Guest Post: David Salisbury says Vocabulary is a Privilege

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Vocabulary is a privilege. Because those in the Pagan sphere have such diversified sets of language, we get the privilege of using language that suits our needs and the needs of our work when we need to. There aren’t many faith traditions that get to interchange the language they used to describe themselves. In fact, the Christian clergy I know often lament the lack of freedom they have in describing their faith denominations. This is often mandated by their overarching church.

Since Pagans, Polytheists, etc don’t have a centralized governing body, its no surprise that schism around descriptive language is increasing. This doesn’t have to be a bag thing of course. In referring to the story of Drew Jacobs of Temple of the River, its clear to see that evaluating his faith description has helped his organization gain a new substance and sense of growth that would have probably come much closer otherwise. Perhaps breaking away from umbrella terms is good for us? It could very well be one of those instances of “growing up” that our communities do throughout the years.

Still, umbrella terms like Paganism remain a privilege that I use so often in my work. In my interfaith work, it is often more reasonable to describe myself as Pagan rather than a “nondual Goddess-centric polytheist”. If I did that, my entire conversation would be wrapped up in trying to explain what that mains to me and why I chose to use that term to describe myself. Rather, when I say I’m Pagan I normally get an “oh ok” and then we can move on into whatever interfaith work we’re engaging in. Some may call this bartering with the integrity of language. I call it building bridges for work I consider more important than etymology and theological classification.

I can foresee a time when many of us will choose to not identify with the word “Pagan” in favor of something more custom-fit to the practitioner. I believe this will form slowly as our numbers grow. If “Paganism” is indeed on an upward swing still, then it will be interesting to see how we sort ourselves out.

Until then, I will remain with myself as a “nondual Goddess-centric polytheist”. To the world, I will remain a Pagan.