This is in response to the \u201cComing Out\u201d articles in the March Issue of Pagan Pages<\/p>\n
My daughter-in-law\u2019s mother is ordinarily a very sweet person, but when she found out that my daughter and I do not subscribe to Christianity, she began a bully pulpit campaign to convert us to her way of thinking\u2026\u2026rabid, narrow-minded evangelicism.<\/p>\n
After enduring her questions, such as \u201caren\u2019t you afraid you\u2019ll go to Hell?\u201d and \u201cWhy can\u2019t you accept Jesus as your Savior?\u201d, I finally looked her in the eye and said: \u201cKaren, I do not proselytize you to convert to my religious beliefs, why do you feel you have the right to proselytize me to YOUR beliefs!? I respect your right to your beliefs, but, obviously, you do not respect mine!\u201d<\/p>\n
She sputtered for a few minutes, before I then asked her\u2026.\u201dwhy is it that Christians feel they can use food, housing, and medical care or, withholding such basic needs, to force non-christians into converting to their way of thinking? Why can\u2019t you respect other\u2019s religious beliefs, and feel it\u2019s your way or no way? And if Christianity is so wonderful, why did Christians feel they had the right to steal so many philosophical ideas from other religions, particularly Wicca? Why did Christians feel they had to massacre women in the Middle Ages, or fight Muslims in Jerusalem and lay the foundation for today\u2019s troubles in the Middle East?\u201d<\/p>\n
Again she sputtered for a few moments, before saying, \u201cChristians fought the Muslims because they were desecrating holy sites!\u201d \u201cOh really?\u201d I replied, \u201dWhy would they \u201cdesecrate\u201d sites that were just as holy to them as they are to Christians? After all, Christianity and Islam are both offshoots of Judaism.\u201d<\/p>\n
Needless to say, she had no reply to my last question. But when she tried to deny the female holocaust of the Middle Ages. I recommended that she read When God Was a Woman, but I doubt that she will because it would disturb her \u201cborn again\u201d rigidity.<\/p>\n
I also pointed out to her that women were the physicians for eons before men decided to interfere, and modern medicine is now just beginning to realize the contributions of these ancient wise women. That according to archeological findings, women were the first farmers and domesticators because they were the gatherers while their men were off hunting wild game. Women wisely decided it would be better to grow renewable food resources, rather than having to keep moving on to find new food supplies. This is why there so many fertility Goddesses worshiped\u2026not just for human fertility, but for the fertility of the land and crops!<\/p>\n
She looked at me with fear in her eyes because I had punctured all her arguments like the fragile balloons they are, and then changed the subject.<\/p>\n
We pagans need not be defensive of our beliefs and way of life. We just need to marshal our knowledge and beliefs to counter those who would deny us our religious freedoms.<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
author bio:<\/p>\n
BanRighe Nhic Michael<\/p>\n
BanRighe is a solo Wiccan practitioner who researched to find her own spirituality after becoming horrified by Christianity\u2018s hypocracy, and who finds it hilariously funny to have been told numerous times that she is the most \u201cperfect christian\u201d many people have ever met!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is in response to the \u201cComing Out\u201d articles in the March Issue of Pagan Pages My daughter-in-law\u2019s mother is ordinarily a very sweet person, but when she found out that my daughter and I do not subscribe to Christianity, she began a bully pulpit campaign to convert us to her way of thinking\u2026\u2026rabid, narrow-minded evangelicism. After enduring her questions, such as \u201caren\u2019t you afraid you\u2019ll go to Hell?\u201d and \u201cWhy can\u2019t you accept Jesus as your Savior?\u201d, I finally looked her in the eye and said: \u201cKaren, I do not proselytize you to convert to my religious beliefs, why do you feel you have the right to proselytize me to YOUR beliefs!? I respect your right to your beliefs, but, obviously, you do not respect mine!\u201d She sputtered for a few minutes, before I then asked her\u2026.\u201dwhy is it that Christians feel they can use food, housing, and medical care or, withholding such basic needs, to force non-christians into converting to their way of thinking? Why can\u2019t you respect other\u2019s religious beliefs, and feel it\u2019s your way or no way? And if Christianity is so wonderful, why did Christians feel they had the right to steal so many philosophical ideas from other religions, particularly Wicca? Why did Christians feel they had to massacre women in the Middle Ages, or fight Muslims in Jerusalem and lay the foundation for today\u2019s troubles in the Middle East?\u201d Again she sputtered for a few moments, before saying, \u201cChristians fought the Muslims because they were desecrating holy sites!\u201d \u201cOh really?\u201d I replied, \u201dWhy would they \u201cdesecrate\u201d sites that were just as holy to them as they are to Christians? After all, Christianity and Islam are both offshoots of Judaism.\u201d Needless to say, she had no reply to my last question. But when she tried to deny the female holocaust of the Middle Ages. I recommended that she read When God Was a Woman, but I doubt that she will because it would disturb her \u201cborn again\u201d rigidity. I also pointed out to her that women were the physicians for eons before men decided to interfere, and modern medicine is now just beginning to realize the contributions of these ancient wise women. That according to archeological findings, women were the first farmers and domesticators because they were the gatherers while their men were off hunting wild game. Women wisely decided it would be better to grow renewable food resources, rather than having to keep moving on to find new food supplies. This is why there so many fertility Goddesses worshiped\u2026not just for human fertility, but for the fertility of the land and crops! She looked at me with fear in her eyes because I had punctured all her arguments like the fragile balloons they are, and then changed the subject. We pagans need not be defensive of our beliefs and way of life. We just need to marshal our knowledge and beliefs to counter those who would deny us our religious freedoms. *** author bio: BanRighe Nhic Michael BanRighe is a solo Wiccan practitioner who researched to find her own spirituality after becoming horrified by Christianity\u2018s hypocracy, and who finds it hilariously funny to have been told numerous times that she is the most \u201cperfect christian\u201d many people have ever met!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}