Beef tenderloin and sherry were the Wednesday-evening sacred food and drink of a religion which originated in a federal prison. Since the printed constitution of the religion was lofty in spiritual self-definition and lawyerly in tone, and the supporting letter of request was formal and well-written, the warden—wise to the fact that religion is dangerous to touch because it might go off—quickly repressed the impulse to treat this new religion with the disrespect of laughter. He passed the matter off to the chair of the prison’s chaplains, who promptly availed himself of me as a religion consultant.
My advice? The warden loved it! It was to test the sincerity of the new religion by reducing the quality of the sacramental elements. Cheap wine instead of sherry. Spare ribs instead of beef tenderloin. The religion failed the test because it revealed that the luxury food and drink, instead of serving the religion, were its purpose. And we taxpayers were saved some expense.
Why was that story first to come to mind when I first read this week’s question? Certainly not because I think that Paganism (actually, Neopaganism) is a pseudo-religion designed with an ulterior motive, as was that prison religion. On the contrary, I have known and read some honest and honorable practitioners of “the Old Religion” whose contributions to public discourse have shown them worthy of a seat at the world’s roundtables of religion. But through decades of experience with the world’s religions, I must say that “Paganism” is not one religion but an umbrella-term for many tiny recent movements with contemporary agendas sanctified by selecting items from ancient mythologies. Involving several hundred thousand Americans, it locates the sacred in Earth and Nature—over against our culture’s traditional competing locations of the sacred in Biblical religion and in reason.
All of these locations of the sacred express truths, support values, and are deserving of respect. Government recognition is another matter.
America is a heritage, a here-and-now, and a hope. In heritage, we are “one nation, under God.” As a Christian citizen, I affirm this heritage--both our cultural-political unity and our historic piety. I hope for an America in the good health of sustaining this unity and this piety. And in the here-and-now, between this heritage and this hope, I try to form judgments which honor “liberty and justice for all” within the limits of my understanding of America as a nation, a civilization, a culture, and a government.
Here, then, are my judgments on this week’s two questions.
1. I vote on issues and for whichever candidate I think has the highest integrity, competence, and commitment to the public welfare. I hope for candidates who, in addition to those virtues, share my commitment to locating the sacred in Biblical religion: “Our fathers’ God, to thee, Author of liberty, to thee we sing. / Long may our land be bright with freedom’s holy light….” I could vote for an atheist, who locates the sacred in reason. I could more easily vote for a Pagan, who re-enchants the world in correction of the Enlightenment’s disenchantment of the world.
2. No, I do not think the military should “add a Pagan chaplain.” A military’s function is to support a nation’s spirit, not only its body. And America’s originating and continuing spirit locates the sacred in Biblical religion coordinate with reason. In that it locates the sacred elsewhere, Paganism is un-American. But un-Biblical religions, at their own rather than at public expense, should have access, for spiritual support, to their adherents in the U.S. military.
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