In Praise of Local Orthopraxy
Do pagans "do" theology?
Reflecting on decades of experience in Interfaith outreach, my friend and colleague Macha Nightmare recently noted that, in these contexts, non-pagans frequently want to know about pagan theology.
But theology is not really an operative question for pagans, she observes. Theology qua systematic theology—in the sense of an overarching, internally-consistent conceptual framework—is a product of Christian thought, and not hence really applicable to the pagan religions.
Point taken. Still, I find myself both agreeing and disagreeing.
Maybe I've been contaminated by growing up in a Christian environment. When I look at myself, though, I find that I do, indeed, have a (more or less) internally-consistent conceptual framework for my paganism. (Regular readers of the Paganistan blog have been subjected to it for years now.) I can't help but think—or at least hope—that pretty much any thinking pagan (Macha included) does too. The unexamined religion, after all, is not worth practicing.
Theology is a fine old pagan word and concept. I'm with David “New Polytheism” Miller in this: whenever we talk (and think) about the gods, we're theologizing. That's the prisca theologia, the primal theology, theology as it was before being abducted and codified into orthodoxies.
Pagans, I would contend, have plenty of theology. What, as pagans, we lack is a shared theology.
