The Editorial By Scot Rhoads Burning Answers In this issue's Letters section, Lisa Hutton Kuhlen asked some questions regarding legitimizing Pagan religions. As we Pagans seek legitimacy, I think we will see other religions becoming more like us than we become like them—a kind of mainstreaming of spirituality. So we can expect to fail to achieve legitimacy as it is now defined; but we can expect the requirements of legitimacy to change to fit us. Part of the development of civilization has been the organization and politicization of spirituality in the form of organized religion. Despite the flaws so apparent to Americans and people outside the religious mainstream, I expect this played an essential role in the creation of civilizations. If you graph relative brain size against the size of social groups in ape species, you get a straight line. Plotting human relative brain size on this line suggests a natural social group size of about 200. Organization on a larger scale requires unnatural means. An example would be a combination of the natural shamanic spirituality with natural leadership roles to produce an unnaturally influential, structured, long-lived religion. We are familiar with the problems this can bring: ossification, dogma, intolerance, totalitarianism, etc. But it also helps make possible large organizations and long-term projects on a scale beyond what unaided human brains can achieve. As descendants of one of the more successful civilizations, it should be no surprise that we have inherited this powerful spirituo-political tool. We should be more surprised (pleasantly!) that the U.S. has taken a step to free itself of the political abuses of religion (in the form of separation of church and state) and is getting away with it. We are succeeding (well, more or less) because our advances in communication and record keeping put at our disposal the information that our rational minds require to overcome our limitations in individual knowledge and memory. (When you don't have records of experiments in raising pigs in a desert environment to warn of long-term disaster, then you need a religion to command you not to eat pork.) Now our records and paradigms are more powerful than most of those which religions provide. Our new methods are also more responsive to the changes that have already overwhelmed the rules our religions provide. (For instance, the Catholic Church still hasn't figured out there might be a population problem. `Be fruitful, or die trying!') Now we can do better. Religious dictates that are now unnecessary and counterproductive make many understandably hostile toward religion and eager to discard it and everything associated with it. Unfortunately, the religio-political organizations have so effectively claimed spirituality as their own, that many would love to dispose of this baby with the bathwater—some seem so anxious that they would jettison the baby first and move on to the bathwater later. Joseph Campbell discusses many of the social ills associated with our loss of mythic structure—this includes spirituality. We need spirituality. But we have already played the organized religion game and found it desperately wanting. More and more people are seeking spirituality separate from the religio-political sources. Some are seeking within the old organizations, but not in them. Some turn to alternative religions (that's us!). Some turn to art or environmentalism, etc., and may not even consider it spirituality. We are rediscovering that each person has a unique spirituality to explore; and now our society has a strong enough foundation outside of religion that we need no longer fear that such individuality threatens civilization. I suspect human nature dictates that individual spirituality grow until it regains the fundamental role it had in individuals' lives before we started this civilization experiment. But 5000 year old fears die slowly. I expect recognizable organized religion to outlast me; but as its political aspect wanes, this becomes less lamentable. And we can use these old, dying political attitudes to further the spread of the new spiritual ones by pursuing (but not attaining!) legitimacy for Pagan religions. All that any form of individual spirituality needs to be legitimate is one person to take it seriously. But political things need some kind of societal recognition to be legitimate. That is the nature of what we seek in legitimizing Paganism. Codes, creeds, core doctrine, organizations, schedules, meetings, buildings, agendas, etc.—these are what legitimize a religion in the eyes of society and its established religions. But Pagans seem to have fundamental difficulty with these things. There are precious few of the expensive things (like buildings dedicated to worship) that should be plentiful, and a surfeit of the cheap ones (like core doctrines) that are supposed to number no more than one. This bodes ill for official recognition. If we gave up the individualistic aspects of Paganism that stand in the way of recognition, then it wouldn't be the Paganism that most of us were drawn to. From what I see, we don't want to be a religion in that sense. But we are seeking to legitimize our spirituality in a society that still confuses that with politics and organization. And we seek understanding and acceptance and respect for the rights our society defines. Sometimes we seek these things through a call for legitimacy. But to succeed without becoming something we don't want to be demands a change in what legitimacy means. This is what I expect to happen. I don't see a Pagan Pope coming along, ever. If it's a Pope, it ain't Pagan in my book. I do see heaps of organizations of various and varying size, influence, respectability and life span. But there will be some shared goals (else the word Pagan loses its meaning) and one of the strongest will be legitimacy (if only because this is inherent in the nature of an organization). I expect that no matter how hard we might work toward legitimacy, we will fail because of the nature of Paganism and Pagans. But I think we will soon become legitimate. This conundrum is possible because we will not change as much as the nature of legitimacy will. (If Mohammed can't come to legitimacy, legitimacy will come to Mohammed.) Spirituality gave religion what it needed to be a political and cohesive force making society possible. Society has grown beyond this, and now there is the urge to throw away childish things, which (since we paradoxically still accept what the Church told us) we believe includes spirituality. But we are also learning that we need (can't escape) spirituality, and that it is mercifully independent of the organizations that claimed it as their own. Yet, we have not grown to the point that social legitimacy is independent of the political and social trappings of organized religion. This is where I see us now: Our society is only just learning to value spirituality independent of organized religion; and it has not yet dawned on us that its value transcends the political, social and architectural edifices of organized religion. As a patchwork of ephemeral Pagan organizations struggles for legitimacy, it is not likely to build the traditional trappings or ossified structure associated with legitimacy over the last few thousand years. But in the struggle, we will make ourselves known, we will show we are not fearsome, we will show we are good people like everyone else. Most important, we will show that religion can be more individual spirituality than anything else, and we will show this better in our failure to form a Pagan religious edifice, than we could in our success. That's why I think we should organize to seek legitimacy. That's why I think it won't work. That's why I think things will turn out ideally for everyone. Blessed Be! | 
