{"id":6803,"date":"2012-06-01T01:10:48","date_gmt":"2012-06-01T06:10:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paganpages.org\/content\/?p=7003"},"modified":"2012-05-31T12:22:41","modified_gmt":"2012-05-31T17:22:41","slug":"pagan-theology-33","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/2012\/06\/01\/pagan-theology-33\/","title":{"rendered":"Pagan Theology"},"content":{"rendered":"

Growing Up<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What do we want to be when we grow up?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

That is a very loaded question.\u00a0 First, it assumes that any of us want to grow up, and, frankly, I have not met a lot of Pagans that think growing up in the traditional sense is a good thing.\u00a0 Having rules, being serious, acting deliberately, and losing your sense of wonder at the world are all generally accepted parts of what it means to “grow up” in our society.\u00a0 Unfortunately they are pretty much diametrically opposed to the polytheistic, fun-loving, world-embracing, and spontaneous Pagan movement.\u00a0 Second, its worth commenting on the individual pieces of the sentence.\u00a0 “We” as used in the question is simply a rhetorical device.\u00a0 There is no “we” in any realistic sense in the modern Pagan movement.\u00a0 There are “many” groups and individuals who practice Paganism, but it’s hard to say there is a “we.”\u00a0 And what do I mean by “grow up”?\u00a0 Becoming serious, pinch-faced, killjoys who fuss at anyone who doesn’t believe what they do?\u00a0 Accumulate worldly power?\u00a0 Build big temples?\u00a0 I’m not exactly sure what “growing up” would entail.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

However I do think the question is a legitimate one.\u00a0 Not in its implication that we need to become more adult-like, we don’t, but rather in its’ questioning where we are going.\u00a0 What would an acceptable future look like for modern Paganism?\u00a0 Now that we are many, and we are, and we have a lot of activities going on, what do we do now?\u00a0\u00a0 Where are we going with all this?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Now I am not someone either qualified or “authorized” [1] to really discuss the future of modern Paganism.\u00a0 I will gladly leave that to people who have devoted a much greater percentage of their lives to the project of modern Paganism than I have.\u00a0 However I think it might be helpful to at least think a little about the options.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There are several ways to examine the future of any organization or movement, including Paganism.\u00a0\u00a0 You can look at the various phases of maturity in the organization, from inception, to organization and consolidation, to entrenchment and institutionalization.\u00a0 You can also look at various scenarios in order to identify what some of the key variables are that will influence the future [2].\u00a0 \u00a0Or you can look at the broader trends in society and ask how they will influence the shape of the organization in the future.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Paganism as a movement is still in the broad and unstructured second phase of its growth.\u00a0 It has moved beyond the initial stages of its founding, one key indicator of that is that many of the founders of modern Paganism (Gardner, Fortune, Crowley, Bonewits, etc.) have themselves moved on.\u00a0 We have established a large number of small institutions, and have a number of self-identified first-generation followers with a smattering of second and third generation followers.\u00a0 The smaller institutions that we currently have are still vulnerable to fluctuations either in society or in interest, so we still are not at the stage where Paganism has become an embedded social institution [3].<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If the question is “where to from here” then some form of scenario analysis might be useful.\u00a0 At minimum going through the process of a scenario analysis of modern Paganism might be informative for understanding how each of us thinks about the future of the religion.\u00a0 Of course in it’s fully realized glory a scenario planning process for Paganism would occupy more time than I have and be a longer essay than you would like to read.\u00a0 So lets just hit the high points.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What are we trying to understand?\u00a0 The starting point is the most important part of analysis using scenarios, because if you don’t know what you are doing, then you can’t get it done.\u00a0 For this column the question is:\u00a0 how might modern Neo-Paganism evolve over the course of the next 20 years?\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0That seems like a reasonable question, and one we can examine with scenarios.\u00a0 Of course we would normally ask how we might affect that evolution over time, but that is too complicated for now.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What are the key driving trends that will affect Neo-Paganism over the next 20 years?\u00a0 Now that is an amazingly good question (if I do say so myself).\u00a0 Some of them we know: demographics, for example.\u00a0 America will become more diverse, at the same time that it becomes older.\u00a0 But demographics is not a variable, it is determined.\u00a0 At the same time demographics matters a lot for religious traditions Just ask the old-line liberal Christian denominations.\u00a0 You could argue that Paganism got a lot of momentum coming out of the demographics of the 1960’s and that momentum is what has propelled it to where it is today.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If Paganism grows, by having more individuals come into the faith, then it will evolve.\u00a0 If it shrinks, then it will most likely remain a small faith that is on the margins compared to the big two or three faiths.\u00a0 The biggest trend in recent years is the idea of “spiritual but not religious” or “seekers” who examine a large number of different denominations or traditions in their spiritual quests.\u00a0 Assuming that this trend continues then a larger fraction of those with religious inclinations will also be inclined to be open about alternative religions.\u00a0 Likewise some fraction of those open individuals will be inclined toward Paganism.\u00a0 So, if the number of people seeking religious experiences changes in the future, we can likely assume that the number of people entering or leaving Paganism will also change in roughly the same proportion.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This seems like a good first variable:\u00a0 does Paganism grow or decline over the next 20 years in terms of number of adherents?\u00a0 While there are many factors that might be involved, it is likely the answer to this question will be decided by how the two primary competing forces of aging and spiritual seeking interact.\u00a0 There should be an increase in seekers as the population ages, but that may be offset by the possible tendency for people to be conservative in their religious choices as they age [4].<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The second variable I’d propose is the diversity of Neo-Paganism.\u00a0 Currently the diversity of Paganism is quite high, with a lot of different paths and denominations.\u00a0 It may not even be possible for our faith to become more unified and centralized, and in some cases that is the real attraction of the faith [5].\u00a0 However we can ask whether the faith will become even more diverse, with an increasing number of small groups dominating our worship, or whether some group such as Circle or Reclaiming, or the Asatru or Druids will “break out” and gather enough momentum and followers to become a noticeable presence.\u00a0 Should that happen I’d really like to be around to see the expression on all the Fox News anchor’s faces.\u00a0 Then, of course, we’d all run like hell!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For me that’s the second variable:\u00a0 how diverse Paganism will be in 20 years.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We can plot these two variables and see what comes of it.\u00a0 The figure shows my interpretation of the four potential outcomes when diversity and numbers of Pagans are plotted in a 2×2 matrix.\u00a0 On the one side we have a decreasing number of Pagans.\u00a0 In that case an increase in diversity would be like now, only more so.\u00a0 Here the number of leaders would be more than sufficient for the number of followers, and the cacophony of voices would tend to ensure that no one “spokesperson” emerged.\u00a0 Less diversity would imply that Paganism stabilized as a small faith, with one or two groups emerging with sufficient clout to consolidate the faith under their banner.\u00a0\u00a0 Here a small, professional, clergy might be possible, particularly if the current model of book-writing and speaking\/presentations carried over.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

On the other side we have a growing number of Pagans.\u00a0 Here an increase in diversity would likely lead to an insufficient number of leaders where compared to the demand.\u00a0 A continuation of lay leadership would be likely as no one group would garner enough followers to have a professional clergy.\u00a0 These lay leaders would be taxed.\u00a0 It is also likely that the sheer number of different paths would eventually intermingle with the New Age and other alternative religious movements, as is sometimes the case now.\u00a0 This “thousand flowers” future would look a lot like now, only on steroids.\u00a0 How much clout this growing movement would have in the world would likely be determined by factors other than religion, such as how much collective social action they would engage in through various other groups.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The final future is one of a growing faith but with a few traditions consolidating the movement into a well-defined path.\u00a0 Just like today with Christianity, there might be a number of lay-led denominations or other groups, but most of the funding, people, and activity would be in the larger groups.\u00a0 Here a professional clergy would be likely, along with temples and a national governing body to support it.\u00a0 Inevitably this would lead to a more doctrinaire, and judgmental, approach to Paganism, simply because those attributes are more common in the larger society than they currently are in Paganism.\u00a0 In other words, the bigger you get the more like everyone else you will look because everyone else will now be in your temple instead of their church.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But the details of these scenarios are not my main point (surprise!).\u00a0 My point is that we can use a structured way to think through what the future might hold for Paganism, and can have some interesting results.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So, what are the key variables for you?\u00a0 What do you think are the uncertainties in your group, or modern Paganism?\u00a0 How do they fit together for you?\u00a0 What would the 2×2 matrix for your group or coven, or Neo-Paganism writ large, look for you?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

While I am not “authorized” to speculate on the future of Paganism, we all, ultimately, are “required” to come up with one.\u00a0 For me it would be better to kind of know where we’re going, and what we might encounter, than to sail blindly into the future in the hope that some new people will come along and sustain our faith.\u00a0 Because when they did that 2000 years ago the people who came along were followers of Christ, and it didn’t quite work out so well for the Old Gods.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]\u00a0 It’s an essay in itself to go into the governance structure of modern Paganism.\u00a0 As far as I can tell there exist large organizations that drive a lot of the political and spiritual agenda of modern American Paganism, primarily the Covenant of the Goddess, Reclaiming, and Selena Fox’s Circle Sanctuary (to include the affiliated Lady Liberty League).\u00a0 At the next tier down are large denominational organizations that bring together a lot of groups, but don’t seem to have as widespread a “popular” voice in the media and society, the Druids, Asatru, and the larger networks of covens.\u00a0 However none of these groups speaks for the all, and the progress that large “intrafaith” groups have had is reflected in the difficulty I have in finding any that have persisted.<\/p>\n

[2]\u00a0 This approach is encoded in the scenario planning process as developed by Shell Oil Company in the 1970’s though it dates back further in the National Security Community.\u00a0 Essentially this type of planning involves deciding what the driving variables are, and coming up with a matrix of scenarios that examine what might happen depending on the values of those variables.\u00a0 So, for example, if one variable is “climate” and the other is “technology” then you could have a wet or dry world, or a high or low-tech world.\u00a0 A wet, low-tech, world would be heavily agrarian with minimal future development of technology, particularly energy technology.\u00a0 A hot, high-tech world might be a word where geoengineering and genetic crops were well developed but climate change had gotten the best of us.<\/p>\n

[3]\u00a0 Even groups with a huge amount of social capital and that are deeply embedded in social tradition can still be vulnerable to medium and long-term fluctuations in social fashion and interest.\u00a0 For example, look at the various social clubs that grew up in the 19th and early 20th century like the Moose or Elks.\u00a0 Most have dwindled to a small fraction of their original membership, and many have disappeared more or less completely despite being very heavily subscribed early in the century.<\/p>\n

[4]\u00a0 I have no idea if this is true, but it sounds possible (science!).\u00a0 We do know that people become more conservative as they age, which would imply that their taste in religion might also become more conservative.<\/p>\n

[5]\u00a0 I fear I have always been an outlier, I’m attracted to Paganism because I believe, not because I have a problem with religious activity.\u00a0 Thus I have no problem with a Paganism that looks, acts, and smells like the Catholic Church (as long at the crucified guy is gone), which is exactly what Paganism looked like for the thousands of years before the Christians did a number on us.\u00a0\u00a0 Back in the day it was the Olympic Athletes who were honored in Pagan temples, not whoever at the time was the equivalent of Filk singers and Quiddich players.\u00a0 But I fully understand and really do appreciate the other side of the argument, that a hierarchical structure is oppressive and results in the jocks beating up on those of us who find our way to Paganism because we don’t fit anywhere else.\u00a0 I certainly fit in the latter category along with most of the rest of us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Growing Up   What do we want to be when we grow up?   That is a very loaded question.\u00a0 First, it assumes that any of us want to grow up, and, frankly, I have not met a lot of Pagans that think growing up in the traditional sense is a good thing.\u00a0 Having rules, being serious, acting deliberately, and losing your sense of wonder at the world are all generally accepted parts of what it means to “grow up” in our society.\u00a0 Unfortunately they are pretty much diametrically opposed to the polytheistic, fun-loving, world-embracing, and spontaneous Pagan movement.\u00a0 Second, its worth commenting on the individual pieces of the sentence.\u00a0 “We” as used in the question is simply a rhetorical device.\u00a0 There is no “we” in any realistic sense in the modern Pagan movement.\u00a0 There are “many” groups and individuals who practice Paganism, but it’s hard to say there is a “we.”\u00a0 And what do I mean by “grow up”?\u00a0 Becoming serious, pinch-faced, killjoys who fuss at anyone who doesn’t believe what they do?\u00a0 Accumulate worldly power?\u00a0 Build big temples?\u00a0 I’m not exactly sure what “growing up” would entail.   However I do think the question is a legitimate one.\u00a0 Not in its implication that we need to become more adult-like, we don’t, but rather in its’ questioning where we are going.\u00a0 What would an acceptable future look like for modern Paganism?\u00a0 Now that we are many, and we are, and we have a lot of activities going on, what do we do now?\u00a0\u00a0 Where are we going with all this?   Now I am not someone either qualified or “authorized” [1] to really discuss the future of modern Paganism.\u00a0 I will gladly leave that to people who have devoted a much greater percentage of their lives to the project of modern Paganism than I have.\u00a0 However I think it might be helpful to at least think a little about the options.   There are several ways to examine the future of any organization or movement, including Paganism.\u00a0\u00a0 You can look at the various phases of maturity in the organization, from inception, to organization and consolidation, to entrenchment and institutionalization.\u00a0 You can also look at various scenarios in order to identify what some of the key variables are that will influence the future [2].\u00a0 \u00a0Or you can look at the broader trends in society and ask how they will influence the shape of the organization in the future.   Paganism as a movement is still in the broad and unstructured second phase of its growth.\u00a0 It has moved beyond the initial stages of its founding, one key indicator of that is that many of the founders of modern Paganism (Gardner, Fortune, Crowley, Bonewits, etc.) have themselves moved on.\u00a0 We have established a large number of small institutions, and have a number of self-identified first-generation followers with a smattering of second and third generation followers.\u00a0 The smaller institutions that we currently have are still vulnerable to fluctuations either in society or in interest, so we still are not at the stage where Paganism has become an embedded social institution [3].   If the question is “where to from here” then some form of scenario analysis might be useful.\u00a0 At minimum going through the process of a scenario analysis of modern Paganism might be informative for understanding how each of us thinks about the future of the religion.\u00a0 Of course in it’s fully realized glory a scenario planning process for Paganism would occupy more time than I have and be a longer essay than you would like to read.\u00a0 So lets just hit the high points.   What are we trying to understand?\u00a0 The starting point is the most important part of analysis using scenarios, because if you don’t know what you are doing, then you can’t get it done.\u00a0 For this column the question is:\u00a0 how might modern Neo-Paganism evolve over the course of the next 20 years?\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0That seems like a reasonable question, and one we can examine with scenarios.\u00a0 Of course we would normally ask how we might affect that evolution over time, but that is too complicated for now.   What are the key driving trends that will affect Neo-Paganism over the next 20 years?\u00a0 Now that is an amazingly good question (if I do say so myself).\u00a0 Some of them we know: demographics, for example.\u00a0 America will become more diverse, at the same time that it becomes older.\u00a0 But demographics is not a variable, it is determined.\u00a0 At the same time demographics matters a lot for religious traditions Just ask the old-line liberal Christian denominations.\u00a0 You could argue that Paganism got a lot of momentum coming out of the demographics of the 1960’s and that momentum is what has propelled it to where it is today.   If Paganism grows, by having more individuals come into the faith, then it will evolve.\u00a0 If it shrinks, then it will most likely remain a small faith that is on the margins compared to the big two or three faiths.\u00a0 The biggest trend in recent years is the idea of “spiritual but not religious” or “seekers” who examine a large number of different denominations or traditions in their spiritual quests.\u00a0 Assuming that this trend continues then a larger fraction of those with religious inclinations will also be inclined to be open about alternative religions.\u00a0 Likewise some fraction of those open individuals will be inclined toward Paganism.\u00a0 So, if the number of people seeking religious experiences changes in the future, we can likely assume that the number of people entering or leaving Paganism will also change in roughly the same proportion.   This seems like a good first variable:\u00a0 does Paganism grow or decline over the next 20 years in terms of number of adherents?\u00a0 While there are many factors that might be involved, it is likely the answer to this question will be decided by how the two primary competing forces of aging and spiritual seeking interact.\u00a0 There should be an increase in seekers as the population ages, but that may be offset by the possible tendency for people to be conservative in their religious choices as they age [4].   The second variable I’d propose is the diversity of Neo-Paganism.\u00a0 Currently the diversity of Paganism is quite high, with a lot of different paths and denominations.\u00a0 It may not even be possible for our faith to become more unified and centralized, and in some cases that is the real attraction of the faith [5].\u00a0 However we can ask whether the faith will become even more diverse, with an increasing number of small groups dominating our worship, or whether some group such as Circle or Reclaiming, or the Asatru or Druids will “break out” and gather enough momentum and followers to become a noticeable presence.\u00a0 Should that happen I’d really like to be around to see the expression on all the Fox News anchor’s faces.\u00a0 Then, of course, we’d all run like hell!   For me that’s the second variable:\u00a0 how diverse Paganism will be in 20 years.   We can plot these two variables and see what comes of it.\u00a0 The figure shows my interpretation of the four potential outcomes when diversity and numbers of Pagans are plotted in a 2×2 matrix.\u00a0 On the one side we have a decreasing number of Pagans.\u00a0 In that case an increase in diversity would be like now, only more so.\u00a0 Here the number of leaders would be more than sufficient for the number of followers, and the cacophony of voices would tend to ensure that no one “spokesperson” emerged.\u00a0 Less diversity would imply that Paganism stabilized as a small faith, with one or two groups emerging with sufficient clout to consolidate the faith under their banner.\u00a0\u00a0 Here a small, professional, clergy might be possible, particularly if the current model of book-writing and speaking\/presentations carried over.   On the other side we have a growing number of Pagans.\u00a0 Here an increase in diversity would likely lead to an insufficient number of leaders where compared to the demand.\u00a0 A continuation of lay leadership would be likely as no one group would garner enough followers to have a professional clergy.\u00a0 These lay leaders would be taxed.\u00a0 It is also likely that the sheer number of different paths would eventually intermingle with the New Age and other alternative religious movements, as is sometimes the case now.\u00a0 This “thousand flowers” future would look a lot like now, only on steroids.\u00a0 How much clout this growing movement would have in the world would likely be determined by factors other than religion, such as how much collective social action they would engage in through various other groups. The final future is one of a growing faith but with a few traditions consolidating the movement into a well-defined path.\u00a0 Just like today with Christianity, there might be a number of lay-led denominations or other groups, but most of the funding, people, and activity would be in the larger groups.\u00a0 Here a professional clergy would be likely, along with temples and a national governing body to support it.\u00a0 Inevitably this would lead to a more doctrinaire, and judgmental, approach to Paganism, simply because those attributes are more common in the larger society than they currently are in Paganism.\u00a0 In other words, the bigger you get the more like everyone else you will look because everyone else will now be in your temple instead of their church.   But the details of these scenarios are not my main point (surprise!).\u00a0 My point is that we can use a structured way to think through what the future might hold for Paganism, and can have some interesting results.   So, what are the key variables for you?\u00a0 What do you think are the uncertainties in your group, or modern Paganism?\u00a0 How do they fit together for you?\u00a0 What would the 2×2 matrix for your group or coven, or Neo-Paganism writ large, look for you?   While I am not “authorized” to speculate on the future of Paganism, we all, ultimately, are “required” to come up with one.\u00a0 For me it would be better to kind of know where we’re going, and what we might encounter, than to sail blindly into the future in the hope that some new people will come along and sustain our faith.\u00a0 Because when they did that 2000 years ago the people who came along were followers of Christ, and it didn’t quite work out so well for the Old Gods.   [1]\u00a0 It’s an essay in itself to go into the governance structure of modern Paganism.\u00a0 As far as I can tell there exist large organizations that drive a lot of the political and spiritual agenda of modern American Paganism, primarily the Covenant of the Goddess, Reclaiming, and Selena Fox’s Circle Sanctuary (to include the affiliated Lady Liberty League).\u00a0 At the next tier down are large denominational organizations that bring together a lot of groups, but don’t seem to have as widespread a “popular” voice in the media and society, the Druids, Asatru, and the larger networks of covens.\u00a0 However none of these groups speaks for the all, and the progress that large “intrafaith” groups have had is reflected in the difficulty I have in finding any that have persisted. [2]\u00a0 This approach is encoded in the scenario planning process as developed by Shell Oil Company in the 1970’s though it dates back further in the National Security Community.\u00a0 Essentially this type of planning involves deciding what the driving variables are, and coming up with a matrix of scenarios that examine what might happen depending on the values of those variables.\u00a0 So, for example, if one variable is “climate” and the other is “technology” then you could have a wet or dry world, or a high or low-tech world.\u00a0 A wet, low-tech, world would be heavily agrarian with minimal future development of technology, particularly energy technology.\u00a0 A hot, high-tech world might be a word where geoengineering and genetic crops…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"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-6803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6803","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\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6803\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}