Patheos Featured Writers

Gus diZerega
Columnist

Gus diZerega is a Gardnerian Elder with over 25 years practice, including six years close study with a Brazilian shaman. He has been active in interfaith work off and on for most of those 25 years as well. He has conducted workshops and given presentations on healing, shamanism, ecology and politics at Pagan gatherings in the United States and Canada. He is the first Pagan blogger for Beliefnet. His first Pagan book Pagans and Christians: The Personal Spiritual Experience won the Best Nonfiction of 2001 award from The Coalition of Visionary Resource. His second, Beyond the Burning Times, is a joint Pagan and Christian authored book discussing relations between the two religions. He is completing a new book: Faultlines: The Sixties the Culture Wars and the Divine Feminine. This will argue the US's current political and cultural struggles reflect a four-way division between "traditional" religion, liberal and "Baconian" secular modernity, and spiritual traditions that have gone beyond the modern paradigm.

Gus is now writing Pointedly Pagan in a blog format! Follow his latest writing here.

Works by Gus diZerega
Pagan religions honor a multitude of ways of thinking about and interacting with the......
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The Trance of Belief: Part I.
Gus diZerega | April 27, 2016
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Social Justice from a Pagan perspective
Gus diZerega | February 05, 2016
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The role of esotericism in Pagan religion
Gus diZerega | February 01, 2016
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Mammon's False Promise
Gus diZerega | November 18, 2015
Consumer society does not simply reflect our desire to have good things. It is a......
Swastikas and the Stars and Bars as Symbols
Gus diZerega | July 01, 2015
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Caitlin Jenner, the Duggars, and Us
Gus diZerega | June 11, 2015
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Why monotheisms are so violent. And why the best...
Gus diZerega | January 13, 2015
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Environmentalism and Pagan religion
Gus diZerega | July 23, 2014
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Polytheism, Emergence and the One
Gus diZerega | June 13, 2014
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What is Paganism? Part IV: Interfaith Recognition
Gus diZerega | January 28, 2014
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What is Paganism? Part II: A Spiritual Taxonomy
Gus diZerega | January 20, 2014
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What is Paganism? Part I: The Basics: Religion,...
Gus diZerega | January 16, 2014
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Hope rests with a new spiritual sensibility that is not necessarily a new religion, but......
Samhain 2013
Gus diZerega | October 23, 2013
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A Personal Note on Abortion
Gus diZerega | August 28, 2013
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The “Pro-Life” Movement’s Hidden Subtext
Gus diZerega | August 12, 2013
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On Abortion: A Pagan Ethical Response
Gus diZerega | July 15, 2013
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Earth Day 2013
Gus diZerega | April 22, 2013
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Why I Am a Pagan
Gus diZerega | April 01, 2013
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A Pagan Perspective on Wilderness
Gus diZerega | March 26, 2013
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The Mirage of Monotheism
Gus diZerega | February 15, 2013
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If Thought Forms Exist, What Can We Do About Them?
Gus diZerega | February 07, 2013
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Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker and Thought Forms
Gus diZerega | January 12, 2013
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Looking Back on the Election: A Pagan Perspective
Gus diZerega | December 05, 2012
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Five Reasons to Vote for Obama
Gus diZerega | October 28, 2012
A Pagan case for voting Democratic down the entire ticket....
Pagan Spirituality and the Future of America
Gus diZerega | October 04, 2012
The core confusion is to equate capitalism with economic freedom or free markets. Once......
Encountering Pagan Deities
Gus diZerega | August 23, 2012
How deep you go into the realm of the gods is largely your own decision -- unless the......
Mitt Romney and all he stands for perfectly exemplify the Republican right and the final......
Where Are the Pagan Fundamentalists?
Gus diZerega | July 12, 2012
Why Paganism is immune to fundamentalism....
The Growing Threat of Christian Dominionism
Gus diZerega | June 14, 2012
The New Apostolic Reformation is a dominionist group with close ties to many Republican......
Does Religion Decrease Compassion?
Gus diZerega | May 10, 2012
Studies suggest that religious dogma can override our natural tendency toward empathy....
Earth Day, 2012
Gus diZerega | April 21, 2012
Earth Day becomes increasingly a day to venerate, and yet is now increasingly ignored....
Religion and Freedom, Religion and Slavery
Gus diZerega | April 05, 2012
Totalitarians of the right and left have always been clear as to what they would do, and......
Cool Ad on the War on Women
Gus diZerega | March 30, 2012
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Framing, Limbaugh, Pagans and Christians
Gus diZerega | March 14, 2012
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It will be very fitting if the nihilists on the right meet their Waterloo by mindlessly......
Pagans, Science, and the World
Gus diZerega | February 15, 2012
When we honor the world, we are honoring a context bigger than we are....
Of Gateways and Beauty
Gus diZerega | January 27, 2012
When we enter a place, we add ourselves to its energies and bring additional presences....
Individuality and God
Gus diZerega | January 06, 2012
Monism is far more adequate than monotheism as a means for understanding the Ultimate....
Pagan and American Individualism
Gus diZerega | December 16, 2011
A poem that teaches us that our individuality is shaped by relationships....
Meditations on a Bumper Sticker
Gus diZerega | December 02, 2011
By buying locally when we can, we help maintain an ethically rich network of community......
Religious and Cultural Paganism
Gus diZerega | November 11, 2011
Why NeoPagans have but the barest hint of a Pagan culture....
Ethics from Within, Not from Above
Gus diZerega | October 27, 2011
The Pagan ethic of respect is in keeping with the realities of embodied existence....
The Underlying Unity Within Pagan Diversity
Gus diZerega | October 16, 2011
What we have in common is that we celebrate the fact that we're all different....
The Pagan-Fascist Controversy
Gus diZerega | September 29, 2011
We need a new historical understanding of Paganism's recent past....
Mainstreaming Pagans
Gus diZerega | September 22, 2011
What's the difference between today's Paganism and indigenous traditions? Intensity and......
Expanding Possibilities within the Trance of Life
Gus diZerega | August 12, 2011
Is embracing Paganism like coming out of a trance?...
Edge or Mainstream? Pagans In The Future
Gus diZerega | August 04, 2011
What if becoming an accepted part of American society turns us into a nominally......
The potential for fanatics to use Christianity to justify mass murder is not simply an......
Can a Pagan be a Conservative?
Gus diZerega | July 21, 2011
Yes. But a Pagan can't be a right-winger any more than a Jew can be a Nazi....
The Ethics of the Universal Potlatch
Gus diZerega | July 14, 2011
We will bring agriculture into greater harmony with a Pagan sensibility only when it is......