Lately I’ve noticed some pagans ‘sticking up for’ Christians when other pagans say anything negative about them. I think this makes them feel good, like they’re building bridges of peace between two groups long at odds, accomplishing something worthwhile in the universe.
In some cases, I think they might be right. There are certainly Christians who are awesome people, and they are not part of the Christian Hate Club; on the contrary, they are arguably the foremost targets of the Christian Hate Club – after people like me, who have tried their faith and rejected it for reasons of conscience. Pagan druids are by nature inclusive and welcoming, and as such I feel we should be among the first to embrace this type of Christian; not as ‘one of us’, but as part of Oneness. The fact that this type of Christian and we pagan Druids diverge sharply in our beliefs and practice, yet know how to respect and tolerate each other, is part of making the vital point to humanity that unity in diversity is truly possible. And quite beautiful, when it works.
However, there are also still many, many very extensive pockets of the Christian Hate Club. Some pagans do not know about this, although it’s gotten very difficult to avoid knowing it given the recent political climate here in the USA. What I find these pagans lack is firsthand experience. They’ve been sheltered from the harsh reality of blistering hate poured out on Outsiders by the Christian Hate Club, and so they have a naive expectation of being able to create bridges these people won’t burn (preferably with as many pagans still on said bridges as possible).
I, and many other pagans, do have that firsthand experiential knowledge of the Christian Hate Club. Sadly, after having publicly come out of the Pagan Druid closet four years ago, I am still experiencing what in Amish circles is called ‘The Shunning’. I’m not shunned by every Christian friend I ever had – and I’m very grateful for the ones I still have; they’re precious to me. In part because they give me hope for a future that is not only free of hate, but free of Clubs – in the negative, exclusionary sense – as well.
However, the vast majority of people I grew up with and spent most of my life considering my friends have partaken in The Shunning.
I grew up in an abusive authoritarian Christian fundamentalist cult. It was horrible, and those years did a lot of damage that is still now being undone. Part of that damage was marrying the one guy my parents found acceptable when I was far too young; he was not as fundamentalist as they were, so at first it felt like relative freedom. Over 15 years of marriage and three children, however, he became in some ways even worse than my parents had been. He could never stay in any church, because he always knew better than the leadership what god *really* wanted. I supported that, because I was going through my own constant questioning of this book that was supposed to be holy, finding more and more that was impossible to reconcile with either itself or my conscience; so I agreed when he took issue with church leadership. Then I would get a respite from church for a while, until he found a new one to try.
I made what I thought were very close friendships in some of the later churches; I began to feel secure in myself enough to try new ways of testing Christianity, trying to understand how it was OK to believe it, to preach a god of love who sent people to hell for breaking the Sabbath (Old Testament) or for not believing in his one and only True Message (i.e., traditional fundamentalist Christianity). I tried to believe this was a perfect book, that there were good reasons that god told Joshua to stone the old man to death for gathering kindling on the Sabbath or mandated that a woman be given to her rapist in marriage as long as she wasn’t previously claimed property of some other man; in which case the rapist was to be stoned.
Finally I realized, No. There is no excuse. There are too many obvious contradictions, too many ways this book reflects the hate I have too often seen from the Christians around me toward all Outsiders. There were debates in Sunday School classes about who is more detestable: atheists or pagans? And are there degrees of Hell so that some will burn hotter forever [gays, pagans, atheists, dark-skinned people, etc.] than others [friendly, useful, helpful people like the Buddhist who offers more food than he can afford to the food bank, and donates his skill as a gardener, but still burns in hell forever].
So I went back to the faith of my ancestors, my true heritage: Druidry – Celtic polytheistic nature spirituality. I have never regretted it, and my path is more beautiful and fulfilling than I ever could have imagined five years ago, mired in the Christian Hate Club and looking desperately for the Exit door.
What did shock me, though, and still continues to in some ways, was the outright rejection and hatred from people I once considered friends. Some of them I’ve known most of my life, since I was a child. These people cannot tolerate my Otherness, and my refusal to be ashamed of it. They have a vested interest in presenting themselves as ‘loving’, and their “Love”, it turns out, is just like their god’s: conditional upon absolute obedience and conformity.
So I am told I’m hateful, and because I show hatred toward a system of religion that abused me for most of my life, and has caused untold bloodshed and pain for much of the world over millennia, they have to ‘unfriend’ me (to use Facebook terminology). So they put themselves in the righteous position of “Love”, slamming the door in another person’s face – even someone they’ve known for many years, and/or to whom they have told sweet-sounding lies of unconditional love and friendship – for being Other than they are; for being Different. For telling the truth, instead of perpetuating their pet lies. For being courageous, going out and forging a new life instead of pretending the old one is all right just because it’s safer.
Others are even more extreme in their hatred: they consider me dead. I am not even acknowledged as a living person; they showered sympathy on my abusive ex-husband when I left after he hurt our daughter, and offered him hospitality and all the “privileges” of friendship I once enjoyed. They join my ex in saying that I am a walking corpse, because I have rejected their faith.
These same people who have treated me with such abuse, hatred, and infamy, are still ‘Friends’ with my children. Some don’t know my children except through me, yet they include my children in their exclusive Hate club because my children are still christian. Still young, and to be pitied, with such a reprobate for a mother.
How insidious is it, to befriend a woman’s children while spitting in her face and rejecting her? How abhorrent, to pretend to love while displaying such ignorance and hatred? How should I react to this hypocrisy, this continual disgusting display of blind loyalty to a corrupt and hateful religion? Do I want your ‘love’ being showered on my children? Absolutely not. It revolts me to see these people leaving happy little ‘buddy-buddy’ messages for my children, having cut off all contact and ties with me because I am somehow a Lesser woman because I’m not ashamed of who I really am.
More than that, perhaps, it frightens me; I don’t want my kids to join that club, or any hate club – but I know how seductive and heady a thing acceptance can be, especially to adolescents. I know my children are very smart, wise beyond their years, and full of real love. I also know that these people – at least some of them – want to ‘teach’ my kids how to be ‘real’ Christians. The idea makes my stomach roil.
The Christian Hate Club does more every day to prove to me that I am more than justified in calling them a Hate Club, and in finding them morally disgusting.
So, I think my fellow pagans must wake up. Realize that the Christian Hate Club will not thank you for defending them; they take it as their god-given right, and they thank him for making you go against your natural inclinations to continual evil and sin. Learn to distinguish between worthwhile Christians and the Hate Club members, and learn to have some courage and integrity in the face of their constant hypocrisy and habitual manner of calling hatred love and love hatred.
Their own Bible ironically says it best, while embodying the ideas it herein condemns: “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness.” [Isaiah 5:20]
Yes, woe to you, false friends and liars, hypocrites and haters. Woe to you, because that is the crop you are sowing for yourselves – and no, the sowing of the seed that will later be reaped in the harvest is not a metaphor that belongs solely to the Church. It has been a pagan metaphor for thousands of years, and is more rightfully ours than yours. Your seeds of hatred born of fear will give birth to deeper fear and greater hate, and so you are caught in an endless spiral of what you’ve created: Fear and Hate under the false name of Love.
The rest of us are well rid of the Christian Hate Club – and all the Hate Clubs. We would be better occupied creating that world we sometimes glimpse, the one without hatred or fear of anything Different, the one built on love that is truly unconditional, compassion not limited to what we can understand; the world we have to build ourselves by belonging to it. Then we can give the refugees from the Hate Clubs a place to go for healing and help, without ever bowing or bending to the hate ourselves.
zylah 