{"id":1923,"date":"2013-11-20T05:00:23","date_gmt":"2013-11-20T13:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/uncommongodcommongood\/?p=1923"},"modified":"2013-11-22T13:42:18","modified_gmt":"2013-11-22T21:42:18","slug":"humanize-religion-a-seminary-class-discussion-with-a-pagan-and-a-former-druid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/uncommongodcommongood\/2013\/11\/humanize-religion-a-seminary-class-discussion-with-a-pagan-and-a-former-druid\/","title":{"rendered":"Humanize Religion: A Seminary Class Discussion with a Pagan and a Former Druid"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>
Jason and me when he spoke in my class last summer.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Pagan leader Jason Pitzl-Waters spoke in my world religions class yesterday. Jason is perhaps best known for his blog, The Wild Hunt: A Modern Pagan Perspective<\/a>. Jason travels from Eugene to Portland (not a short ride) to put a human face on Paganism for my students. One of the things he\u00a0asks himself is: \u201cIf I don\u2019t come and speak, who will the Christian seminary professor bring in as a guest speaker?\u201d He shared his internal musings with my class and put the matter in\u00a0context so that we could appreciate the question. If Christianity were a minority faith tradition that is often maligned, would we Christians feel comfortable if the media pulled anyone off the street who acknowledged they were Christian and interview them as an expert on Christianity? In his effort to humanize Paganism, Jason asked my class to see Pagans as one of those groups of spiritual people we Evangelical Christians\u00a0want to convert, not as a bunch of Satan worshipers. He added, \u201cThe better you understand us the better your outreach. Caricatures will never lead to connection with Pagans. Having actual human moments with people of other faiths leads to empathy.\u201d In my estimation, if we don\u2019t humanize religion, we may very well end up demonizing the adherents of other paths.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, my class had opportunity to share human moments with two people with Pagan stories. Jason, who is a\u00a0Wiccan,\u00a0brought with him someone from a Druid background by the name of Teo Bishop.\u00a0Teo lives here in Portland and has\u00a0been in the news quite a lot lately given his movement toward Christianity. Teo blogs at Bishop in the Grove<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0is currently on the cover of Witches and Pagans<\/a>\u00a0because of\u00a0his recent migration back to\u00a0Christianity\u2014the religion of his youth. He has found the intensified interest quite challenging. I can only imagine how challenging it is since, by his own admission,\u00a0he\u00a0is simply trying to learn what it means to follow Jesus. How simple, yet so complex. Kind of like Teo. Kind of like the rest of us. Teo does not fit stereotypes. Who does?<\/p>\n

Teo is not a paper-thin caricature, nor is Jason, nor are you and me. Jason brought Teo to class today to complexify the discourse. From the vantage point of Jason\u2019s Pagan tribe, it might not be seen as advantageous, he acknowledged. Many Pagans feel like Christianity scored another point in Teo\u2019s turn. But it was more important to Jason to complexify rather than score points or keep points from being scored against this or that religious tradition or spiritual path. Jason\u2019s genuineness and honesty always speak volumes to me. I hope I would be simple enough to complexify multi-faith discourse whenever possible.<\/p>\n

Toward the end of his talk, Jason encouraged my class to approach people of different paths as people, not members of enemy armies. How novel. It sounds simple, but it\u2019s not so easy. Land mines\u00a0from past religious culture wars cover the\u00a0path. Still, we need to be willing to risk and move past our fears and push forward even though\u00a0adherents of\u00a0our respective teams, tribes and armies may excommunicate us simply because we\u00a0choose to communicate\u00a0face to face with fellow humans of different paths.<\/p>\n

I am grateful for Jason\u2019s willingness to risk, as well as Teo\u2019s. Together with the students in my class, they\u00a0put human faces on religion and spirituality yesterday. No points were scored during or after class, but hopefully greater trust was\u00a0built. We\u2019ll need such trust if we ever hope to diffuse the religious war bombs that deface us all.<\/p>\n

This piece is cross-posted at\u00a0The Institute for the Theology of Culture: New Wine, New Wineskins<\/a> and at\u00a0The Christian Post<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pagan leader Jason Pitzl-Waters spoke in my world religions class yesterday. Jason is perhaps best known for his blog, The Wild Hunt: A Modern Pagan Perspective. Jason travels from Eugene to Portland (not a short ride) to put a human face on Paganism for my students. One of the things he\u00a0asks himself is: \u201cIf I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1284,"featured_media":1278,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nHumanize Religion: A Seminary Class Discussion with a Pagan and a Former Druid<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Pagan leader Jason Pitzl-Waters spoke in my world religions class yesterday. 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