[Main Blog Post] Further Thoughts on Religious Authenticity

[jprussell]

This week's post comes mostly as a response to a question by causticus on last week's Magic Monday by JMG. It was spinning around in my thoughts all week, and I decided to share the expanded thoughts here. As always, your thoughts are welcome, and let me know if you'd like to be on the mailing list.

Comments

[causticus]

Hey Jeff, if you don’t mind I’m going to split up my response into a series of posts. First I want to address what you said about polytheism and communities. Because I think this is something that has to do with all forms of alternative spirituality in the current era.

One thing that I just remembered -- awhile back I had read a book that was all about the history of the Independent Sacramental Movement; particularly about modern Gnostic Christian churches. Those organizations faced many of the same problems that modern pagan groups have had to death with. They attract mostly intellectuals and eccentrics (as opposed to Joe and Jane Sixpack), meaning people with their own strong opinions and idiosyncratic takes on what the organization should be and what it should do. Predictably, this has led to constant schisms and the inability to grow substantial congregations beyond 10-15 people. Many of the ISM churches ended up being more like small groups of like-minded enthusiasts rather than community-oriented congregations full of ordinary people. Sound familiar? In the book, some of the church leaders interviewed did mention that running their groups was like herding cats because most participants wanted the group to be reflective of their own personal preferences. And of course, everyone has their own unique snowflake preferences. This is exactly what you were talking about in your response. Basically, we’re all so very selfish and stubborn when we get involved in these novel spirituality projects. It seems that getting people to agree on things (enough for an organization to maintain a coherent focus) requires a lot of potentially-awkward compromises to be made.

Back on the topic of pagan groups and these issues, Raven Kaldera wrote a very on-point and brutally-honest (IMHO) article about the inability for modern pagan/polytheist groups to attract and serve broader communities. I’d say it’s well worth the read:
https://www.churchofasphodel.org/articles/why-my-aunt-judy-isnt-a-pagan-or-how-far-we-still-have-to-go.html

And this all gets to a big sticking point for me, which is the community question you alluded to. I often ask myself a fundamental question: is what I practice in private something I can share with friends and family? Is what I do something that’s very limited to a specialized “fandom” niche sort of appeal? If that is the case, then the religious/spiritual activity in question will likely be something that never leaves my living space. At best, it can become something that can be practiced in a group of those aforementioned like-minded enthusiasts living in my area. At its greatest extent, maybe a fraternal “lodge” type of outfit, but not a general-congregation religious organization.

As an occultist, I have no problem with my spirituality being entirely a solitary activity. I just find it a bit sad if it can’t end up being anything more than that.

In some follow up responses, I’ll share my insights about a few successful Heathen groups I’ve read up on (besides the Theodish, which we've talked about a lot), in addition to my observations on some new-ish “start up” groups on the Greco-Roman side of things. And a few things about our “Androphile” friend Jack Donovan; I think his new project isn’t nearly as bad as I might have made it out to be in my MM thread reply (though still elementally-unbalanced)

[jprussell]

Don't mind about multiple posts at all, thank you for responding!

Yeah, I haven't read Plummer's book on the ISM yet, but it's required reading for my UGC seminary, so it's on the list. That doesn't surprise me at all, really, but it does suggest that in a cosmopolitan world, having some hierarchy, organization, and dare I say it, orthodoxy, might actually be necessary to compete with the other options on offer, especially in a culture where some of the options do offer all of those things, or the kinds of things that having those enables.

I agree that Raven's article seems pretty spot on, thank you for sharing that. My own hunch is that the best way around it for us weirdos is, as you say, something like a lodge or a guild structure, where certain rules and activities are firmly written in to "this is what we're about here" - totally voluntary to join, lots of leeway on most things, but a few hard and fast things like "we collect money for this kind of service and go volunteer monthly" or what have you. Don't keep up with the guild rules, you get kicked out. Here, though, there's still the problem of getting together a critical mass to be self-reinforcing.

I look forward to the follow-up responses!

Jeff

[causticus]

Oh for sure, some "orthodoxy" is certainly in order. When I get to talking about the Greco-Roman group, that will come up as a central theme. They embrace orthodoxy but to the opposite extreme of your typical loose-goosey Neopagan group. (Spoiler alert: the group's main founder comes from a staunch Catholic background).

[causticus]

On the topic of Lodge/Guild rules, I came across the writings of the founder of a Folkish Heathen Kindred that had a lot of success finding and recruiting ordinary people as members. The founder himself is/was a police officer and you can see in his writing, his overall approach is very practical and pragmatic.
http://www.heathengods.com/learning/heathen_tribes.pdf

As you can see the governing structure is a lot like a Lodge. There's three main officers, (1) Chieftain, (2) Godhi, (3) Thyle. The first is the group's leader, the second is its spiritual expert, and the third is responsible for making sure members follow the rules (Thew) and keep their oaths. In practice, the Chieftain serves the role as both a Presiding Officer of a fraternal group and fulfills the function a Protestant pastor would in a church community. I think this type of Heathen organization is tapping into some elements that are deeply embeded in American culture. IMHO this sort of thing greatly helps in the area of personal authenticity.

This Kindred apparently went strong for at least five years; not sure if its still around today. The main web site looks like an artifact from 1999 (personally, I love the 90s D&D aesthetic). But still, at the end of the day, its growth was very much hampered by the limited appeal that is Germanic pagan reconstructionism, particularly this group's Viking/Asatru focus. Having said all of that, I think the group's organizational structure could be easily adapted to other types of groups. The "Holy Guild" just might be the way to go. I think after the lower astral finally clears up, it might be safe once again to form meatspace groups.

[jprussell]

Sorry for not responding to this for a bit, things came up, as they do.

Thanks for this link, I'll have to check it out - I'm always keen to learn about religious organizational structures, especially those with any track record of success at all. I've been especially interested in those that don't explicitly mimic American protestant churches, but now that you mention it, maybe that's a mistake - as you say, that may just be baked into our religious culture by now.

As for the limited appeal of Germanic polytheist reconstruction, yeah, that's a thing I've been thinking about for a while now, but it's had to languish on the back-burner while I pursue other projects: what might a fringe religious movement that starts with heathenry look like that is flexible and robust enough to last through the current cultural pendulum swing to politics (rather than spirituality), and hopefully beyond. Druidry is my explicit model here of what good looks like, but it has a few features that would be hard to emulate (focus on nature, which allows for a lot of religious agnosticism while still having a shared spiritual focus, a great name with lots of historical oomph, and so forth). I plan on developing more of this, but it's very much on the slow roll right now.

[causticus]

Oh no worries at all. It wasn't so long ago when these sort of correspondences would span months (or even years) rather than hours and days.

I have a hunch that the hard-reconstructionist approach might recede into the background as rationalism becomes less and less fashionable. To use some Nietzschean terminology here, the approach toward reviving the Way of Our Ancestors would shift from the Antiquarian to the Monumental (meaning: past, present, and future all play a role).

I think modern Druidry is great for an individual spiritual path, for those inclined toward nature spirituality, but in its current formulation there isn't really much of an emphasis on community-building or the formulation of the sort of shared beliefs and practices that are required for creating and sustaining cohesive communities. Without a least a solid set of common precepts and a Lindy ethical philosophy, Druid groups very easily sink into a morass of relativism and subjectivism, or simply become a sock-puppet of whatever pop culture fad happens to be all the rage this week (I realize I'm describing much of alt-spirituality here).

[jprussell]

Fair enough!

Yeah, that seems about right to me on reconstructionism losing some of its oomph. As I said in my post The Trouble with Authenticity, I think a lot of the appeal of grounding things in authenticity is that it feels like a justification that's consistent with our usual rational materialist ways of justifying things - something like "well, even if you don't buy that I'm getting something ineffable out of these spiritual experiences, you still have to respect my research and attention to detail!" As more and more people welcome spirituality back into a prominent place in their lives, as you say, there will be less need to justify it on "rational" grounds, to yourself or anyone else.

And that's a good point about Druidry as eminently well-suited to individual weirdos, but less strong for community-building. In a way, that's understandable - Druidry has a lot to say about how to relate to nature, but not much at all about how to relate to other men (except insofar as mankind is seen as part of nature, of course). I'm biased, of course, but I think Heathenry's built-in emphasis on oaths, troth, and social bonds sets it up to handle community-building much better. I'm in the middle of reading an interesting article on the subject by Arlie Stephens, which makes some of those points, but also includes some cogent critiques: Towards a Modern Heathen Ecclesiology. You might find it interesting.

[causticus]

Thank you for that link. I did indeed find it very thought-provoking. "Ecclesiology" is a very good word to sum up the interest I've had in these topics for quite some time now.