This is just an index of links, so I don't lose them, pending a later real post on the subject.
- Post-Christianity, Political Solidarity, and the Pagan Paradigm, Paganism, Solidarity, and the way forward: Jason Pitzl-Waters at The Wild Hunt (plus Solidarity, Not Unity: an interview at Humanistic Paganism
- The Nature of the Gods from Theomon the Bard
- Ducking Pigeonholing: Sarah Lawless at The Witch of Forest Grove
- Running from the word “Pagan”: Jason Mankey at Raise the Horns at Patheos
- The Light In The Window: Morpheus Ravenna quotes me in talking about the nature of the gods and Pagans' relationship with them
- Running from the word “Pagan”: Kenny Klein at Witches & Pagans
- When Pagan Discourse Becomes Reality TV & Genderqueer is to trans as polytheist is to Pagan: Teo Bishop at Bishop in the Grove
- Dropping the Pagan label: Star Foster at her Google Plus
- Why I call myself Pagan: Sam Webster
- Buddhists are Pagan: James Foster at Pagan Dharma
- A Question of Pagan Solidarity: Heather Greene collecting quotes at The Wild Hunt
- Defining Paganism & Identity Reflection: David Dashifen Kees at TechnoWitch.org
- Why I'm Not Pagan: Drew Jacob at Rogue Priest
- The role of faith and hubris in Paganism: John Halstead at The Allergic Pagan
- A Wordless Definition: Crystal Blanton at Daughters of Eve
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Three from T. Thorn Coyle:
- Pagan (a poetic evocation)
- Paganism: Some Questions
- Paganism: One Working Answer
- It's time for Pagans to stop being Pagan: Scott Reimers at Patheos
- I've offered a definition of a “Pagan” religion as one “whose message is its Gods and whose revealed texts are its myths”. Edward Butler via Twitter, quoting an article from Pomegranate 7.1 (2005)
- Yes, Virginia, I am an atheist Pagan: Rhett Aultman
- Bringing Back the Gods: P. Sufenas Virius Lupus
- Curious antipathy: the ongoing struggle to define Modern Paganism: at Eros is Eros
- Values / Beliefs / Practices: Yvonne at Sermons from the Mound on Patheos
- The pagan sensibility: Me, here
Here's Michael York, summarizing the definition of Pagan from his book Pagan Theology: Julian Betkowski
The ‘broad” definition of paganism that I use is “an affirmation of interactive and polymorphic sacred relationship by the individual or community with the tangible, sentient and/or nonempirical.”
A ‘narrower’ definition replaces the ‘and/or’ conjunction with a simple ‘and’. Briefly, I see paganism as a celebration of life, a celebration of the world, a celebration of the physical, and a celebration of pleasure. Its component features are drawn from a grab-bag of nature veneration, the this-worldly, corpo-spirituality, enchantment, humanism, hedonism and multiple and gender-differentiated understandings of godhead or the divine. Different individuals and different communities select from this grab-bag differently. There is no dogmatic authority. The underlying ethos within a pagan orientation can be understood in terms of wishing, health, wonder and freedom. Most succinctly, paganism is root-religion — the root of all religion. And where the fashion is now to say, “I am not religious; I am spiritual,” I would rather say, “I am not spiritual; I am pagan!”
Here's a tweet from the Pagan Alliance:
Can Pagan mean any earth-based, nature-centered, polytheistic OR indigenous faith? that's how we've defined it n our org
6 comments:
There's also:
Three Legs on the Pagan Cauldron, or Must Pagans Be Polytheists?
http://tinyurl.com/bro9z6k
There's Far More to Paganism than Worshiping Gods and Goddesses:
http://tinyurl.com/d23e3rl
both in response to
Bringing Back the Gods
http://tinyurl.com/cuzx5uk
http://greekreconmommy.blogspot.com/2013/01/why-fuss-over-polytheist-vs-pagan.html is an attempt to look at the issue.
People might be interested in a few posts of mine from 2011, in which I tackled the issue from a linguist's perspective (i.e. not what should it mean, but what it does mean):
The Pagan Knot: Why Pagan is the Perfect Name for Us
Defining Paganism: Word Wrangling
Defining Paganism: Foundations of Word Meaning
Defining Paganism: Prototypes of the Pagan
Defining Paganism: Is Paganism a Religion?
I just read this post and loved it. Inspired by the ongoing community dialogue, Themon goes in a slightly different direction. His conclusions are exciting, and challenging.
The Nature of the Gods
Here's another attempt to collate others' attempts at defining or describing Paganism.
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