You've put your finger on one of my few qualms, too.
Both Xianity and Islam have a conversion requirement. In both cases, belief that theirs is the Only True Religion!!!!1 is a basic tenet. We have no such tenet. We do not even have an imperative to grow. What we do have is a duty to, as you say in your response to this, make heathenry welcoming. Or I would say more simply--we have a duty to welcome people who are heathen, or considering whether heathenry is for them. Hospitality. But not conversion, not even judging ourselves by numbers.
Let the gods, and the true attractiveness of our religion, determine how big we get. (I'm constantly awed by how many are finding out about the gods, because I agree--we aren't doing a good job of getting info out there, or of being hospitable.)
I am not suggesting that you--or many heathens--are saying we should seek out converts. Least of all by lies, intimidation, and coercion like Xianity and Islam. But I don't think we should even measure our success by our numbers, the way they do. I do agree we should be ashamed if we drive people away . . . but heathenhulagirl is right when she points out below that quiet a few come back--or they become solitary and repudiate just "organized Asatru." or just the one kindred that treated them badly. or just the one organization that disappointed them. Thank the gods.
The other reason I think the comparisons are invidious is that Xianity and Islam--especially the latter--do have very simple doctrinal definitions. Ours is not that kind of religion. Our commonality is a horde of gods--and an ethos that is slippery to define, amounting as it does to a sophisticated view of honor. I don't have the faith in the NNV that you do--I am all too well aware of their shaky foundations and the variations in versions. And I don't think dogma is even what defines heathenry. Heck, there are even variations among us as to which gods we revere. The obvious example is Loki . . . but bulwerk also alluded to the fact that many heathens regard Wóden as distinct from Óðinn and in some cases also from Wodan.
Apples and oranges and nectarines. We are who we are--we aren't a religion of numbers or even of doctrinal exactitude.
I like that, actually.
Look what someone found and sent me on IRC yesterday, from a site I stay away from: http://bc-freehold.org/skalds/freydis_heimdallson/goatherd.html . Good parable. Notice who was foolish and lost sight of the objective, and what arguments defeated them. We are simply not sheep. (Where the parable breaks down of course is that many people are happier as Xians, and that goes for all the religions of the desert god.)
I honestly don't see conversion as one of the biggies in any of the older faiths. Judaism doesn't have it(you have to earn your place and study and hard work as well as initiatory rites are a must)nor does buddhism, or hinduism or a lot of the others. They wait for the individual to discover what is within themselves. So why should we as a recon religion seek others out for conversion? Not to mention I previously was Jewish so have a pretty big problem with prostylization anyway.
As to the NNVs. I can see why a lot of people feel badly toward them(with them being so intrinsically connected to mcnallen)but I didn't know of the connection to S.M. when I was taught them. I think that the potential for personal interpretation, unlike the 10 C's is a good thing, it changes with the level of growth of the practitioner and gives a deeper breadth to them. I know it has for me. It wasn't until years later I even knew they were connected with S.M. Which meant he had no bearing on them for me. Eh. I think that giving individuals as guideline for behavior is not bad, but it is far from required in order to practice Heathenry. I do know that in my world order is very required what with me being bi-polar and when I create order in many places, including my spirituality it helps me to find myself making progress. So I use it.
I like the parable, but I agree, that not everyone who re-converts(or converts for the first time from heathenry to xianity)to Chrisianity does so against their better judgement or their will. People grow, and their needs change. Why should we prevent them from going where they will best be served?
I have always thought that Heathenry/Asatru/The Northern Tradion/Whatever Way You Phrase It... Spoke well for itself.
I'm well aware that Judaism isn't a proselytizing religion, and indeed requires would-be converts to be rejected twice. But in Xianity and Islam, it's basic, and they were the two the OP used as examples . . .
My objection to the NNV has nothing to do with McNallen; I have similar problems with the 12 Ætheling Thews, although I do like that they include givefulness and not just hospitality. They're all simplifications emulating the 10 Commandments; heathen ethics just aren't that simple. The NNV/Ætheling Thews lists are very useful in many ways; it's just they are not as much of a common rallying point as the post suggests. People use different lists, have different interpretations (in the previous post, bulwerk and I had a deep disagreement about frith, to give an obvious example), and some don't like the lists of virtues/thews at all. We have broad agreement on heathen honor--perhaps a surprising degree of agreement, considering the range of doctrinal positions within heathenry!--but considerably fewer of us could agree on a list of virtues, surprisingly enough.
I am thinking that we should all write down our stories in a compilation book. Essays on how we came to heathenism. Our journeys. I took survey in 2000 about why people became heathen, their sexes, ages, income, education, occupation and the age when they became Asatru. I got waylaid because in December 2000 I had my daughter who turned out autistic and I have been busy raising her. But the statistics are interesting. The heathens I surveyed have above average income, above average education and many were reformed Catholics and a few Jews. Many passed through Wicca and was dissatisfied and many were agnostics and became informed believers. There is an expression that "1 informed believer is worth 1,000 blind followers."
I think the demographics may have broadened. My perception, FWIW . . . is that is an increasing disconnect between the desire for knowledge and college attendance (it's harder to get through the hoops in high school, they've been testing more and more for conformity; it's harder to get money for college and you usually have to compromise quite heftily, including studying a very practical major, to get a loan; colleges are increasingly dominated by practical degrees and faculty who teach them, and the intellectual seekers increasingly just drop out and read on their own; in particular, medieval and Germanic subjects are taught even less than they were twenty years ago, or ten years ago, so people think, why bother?) I've got used to finding out that people either didn't go to college or didn't finish (and are very well read in their own fields of interest, but lack the languages and training in written composition that college or even school should have given them); or alternatively they got a degree in business or tech, or in many cases certification, or worked their way up in one or the other and are only now painfully getting a college degree on the side; and in many cases they are ex-military, which often means they were doing that while their contemporaries were doing BA's.
As a very highly educated person--I dedicated a BA, 2 MA's, and a PhD to the gods and then taught comp (and ESL when the market in comp started to reflect the disemphasis on the liberal arts) for a couple of decades--I'm thrilled and saddened by this disconnect; the majority of the people who can run rings around me on Germanic history have no college, or hated college, or survived it to get the cred, but never got to follow those interests there whatsoever; pretty much everyone lacks the German, the basic Latin, or even the knowledge of how to use reference books to read an Anglo-Saxon or Old Norse passage so as to avoid the pitfalls in reading the texts, so people cite translations unquestioningly, and I wind up explaining again and again things like the fact that the word "well" in a translation does not mean Urð's Well is a brickwork cylinder with a bucket going down it on a string; and you really, really cannot use written usage to judge either someone's age or the quality of someone's thought any longer--it's not even the texting generation, it's sometimes that they don't know any better than to let a spellchecker decide what they want to say.
tchippakan has been working on a book about "non-festival pagans" for some time. There are just an amazing range of people out there who are pagan and/or heathen and fall below the radar.
Even here on LJ, you and many others are not on the e-lists where some of us have formed our notion of who the heathen community is--or you are on different ones--or I don't know the name you use on them--or you lurk a lot there. Some people are really only active on forums; some people are really only active on e-lists; some people pick one e-list, and otherwise just interact with local friends; some people just do LJ (and LJ itself is increasingly balkanized--from my perspective you just popped up, tho I'd seen you commenting in a few other places . . .)
Yup--the academic and critical voices can sound very loud.
I'm sorry you felt bad that your post didn't get responses--I think a lot of us are leery of wading in on a list with opinions and reactions to very personal stuff. (I'm even leery of it on LJ--all too often I see someone share stuff in a public community post and get some insensitive or very agenda-driven responses.)
Some lists are marvelous for building community: the NortheastAsatru Yahoogroup emphasizes that and for many people, it works (not so much for those who discover there's no one within easy reach of their location, or gets on the wrong side of a debate on approaches to heathenry--they do happen even on that list); GFS has physical get-togethers, so especially for those in its heartland of Colorado, the fyrnsidu Yahoogroup does work as a builder of real community.
But when all's said and done, everything short of moots, physical blóts, sumbles, and feasts, and videoconferencing and audio-enabled chat is text-based. As such, conversations tend to go off in odd directions and involve misunderstandings of both motive and content even more than aural conversations; and one can never know when something is going to spark interest and when it's going to fall flat, especially since some people just don't have much time for reading text-based conversations or just don't like it--and they might have been the people who would have responded to a particular topic, in another medium.
So if you like, I'll dig up your post and revive that topic on the list, and yes, you do have valid points. I'm just not sure what can be done about it; clashing time zones and schedules make the realtime technologies harder and harder to use, so I won't push chat at you the way I would have a few years ago.
. . . and there's the issue that there are always newbies, or people who are just getting interested in a particular topic, for whom the fiftieth discussion of blót methodologies or the twentieth discussion of what mægen is are useful. I and others have been doing a lot of writing the past few years--books, websites, and articles--but people will always want to ask their question now and it doesn't matter if it's there in the list archives or if I can give them a bibliography and/or a URL. They still want to discuss it now, and I'm into reading lists, boards, and LJ threads enough to enjoy revisiting things in that serendipitous fashion myself . . . I completely understand that others aren't, but what makes me tear my hair is I never have enough time to monitor all the places people are discussing things.
Hmmm yaqub, I don't rememeber having seen this thread, unless it was before March 2007 sometime then I wouldn't have seen it. Wasn't around then. It would probably help me to know what your handle is on HT's elist so I could look it up. But no matter. I'll peruse the list again and hopefully find it. :-) Maybe it is something we want to rediscuss. But I agree very much with M though about discussing very personal matters on public fora. I myself am a relatively private person when it comes to that kind of stuff most times. So I don't readily disclose on a public forum. With online friends whom I've known and come to trust, yes, but not for the whole elist generally. And in terms of offering some answers to some posts that deal with heavy duty life issues, I personally find it hard to read a person's story where their pain is almost palpable. I tend to try to respond in a positive and encouraging way and show empathy and understanding. People post some of these stories for different reasons. I tend to think (perhaps erroneously though) that many people are looking for support, moral support and friendship and understanding. There's nothing wrong with that though. And I know that you are not saying that there is. But sometimes a theme or a topic of discussion gets introduced...it kind of acts as a "feeler" for the crowd. And in my experience on other elists as well many members tend to offer very human responses (read emotive based response) and not so much an intellectual response immediately. I think that this is just part of human nature. Like I said, maybe we do want to revisit the point that you brought up as M indicated.
A true story to tell though: I live in the Nation's Capital of Canada. I can attest to the fact that there aren't that many Heathens here...literally they can be counted on two hands but not with the full complement of the ten digits, if you know what I mean. So when I first delved into the world of Heathenry, I "tried on" different elists. And it was precisely through an American elist that I "met" a fellow Canadian who lived in the east end of my town! This young chap turned out to become a very good Heathen friend. He was my first point of contact until I fell in with this group of roguish Heathens (who shall remain nameless...;-)). In the past year, my family and I have had the pleasure of meeting up with him and his lovely wife and two young boys. Though we're all constrained by time and life's demands, we are talking about starting our own Kindred. Something very positive indeed and surely something that I would never have dreamed of when I first found Heathenry. So this is one reason that I personally am thankful for the existence of "cybertru" as one of my friends calls it.
But more significantly, it is precisely through being invited to check out HT that I have come to know and love a certain group of online Heathens...yes this roguish group I mentioned above. From the start they have been helpful, inviting and supportive of me and my development...not to mention very tolerant of my initial constant questioning! And I can honestly say that I have come to see this fine group as my virtual Kindred. Though we don't blot or sumble together (not yet anyway...food for thought there, anybody from this group that might be reading this!), we do talk, chat, respond, post and overall interact within the confines of the medium of cyberspace. Sadly, I doubt very much that I will ever meet any of these fine people in real life (but one never knows though!), but I have some pictures of a few of them which at least gives me some kind of visual picture. And in a very real sense I do feel that I belong to a community, though I might not be able to physically shake my fellow Heathens' hands. And although I do not speak with all of my fellow virtual kinfolk on a daily basis, I still know where to find them if I do so choose to engage in such. And for me, that is worth its weight in gold. Just knowing that I do have a community of fine folk to which I belong makes me a Happy Heathen--and a very fortunate one. So again, as much as sometimes I find certain aspects of "cybertru" difficult to deal with, overall it can be an extremely positive thing. As with everything in life, it's all what you make of it, I guess.....Just some thoughts.....
Both Xianity and Islam have a conversion requirement. In both cases, belief that theirs is the Only True Religion!!!!1 is a basic tenet. We have no such tenet. We do not even have an imperative to grow. What we do have is a duty to, as you say in your response to this, make heathenry welcoming. Or I would say more simply--we have a duty to welcome people who are heathen, or considering whether heathenry is for them. Hospitality. But not conversion, not even judging ourselves by numbers.
Let the gods, and the true attractiveness of our religion, determine how big we get. (I'm constantly awed by how many are finding out about the gods, because I agree--we aren't doing a good job of getting info out there, or of being hospitable.)
I am not suggesting that you--or many heathens--are saying we should seek out converts. Least of all by lies, intimidation, and coercion like Xianity and Islam. But I don't think we should even measure our success by our numbers, the way they do. I do agree we should be ashamed if we drive people away . . . but heathenhulagirl is right when she points out below that quiet a few come back--or they become solitary and repudiate just "organized Asatru." or just the one kindred that treated them badly. or just the one organization that disappointed them. Thank the gods.
The other reason I think the comparisons are invidious is that Xianity and Islam--especially the latter--do have very simple doctrinal definitions. Ours is not that kind of religion. Our commonality is a horde of gods--and an ethos that is slippery to define, amounting as it does to a sophisticated view of honor. I don't have the faith in the NNV that you do--I am all too well aware of their shaky foundations and the variations in versions. And I don't think dogma is even what defines heathenry. Heck, there are even variations among us as to which gods we revere. The obvious example is Loki . . . but bulwerk also alluded to the fact that many heathens regard Wóden as distinct from Óðinn and in some cases also from Wodan.
Apples and oranges and nectarines. We are who we are--we aren't a religion of numbers or even of doctrinal exactitude.
I like that, actually.
Look what someone found and sent me on IRC yesterday, from a site I stay away from: http://bc-freehold.org/skalds/freydis_heimdallson/goatherd.html . Good parable. Notice who was foolish and lost sight of the objective, and what arguments defeated them. We are simply not sheep. (Where the parable breaks down of course is that many people are happier as Xians, and that goes for all the religions of the desert god.)
Frith,
M
Reply
As to the NNVs. I can see why a lot of people feel badly toward them(with them being so intrinsically connected to mcnallen)but I didn't know of the connection to S.M. when I was taught them. I think that the potential for personal interpretation, unlike the 10 C's is a good thing, it changes with the level of growth of the practitioner and gives a deeper breadth to them. I know it has for me. It wasn't until years later I even knew they were connected with S.M. Which meant he had no bearing on them for me. Eh. I think that giving individuals as guideline for behavior is not bad, but it is far from required in order to practice Heathenry. I do know that in my world order is very required what with me being bi-polar and when I create order in many places, including my spirituality it helps me to find myself making progress. So I use it.
I like the parable, but I agree, that not everyone who re-converts(or converts for the first time from heathenry to xianity)to Chrisianity does so against their better judgement or their will. People grow, and their needs change. Why should we prevent them from going where they will best be served?
I have always thought that Heathenry/Asatru/The Northern Tradion/Whatever Way You Phrase It... Spoke well for itself.
Reply
My objection to the NNV has nothing to do with McNallen; I have similar problems with the 12 Ætheling Thews, although I do like that they include givefulness and not just hospitality. They're all simplifications emulating the 10 Commandments; heathen ethics just aren't that simple. The NNV/Ætheling Thews lists are very useful in many ways; it's just they are not as much of a common rallying point as the post suggests. People use different lists, have different interpretations (in the previous post, bulwerk and I had a deep disagreement about frith, to give an obvious example), and some don't like the lists of virtues/thews at all. We have broad agreement on heathen honor--perhaps a surprising degree of agreement, considering the range of doctrinal positions within heathenry!--but considerably fewer of us could agree on a list of virtues, surprisingly enough.
Frith,
M
Reply
(The comment has been removed)
There is an expression that "1 informed believer is worth 1,000 blind followers."
Reply
As a very highly educated person--I dedicated a BA, 2 MA's, and a PhD to the gods and then taught comp (and ESL when the market in comp started to reflect the disemphasis on the liberal arts) for a couple of decades--I'm thrilled and saddened by this disconnect; the majority of the people who can run rings around me on Germanic history have no college, or hated college, or survived it to get the cred, but never got to follow those interests there whatsoever; pretty much everyone lacks the German, the basic Latin, or even the knowledge of how to use reference books to read an Anglo-Saxon or Old Norse passage so as to avoid the pitfalls in reading the texts, so people cite translations unquestioningly, and I wind up explaining again and again things like the fact that the word "well" in a translation does not mean Urð's Well is a brickwork cylinder with a bucket going down it on a string; and you really, really cannot use written usage to judge either someone's age or the quality of someone's thought any longer--it's not even the texting generation, it's sometimes that they don't know any better than to let a spellchecker decide what they want to say.
tchippakan has been working on a book about "non-festival pagans" for some time. There are just an amazing range of people out there who are pagan and/or heathen and fall below the radar.
Even here on LJ, you and many others are not on the e-lists where some of us have formed our notion of who the heathen community is--or you are on different ones--or I don't know the name you use on them--or you lurk a lot there. Some people are really only active on forums; some people are really only active on e-lists; some people pick one e-list, and otherwise just interact with local friends; some people just do LJ (and LJ itself is increasingly balkanized--from my perspective you just popped up, tho I'd seen you commenting in a few other places . . .)
Frith,
M
Reply
(The comment has been removed)
I'm sorry you felt bad that your post didn't get responses--I think a lot of us are leery of wading in on a list with opinions and reactions to very personal stuff. (I'm even leery of it on LJ--all too often I see someone share stuff in a public community post and get some insensitive or very agenda-driven responses.)
Some lists are marvelous for building community: the NortheastAsatru Yahoogroup emphasizes that and for many people, it works (not so much for those who discover there's no one within easy reach of their location, or gets on the wrong side of a debate on approaches to heathenry--they do happen even on that list); GFS has physical get-togethers, so especially for those in its heartland of Colorado, the fyrnsidu Yahoogroup does work as a builder of real community.
But when all's said and done, everything short of moots, physical blóts, sumbles, and feasts, and videoconferencing and audio-enabled chat is text-based. As such, conversations tend to go off in odd directions and involve misunderstandings of both motive and content even more than aural conversations; and one can never know when something is going to spark interest and when it's going to fall flat, especially since some people just don't have much time for reading text-based conversations or just don't like it--and they might have been the people who would have responded to a particular topic, in another medium.
So if you like, I'll dig up your post and revive that topic on the list, and yes, you do have valid points. I'm just not sure what can be done about it; clashing time zones and schedules make the realtime technologies harder and harder to use, so I won't push chat at you the way I would have a few years ago.
. . . and there's the issue that there are always newbies, or people who are just getting interested in a particular topic, for whom the fiftieth discussion of blót methodologies or the twentieth discussion of what mægen is are useful. I and others have been doing a lot of writing the past few years--books, websites, and articles--but people will always want to ask their question now and it doesn't matter if it's there in the list archives or if I can give them a bibliography and/or a URL. They still want to discuss it now, and I'm into reading lists, boards, and LJ threads enough to enjoy revisiting things in that serendipitous fashion myself . . . I completely understand that others aren't, but what makes me tear my hair is I never have enough time to monitor all the places people are discussing things.
Frith,
M
Reply
Like I said, maybe we do want to revisit the point that you brought up as M indicated.
Anyway, just a couple of thoughts offered here.
In frith...Frau Astrid
Reply
But more significantly, it is precisely through being invited to check out HT that I have come to know and love a certain group of online Heathens...yes this roguish group I mentioned above. From the start they have been helpful, inviting and supportive of me and my development...not to mention very tolerant of my initial constant questioning! And I can honestly say that I have come to see this fine group as my virtual Kindred. Though we don't blot or sumble together (not yet anyway...food for thought there, anybody from this group that might be reading this!), we do talk, chat, respond, post and overall interact within the confines of the medium of cyberspace. Sadly, I doubt very much that I will ever meet any of these fine people in real life (but one never knows though!), but I have some pictures of a few of them which at least gives me some kind of visual picture. And in a very real sense I do feel that I belong to a community, though I might not be able to physically shake my fellow Heathens' hands. And although I do not speak with all of my fellow virtual kinfolk on a daily basis, I still know where to find them if I do so choose to engage in such. And for me, that is worth its weight in gold. Just knowing that I do have a community of fine folk to which I belong makes me a Happy Heathen--and a very fortunate one. So again, as much as sometimes I find certain aspects of "cybertru" difficult to deal with, overall it can be an extremely positive thing. As with everything in life, it's all what you make of it, I guess.....Just some thoughts.....
In frith...Frau Astrid
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