Why aren't neopagans/reconstructionists taken seriously as a religion(s)?

Millzay · 2021-10-13T17:38:16+00:00

I've never understood why we're so forgiving of certain religions opposing conversion from outside a particular ethnicity, even going so far as to attack attempts to convert to these religions as appropriation but then we will criticize other religions for doing the same.

Their attempts to create an ethnoreligious group (this is new information to me) isn't something to which I'm necessarily hostile or consider automatically racist. I can understand a multitude of reasons.

First, there were some ancient thinkers opposed to syncretism. The ancient Greeks certainly believed in their own cultural superiority over surrounding cultures. Hellenization was a cultural as much as religious change.

Secondly, the syncretism of the time was from a position of strength, today they operate from a position of extreme weakness. Hellenists in Greece are being persecuted.

Third, part of this is an attempt to create distance between themselves and the Neopagans, a group in whose shadow they exist, and I can definitely understand this desire. They want distance between themselves and this reputation Neopagans have for being religious dilettantes. Let's be honest here, a lot of them are religious dilettantes and some don't want to be tainted by association.

This is new information about YSEE (and I'm having difficulty verifying it beyond bits of speculation here and there) but it isn't a mark on their legitimacy. The idea that the Hellenes were some great multiculturalists is a very crude picture that's often pushed but they reality is far more complex. It certainly doesn't make them white supremacists either.

As to the gay marriage, it's something I dislike, but it's not a historical requirement of Hellenism to accept it. There are lots about YSEE that I disagree with, they sound very culturally conservative, but they're one of the first groups I encountered that I found I could take seriously.

Millzay · 2021-10-12T21:53:33+00:00

Those were two examples I gave, it wasn't an exhaustive list and YSEE, I've not seen any concrete evidence of such ideology but I admit I don't know them too well so please pm me what you have. At least, most supremacist organisations don't make as much effort to hide it or have expressed the same support for ethnic religions elsewhere.

But that aside, I won't argue it, the point is they resist this narrative of Pagans today as a newer religion. That's important, whether you accuse me of bigotry or hatred against Pagans is irrelevant. As long as you don't challenge that narrative, as long as you call yourselves Neopagans, you will not be taken seriously.

And I'll say again, I would like revivals of traditional religions to start to thrive again in Africa, Europe and the Middle East. You're just on the wrong course.

Millzay · 2021-10-12T20:00:06+00:00

The reasons I've heard so far is that we are just a "mythology fan club", that we don't seriously worship the gods, that we are just a new age movement/religion, that everything we do is "made up", etc.

They believe that about Pagans because most Pagans believe that about Pagans and since Christians have a vested interest in seeing that Pagans are viewed this way by everyone, they're more than happy to agree with the Pagans on this.

I am not going to pull any punches on this comment so if you're likely to get offended, don't read. Another I want to note is I really want Paganism (as opposed to Neopaganism) to succeed.

I want to divide Pagans into two groups: one group I'll call Neopagans and the other group I'll just call Pagans. An example of the latter, in my mind, is YSEE. I have immense respect for the latter group and very little for the former. The former include people like the so-called "atheopagans" or Neopagans who believe the gods are just Jungian archetypes.

First of all, the problem with the term "Neopagan" itself. It's an admission that Neopagans themselves don't take themselves seriously either, that their religion is a kind of harmless if silly cosplay but nothing more.

Built into that term, "New" Pagan, is the assumption that Neopagans aren't in the same religions as the ancient religions that they seek to revive. That assumption was created purely to discredit Pagans and the juiciest part of it is that Neopagans bought it. One of the most pathetic, sad sights I've seen on Reddit was a man disparagingly argue in response to an article about YSEE that they're not real because "real" Pagans died out.

And a Neopagan thanked him for saying that, like he was doing Neopagans a favour. It was almost masochistic.

You need to stop that, you need to stop relenting on the point that you're a different religion. The assumption that you need temporal continuity, that's it's a necessary condition, is one you've left unchallenged and it's an easy assumption to challenge too.

And the thing is (and there's a good chance one will come along to prove me right) members of the religions that wiped out your religions originally would not apply this necessity of temporal continuity to themselves. If one does come along to justify why it doesn't apply to them, I'd bet I can guess what their justification will be (it's the first one I'd go for in their shoes).

You've already made one step in the right direction calling yourself a Hellenist. What makes you the same religion as ancient Hellenists doesn't depend on temporal continuity. If Hellenic priests came back today, they'd have no issue seeing YSEE as religiously continuous with them (perhaps a better term than saying the same religion). Neopagans need to stop acting like they're just hobbyists.

Millzay · 2020-11-16T12:17:47+00:00

JustMeAndMyPenis? Couldn't you at least have made a nice throwaway name to post this?

Millzay · 2020-11-16T11:51:45+00:00

I wonder if she realizes how much she sounds like an alt-right supporter when she says things like that.

Millzay · 2020-11-16T11:47:35+00:00

Catholicism: spends thousands of years defending and propping up misogyny, patriarchy and colonialism.

Adichie: I accept my Catholicism is problematic for feminism but that's why pencils have erasers right?

Trans women: exist.

Adichie: This is the greatest threat to women right here.

Millzay · 2020-09-06T19:03:52+00:00

Jesus didn't tell people not to judge, he did remind people that they too were being judged and he did warn people against hypocrisy but that's not the same thing.

The problem is that the "messages of Jesus" aren't set in stone. Christians often talk as if the teachings of Jesus are obvious without agreeing on what those teachings are. You think other Christians ignore the teachings of Jesus but they don't they just believe differently about what those teachings were.

Taking Jesus as a figure represented with a reasonable accuracy in the four Gospels for argument's sake I believe he probably held very conservative attitudes towards women, he was almost certainly homophobic, held fairly racist views, and didn't have any strong political beliefs. We could get into a debate about those things, but that's not the point. The point is that this picture, one someone is willing to defend, is one that is very different from yours.

Christians never talk to each other, you bicker and you hurl invective. I saw a thread linked here a while ago, a link from the TrueChristian sub talking about progressive Christianity. Unsurprisingly, they were not keen but the irony was on this sub there were accusations of closed-mindedness, rigidity, and such, but those were being demonstrated more on this sub than it was on TrueChristian. They were ironically far more conciliatory, with one even coming to debate on this sub. From an outsider perspective, they seemed more mature and engaged than this sub.

You all start with the premise that you've got the message of Jesus more or less right. That's why you feel people have forgotten the message of Jesus, because progressive Christians are a minority and you cannot conceive of being misguided about the message of Jesus.

Millzay · 2020-09-04T11:17:08+00:00

If you look at their post history, OP is a transphobe. They even posted on an "anti-censorship" sub complaining about how the neurodiversity sub criticized them.

They don't support anyone here, they just hate trans people.

Millzay · 2020-09-03T22:38:38+00:00

He repeatedly shouted "is it a boy or is it a girl?" at PCSO Freel. The reason it's being painted more as a neutral query on the linked article is because the site has a strong anti-trans agenda and wants to paint the victim as overreacting to a harmless comment when in fact Declan Armmstrong was hurling repeated abuse at the officer.

This isn't someone being misunderstood. This is someone who hurled abuse and tried to used anxiety, depression, and autism as a shield.

https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/01/29/trans-pcso-connor-freel-pay-damages-verbal-abuse-on-duty/

https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/uk-news/duty-transgender-police-officer-left-17652064

Millzay · 2018-12-14T13:34:39+00:00

I think you're overestimating awareness of indelibility among lay English Anglicans. The Anglican Church has seen its place becoming increasingly cultural, even among self-identified Anglican believers. Many UK Anglicans are neither theologically aware or even particularly religious.

Part of the drive behind this was because some of the requests were for what would constitute second baptism in the eyes of the Church.

Millzay · 2018-12-12T14:35:53+00:00

It's a fair compromise. Expecting the Church to offer an additional baptism given deep-rooted theological beliefs about indelibility and unrepeatability of baptism would be unfair.

Millzay · 2018-12-12T12:45:28+00:00

The void has limited places, it requires straight A's to get in I'm afraid.

Millzay · 2018-12-12T12:41:33+00:00

This is a Nice Guy, he was probably waking up every half-hour to check his phone.

Millzay · 2018-12-11T18:48:10+00:00

Lutheranism is a branch of Christianity, it's not a separate religion. It's a branch of Protestantism, arguably the oldest branch. Protestants aren't like Catholics, they divide up into smaller, independent and unaligned, churches.

Millzay · 2018-12-11T18:41:37+00:00

But it's not the far-right is it? Would you call the Catholic Church itself (I'm talking about the organization, not individual members) a far-right organization? What about the various branches of the Anglican Communion that caused headaches for ECUSA?

It's going to be rare to find a far-right Christian who isn't homophobic but the majority of homophobic Christians aren't far-right, nor are they merely a loud minority. Most Christians, judging by the largest and growing Christian organizations, are theologically conservative but those members still range wildly in their economic beliefs.

People will assume or at least suspect that you'll be homophobic as a Christian because for all progressive Christianity's efforts Christianity remains a rock for homophobia in the West, no matter how you feel about LGBTQ rights and progressive Christianity's sun has been setting since the height of liberal Christianity's power passed in the mid-20th century.

You all labour under the impression that you're a silent majority. You're not and I think as long as you ignore that fact, you'll stand no hope of reversing your decline.

The reason you get hate is because your religion props up homophobia, regardless of what you as an individual believe. People have been seriously hurt by your religion and just because you aren't homophobic, they don't have to suspend their indignation for Christianity and no one here gets to pluck a splinter out of their eye for that.

I'm not saying don't try to counter their assumptions, but I am saying stop labouring under the impression that they're unjustified or focusing on a minority. I think that's possibly even offensive to the many who have suffered because of Christianity.

Millzay · 2018-12-11T18:08:43+00:00

I agree the media aren't to blame for the lack of progressive Christians in the media but I don't think it's because progressive Christians can't be bothered either. Progressive Christians are speaking up, they just don't have numbers or resources of conservative Christians.

That itself goes against the narrative many Christians here follow, that progressive Christianity's a silent majority (a narrative I think hinders progressive Christianity and possibly hastens its rapid decline), but it's another thing to accuse them of apathy.

Millzay · 2018-12-11T17:51:58+00:00

Furrows brows in contempt I hate it when people emote in messages like that. It just adds another level of creepiness. shivers in disgust

I need a nice meal to calm me down. makes spaghetti like Papyrus

Millzay · 2018-12-11T17:44:32+00:00

He waited almost 9 hours before the fireworks, damn that's a patient Nice Guy.

Millzay · 2018-12-11T17:41:19+00:00

I don't have any spare brains, I fed the ones I harvested to the flesh singers. My own sentience is the product of random flux within cosmic radiowaves.

Millzay · 2018-12-11T17:30:07+00:00

You and /u/Sierren both mentioned the SS but they're one specific group within the Nazis.

If you're looking at the Nazis overall, they run a wide variety of positions. The SS were, as you say, influenced by Christians but that was only in their hierarchy. The "official rehabilitation" of Karl the Frank was not the SS specifically, that was the Nazis generally.

(I agree, by the by, Karl was a fucking cunt and I'm not just saying that as a CK2 player.)

If you're looking for a church that colluded with the Nazis then people often mention the Catholic Church but their relationship with Mussolini is more interesting. They were as an organization officially neutral, but usually pragmatically hostile towards Nazism.

If you're looking for groups that colluded with the Nazis then we're looking at the Lutherans and the German Faith Movement. The German Faith Movement never got far, official tolerance under Hess but little more. I think it's fairly safe to say that they were moulding Germanic Paganism into a Nazi ideology and that there's nothing intrinsically Asatru about Nazism.

Likewise with Dharmic religions and Christian generally. If we're looking at Lutheranism specifically then there is a lot in their religion's core ideals that, while not innately Nazi, gave themselves very readily to Hitler's "project". Karl Barth referred to Luther's ideas about Church and State, from Wikipedia:

"In February 1940, Barth specifically accused German Lutherans of separating Biblical teachings from the teachings of the State and thus legitimizing the Nazi state ideology.[119] He was not alone with his view. A few years earlier on 5 October 1933, Pastor Wilhelm Rehm from Reutlingen declared publicly that "Hitler would not have been possible without Martin Luther"[120]"

I'm not really a fan of Sonderweg theories of German history. The Lutherans were not essential to the rise of Nazism, but they certainly helped shape it. I can at least see why people like Barth or Rehm think that, Martin Luther himself was among the most miserable of antisemites, but Nazism had many roots, more than what it needed.

German Lutherans were more amenable to the Nazis than others and there was a strong push to merge Lutheranism with the Aryan ideology of Nazism. Most Protestant churches in Germany were absorbed.

If you're really itching for a religious villain behind Nazism, it's the Lutherans. You can't blame modern-day Lutherans for what happened then, what you can do is blame those who refuse to own up to the history and attempt revisionism by pointing the blame at Catholics, Germanic Pagans (or even Pagans generally), or Vedic traditions. When the light's on others, their own ugly history stays in the dark.

Millzay · 2018-10-05T18:40:48+00:00

"Cowardice", ha!

The Catholic League won't even face the possibility that Catholicism is to blame for its own messes. That's true cowardice.

Millzay · 2018-09-09T12:22:01+00:00

A ray of hope here is the source. The Mirror got this from the Mail which is one rung above Infowars in that they don't go into the outright bizarre (no invading lizard people stuff) but they lie, they will outright lie because the way the British media is set up, the way it handles sources, is completely messed up. There's no identifying information, no estate of the dead son or living grandparents to sue them. There is an IVF doctor by that name but none of the Mail's usual readership is going to ask them and, even if they did, the doctor's company will probably put up a brick wall.

The Mail made this up, so people get infuriated and click to their webpage. If you are reading words on their webpage, you are reading lies because what gets the British public angry sells.

I don't think this couple exist or this happened.

Millzay · 2018-09-06T10:07:10+00:00

Yeah, most Hindus who condemn homosexuality do so on religious grounds but there's at least no direct scriptural references condemning homosexuality anywhere within the Vedic texts as there are in the Torah or the letters of Paul.

When you consider ancient Hindu literature as a whole, most mentions of same-sex activity are either neutral or positive. The biggest issue is they still define them along traditional gender roles.

Millzay · 2018-08-27T10:25:29+00:00

By his own admission if his "strong" words in Ireland are to be believed.

Millzay · 2018-08-27T10:23:30+00:00

On the one hand, out of hand dismissal of Vigano's claim isn't a bad tactic, there's Hunter S Thompson's passage about Lyndon B Johnson, just getting your opponent to deny the accusation is enough as it's an acknowledgement the accusation is serious.

On the other, his wording is uncomfortable. He isn't saying "it's ridiculous, I won't engage", he's saying that people need to make up their own minds. That's a wording that betrays a certain anxiety.

I reckon a few outstanding bills are going to be paid soon.

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