Community
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Walking Our Talk: Modeling a Vision for the Future
As I have written before, Atheopaganism is a forward-looking religious path. We envision a time when humanity lives in balance with the natural systems of the biosphere and when all people are treated fairly and equally in human society. Those are tall orders, but that’s what a vision is for, right? Especially in these times, it is clear that we have far to go to approach these visionary goals. And so as we create our “microcosms” of human society in our Pagan circles, it is that much more important that we model for ourselves and others the world we hope to create. In my experience, Pagans don’t do nearly so…
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Producing Your Own Atheopagan Event
Having online community is great, but real, in-person gatherings where we can build relationships, celebrate our rites and learn from one another are much, much better. I encourage you to organize your own events and start building your own non-theist Pagan community. To that end, I’m happy to announce the release of the Atheopagan Event Planning Guide . I hope you’ll download the Guide and its associated spreadsheets (the Timeline Template and the Budget Template), and use them to create your own gatherings. When planning your Atheopagan event, be sure to contact The Atheopagan Society (our registered nonprofit) to see if there are ways we can help (with affordable event…
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Unpopular Ideas
On this day in 1809, Charles Darwin was born. 50 years later, he would publish “On the Origin of Species”, which pretty well blew the doors off the scientific world, outraged the contemporary religious culture, and established the key scientific foundation of the field of biology for all time. Darwin knew what he was doing. He sat on “Origin” for years, aware that the core implication of his work—that no God was necessary to explain the diversity of life on Earth—would bring him a deluge of hatred and ridicule. He was right. 159 years on, Christian fundamentalists still rail against Darwin’s discovery. Their entire worldview is threatened by his simple…
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On the Other Hand…(A Love Letter)
So, I’ve been a little hard on the Pagan community lately. I’ve decried abuses and hierarchies, lack of political engagement, and the leftovers of the sexual culture of the 1960s that still thrive in many corners of it. Those things are true, in my opinion, and I stand by them. So why, one might ask, do I continue to be a part of a community of people who I find so problematic? Well, let me tell you: because it’s wonderful. In all my experience, no cohort of people has ever been so smart, interesting, creative, unique and, by and large, genuinely good-hearted. Weird, yes—but isn’t that just a synonym for creative? Despite blind…
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Children of the Earth Tribe, WAKE UP
Back in September of 2015, I asked, is Atheopaganism political? Go ahead, read it. It lays out why I believe that any religious path that is truly about this Earth—any path of integrity—must, in days such as these, be one of activism. Since, I’ve had plenty of opportunity to consider the Pagan community generally through this lens. And I am sorry to say that I have been sorely disappointed. Most of the visible voices, most of the “Big Name Pagans”, are anything but political. At best, they may voice the occasional political opinion in passing, but mostly they’re about rituals and magical tools and cultural traditions and “mysteries”. Oh, and selling…
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Announcing the Atheopaganism Patreon Campaign!
Atheopaganism has really taken off in the past couple of years! Our web traffic is up, our Facebook group is soon to break 1,000 members, and we’re engaged in the broader online conversation of the Pagan community to a significant degree. This is exciting! It’s also quite a bit of work. I am unemployed at the moment, so I have the time, but soon I will (presumably) be going back to work and Atheopagan activities will need to fit in around that. For this reason and after a lot of soul-searching about it, I have decided to create a Patreon fundraising campaign to ensure that Atheopaganism gets the attention and…
