.

This is what Christians have been pushing out of their cultures in an attempt to resist evil.

Evil is worth resisting. It exists. And no small number of pagans have been influenced by the compelling stories of socialism or feminism, something which I find deeply disturbing. But think of what you cast out or fail to nourish before you evict someone who could be a spiritual resource like Matthieu Pageau.

No wonder you’ve been losing the culture war. It’s time to do better.

Selina Rifkin, M.S., has been to Hades in a handbasket. More than once. This has given her some opinions. Like most of her generation [X] she’s okay with snark. Most days she tries for good writing but the snark and side comments do creep in. She lives with her husband, and is Mother of Cats; four boyz and one cranky gurl. Selina has written The Young Woman’s Goodlife Guide: Things I Wish I’d Known When I Was 20. Or… Learn From My Pain, and How to Train Your Cat: Using a Clicker and Leash to Keep Your Indoor Cat Happy and Healthy. She’s currently working on The Goodlife Guide to Nutrition.