When you construct a neat little box for yourself and call this box “purity” or “truth,” then by definition all that falls outside that box becomes “impure” and “false.” That is a necessary result of such box construction. It is a process followed by monotheism (where everything outside itself is seen as “paganism”) and by particular groups within that genus – the Israelites themselves and a sub-category, the Essenes, and later, by the Christians. The objective might be to “box in” the “constructed other” (everyone outside that box) but it has the concomitant (and therefore unavoidable) effect of also boxing in those who lay claim to that purity and that truth.

They have, by creating the “other” category, also created a category for themselves: “We are special. We are real Americans; you are false.”

We have seen this construction of a purity box in American politics. Especially since the election of Barack Obama, Republicans who do not object to every proposal the president makes are accused of not really being Republican. This once unofficial trend has become doctrinaire (the ranting of Limbaugh, Coulter, Beck, Hannity and others) and has now been codified as of Friday, January 29, 2010: A proposal for a “litmus test” which would have required candidates to affirm ten core conservative positions (Ten Commandments anyone?) did not materialize but what did still amounts to a creed:  GOP candidates must support the party’s platform if they want gold for their war chests.[1]

The religious undertones are unmistakable. More and more, the GOP has become “God’s Own Party” – a party in which political purity closely aligns not only with religious purity but adopts the language of religious purity.[2] As Regina Schwartz says of monotheism,

Politics are not hardwired into theology. Worship of one deity need not necessarily produce this violent notion of identity, but monotheism has been caught up with particularism, with that production of collective identity as peoples set apart, and it so happens that when the biblical text moves more explicitly toward polytheism, it also endorses a more attractive toleration, even appreciation of difference.[3]

And it is this sense of collective identity, this idea that Republicans are a people apart – a people of God, a Chosen People like the Israelites – that epitomizes the recent polarization of the American political – and religious – landscape. It is not only required that you be Republican to be acceptable; you must also be a Christian, and not just any Christian, but a certain type of Christian.

Shades of the so-called Old Testament (more correctly, the Hebrew Bible).

In Upstate New York, recently, Republican Dede Scozzafava was forced to withdraw from the campaign for NY-23 Representative because she was not Republican enough to be truly a Republican. As Politico reported at the time, “Conservatives have asserted that Scozzafava, a GOP establishment-backed state assemblywoman who supports abortion rights and gay marriage, is far too liberal for them to support…”[4]

As the Washington Post tells it, “[former Alaska governor Sarah] Palin and [Minnesota Gov. Tim] Pawlenty cast the contest as a fight for the direction of the GOP.” But it is more than this. For purity ideologues, Scozzafava is not really a Republican at all. Pawlenty was strident: “we cannot send more politicians to Washington who wear the Republican jersey on the campaign trail but then vote like Democrats in Congress.” Glenn Beck denounced her as “ACORN-supported” and an “Obama-Lite Republican” and conservative robo-calls in the district describing her as a “child killer,” a “lesbian lover” and a “homo.”[5]

Rush Limbaugh was more blunt:

We can say she is guilty of widespread bestiality. She has screwed every RINO in the country. Everyone can see just how phony and dangerous they are. 2010 might be a nightmare for PETA. Tow animals may become extinct: RINOs and Blue Dog Democrats.[6]

CBSNews reports that “Michelle Malkin mocked her as a ‘radical leftist.’”[7]

Quite clearly, it is not political issues that define one’s political affiliation, but what are perceived to be violations of the Ten Commandments.

Again, we see the shadow of the Old Testament behind opposition to Scozzafava.

Regina Schwartz:

In the myth of monotheism, pluralism is betrayal, punishable with every kind of exile: loss of home, loss of land, even alienation from the earth itself.[8]

Loss of political office.

Schwartz notes the manner in which the Biblical narrative paints “inclinations toward polytheism” as “sexual infidelity” and how Israel itself “is castigated for ‘whoring after’ other gods, thereby imperiling her ‘purity.’ The land itself must be kept clean “or its inhabitants will be ejected, ‘vomited’ out of the land… When Israel is not monotheistic, it is filthy and pollutes the land” (Lev 20.20-25). “When Israel worships a foreign deity, she is a harlot, the land is made barren, and she is ejected from the land” (Jer 3.2-3).[9]

Dede Scozzafava has been vomited forth.

With the advent of the Republican purity test, of its “Ten Commandments” she will not be alone. This move leaves many Republican office-holders vulnerable.  The pressure to conform is intense. Extremist Rush Limbaugh has repeatedly bent Republican office holders to his will. In the case of Dede Scozzafava, CBSNews reports,

[Newt] Gingrich…[who] earlier this week…said conservative support for Hoffman had been a mistake…On Saturday… threw his support behind Hoffman via a Twitter post. Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, who only a few days ago similarly backed Scozzafava, is now behind Hoffman.[10]

Repent or die…a political death. The message has been made clear. Nobody wants to be vomited forth.

Inside that little purity box there can be no tolerance of differing opinions because tolerance = compromise and compromise means surrendering the distinctions between True and false, no ultimate truth and no heresy. You’re one of “us” or you’re one of “them” (the dreaded “other”); you’re for us or against us. From inside the purity box, it is a struggle of good vs. evil, of right vs. wrong, of capital-T Truth vs. moral relativism.

In the same sense that ancient Christians saw themselves as inheritors of the mantle of “Chosen People” today’s extremist Republicans (is there any other kind after “Black Friday” January 29, 2010?) see themselves as today’s Chosen People.

We heard this rhetoric during the Bush Administration in the wake of 9/11: America was chosen by God to be the new Rome, a vehicle for the spread of Christianity and by extension then, Bush was chosen by God to be President. If you opposed Bush, you opposed not only America but you placed yourself in opposition to God.

Politics and religion have become indistinguishable in the new GOP; The Ten Commandments of the Israelites or the “ten political positions of the Republican Party. And as I have demonstrated here, the parallelism is not at all superficial, but reaches to a much deeper level. Be pure or you are not one of us; you will be vomited forth.

As New Testament scholar Gerd Lüdemann observes (Intolerance and the Gospel, 2006), the history of Christianity demonstrates that there is little tolerance for thinking or acting outside the “orthodox” Christian tradition. He suggest (and the evidence of the GOP offers tangible evidence) “that attempts to harmonize Christianity with the democratic ideal of tolerance cannot really work because there is a logical contradiction between monotheism and Christology, on the one hand, and the core values of a pluralistic society, on the other.”[11]

When the purity box makes compromise impossible, what is the prognosis for American politics? We have seen a very centrist-oriented Obama reaching across the aisle to work with Republicans. The Republicans insist that they are willing to work with Obama, but what they are suggesting is not give-and-take, it is not compromise (because compromise is not compatible with purity) but surrender: Obama must do what they want. They seem happily unaware that they lost the election (Democrats, by contrast, seem unaware they won, but that is another story altogether).

As Obama told the GOP leaders, “this is not how Democracy works.”[12]

But the GOP no longer seems interested in Democracy. The GOP’s only interest is in the diktat of “Truth”; the GOP has become the party of extremism. Extremism is “any ideology taken to its extreme, interpreted and enacted in an absolute sense that allowed no compromise with practical considerations or accommodation with the world.” As historian Michael Gaddis puts it, “Extremist discourse, in religion as in other contexts, valued above all zeal and authority in the pursuit of its cause, and strove for a total and perfect expression of its values.”[13]

And presto, we have the Republican Party’s “purity test.”

Religious extremists, Gaddis observes, “convinced themselves that they have enacted not only their own will, but God’s.”[14] We live in a world where political extremists feel the same.[15]

Such an attitude does not leave much room for the rest of us. Nor does it leave much hope for the future of American politics. The only solution, from the GOP’s point of view, is the complete surrender of the Democratic Party to its will. A governing majority is impossible without compromise; this necessity of working across the aisle is built into the American political system.

But hands cannot reach across the purity box. Or as Egyptologist Jan Assmann puts it (Moses the Egyptian, 1997), “false gods cannot be translated.[16] And the true God lives within the purity box; outside are false gods – real and metaphorical.

We are being asked to choose between the Constitution and God.

Historically, the solution to this dispute has been inquisition, holy war…and theocracy. Constitutionally, none of those outcomes are desirable – or even theoretically possible. The Founding Fathers could have established the new nation as a monarchy or a theocracy; they did neither. We can only assume they meant to have a liberal democracy. The Constitution codifies these ideas. It protects that liberal democracy.

The Constitution, significantly, is the highest development of the ideals of the Enlightenment.

But the war against the Constitution is very real and has proven unexpectedly effective. Church-State walls are under attack and crumbling and adherence to Enlightenment concepts such as diversity, tolerance, and individual human rights are seen as attacks on God. The Enlightenment gave us the Constitution; extremist Christianity and the Republican Party have united to attack – and destroy it.

The purity test – the Nicene Creed of the new republicanism – is not the end; it is only a step in the road that defines the nature of the struggle for the faithful. The purity box does not allow for retreat or surrender; nor for the sake of all our ancestors created in the New World – a land of liberty – can there can any retreat or surrender from progressives.

The outcome of such a surrender is unthinkable.

---

[1] My Oxford American Dictionary (2008) calls a creed “a statement of belief or principles.”

[2] HonoluluAdvertiser.com http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20100129/BREAKING01/100129052/GOP+adopts+platform+test+for+candidates+during+Hawaii+meeting

[3] Regina Schwartz, The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1997),, 31.

[4] Politico.com http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1009/28970.html

[5] Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/09/AR2009110903690.html

[6] MediaMatters for America http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/02/limbaugh-scozzafava-guilt_n_342535.html

[7] Coop’s Corner, CBS News http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/10/31/blogs/coopscorner/entry5475675.shtml

[8] Schwartz (1997), 47.

[9] Schwartz (1997), 63.

[10] Coop’s Corner, CBS News http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/10/31/blogs/coopscorner/entry5475675.shtml

[11] http://wwwuser.gwdg.de/~gluedem/eng/

[12] The Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/29/obama-goes-to-the-gop-lio_n_442331.html

[13] Michael Gaddis, There Is No Crime for Those Who Have Christ: Religious Violence in the Christian Roman Empire (University of California Press, 2005), 5-6.

[14] Gaddis (2005), 6.

[15] One need only remember Palin’s assurances to the “faithful” that God would do the right thing for America on election day. http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2008/10/palin_the_right.html

[16] Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism ((Harvard University Press, 1997), 3.

Update:  Please see the recent post by Gus diZerega over at Beliefnet,

James O’Keefe, Conservatism, Racism and a Religious Connection

Thanks go to Makarios for pointing me towards this excellent piece.

Church-State Watchdog Group Urges Obama To Keep Promise To Fix ‘Faith-Based’ Initiative

On One-Year Anniversary Of Obama ‘Faith-Based’ Plan, President Should Ban Government-Funded Religious Bias And Proselytizing, Says AU

February 2, 2010

President Barack Obama should honor his pledge to reform the “faith-based” initiative by banning job discrimination in tax-funded programs and making it clear that public funds cannot support proselytizing, says Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

In a letter sent to Obama today, Americans United urged the president to reverse Bush-era faith-based policies that remain in effect today and follow through on reforms he proposed when he was a candidate.

“We’ve waited long enough,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director. “The faith-based initiative has serious constitutional defects, and it’s time for a fix. Billions of federal tax dollars are going out the door without adequate religious liberty and civil rights safeguards.”

In a July 1, 2008, speech in Zanesville, Ohio, Obama promised to end Bush administration policies that allowed publicly funded faith-based social services to proselytize and discriminate in hiring on religious grounds.

Read the full press release at www.au.org

If the United States was founded by Christian Europeans, the government established in the wake of the Revolution was secular. This was not only a protection of belief (or lack of belief) but a protection of government. The religious wars of the Old World were a recent memory for those people and they knew firsthand the dangers of government sponsored religion.

More than two centuries later, we live in the most pluralistic society in the world. There are not only Christians (protestant, catholic and denominations too numerous to count), but Buddhists, Hindus, Scientologists, atheists, pagans, and others. Every possible viewpoint is represented as never before in history in a single culture.

It is not always easy getting along. Christianity still dominates American culture. Christians are still a majority, though even defining what makes a person Christian is as difficult as it was in the first Christian century. The process of syncretism, which affects every religion, has had some positive effects. There are Christians who accept that there are other paths to “salvation” and who embrace more New Age viewpoints, such as reincarnation and past lives.

On the other hand, there have been some negative effects. There are those who do not want to lose their “dominant culture” status, who feel threatened by the loss of status in society, who ever more stridently insist that the United States was founded as a Christian Nation and who claim that atheists, feminists, pagans and secular humanists are to blame for all the ills of society, and not only that, but a danger to the country itself.

This argument is right out of the Old Testament. And for non-Christians of every stripe, it smells of rank superstition – a petulant, jealous, childishly angry deity punishing those who dare think for themselves. The Hurricane Katrina disaster is laid at the door of this angry god (punishing the sinful people of New Orleans) as is the recent quake in Haiti. This is what YHWH did to the people of Israel who “whored after foreign gods” we are told.

The irony is that those foreign gods were actually ethnic gods of the Jewish (Canaanite) people and YHWH himself was the foreign god – a god out of NW Arabia (Sinai) brought into the country most likely by Midianite merchants. But conservative Christians have built up a mythical past to which they can appeal at need, one which, while taking little cognizance of history, makes history conform to a system. This is not good history, but as Kierkegaard said, Christianity is belief in the absurd and it is certainly absurd to refuge to acknowledge the facts as they lay plainly before you.

The rest of us are trapped in this mythical world. And not only is ancient history mythologized but so is American history – the myth of a Christian Nation. And as rapidly as events happen in the real world, they are mythologized – re-interpreted to fit, to conform to the system. It is becoming difficult for the real world – and us – to keep up with the spin.

How does the majority of the population get along with a vocal, vitriolic minority who refuse to live in the same evidence based world in which we live? Though pagans and atheists and Buddhists and Hindus have many differences between them, it is far easier for these groups to coexist (along with more moderate Christians) than it is for any of them, singly or collectively, to get along with the extremist minority (whether we identify them as Evangelicals, Fundamentalists – or more pointedly, Talibangelicals).

The forces of reaction demand adherence to their myth. When we decline to play along, when we insist on our freedom of choice in these matters, we are told we are turning away from God. During the Bush Administration it was worse (if that’s possible): we were told that since God chose Bush (he apparently didn’t choose Obama?) if you opposed Bush you opposed God. Similarly, God chose the USA to continue Rome’s work in bringing people together (they’re easier to hammer into submission if you get them all into one place?) so if you oppose American policy you…yes, you see how this works now…you turn against God.

And you know what happens when you turn against God – hurricanes and earthquakes, Sodom and Gomorrah.

And for disagreeing, for embracing choice, we are accused of making war on Christianity, of persecuting them. If universal tolerance is a logical impossibility, we can still try to get along, can’t we? But how do you include somebody who sets themselves apart, who refuses to be included?

Look at it from the perspective of a little child (we’ll call him Tommy) who says, “I won’t play with you!” or “I’ll only play with you if you play by MY rules!” and who then says, when his demands are rejected, “They’re persecuting me!”?

But nobody is telling little Tommy who isolates himself in the corner that he can’t do what he wants. Tommy’s real problem is that Tommy insists the other children do what he wants. Tommy has the right to live and play as he chooses with like-minded children. He does not have the right to dictate to other children.

In the end, Tommy’s claims of persecution ring hollow. Nobody is persecuting Tommy. The other children are not insisting Tommy live and play like they do. They are just insisting he behave when in their company.

The Constitution is set up to deal with this. We do not have a true democracy; Madison understood that in a true democracy that the rights of minorities are trampled by majorities. The Constitution prohibits (in theory – but not in California?) such blatant abuses, which were thought of as the “excesses of democracy.” The rights of all are to be protected. The majority of the children and Tommy too. Each is free to seek happiness. None of them are free to dictate to the other. All are equal. None are privileged.

Tommy claims that his rights are being ignored, or trampled. But they’re not. And Tommy does not really want equal rights. He wants his views to be privileged. But for Tommy, not being free to dictate to the other children is an abridgment of what he sees as his rights – his right to dictate to others. Religiously, Tommy may feel he has that right, but those perceived rights must, in a pluralistic society (as ours is) take second place to equal rights for all. Because if one group has the right to dictate to the other groups, then only one group has rights. And you will find no support for Tommy’s  position in the Constitution. None at all.

Believe what you want, live how you want, we are told, but extend that same right to others. Ironically enough, this very attitude is enshrined in the Bible Tommy holds so dear: Do unto others  as you would have them do unto you.

But when you don’t live in an evidence-based world, you can ignore pesky little inconvenient facts like that, can’t you?

In the end, the rest of us – the majority as it happens – must insist on our rights; our Constitutional Rights. Our right to believe or disbelieve as we choose. As Jefferson said, “it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” And he is right. It doesn’t. Tommy might be offended that the rest of us refuse to believe him when he says his god will punish us (and him) when we refuse to play by his rules, but the Constitution says (for very good reasons – grounded in centuries of religious conflict and terror) that Tommy doesn’t have the right to impose his rules on us, and that the government also lacks that power.

We have to insist on those rights, and insist loudly, as Tommy and others like him insist on making history – and us – conform to his system. It’s bad parenting, after all, to give into a child’s temper tantrum, and that is what this amounts to.

Paganism, in the Roman Empire, died hard. For centuries, laws and edicts punished the devout. People continued to believe, to celebrate their gods. They loved their religion; they did not want to give it up.

From the fourth century to the ninth, you can see the measures taken to crush the beliefs of the people.

The same was true in Northern Europe. “Barbarian” Christian successor states rose up from the ruins of the Christianized empire and began to impose Christianity not only on their own people, but on peoples beyond their borders. The Frisians, the Saxons, and Slavic peoples, all resisted. None of them wanted the new religion.

Further north, in Scandinavia, Heathen practices persisted for centuries. In Iceland, which was forced under threat of war to convert to Christianity in 1000, Heathenism simply went underground.

Much of the myth of Christianity centers around the idea that people flocked to become Christians, that it was a liberating experience. It was not. Christianity succeeded because it was imposed by force, including torture and death. It was maintained by the same forces throughout the centuries. In the later Roman Empire, every time Roman Christian authority waned, Paganism sprang up and the people cast off the unwanted religion. This happened in Britain, it happened in Spain, and it happened elsewhere.

Another sign of Paganism’s enduring nature comes from central Mexico – from the descendants of the Maya. This video is brief but it’s message is powerful and compelling: people love the gods, they love their religion: The Secrets of the Maya

It’s refreshing to see something like this, with no hint of disapproval in the narrator’s voice, no sign of missionaries engaged in cultural genocide (though we all know they’re out there somewhere). Leave people alone; let them worship as they wish. If it’s a syncretic form of Christianity that pays homage to the past and to ancient religion, fine. You may think of them as heretics, but let them be. If it’s something else, something closer to the beliefs of their ancestors, even better. Either way, it’s their choice.

We need to get over our strange belief that we know best, and I’m speaking of Western cultures in particular, given the age we live in and the influence of Christianity on these cultures. Never before in history has the idea been prevalent that a culture has to export its religion, and not only export it, impose it and enforce it. Bring the missionaries home. Let the people be. If you think your god wants everyone converted, he will do it in his own good time

There is a reason you don’t hear much about Prosper of Aquitaine. Why? Because he agreed with the position I stated above, that it was “for divine grace alone”to bring about conversion. Prosper wrote in 440 CE a book called “De Vocatione Omnium Gentium (On the Calling of All Nations). It has been called “the first work in Christian literature to be concerned with the salvation of infidels” (A. Hamman in the Encyclopedia of the Early Church Oxford:1992) but what sets it apart is that Prosper spoke of salvation, not evangelization.

It was an enlightened position for fifth century Christian culture; it would be an enlightened position today, in the twenty-first century, sixteen hundred years after those thoughts were put to parchment.

(Now that Jól is past I have had time to reflect on what the holiday means to me. I have also had time to reflect on various environmental issues. There is a symmetry that exists for Pagan peoples where religion and environment are concerned that is perhaps missing for some, and this article is meant to address one particular aspect of that symmetry. My goal here is to offer food for thought, rather than solutions – Hrafnkell)

People like fireplaces and wood burning stoves – not to mention a good bonfire. Not only for the warmth they provide, but for aesthetic reasons, particular on a cold winter’s day. Few will disagree that the sight and sound of flames licking at wood is a recipe for contentment.

But for Heathens, a wood fire can have religious connotations that might be lacking for those who follow other religious paths (the idea of the Yule log is not unique to Germanic Paganism).

No doubt there are few who have not heard of the Yule log. Fewer are probably aware of its Pagan antecedents.  For a Heathen, the Twelve Days are unimaginable without a decorated tree (the decorations were originally gifts to the tree) and a burning log in the fireplace.

We cannot always get oak, but we can get wood – actual wood rather than Duraflame’s napalm-like qualities, or the logs made out of coffee grounds. But wood, after many millennia, is becoming a politically incorrect and environmentally inexpedient commodity.

People have become aware of the polluting qualities of burning wood. We live in environmentally conscious times, and we are daily bombarded with studies revealing the origins and causes of various forms of pollution.

I first encountered the idea of particulate pollution when I moved (briefly) to Florida. Florida, I learned at the time has (or had) a problem with particulate matter floating around in the air and this was a cause of concern, given my allergies. I knew that stuff wasn’t good for you.

The U.S. Department of Energy has identified some of the problems related to wood-burning fireplaces – they emit various nasty substances, including the above-mentioned particulate matter, but also nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, and organic gases. That a wood-fire can therefore be harmful to a person’s health scarcely needs saying. It is particularly bad for people who already suffer from various health problems or whose health is precarious because of age or pregnancy.

There is the added issue of fireplaces serving as a means of escape for heat – thus leading to increased energy consumption to keep your home warm. For this please see the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Savers Blog.

Clean Air Revival informs us about the dangers of particulate pollution:

Burning solid fuel yields particulate pollution – solid particles smaller than a red blood cell which have been implicated in 30,000 deaths in the US and 2.1 million deaths world wide per year. .  “Particulate pollution is the most important contaminant in our air. …we know that when particle levels go up, people die¹. ” Indeed, wood smoke is chemically active in the body 40 times longer than tobacco².

1. Joel Schwartz, Ph.D., Harvard School of Public Health, E Magazine, Sept./Oct. 2002

2. Wm. A Pryor, Persistent Free Radicals in Woodsmoke: An ESR Spin Trapping Study, Free Radical Biology and Medicine 1989, 7(1): 17-21

Perhaps unsurprisingly, wood smoke can contribute to the risk of cancer: A  July 11, 2005 study published in Chest informs us that exposure to wood smoke may increase the risk of lung cancer via a mechanism similar to that of tobacco: “… our findings demonstrate that wood smoke could produce similar effects on p53, phospho-p53, and MDM2 protein expression as tobacco.… It is important to consider wood smoke exposure as a possible risk factor for the development of lung cancer in nonsmoker subjects.”

Not a pretty picture by any means. I learned long ago that grandma made me sick by using wood cutting boards and preparing raw meat and veggies on the same surface; now I learn than her fireplace was giving me cancer!(For more on the dangers of wood smoke see Clean Air Revival and Wisconsin Department of Health Services.)

The situation is so serious (or at least, perceived to be – there are critics of the measures) that some parts of the country are placing limits on burning wood. Planetizen.com reports that “Five years ago, the Central Valley became the first area of California to ban indoor wood burning when an ‘alert’ was called by the air district; other air districts followed in 2008.” On October 17, 2008, “Regulators in the Bay Area Air Quality Management District are clamping down on wood burning between November and February as a way to meet a new federal law limiting the amount of breathable, fine particles.” On March 9, 2009, the Connecticut Legislature considers HB6616 An Act Establishing Wood Smoke to be a Public Nuisance (!) On December 29, 2009, it was reported that Bay Area inspectors in California caught 47 fireplace violators on Jól day.

Ouch. Happy Jól, folks.

In many cases you can only have a fire if you have the proper type of wood stove. In others, no fires at all.

What’s a conscientious but devout Heathen to do?

Will the day come when across the fifty states we are barred from burning a Yule log? And should a religious waver be possible?  A spokesman for the Bay Area Air Quality Management District does not offer an encouraging answer: “We know a lot of people like to burn on this holiday, but it’s our duty to protect public health,” said Ralph Borrmann, the spokesman.

While the dangers of wood smoke cannot be denied, it seems hypocritical that those who cause the worst levels of pollution – big corporations – proceed with doing untold harm to our environment with hardly a comment directed at them. You can watch their chimneys belch smoke into the sky but you can’t burn a Yule log for your gods?

Still, legal and regulatory hypocrisies aside, it’s a bit of an ethical conundrum. If Paganism is nature-based religion, how does one reconcile concern for the environment with concern for showing proper devotion to one’s gods?

I would argue for one obvious (and partial) solution: that even where bans do not exist, one solution might be to burn less frequently. Obviously, a person could choose to burn wood only for religious reasons and on religious occasions. Most of us do not require the use of a wood fireplace to heat our homes (not that the heat we obtain via the power company comes pollution free!). For most of us, aesthetics are at the heart of a fire.

A simulated fire is obviously inadequate. This would amount to pretending to toss a pinch of incense on a flame or pretending to pray. It is the cultic act that has significance. Faux piety is no piety at all.

Wood pellets are offered as an environmentally safe option when burning wood. They produce less soot and ash (and no creosote – the stuff that causes chimney fires)  and they are made from wood that would otherwise go into a landfill. See Treehugger.com. But while wood pellets produce far less pollution, burning wood pellets does not have the same effect as a log. While aesthetic considerations might be set aside in the normal course of events, religious reasons render this a far less attractive solution.

For those who are interested in both the ethics and the environmental issues involved, please see Burnwise, a partnership program of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).