“Why I Am a Unitarian Universalist Pagan”
The third sermon in an occasional series
by Reverend Charles Blustein Ortman
January 8, 2006
My sermon this morning, "Why I Am a Unitarian Universalist Pagan," is the third in an occasional series being presented throughout the course of this year. The earlier sermons were titled, "Why I am a Unitarian Universalist Spiritual Humanist" and "Why I am a Unitarian Universalist Christian." Click on the previous sermon title links to read them online, or look for them on the rack in the church narthex. My intention is to view life as a Unitarian Universalist, through a number of theological perspectives, in ways that I hope will be of value to those of us who claim to be religious liberals embracing diversity and freedom of conscience in religious matters. Our faith tradition encourages us to look through different lenses with the hope of seeing larger glimpses of truth.
Since the title of each of these sermons begins with, "Why I am a Unitarian Universalist..." I'll start there by reviewing what I said in the earlier installments. I am a Unitarian Universalist because here I am not told what to believe but am asked what I do believe. And more, I am asked how that belief matters, not only in my own life, but in the world around me. I am asked here to accept things on faith, but on my faith-not anyone else's. I am a UU because I know my life's path is a journey and while I don't know just where it may lead or to what end, I do know that the content of my life consists of the experiences and choices that I make along the way. And I know that the quality of my life's journey is also closely related to the company I keep along the way. And so I am a Unitarian Universalist because this faith tradition calls me into community – to make the most of, to do the best with, and to love the most fully I possibly can with the life I have been given. I am a Unitarian Universalist because I believe in the potential for human beings to learn and grow. And with that potential, I believe in the possibility of a better world, rooted more firmly in the ideals of truth, beauty, love and justice.
Why I am a Unitarian Universalist Pagan… One of the reasons why I wanted to schedule this particular sermon as close as I could to the winter holidays is because several years ago, when I first came to this church, it was just after the winter holidays, when I received a complaint. Actually, the complaint was delivered indirectly from a third person. The gist of it was that the person who’d been offended made a comment to the person who was relating it to me that I must be some kind of closeted Pagan.
The evidence was clear. I had celebrated the darkness of the season with many references to the solstice and the cycles of the seasons. Even more damning was my officiation of the “Fire Communion.”
“And they didn’t like those things?” I asked.
“Oh, I think they liked them okay,” was the answer.
“So, what’s the complaint?”
“The complaint was that you didn’t claim to be a Pagan.”
“Is there a problem if I am a Pagan?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Then what’s the problem,” I asked again.
“That, if you’re a Pagan, you should openly say that you’re a Pagan, I think.”
As I’ve said before, I’m often uncomfortable with the use of labels. But this sermon series is all about labels. So, I’m here today to honestly and openly tell you that my celebratory recognition of the solstice and my leadership of the “Fire Communion” ritual are indeed indicative of the truth that I am a Unitarian Universalist Pagan. I cannot say that my fidelity to Paganism is any greater than many other theological perspectives that I enjoy. But I can say that I am a Pagan.
All seriousness aside for just a moment, I can’t really make a statement like that without adding, at least in my head, the last word to the phrase … I am a UU Pagan baby. My first introduction to the concept of paganism was as a Catholic grade school student, where I learned that the world had lots of Pagan babies. These were children in mostly far-off lands who had not yet heard the word of God and been saved. For a cost of only five dollars, we could save one of those Pagan babies for life! They would be educated by Catholic missionaries and baptized.
This was a big deal. Competitions were established to motivate giving: boys against girls; rows against rows; reading groups against other reading groups. I once got in trouble at home for contributing ten dollars one Monday morning after having worked for a neighbor all day the previous Saturday to earn it. I was adamant in rebuking the reprimands from my father though. It had been my money; I could do with it what I wanted. The competition had been fierce and I had single handedly saved two Pagan babies myself, not only being a champion of my faith, but winning the day for row number four… And to think, years later, here I am a Pagan baby, myself.
The word Pagan, according to the Dictionary of Word Origins, has an interesting story. “The history of Pagan is a bizarre series of semantic twists and turns that takes it back ultimately to [the] Latin [root], Pagus (source also of English peasant)…[It] is [also] closely related to [the words] pact and peace. It was extended metaphorically to ‘country area, village.’” Pagan religion was initially the religion of the people, particularly rural people. It was tied to agriculture, to the cycles, and the seasons and to nature. Use of the word Pagan shifted dramatically though, with the advent of Christianity to mean heathen. Webster defines Pagan from that point in time, as heathen and interestingly defines heathen as nonreligious – specifically, as non-Christian, Jew or Muslim. A rather parochial point of view of it, I’d say.
The modern form of Paganism or Neopaganism takes its roots from the pre-Christian era. According to the Columbia University Press Encyclopedia, “Neopaganism is a polytheistic religious movement, practiced in small groups by partisans of pre-Christian religious traditions such as Egyptian, Greek, Norse, and Celtic. Neopagans fall into two broad categories, nature-oriented and magical [oriented] groups, and often incorporate arcane and elaborate rituals.” These rituals are often celebrated in synch with the equinox, the solstices, or the phases of the moon.
Neopaganism is considered an “Earth-based” or “nature-based” religion because it holds Earth and all of nature to be sacred. Many Neopagans draw from other religions that are also nature-based such as those of the indigenous peoples of the North, Central and South Americas, as well Africa. The divine nature of Earth is recognized in the form of the Goddess, who is called by many names, among them Sophia, Wisdom, Gaia, the Earth Mother, and the Great Mother of classical anthropology. In its much rarer masculine form, the nature force is called the Green Man.
Theologically, paganism is basically panentheistic, from the Greek: Pan-all, En-in, and Theos-God; God-in-all. Panentheism holds the view that God is eminent in all things and thus all things are sacred. But there is another major characteristic of Paganism – at its very core, it is significantly feminine in character. The goddess provides all things and thus all things are sacred. The early Goddess religions were existent mostly in prehistoric times and so little is known of their content. What is known is that they exalted the life force, that force which flows out of a female source. The object of adoration, from their physical, natural perspective, was a divinity that bore the face and the shape of woman.
Recently, Paganism was popularized through Dan Brown’s best seller, The Da Vinci Code. The premise of the book is that Jesus and his associates had very much been followers of earth-centered paganism, and that the Holy Grail, the subject of much medieval and modern scholarship, was indeed Mary Magdalene. Accordingly, she, representing the feminine principle within God as well as representing sexuality, was marginalized by the early church fathers – and their more recent successors – in their attempts to promote masculine domination over the spiritual realms.
When patriarchal Christianity with its demands of religious fidelity became the state religion of the empire, feminist Paganism was forced underground. It didn’t disappear there, where its irrepressible expressions continued to emerge from subterranean hiding places. In a dialogue between the protagonist and the antagonist in, The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown claims:
“Historians still marvel at the brilliance with which Constantine converted the sun-worshipping pagans to Christianity. By fusing pagan symbols, dates, and rituals into the growing Christian tradition, he created a kind of hybrid religion that was acceptable to both parties…
"Transmogrification…The vestiges of pagan religion in Christian symbology are undeniable. Egyptian sun disks became the halos of Catholic saints. Pictograms of Isis nursing her miraculously conceived son Horus became the blueprint for our modern images of the Virgin Mary nursing Baby Jesus. And virtually all the elements of the Catholic ritual—the miter, the altar, the doxology, and communion, the act of "God-eating"—were taken directly from earlier pagan mystery religions."
So, even though Paganism has been disdained publicly over the centuries by orthodoxy, and we might want to note here that it has been by the orthodoxies of all the patriarchal religions – not just Christianity, it has continued to thrive. It has lived underground through secret societies and it has existed in the mainstream culture, just below the surface, in the symbols and metaphors, in the celebrations and the rites of everyday life.
So if it’s been there all along, what’s the big deal? Why does it matter? Why is it important to us, as Unitarian Universalists?
Paganism has continued to thrive because it is a natural religion. And it has been suppressed through the ages for the same reason, because it is a natural religion. The patriarchal paradigm continues to persist because it provides a social structure in which the few maintain control over the many. If what comes natural to us was allowed unbounded freedom of exploration and expression, that would mean the end of control and the end of patriarchy. To those who believe in the order provided by patriarchy, it would spell the end of civilization as we know it. They aren’t willing to concede that without a struggle.
That’s what Muslim extremists fear. That’s what an unretractable Jewish orthodoxy dreads. And that’s what ultra rightwing conservative, fundamentalist Christians, including the current administration in Washington, are so anxious about. Hierarchical, patriarchal religion supports hierarchical, patriarchal governments, which in turn exploit people and the environment. Pagan, feminist religion supports not only individual spiritual development and expression, but by extension it promotes interpersonal and international cooperation and environmental responsibility.
Why is Paganism important to us? Because it connects us to our source and to each other. Because it provides a framework in which we can recognize, on a deep spiritual level, that we are intimately related to this universe, to this earth and to one another.
Why is Paganism important to us? It’s not so that we can rid ourselves of a slate of gods, only to replace them with a lineup of goddesses. It’s not so that we can rely on magic to do the soulful work of personal growth and social and eco justice. It’s important because it allows us to connect our personal natures with the natural world around us. Through the metaphorical personification of identifiable forces in nature, paganism invites our participation in meaningful, loving, and committed relationships with nature…with Life.
Our biological rhythms are in sync with the rising and the setting sun, with the expanding and retracting moon, with the seasons of darkness and light. If we can get out of our heads a little bit and into our body’s rhythms, hungers and appetites, then perhaps we can better anticipate the rhythms, hungers and appetites of our planet. Then perhaps we can be in a more harmonious relationship with the earth instead of trying to control it and trying to steal from it everything that it has to give us. Then perhaps we can better appreciate the rhythms, hungers and appetites of our neighbors, and we can be in better relationship with them, knowing that our fates are tied to the same divine source of life that begets us all.
Why is paganism important to us? Because it provides us with a means of better knowing who we are. It provides rituals that open doors to self-awareness and to an awareness of others.
It provides rituals that can open doors, which by the way can lead to enjoyable exploration. I once heard the renowned Pagan writer, Star Hawk speak to a group of about 3,000 Unitarian Universalists as she delivered a lecture at General Assembly one year. Star Hawk talked about how Pagan ritual was always an effort to exceed personal limitations by reaching for ecstasy, joy and elation. “We may not always get there,” she said. “But I can promise you one thing; it is never, never a boring, disengaged experience.”
Our Unitarian Universalist Principles and Purposes draw on four primary sources:
- Wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life;
- Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves;
- Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit.
- Spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.
The final source, earth-centered teachings, was the last piece to be added to the document. Even we were late in coming to the realization of the spiritual value in honoring the pagan underpinnings of our spiritual natures.
Until we can connect all of who and what we are, we will not have found a theological model or a religious tradition that will serve us or our world well enough. We are both masculine and feminine. We are black and white and Hispanic, Occidental and Oriental. We are straight and gay and both and neither. We are one humanity in an ever shrinking world.
Religious paths that lead to exclusion and domination push us along a road of destruction. Religious paths that lead to harmony within our human family and on this planet though lead us in the direction of salvation. Paganism, with its rituals and its goddesses, with its rhythms and its cycles, with its connections and relationships, its implacable quest for joy and its creative expressions of unity provides us with a path toward such harmony.
So, perhaps it’s 11 years later, but I want you to know that you can count me among the pagan babies of the world. I aspire to be a good Unitarian Universalist Pagan. And I invite you to come along. |
