Triumphant


One of the unfortunate legacies

One of my hobbies is history, especially religious history. One of the things that concerns me about the modern Pagan movement is what I call "the Faith Triumphant." In a nutshell, believers in "the Faith Triumphant" believe that if all humans just accepted that there was One True Way™, the world would be a good and peaceful place with malice towards none and casual Fridays every day and no disease or global warming.

Codswallop.

History teaches that there are cycles of thought, even if there aren't necessarily cycles of actions. For this essay, I'm differentiating neopaganism from paganism. To really get a feel for how neopaganism has spread, you need to go back to the early days of Christianity, before Constantine, back before there was a "universal" church, when believers were still arguing among themselves.

See, it's that notion of a universal or catholic church that started some of the difficulty. I think that the notion that One Faith Fits All is a particularly dangerous one for those who want to experience and be experienced. While my particular path may or may not be similar to yours, the idea that yours should be exactly the same as mine makes you little more than my shadow.

It doesn't take much to see that is the roots of doctrine and orthodoxy. People have been killed and cultures wiped out all so there could be a Faith Triumphant that rewrites history to it's needs.

It's still a hot button, especially among those who have recently accepted their own Paganism. Fortunately, most outgrow it.

Posted: Thu - June 7, 2007 at 01:20 PM
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