Elaine wrote:
>the fact that there are links to ethnicity embedded in the
actual structure of the religion
Um, Judaism? Zoroastrianism? Mandaeans?
Dodgy ground, Elaine, dodgy ground.
Elaine wrote:
>I'm quite willing to be convinced I'm wrong on this, but at the moment I
remain uneasy about any forms of religion which can so easily be linked to
forms of ethnic nationalism. I take the point that there are plenty of rabid
right-wing Christians, but this isn't quite the same thing. It's not a
question of the distribution along the political spectrum of pagans or
heathens, but of the fact that there are links to ethnicity embedded in the
actual structure of the religion. Whereas Christianity and Islam, however
they may behave in practice, at least formally claim universal validity and
the equality of all humankind.
Does "ethnic nationalism" have to be Far Right politically? Would this
include Scottish dancing? (Not a religion, I know -- except to those who
practise it!)
More seriously, part of the point of (some areas of) Paganism is to connect
to the gods and mythology and traditions of the land where you live, or
where you come from, as being more relevant to you than a foreign god/God
from a foreign culture. Does this have to make it Right Wing? I don't
understand why it worries you.
Many of the problems in Fundamentalist Christianity, I think, come from
their forgetting/ignoring the fact that (however it was adapted later)
Christianity began within a specific geographical and historical setting --
Jews living under Roman occupation, twenty centuries ago -- and this
inevitably affected some of the teachings, some of the language, some of the
New Testament stories, which really can't be separated from their setting.
Similarly, Islam came from another specific historical and geographic
setting -- seventh century Arabia; even today the Koran is supposed to be
not translatable from Arabic; also, many of the problematic areas of Islam
(for Westerners) are cultural customs rather than spiritual teachings. So
yes, Christianity and Islam claim universal validity, but their underlying
mythos is necessarily ethnic. They have also both been very good at
imposing a dominant culture (in the case of later Christian development,
English, Spanish, etc) on other cultures they invade. Perhaps that's in the
name of "universal validity and the equality of all humankind"; perhaps it's
simply cultural imperialism. But for the life of me I can't see why this is
preferable to cultures being allowed to keep their own (ethnic) gods.
David
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