Why You Can't Worship Jesus Christ And Be Pagan

It's time to take this apart and get clear.

I made this title statement in my first post , and it caused a fair bit of commotion. Some said oppositionally that they can do whatever they please. Some objected that the worship of Jesus Christ is acceptable so long as one is not a creedal Christian: the "he's a good guy" thesis. In other words, the God is all right but the religion and its humans are not. Some even see no conflict between Christianity and Paganism. I was moved by the intensity of some of the positions held in the comments, but after contemplation I return to my own view, one held by many Pagans today and communicated to me both in the comments and privately. While I can't speak for others, I can tell you my reasoning about why you can't worship Jesus Christ and be Pagan.

I focus on worship in this discussion because worship is the living act of religion. Belief is just thinking about religion, and in healthy persons it changes with their development. Only in Christianity is belief central. (Islam, for example, may be creedal, but it is not belief-based; it is submission-based. Perhaps there are other religions that make belief central, but in my view it would do them no credit.) If you are focused on what you believe, not what you do, you are thinking like a Christian. If you want to be a better Pagan , stop worrying about what you or anyone else believes, but get to work and practice your variety of Paganism. Mostly you need to invoke and get to know your Gods. Then you will know , and not need to believe.

Before addressing this defining issue of contemporary Paganism, I had to take a step back to clarify the nature of Pagan authority in my last post. Recently, I also discussed the technical nature of worship . I recommend reading these essays first so that the following will be comprehensible.

Also, I have a very distinct definition of Paganism that I have covered elsewhere and which gives context to my view. In short, the term "Pagan" only applies to that complex of religions that develop starting with the Renaissance and eventually call themselves Pagan. It does not apply to the ancients, or to cultures outside the European, Mediterranean, and Mesopotamian region. Neither the ancient pre-Christian religions nor those foreign to the aforesaid region call themselves "pagan," and while they have much in common, they are each distinct and should be referred to by their proper names. Contemporary Paganism is derived from the occult revival that began with the Florentine Renaissance and is a uniquely modern phenomenon. We are a very different people from the ancients and do not share their worldview even as we reconstruct their religions.

But mostly, readers will have to be serious about what they are doing religiously for this essay to be relevant. Paganism and Christianity are real things with real, established characteristics. To adhere to either of them requires certain commitments, without which you do not belong to either of them. So, if you are serious, come think this through with me.

Fundamentally, Paganism is disjunct from Christianity. A person can only be one or the other. While technically a Pagan is not forbidden to worship Jesus Christ (but shouldn't or wouldn't, see below), Christians are condemned to eternal punishment if they worship anyone other than the persons of the Trinity. If you are Christian, worshiping other Gods is one of the most massive sins you can commit. (See Ex. 22:20—"He that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the LORD only, he shall be utterly destroyed"; also 1 Jn. 5:21; 1 Cor. 10:20; Dt. 32:17; Ex. 32:1-6; 1 Kgs. 12:28-30.) Here is a link to a fairly normative, if biblically founded Evangelical presentation of the Christian understanding of other Gods. If, as a Christian, you think you can dodge this problem, you will have to answer to your God. He forbids the worship of other Gods, as well as magic, divination, astrology, and so forth, under pain of damnation. These scriptures dispose of the Christian side of the equation: You can't be a Christian and do Pagan things.

If you are Pagan, worshiping Jesus Christ, or His Father or the Holy Ghost, is a different kind of problem. There is nothing to forbid such, but why would you?

Technically worship strengthens that which is worshiped ( see my blog ) both in the world and in the life of the worshiper. Thus worshiping any or all of the Trinity makes you more Christian and less Pagan. This looks good to Christians. Christianity and its God desire our (that is, Pagans and everybody else) elimination through ideological imperialism and ethnocide; all must be converted. If you want a good solid Christian vision of this, read the Revelation of John. Jesus promises to throw us all in the Lake of Fire, in other words to destroy us or torment us for all eternity if we do not bend the knee and confess that he is our Lord and Savior.

Therefore for a Pagan to worship this Deity, Yahweh and Co., in all sincerity and fullness is rendering aid and comfort to an enemy: a Being who wishes Pagans destroyed or to have their religions and culture removed by conversion.

There are some qualifications to this statement: Rendering due honors in His hall is just being polite; He is a God after all. Attending the worship service of a neighbor, friend, associate, or family member in support of them is to be distinguished as well. That's just being respectful and caring. There are probably other times when doing something technically worshipful but which places persons over ideology and which are caring or honorable is appropriate. I can't be exhaustive. This requires good judgment.

The main problem is that Yahweh & Co., and Their followers, have declared themselves our enemies. We don't need to be out to destroy them to be enemies, because they already seek our destruction; that's what makes them our enemies. Worshiping any of the Three of Them is supporting the Deity that seeks to eliminate all of us "idolators" and "demon" worshipers. Ever been witnessed to? Have you seen the theocratic and Dominionist movements within Christianity? These are not aberrations attributable to a few bad apples, but central to the system of Christianity.

That some of the Christians you know are nice people says nothing about what Christianity and its God have in mind. This is a One True Way religion, not even slightly pluralistic. Perhaps you will raise the issue of interfaith work. Given Christian history, this behavior looks more like diplomacy defined as the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a big enough rock.

So, if you are Pagan, why would you worship Jesus Christ?

It is a good question: Why be Christian (i.e., worship Jesus Christ) at all? Besides its awful theology, to which we will return in a future post, worshiping YHWH or Son is a great way of having or retaining Christian privilege in our society. (See a great list of 40 Christian privileges from Schlosser, L. Z. (2003), "Christian privilege: Breaking a sacred taboo." Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development , 31 (1), 44-51; more discussion here . It doesn't include my favorite: having your career advancement stopped because you are not Christian.) This behavior is tempting, but totally without integrity. There is nothing honorable about including any of Those Three in your worship just to have the cover and privilege they provide in our society.

Those of us who are actually Pagan have reason to resent this behavior. If you don't live our life, if you are unwilling to face the consequences and bear the burdens of being Pagan, don't call yourself one. This is the Pagan equivalent to a Native American saying to a non-Native, "Come live on the Rez, or stay out of our stuff" (in character if not intensity). Or in another frame, if you don't have African blood, do you get to say you are black-ish?

Historically, Paganism arose during the Florentine Renaissance as a critique and, in many cases, a rejection of Christianity. This critique is central to the character of Paganism and a major part of its value to the world. We are a direct corrective to the horror of Christian history, theology, and morals, none of which is good. (In the future, I will continue in this vein discussing why Pagan theology is superior to Christian theology.)

Magically, one might say we were invoked into being by the harmful actions of Christianity and its God as Their Nemesis. We are deeply entwined with the development of science and our technological culture, that culture which finally permits us to feed, clothe, shelter, etc., everyone on the planet (should we choose to). We are deeply entwined with the cultural transformation called the European Enlightenment by which the values of equality and democracy were established as central to our civilization.

Some will ask, what's wrong with mixing a bit of Christ in our Paganism? The Gospel story is not one of love and peace, that's just the public relations. The history of Christianity shows the true character of Christianity and its Deity: the destruction of civilizations and cultures, and the slaughter of innumerable humans as savages, infidels, or simply heretics. Then there is the subtler problem of Missionary Paganism, destruction by infiltration and dilution. They come and preach the nice stuff, and so we include Christian worship with ours, but slowly they teach that the Old Ways should be abandoned for Christianity. Eventually, only the old people know the old ways, and when they die off only Christians are left: the old ways are destroyed. Just ask the Indians of the Americas, just ask the Hawaiians, just ask the Africans.

So, it is time to get serious.

Perhaps you are a Christian who has seen the enormous good that is in Paganism but missing from your religion, and you want some of that. Learn, then leave us and go reform your own religion; you may be its salvation.

Perhaps you are a Pagan who has not been able to overcome the conditioning that tells you the Christian god-complex is good. It is hard to do and takes years of retraining to break the spell; being continually told that unless you conform you will go to hell is very difficult to overcome. This God even says He loves you, much like in an abusive relationship. You must be mindful of history and how that 'love' actually plays out.

I suggest you invoke more: the Gods will save you from this delusion.

Therefore I can only conclude that those of you who are still including Christianity in any manner in your Paganism are either Christians coming to be fed what your own religion can't provide or infiltrators diluting and destroying our religion. Or, perhaps, you are a Pagan who has not yet committed yourself to your religion sufficiently to jettison the God who wishes to destroy it. Sadly, you don't even have to be conscious of this to be doing it.

I shall be blunt: you need to get conscious and make your choice. I have. I am Pagan.

Why You Can't Worship Jesus Christ and Be Pagan