[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

[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).