Paganistan: Notes from the Secret Commonwealth
In Which One Midwest Man-in-Black Confers, Converses & Otherwise Hob-Nobs with his Fellow Hob-Men (& -Women) Concerning the Sundry Ways of the Famed but Ill-Starred Tribe of Witches.
Don't Let Your Politics Take Over Your Religion
Broken Tools
I'm always a little in awe of those who are so sure that they have all the answers.
Are they really so stupid, or just lying to themselves?
Back in the 80s, N joined the Starhawk vanguard and let her politics become her religion.
For years she was a social activist warrior: protests, marches, and power-raisings against the Wrongs of the Right became her Craft. Her causes somehow came into every conversation. Worthy as her goals were, we all got a little sick of hearing about them all the time.
Now Tr*mp is back in office. The waters that she worked so hard to protect are fouled with plastics and forever chemicals. I listen, silent, to her railing. The old social firebrand is gone. She's angry and bitter, glad only that she bore no children to inherit whatever comes next.
Nothing is quite so sad as a failed vision.
At the moment, Evangelicals are reveling in their current cultural ascendancy, but their triumph will not last. The Wheel turns. Their youth are leaving, looking elsewhere because they're sick of having rewarmed Right-wing politics passed off as spirituality.
It's a lesson hard of the learning, for Left and Right both: don't let your politics become your religion. When you do, both tools will assuredly fail you, just when you need them most.
Helping my hostess clean up after the party, I find myself thinking of N's failed activism, and its sorry fruits.
“Wasn't it nice to see N again?” she asks.
“No, not really,” I say.
Comments
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Wednesday, 16 April 2025
For years, the Honeywell Project here held protest after protest against the Honeywell Corporation, which at the time was manufacturing (ye gods) cluster bombs. They spent thousands and thousands of dollars bailing civil disobedients out of jail.
My friend Stephanie, ever the pragmatist, said: "If they'd spent all that money buying Honeywell stock, maybe they could actually have accomplished something." -
Tuesday, 15 April 2025I watched an interesting video by that 'Religion for Breakfast' guy on YouTube. It was called "Would Jesus vote Republican or Democrat?" His basic point is that politics is our religion, and that's not just here in America.
Last year I read a library copy of "Spirit-Led Living in an Upside-Down World" by Stephen Strang. Very right wing stuff making excuses for Donald Trump that they would never make for a Democrat. He seemed to expect sweeping Republican victories with God on the side of conservativism. My Art History major kicked in while I was reading and I thought of God with a paint brush and pallet. Republicans as a dab of red paint, Democrats as a dab of blue paint and Independents as a dab of Yellow paint. I thought God paints with a full pallet not in monochrome. -
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I could not disagree more.
Our religions should be SUFFUSED with politics. If we're not here to make a better world, what is the damned point?
Other than, say, a masturbatory feelgood practice that does no good for anyone except its practitioner?
Your friend N didn't make a distinction between telegraphing a political agenda and actually making it happen. "Workings"? Please. What about LOBBYING? What about volunteering for campaigns for good candidates?
I work in politics. And I am completely tired of Useless Noble Gestures. Which seems like the extent of N's efforts.
Politics can be masturbatory, too. But neither politics nor religion HAS to be.
If you don't stand for something, you don't stand against anything.