Thanks for continuing the discussion. Since this is a more focused topic, rather than an answer to a specific question, I figure I'll put out some initial thoughts on the pros/cons of these different options, with the express purpose of hearing others' reactions to those, as I am far from settled on how to feel about these topics. Also, honestly, so far it hasn't had much to do with my entirely-solitary practice, so beware of rampant theorizing and second hand knowledge ahead!
1. Inclusionary vs Exclusionary Approaches to Contemporary Polytheism a. Inclusionary/Universalist Polytheism Pros: Making a universalist argument in a modern American alternative spirituality sub-culture isn't all that hard. It's been close to the default for a long time. I think it jives well with the individualism and desire for freedom that a lot of American weirdos (very much including myself in that category) yearn for. There are also good historical precedents for polytheists welcoming folks from all backgrounds, incorporating worship of Gods from other lands, and praying to whichever Gods were worshipped in the lands you fared to. Lastly, if holy Beings truly are well beyond the bounds of our earthly/fleshly being, why should they much care about the most incidental bits of our earthly/fleshly background?
Cons: To me, the main con is more circumstantial than based on principles - these days, there is a strong demand that "inclusive" means "you can't keep me out for any reason and you have to let me participate in anything you do, but that participation must allow for my restrictions." For example, if someone who believes the Gods are only archetypes wants to join a polytheist organization and insists they should be let in for "inclusiveness," but then demands that their Jungian-inspired approach be used rather than something more traditional other folks want to do. To use an escalatingly-silly example: imagine a vegetarian insisting on being allowed to compete in a chili cook off, in the name of "inclusiveness." Okay, likely fair enough. But then when no one likes his spicy bean soup as much as the chili it's competing against, he insists on a separate category with its own trophy for "vegetarian chili." Ehhh, okay, I guess? But then, when folks don't take the vegetarian category as seriously, demanding that all the chilis be vegetarian, or else the event should be canceled for being exclusionary. That's just nuts. That's also the kind of behavior that universalist polytheist groups seem to be prone to.
Related, but worth calling out as distinct: because universalist groups welcome a wider swath of folks, it's more likely that some of those folks will want to use the group for ends outside of the group's core purpose (getting laid, puffing up their egos, politics, whatever). Once this kind of capture takes hold, it becomes a positive feedback loop, making the group more and more about whatever this theoretically-non-core purpose is, until the group either implodes or obviously has nothing to do with it's original "main" purpose.
b. Exclusionary/Folkish Polytheism Pros: For better or worse, the kinds of rough groupings most of these groups base themselves on (Northern European ancestry, being white in America, where you live now, what language you speak, and so forth) have some correlation with shared culture, norms, and behaviors, and that makes it easy to get on the same page, especially about things as potentially contentious as religion.
More fundamentally, if you believe that any group has a right to say "hey, these beliefs and practices belonged to my forbears, they're not for everyone, and we have a right to keep them around and say who gets to learn them under what circumstances," then to be consistent, you likely ought to extend that courtesy even to folks who say that about the pre-Christian beliefs of Northern Europe (or wherever else).
For those religions that include worship of forebears, it also kind of makes sense to insist it's really for those who share those forebears(now, whether you define that by culture, genetics, language, or what, is fuzzier).
Also, in a kind of inverse to the above with inclusive groups, the very fact that being exclusionary is politically unacceptable these days means that these groups might be less likely to become political or otherwise be seized for some end other than their stated goals, so that might be worth something.
Cons: These kind of exclusionary beliefs can shade into actual hatefulness, xenophobia, or racism, and the line between "we're not hurting you, we just don't want anything to do with you" and "we hate you" can be fuzzier than we might like to believe.
There's also an in-built tendency in these approaches to seek "purity," usually in the form of adherence to what we know about the beliefs of one historical time and place - but which time? and which place? Were the Vikings of the early middle ages a better model of religious practice than the Germanic tribes of the folkwanderung? This is exacerbated by the extremely fragmentary nature of what we know about pre-Christian beliefs. Pretty much every flavor of Heathenry relies heavily on Snorri Sturlusson's medieval Icelandic work, since that's one of the few coherent sources of myth we have. We don't really know how much that tells us about what Anglo-Saxons were doing in the 5th century, and it can be weird to insist on "purity" around something so very uncertain.
2. The Tribal/Theodish Option Pros: Theodism made a real effort to re-create some of the social and cultural assumptions that likely were integral to the day-to-day practice of Anglo-Saxon heathen belief. Tight, personal bonds, oaths that you take very seriously, acknowledging and accepting the reality and importance of certain hierarchies. I think there's some worth in taking that stuff seriously, or at least trying to.
Another thing that made this model a nice alternative to the above binary is that it wasn't "no holds barred" like the universalists - you had to swear oaths about what kind of behavior you'd engage in and who you'd listen to and such, but its limits also weren't based on where you or your ((great) grand) parents were born, they were based on freely-entered agreements.
Cons: This seems like one of the options most likely to devolve into true LARPing. We don't actually live in early medieval England. The parallel social/cultural structures the Theodsmen tried to set up were brittle and shallow compared to real-life tensions and commitments. Read the history, including all the "outlawings" of folks found wanting as members of the tribe: https://ealdrice.org/theodspell/
3. The Holy Guild Concept Pros: This is the option I'm currently most excited about, as I think it might share some of the best of the above options, while having ways to curb the worst sides. Having a religious organization you belong to with certain rules about who can or can't join, what duties and behaviors are expected of you, and what you can expect to get from the organization is one that has a long history of working in this culture (see: every church). The model is flexible in terms of what those expectations and duties will be, and it includes thoughts on how to change them as needed.
Cons: Voluntary associations of all kinds aren't doing so hot in our society today. Especially for weirdo niche religions. Finding enough folks to participate at all, much less in ways that reinforce and strengthen the group would be very tough. Also, a lot of what made guilds strong in the past (mutual aid for members in need, covering things like funeral expenses, and so forth) are these days more often handled by other methods, and so much of the "meat" of belonging to such a group just isn't there. But that criticism applies at least as well to all of the other options above.
Okay, so those are my takes, as I said, I welcome thoughts, pushback, or other ways of looking at this stuff.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2023-06-27 09:17 pm (UTC)1. Inclusionary vs Exclusionary Approaches to Contemporary Polytheism
a. Inclusionary/Universalist Polytheism
Pros: Making a universalist argument in a modern American alternative spirituality sub-culture isn't all that hard. It's been close to the default for a long time. I think it jives well with the individualism and desire for freedom that a lot of American weirdos (very much including myself in that category) yearn for. There are also good historical precedents for polytheists welcoming folks from all backgrounds, incorporating worship of Gods from other lands, and praying to whichever Gods were worshipped in the lands you fared to. Lastly, if holy Beings truly are well beyond the bounds of our earthly/fleshly being, why should they much care about the most incidental bits of our earthly/fleshly background?
Cons: To me, the main con is more circumstantial than based on principles - these days, there is a strong demand that "inclusive" means "you can't keep me out for any reason and you have to let me participate in anything you do, but that participation must allow for my restrictions." For example, if someone who believes the Gods are only archetypes wants to join a polytheist organization and insists they should be let in for "inclusiveness," but then demands that their Jungian-inspired approach be used rather than something more traditional other folks want to do. To use an escalatingly-silly example: imagine a vegetarian insisting on being allowed to compete in a chili cook off, in the name of "inclusiveness." Okay, likely fair enough. But then when no one likes his spicy bean soup as much as the chili it's competing against, he insists on a separate category with its own trophy for "vegetarian chili." Ehhh, okay, I guess? But then, when folks don't take the vegetarian category as seriously, demanding that all the chilis be vegetarian, or else the event should be canceled for being exclusionary. That's just nuts. That's also the kind of behavior that universalist polytheist groups seem to be prone to.
Related, but worth calling out as distinct: because universalist groups welcome a wider swath of folks, it's more likely that some of those folks will want to use the group for ends outside of the group's core purpose (getting laid, puffing up their egos, politics, whatever). Once this kind of capture takes hold, it becomes a positive feedback loop, making the group more and more about whatever this theoretically-non-core purpose is, until the group either implodes or obviously has nothing to do with it's original "main" purpose.
b. Exclusionary/Folkish Polytheism
Pros: For better or worse, the kinds of rough groupings most of these groups base themselves on (Northern European ancestry, being white in America, where you live now, what language you speak, and so forth) have some correlation with shared culture, norms, and behaviors, and that makes it easy to get on the same page, especially about things as potentially contentious as religion.
More fundamentally, if you believe that any group has a right to say "hey, these beliefs and practices belonged to my forbears, they're not for everyone, and we have a right to keep them around and say who gets to learn them under what circumstances," then to be consistent, you likely ought to extend that courtesy even to folks who say that about the pre-Christian beliefs of Northern Europe (or wherever else).
For those religions that include worship of forebears, it also kind of makes sense to insist it's really for those who share those forebears(now, whether you define that by culture, genetics, language, or what, is fuzzier).
Also, in a kind of inverse to the above with inclusive groups, the very fact that being exclusionary is politically unacceptable these days means that these groups might be less likely to become political or otherwise be seized for some end other than their stated goals, so that might be worth something.
Cons: These kind of exclusionary beliefs can shade into actual hatefulness, xenophobia, or racism, and the line between "we're not hurting you, we just don't want anything to do with you" and "we hate you" can be fuzzier than we might like to believe.
There's also an in-built tendency in these approaches to seek "purity," usually in the form of adherence to what we know about the beliefs of one historical time and place - but which time? and which place? Were the Vikings of the early middle ages a better model of religious practice than the Germanic tribes of the folkwanderung? This is exacerbated by the extremely fragmentary nature of what we know about pre-Christian beliefs. Pretty much every flavor of Heathenry relies heavily on Snorri Sturlusson's medieval Icelandic work, since that's one of the few coherent sources of myth we have. We don't really know how much that tells us about what Anglo-Saxons were doing in the 5th century, and it can be weird to insist on "purity" around something so very uncertain.
2. The Tribal/Theodish Option
Pros: Theodism made a real effort to re-create some of the social and cultural assumptions that likely were integral to the day-to-day practice of Anglo-Saxon heathen belief. Tight, personal bonds, oaths that you take very seriously, acknowledging and accepting the reality and importance of certain hierarchies. I think there's some worth in taking that stuff seriously, or at least trying to.
Another thing that made this model a nice alternative to the above binary is that it wasn't "no holds barred" like the universalists - you had to swear oaths about what kind of behavior you'd engage in and who you'd listen to and such, but its limits also weren't based on where you or your ((great) grand) parents were born, they were based on freely-entered agreements.
Cons: This seems like one of the options most likely to devolve into true LARPing. We don't actually live in early medieval England. The parallel social/cultural structures the Theodsmen tried to set up were brittle and shallow compared to real-life tensions and commitments. Read the history, including all the "outlawings" of folks found wanting as members of the tribe: https://ealdrice.org/theodspell/
3. The Holy Guild Concept
Pros: This is the option I'm currently most excited about, as I think it might share some of the best of the above options, while having ways to curb the worst sides. Having a religious organization you belong to with certain rules about who can or can't join, what duties and behaviors are expected of you, and what you can expect to get from the organization is one that has a long history of working in this culture (see: every church). The model is flexible in terms of what those expectations and duties will be, and it includes thoughts on how to change them as needed.
Cons: Voluntary associations of all kinds aren't doing so hot in our society today. Especially for weirdo niche religions. Finding enough folks to participate at all, much less in ways that reinforce and strengthen the group would be very tough. Also, a lot of what made guilds strong in the past (mutual aid for members in need, covering things like funeral expenses, and so forth) are these days more often handled by other methods, and so much of the "meat" of belonging to such a group just isn't there. But that criticism applies at least as well to all of the other options above.
Okay, so those are my takes, as I said, I welcome thoughts, pushback, or other ways of looking at this stuff.
Cheers,
Jeff