Many apologies for the delay in response. I was out of town, but this is an awesome conversation that I appreciate hugely and I have not forgotten it.
In liberal churches I think a lot of the huggy talky share-your-story-handholdy stuff is an attempt to introduce some feeling of community into the whole thing, but because anyone CAN show up, it makes me uncomfortable. Not just because I have social anxiety, and not just because my own religious practise tends to be more traditional and less huggy, but because anyone and everyone could be there and I don't know who I am sharing my story with.
Eeeeeyeah, I can see that. I think in your position I wouldn't be in super-duper-sharing mode, either.
In a tribal religion (like Judaism, and most pre-Christian pagan religions) everyone who has been born or adopted into the tribe belongs to the tribe, whether they believe in anything or not.
That belief matters is one of the big differences between Christianity (especially Protestant Christianity) and Judaism and also one of the big differences between tribal paganism and Neo-Paganism. That is actually one of the things Neo-Paganism derives from the fact that it is a post-Christian religion and that almost everyone who is a Neo-Pagan is a convert from a nominally Christian or culturally Jewish family who has grown up their whole life long with the belief = religion equation.
I thought this was really interesting, because for some definitions of "belief" it fits my experience, and for some it doesn't. I think if we define "beliefs" as "values," it fits perfectly. It matters to our group what you believe, because it matters to the people you're circling with whether you respect their freedom to decide certain things (such as how to initiate, or whom to be in a relationship with, or what gender to identify with if any, or whether to continue a pregnancy, etc.).
If you define it as "religious beliefs," though... it ceases to matter at all. We have a wide spectrum from atheists (of whom I think there are at least two or three, myself included) to people who specialize in dealing with ghosts to a woman who talks to fairies and another man who talks to a dragon that tells him about the future. As far as what we believe is going on around us and which stories are true, there's a really wide divergence.
I used to think that was just because orthopraxy matters more to Neo-Pagans than orthodoxy, but one of our priests sent me an article via email a bit back that changed how I looked at it. It's about how Neo-Pagan religions were cobbled together in a time when diversity couldn't be escaped, so they're frequently built to survive in a different environment than religions whose origins lie in a time when you could trust that your neighbor and the guy across the street and even the people across town probably believed more or less the same stuff you did. Because of that, being able to handle diversity can be as important to the basic nature of a lot of Neo-Pagan traditions as resisting diversity can be to a lot of monotheist traditions. So while sitting next to a homophobe in a Christian church might not be a huge problem in that circumstance, circling with one in a Neo-Pagan kind of environment prompts a lot more questions as to what the hell that person is even doing there.
This is not to say that Neo-Pagan individuals (or even Neo-Pagan groups) are always going to be better about these things than older monotheist traditions. There are too many Dianic groups for "women born women" and too many gender essentialists and heteronormativity in general (because hey, fertility cults, it's an easy pitfall) for me to say that. Wanted to give that disclaimer. Practicing a religion whose values and customs are shaped by the expectation of diversity doesn't mean members themselves always have the tools to handle it.
Unfortunately, it has the effect of forcing people who need the mystical practise to feel like they have actually done anything worshipful to make this choice between politics and fellowship and study or mysticism and getting out of your talky brain and the stress release that comes with that, which is, if you have this kind of neurological wiring--and I do think that neurological wiring has a lot to do with it--a TREMENDOUS stress release. If I can get up into that part of my brain and stay there for an hour, I may or may not be tired afterwards, but I feel so much BETTER.
I hear that. It's almost certainly more vital to you than to me, but it's also more important to me than almost any other atheists I know.
It made my handfasting interesting, because I wanted the ceremonial experience and I wanted to have the energy that I look for from rituals, but without invocation of or salutes to deities that we don't believe in. It turned out great, though, because the only blessings we needed were from each other and the community that loves us and we had that in abundance. For our group, a group that's based more on shared values and support of our common humanity than orthodox beliefs about the material world or the supernatural, this worked beautifully. I don't think that kind of arrangement would have worked in a group that's united in a different way, though.
Even a lot of atheists are sort of thrown that we had a religious commitment ceremony, because they don't always know what religious practice does aside from act as a vehicle for faith, so they don't know what could possibly be there for anybody without faith. I have a need for religious practice even though I've come to be comfortable with the idea that the stories are stories, but the practice I have doesn't happen to be one that forces me to choose between having the ritual I want and the community I want.
I picked my religious practice in large part because I like the religion as a cultural system, but if Neo-Pagans didn't show signs of working on the heteronormativity and weird gender stuff (which, from what I've seen, the Neo-Pagan community has been pretty responsive to), I absolutely would ditch them in a heartbeat. What I need is so tied up with common values that even if practicing with homophobes or transphobes or misogynists could still work for some people (because it leaves the thing they're after largely untouched), it undermines my whole reason for being there.
I need to connect with other people as much as I think some people need to feel a connection with a deity. I used to think I fell into the latter category until I visited a mosque in religion class and realized that I loved performing salat because I liked praying with the Muslims and not because I liked praying to Allah. (As you can see I would make a very poor Muslim.)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
chiming
no subject
Date: 2011-08-06 09:29 pm (UTC)From:In liberal churches I think a lot of the huggy talky share-your-story-handholdy stuff is an attempt to introduce some feeling of community into the whole thing, but because anyone CAN show up, it makes me uncomfortable. Not just because I have social anxiety, and not just because my own religious practise tends to be more traditional and less huggy, but because anyone and everyone could be there and I don't know who I am sharing my story with.
Eeeeeyeah, I can see that. I think in your position I wouldn't be in super-duper-sharing mode, either.
In a tribal religion (like Judaism, and most pre-Christian pagan religions) everyone who has been born or adopted into the tribe belongs to the tribe, whether they believe in anything or not.
That belief matters is one of the big differences between Christianity (especially Protestant Christianity) and Judaism and also one of the big differences between tribal paganism and Neo-Paganism. That is actually one of the things Neo-Paganism derives from the fact that it is a post-Christian religion and that almost everyone who is a Neo-Pagan is a convert from a nominally Christian or culturally Jewish family who has grown up their whole life long with the belief = religion equation.
I thought this was really interesting, because for some definitions of "belief" it fits my experience, and for some it doesn't. I think if we define "beliefs" as "values," it fits perfectly. It matters to our group what you believe, because it matters to the people you're circling with whether you respect their freedom to decide certain things (such as how to initiate, or whom to be in a relationship with, or what gender to identify with if any, or whether to continue a pregnancy, etc.).
If you define it as "religious beliefs," though... it ceases to matter at all. We have a wide spectrum from atheists (of whom I think there are at least two or three, myself included) to people who specialize in dealing with ghosts to a woman who talks to fairies and another man who talks to a dragon that tells him about the future. As far as what we believe is going on around us and which stories are true, there's a really wide divergence.
I used to think that was just because orthopraxy matters more to Neo-Pagans than orthodoxy, but one of our priests sent me an article via email a bit back that changed how I looked at it. It's about how Neo-Pagan religions were cobbled together in a time when diversity couldn't be escaped, so they're frequently built to survive in a different environment than religions whose origins lie in a time when you could trust that your neighbor and the guy across the street and even the people across town probably believed more or less the same stuff you did. Because of that, being able to handle diversity can be as important to the basic nature of a lot of Neo-Pagan traditions as resisting diversity can be to a lot of monotheist traditions. So while sitting next to a homophobe in a Christian church might not be a huge problem in that circumstance, circling with one in a Neo-Pagan kind of environment prompts a lot more questions as to what the hell that person is even doing there.
This is not to say that Neo-Pagan individuals (or even Neo-Pagan groups) are always going to be better about these things than older monotheist traditions. There are too many Dianic groups for "women born women" and too many gender essentialists and heteronormativity in general (because hey, fertility cults, it's an easy pitfall) for me to say that. Wanted to give that disclaimer. Practicing a religion whose values and customs are shaped by the expectation of diversity doesn't mean members themselves always have the tools to handle it.
Unfortunately, it has the effect of forcing people who need the mystical practise to feel like they have actually done anything worshipful to make this choice between politics and fellowship and study or mysticism and getting out of your talky brain and the stress release that comes with that, which is, if you have this kind of neurological wiring--and I do think that neurological wiring has a lot to do with it--a TREMENDOUS stress release. If I can get up into that part of my brain and stay there for an hour, I may or may not be tired afterwards, but I feel so much BETTER.
I hear that. It's almost certainly more vital to you than to me, but it's also more important to me than almost any other atheists I know.
It made my handfasting interesting, because I wanted the ceremonial experience and I wanted to have the energy that I look for from rituals, but without invocation of or salutes to deities that we don't believe in. It turned out great, though, because the only blessings we needed were from each other and the community that loves us and we had that in abundance. For our group, a group that's based more on shared values and support of our common humanity than orthodox beliefs about the material world or the supernatural, this worked beautifully. I don't think that kind of arrangement would have worked in a group that's united in a different way, though.
Even a lot of atheists are sort of thrown that we had a religious commitment ceremony, because they don't always know what religious practice does aside from act as a vehicle for faith, so they don't know what could possibly be there for anybody without faith. I have a need for religious practice even though I've come to be comfortable with the idea that the stories are stories, but the practice I have doesn't happen to be one that forces me to choose between having the ritual I want and the community I want.
I picked my religious practice in large part because I like the religion as a cultural system, but if Neo-Pagans didn't show signs of working on the heteronormativity and weird gender stuff (which, from what I've seen, the Neo-Pagan community has been pretty responsive to), I absolutely would ditch them in a heartbeat. What I need is so tied up with common values that even if practicing with homophobes or transphobes or misogynists could still work for some people (because it leaves the thing they're after largely untouched), it undermines my whole reason for being there.
I need to connect with other people as much as I think some people need to feel a connection with a deity. I used to think I fell into the latter category until I visited a mosque in religion class and realized that I loved performing salat because I liked praying with the Muslims and not because I liked praying to Allah. (As you can see I would make a very poor Muslim.)