...that's what I said to a pagan (solitary, self-describing as Wiccan) friend of mine as we chatted about life the universe and stuff; it was a flip remark, made to amuse; but it has stayed with me as somehow eikonic of real interfaith dialogue: exchanging ideas about things we find mutually interesting albeit from different perspectives, and having a chance to laugh about the oddities and quirkiness of situations around the edges of religion, faith and spirituality. Later she said that, in the whole town, why was it that she had to talk to a Church of England priest (vicar=wicca, get it?) to find someone that understood her.
Indeed.
Maybe it was because the path she was on was one I had trodden to different degrees myself: before hearing Christ's call and responding, I had heard the call of nature (no, not that call) and reverenced sunlight on greenery, the woods, the creatures, the cycles of nature and was drawn to an awe-filled response and a desire to express that in 'religious' ways. I was breaking free of the materialistic reductionism of my cultural background but I was not at all drawn to the church of my early childhood.
Maybe it was because like my wiccan friend, I was interested in the implications of quantum physics and chaos theory, and (unlike her?) understood them reasonably well.
Maybe it was because, like CS Lewis before me, I experienced my Christ-ing not as a disenchantment from nature but as a deepening appreciation of it/her and as a way to begin to deal with the root problems of our ecocidal civilisation.
I grok many things that I read Pagans saying. I don't find many of the core things Pagans seem to be concerned about alien to my own faith.
I even grok the distancing from the Christian faith as it is seen and distressingly often experienced by many in our societies. I recall well beginning my own spiritual search with the attitude that the churches had nothing to offer sincere seekers of spiritual truth and experience.
So I hope we can have Christian Pagan encounters where we can listen to one another; laugh with one another; grow to understand one another and finally to dissolve stereotypes and mutual disinformations. It's a risky path though, because the first to tread it (and yes I know that some are already treading it), will face misunderstanding from their peers and even hostility. I know in experience something of that too. I choose carefully whom I tell of my own interest in these spiritual paths. Some of my fellow Christ-followers get rather overly scared about it. They are victims of disinformation, and sometimes perpetrators and it is not an easy fix to challenge what their personal authorities have told them. It must be the same for Pagans.
Tell me: is it?
Here are links to the other participants in this synchroblog
* J. R. Miller (Christian) of More Than Cake on A Christian Approach to Interfaith Dialogue"
* Liz Dyer (Christian) of Grace Rules on Interreligious Dialogue: Risky Business
* Matt Stone (Christian) of Glocal Christianity on Is
Interfaith Interfaith enough?
* Steve Hayes (Christian Orthodox) of Notes from underground on Interreligious dialogue
* K.W. Leslie (Christian / Pentecostal / Assemblies of God) of The Evening of Kent on Gathering with the pagans.
* Phil Wyman (Christian) of Square No More on A Christian Presenter at Pagan Pride!?
* Beth Patterson (Liberal Christian w/ Celtic undertones) of Virtual Tea House on Same Stove, Different Teapots
* Jarred Harris (Pagan/Vanic Witch) of The Musings of a Confused Man on Interfaith relationships
* Yvonne Aburrow (Wiccan Unitarian) of the dance of the elements on Only connect
And here's a link for some matters arising from this synchroblog.
MetaPagan: Synchroblog on interfaith dialogue
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6 comments:
Thank you for this - in part a testimony about your own development as a Christian - very interesting - one of my best friends openly describes herself as a pagan and I connect with her as a Christian in a way that I can not connect with many of my other friends who seem to have a more secular or materialistic preoccupation.
from Rachel at Re vis.e Re form
Methinks you should have joined the synchroblog with this post! Notes from underground: Interreligious dialogue
Great post, Andy. One teensy-weensy thing - Wiccan and Pagan are spelt with a capital letter.
I grok many things that liberal Christians say, too - it's just the evangelical / fundamentalist stance (e.g. penal substitution theology, exclusivism, dispensationalism) that really gets my goat.
I think that there is a similar, yest slightly different problem when it comes to Pagan misconceptions about Christianity. The difference is that Pagans' understandings of Christianity isn't so much formed by (mis)information we've received from authorities, but from direct experience with Christianity, from being raised in that background ourselves and/or interaction with other Christians.
The problem with this is that it's easy to forget that our personal experiences with Christianity may isn't necessarily representative of Christianity as a whole. On a personal level, I've spent several years discovering and learning about how Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Mainline Protestantism differs from the Christianity I learned growing up in a Baptist church and later attending a Pentecostal church while attending college.
The thing is, people's personal experiences can leave a powerful impression, and one that people are sometimes unwilling to let go of. Pagans' experiences of Christainity can be particularly powerful and (unfortunately) negative. Seeing beyond that sort of thing to see a brand of Christianity that differs from what we've known can be a daunting task at times.
I'm glad you wrote this post. I hope you'll join us on a regular basis.
-- Jarred.
Thanks for posting this - between the lines I read "we are not that different from one another after all"
Andii,
This post has been added to the synchroblog list. You can add the list of other posts at the bottom of yours by copying the list from mine (see link in my earlier comment above) and copying it here.
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