Defining "Pagan"

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
• 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