Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Can you adopt a tradition?

It's not just contemporary Pagans who are vexed by that problem. Journalist Ron Dreher of the Crunchy Con[servative] blog tries to respond to a political conservative's criticism, the critic being columnist Maggie Gallagher.

And then his commenters arrive in flocks.

And the argument goes around and around, sounding very much like Wiccans and reconstructionist Pagans arguing, only with different religious language.

And then a real Pagan does arrive in the comments. Someone tries to refute him by quoting G.K. Chesterton, as though the definition of "pagan" had not matured over the last hundred years. Is that the best they can do?

Yes, a sort of philosophical/literary paganism was in vogue in Chesterton's time--the next issue of The Pomegranate will have an excellent article on that era. But it is not exactly what we are talking about now.

4 Comments:

Anonymous Darkly said...

I know it's human to argue over truths, but one would think we'd have learned by now that everyone has their own truth and their own opinion.

It's comforting, I suppose, to know that the same disagreements we have in the pagan community are universal. ;)

10:09 AM  
Blogger Chas S. Clifton said...

It's interesting that in his follow-up post, Dreher, a convert to Catholicism, speaks of the truth conveyed by ritual, etc.

While I appreciate the interfaith moment, I don't think that their absolute truths and ours will ever correspond exactly.

11:19 AM  
Blogger Jason said...

Also of interest, Dreher has un-converted to Catholicism, and has no converted to Orthodox Christianity!

7:13 PM  
Blogger Chas S. Clifton said...

Jason, yes, you're right. It's a regular soap opera. What comes next, a blow on the head and amnesia?
:-)

8:32 PM  

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