Dr. John Young                                                                                                             4/6/08

Unitarian Universalist Church of Jacksonville

 

Earth-Based Spirituality

 

 

The vast majority of humanity’s history was prehistoric and pre-literate; we know about it through archeology rather than scriptures or written documents. For instance, the Venus of Willendorf, on your Order of Service cover, is a goddess sculpture found near Melk, Germany, and determined to be about 20,000 years old. Riane Eisler in her book, The Chalice and the Blade, made a vivid case a generation ago that the Western world had a vast pre-history that was not patriarchal, authoritarian, or particularly hierarchical. Presenting the ancient flowering of Crete as its final climax, Eisler pointed out that these ancient European traditions contained much wisdom that might make us more civilized if we returned to them. Combined with the simultaneous explosion of women’s liberation in America, goddess worship or neo-paganism provided for many a theological and her-story [as opposed to his-story] foundation for believing that women not only deserved equality and empowerment but that they could and did represent the superior wisdom and virtue found in the pre-Christian wisdom of the pagan traditions.

 

The religious practices that preceded the present world religions focused on the seasons of the year and the stages of our lives, and were clearly nature-centered. These ideas and attitudes of the neo-pagans seemed attractive to people with growing environmental and ecological consciousness. As Thoreau said, “in wildness was the preservation of the world.” Nature seemed to be what we needed to return to in the face of technological and organizational forces getting out of control. Pagan’s exuberant embrace of nature and individuality were attractive. It didn’t hurt that being pagan annoyed the traditional power structures.

 

A third attractive element was that pagan traditions included not only ancient cultures and rites but also contemporary native peoples throughout the world. Becoming pagan potentially meant sweat lodges and ecstatic consumption with the Native Americans, the embrace of Chinese folk remedies, Mayan and African dances and masks, Australian aboriginal peoples, scary Voodoo ceremonies, and the excitement of Wiccan white witchcraft. It was a way of deeply respecting the indigenous traditions that we could all see were becoming endangered. Neo-paganism was a way of getting back to our human roots. People who liked to dress up as medieval knights or Egyptian priests, to participate in rites with ancient lineages around a roaring fire or become priestesses or priests after a couple of week-ends found a home in neo-paganism.

 

Our Unitarian Universalist denomination got involved with the pagans. A generation ago, we added a seventh principle to our UUA Principles: “respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.” This principle was common ground for scientific rationalists and romantic pagans. Both wanted to celebrate ecological consciousness and to recognize humanity’s natural place in the world rather than the traditional Western mistake of considering mankind to be theologically dominant in an aggressive male God’s scheme of things.

 

In the early 1990s, Unitarian Universalists added a sixth tradition to our traditions: “Spiritual teachings of Earth-centered traditions that celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.” The debate during the three years of democratic confirmation was often a battle with some of the scientists and humanists, mostly male and older, being afraid that adding this tradition would mislead people into joining us who were superstitious, irrational, or lost in romantic nonsense. Many of strongest proponents for including earth-centered spirituality were female, young, or transparently sub-cultural, and they saw this step as a way to end patriarchy, show appropriate respect for native peoples, and get UUs past their sterile head trips. A clear majority of Unitarian Universalists embraced earth-centered spirituality as part of our movement, and many of our congregations added a Unitarian Universalist Pagan or CUUPS group.

 

Our Unitarian Universalist movement has been working diligently for generations to be inclusive. The danger with wide-open inclusion is that some people will join who think that we are simply an anything goes, make-your-own religion, a no-limits spiritual community. That is simply not so. The dividing line has always been and will always be that members need to be and to remain rational, responsible, and mutually respectful, and that they need to perceive Unitarian Universalism as their primary religion despite the obvious varieties of our spiritual practices and political and economic beliefs. Every Unitarian Universalist congregation contains scientific humanists, liberal Christians and Jews, practicing Buddhists, and neo-pagans, among others. Each of us commits ourselves to supporting our UU principles and traditions with their time, talents, and money, all UUs with a variety of spiritual practices.

 

Our national denomination began a year or so ago to decertify many of its affiliate groups because they seemed to have proven themselves to be unwilling to play by these rules. Our own congregation has had the practice over the years of welcoming many groups to rent our space, sometimes as a public service because groups were unwelcome elsewhere. However, our own UU sub-groups who do not pay rent, were and are supposed to be primarily UUCJ members with clear UUCJ leadership and an unwavering sense of commitment to our congregation. Very recently, the UUCJ Board decided that this focus had been lost among some of the pagan participants here, and so they set up an earth-centered group within our religious exploration programs for adults, and they made clear that other pagan groups, whose connections with our congregation were tenuous at best, would need to begin to pay regular rental rates for the use of our space. UUCJ is certainly pagan friendly, but it is not a free meeting place for whatever people feel like doing.

 

Internet statistics suggest that tribal religions make up 4% of the world’s population and that Chinese folk religionists make up another 6% of the world. Given the prevalence of pre-Hindu peoples in India and many who mix Christianity and tribal religions in Africa and Latin America, this may be too small a proportion that are identified as traditionally pagan. Their estimate is that only 1/5 of 1% of the world’s people are neo-pagan and that a full 1/3 of those are in the United States. If these are accurate that would make neo-pagans the 6th largest non-Christian religious group after Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and Unitarian Universalists, who are more like 1/3 of 1% of Americans.

 

Scholars often identify pagans theologically as those who hold a non-monotheistic belief system and are not part of one of the traditional world religions. Some are polytheists, believing in many deities. Some are pantheists, who believe that the combined subconscious spirit of all living things forms the universal deity. Some are panentheists, who argue that the universal deity is both in every thing in the universe and extends beyond the known universe. Scholars classify pagans as: paleo-pagnism, in which a pagan culture has not been too disrupted by other cultures, as with Hindus and Shinto practitioners; meso-paganism which are those cultures where the pagans have been significantly influenced by monotheistic or modern world views, like Haitian Voodoo, Native Americans, or the Viking-era Norse; and neo-pagans who are modern people who revive nature worship and pre-Christian spiritual paths, varying from Reconstructionists to New Age, from Neo-Druid to Wicca.

 

Until the 19th century Romantics, paganism was disparaged. Then, their brave freedom of religion, their epicurean, sensual, and materialism began to be celebrated. However, many still criticized pagans for being uninterested in sophisticated religion and unconcerned about the human future. The word pagan implies Latin terms for civilian as opposed to clergy and non-militant in a world of religious militancy. Its north European roots imply a country or village person. Today, there are neo-pagans who feel drawn to ancient Egyptian and Semitic faiths, Greek, Roman, Celtic or German, who consider themselves shamans, participate in Mayan rites, or embrace contemporary Wicca practices.

 

Wicca is the pre-Christian traditions of Ireland, Scotland and Wales. It usually focuses on a hunter god and a fertility goddess, the lord and the lady. It has a profound respect for nature and feels the presence of Mother Earth viscerally. Its standard admonition is: ‘harm none and do as you will.’ It is the craft of the wise and emphasizes balance and equilibrium while opposing a hunger for power. It emphasizes positive witchcraft traditions. Wiccans argue that to be a witch is to a healer, teacher, seeker, giver, and a protector of all things. One can be a witch without being a Wiccan as you can be Christian without being a Baptist.

 

Next Saturday, April 12, I will be leading a workshop on paganism. Like our other world religions workshops, I will do an hour and half of orientation. Then, there will be a panel; the panelists will all be current UUCJ members who represent different pagan spiritual paths. Holly Charland is organizing a lunch with symbolic vegan foods, and then the participants will join with the panelists in a celebration of the Spring Equinox, the closest traditional seasonal festival. After that, the participants will gather to digest and discuss what we have experienced. I invite you to participate. We are the only Jacksonville congregation that is ever likely to provide such an opportunity. In our April Sunday morning spirituality sessions, at 9:30 a.m. in the Fletcher Room, we are discussing Patricia Montley’s In Nature’s Honor: Myths and Rituals Celebrating the Earth, which is also our text for the pagan workshop.

 

It is a common error that pagans deify nature or some natural element or object therefore becoming idolatrous. In my experience, most of our Unitarian Universalists neo-pagans simply have empowered nature and its natural seasons and cycles, beauties and mysteries to become doors to transcendence, entrances to spiritual depth, and methods of personal and community discipline.

 

Montley summarizes: “For the ancients interdependence was clear. Humans played an important role in the renewal of the earth, as the earth played an important role in the renewal of humanity. For us, moderns, distanced from the earth by technology, interdependence is not so clear. In the unholy wars between fundamentalists and liberals, how do we find common ground? We share the same earth. Celebrating the renewal of the earth gives us an opportunity to become new ourselves—to let go of old hurts and failures, to forgive ourselves and others, to get on with life as nature does, to open ourselves to hope and possibilities, to welcome the fertility of spirit that gives life its richness. Recognizing our mutual bond with the earth can strengthen our bonds with one another and put into perspective the things that separate us. If together we respect our Mother Earth, will we not learn to respect one another and begin the work of peace? The ground we stand on is holy—and it is our common ground.” As UUs, we all test our individual variety against the shared standards of rationality, responsibility, and mutual respect. Our pagans enrich us, and we celebrate them.