by Granny
Granny was a long-standing community member in alt.religion.wicca.moderated, known for patient, historically grounded posts. This piece began as a stated "ramble" on a pet peeve — the spread of the word "pagan" as an all-purpose label for any non-Christian religion — but developed into a sharp argument: that loose use of the word doesn't just muddy the waters, it re-enacts the very erasure it claims to resist.
Everyone has little pet peeves — those irritants that just beg to be scratched. One of mine is the all-inclusive use of the word "pagan" whenever a pre-Christian or polytheistic religion is discussed.
WARNING: I feel a ramble coming on... please indulge me.
It was the Christianised Romans travelling into Europe and Great Britain who labelled the locals "pagans." They didn't mean it as a compliment. To them, a pagan was a hedonistic worshipper of false gods — an ignorant peasant. I'm sure most of you know this history and will agree that one of the best ways to suppress a conquered population is to destroy its religious identity. This is what the Romans set out to do. The pagans became the bad guys. Belief in country faiths became a bad thing. The Christian Romans destroyed the pagan altars and defiled pagan sites. They replaced everything with Christian icons and built their churches on pagan ground.
They absorbed the pagans into Christianity. After a generation or two it was hard to tell what was indigenous and what was imposed by the Romans. I don't want to get too far off the subject, but the Christians also altered their holidays — most importantly the birth and death of Jesus — to coincide with the pagan celebrations of the winter solstice and spring equinox. This was done intentionally in an effort to incorporate local religions.
Back to my problem: with the growth of the internet, the term "pagan" has become like a road weed that has jumped over the garden wall. It is found everywhere, used where it has no business, and is impossible to dig out.
A Pacific islander is not a pagan.
A Taoist is not a pagan.
A Cheyenne tribesman is not a pagan.
A Hindu is not a pagan.
I have even seen a Jew referred to as a pagan because "Judaism predates Christianity"!!
So who ARE the modern pagans? Those who have taken up the practice or perpetuated the beliefs of the folk religions of Europe and Great Britain — the Celts, the Druids, the Wiccans, among others.
When you lump ALL of the non-Christian religions together under the "pagan" banner, you commit a great injustice. You are doing exactly what those Christian Romans did. You are diminishing the cultural identity of the people who worship other gods, who believe other philosophies. You are blurring the lines in an attempt to validate your own religion: "I'm a pagan and that Indian is a pagan too!" ...Except that he's NOT — he's a Hindu.
And it works both ways. By throwing the word "pagan" around indiscriminately, you obscure your own cultural identity. You lose clarity, direction and power. You draw attention to your lack of knowledge and understanding. You show your willingness to be led by whatever author is on the Llewellyn discount list.
Please, show respect for other religions and the people who practice them. Even if the belief system is polytheistic, even if it is followed by only one family on Chuk Island and has no name, even if it predates cave paintings — it is still important to the cultural diversity of humankind. Call it an "indigenous religion of Chuk Island." Call it a "folk religion." Call it a "family tradition." But don't call it "paganism."
Once you slap that PAGAN label onto something, no one will see it as it really is ever again. Something very valuable will have been lost. A Celt will look just like a Taoist. The Cheyenne become no different from the Hawai'ians. And you?
You are the neo-Romans.
Colophon
Written by Granny and posted to alt.religion.wicca.moderated, 24 July 2003. Original Message-ID: <[email protected]>.
Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.
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