My new post is up on Pagan+Politics. See it here.

Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, who is currently (one might say justifiably) running third in the state’s Republican gubernatorial primary race, is apparently  not sure if the Constitution’s guarantees of freedom of religion apply to Islam, which happens to be the world’s second-largest religion – right after Ramsey’s own religion.

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This incident of gross stupidity and intolerance (it can only be both) took place at a recent event in Hamilton County, TN. Ramsey, responding to an audience question regarding the “threat that’s invading our country from the Muslims,” pretended support for the Constitution and the whole “Congress shall make no law” rigmarole when it comes to religion but voiced reservations about Islam’s status as a religion, claiming it’s more of a  “cult” than a religion.

“Now, you could even argue whether being a Muslim is actually a religion, or is it a nationality, way of life, cult whatever you want to call it,” Ramsey said. “Now certainly we do protect our religions, but at the same time this is something we are going to have to face.”

If you want to start pulling out your guides to what constitutes a cult, you will quickly see that Christianity qualifies in many ways as a cult. And this is to ignore the terrifying prospect of religion mixing with politics – which is the purpose of the Constitutional guarantees Ramsey pretends to support. Our Founding Fathers lived at a time in which governments supported state religion and of course deprived minority religious groups of their rights. I have in my family tree a French Huguenot, a protestant, who fled Catholic France for a chance of religious freedom in the New World. The Catholics then spoke of protestants in much the same way Christian conservatives in this country speak of Muslims, as non-people, a non-religion, an infestation to be stamped out.

Talk about a religious group controlling the US government to the extent that it decides which religions are religions and which are not is one that should not be taking place in this country. Christianity has made it quite clear that Christianity is the only true religion, that it is more equal than other religions, etc. This is fine. They have a right to feel that way. They do not have a right to impose it as public policy. That’s why we have the Constitutional guarantees Ramsey treats so carelessly.

I saw a bumper sticker the other day that made me laugh. It said, in bright readable letters: “God is Pro-Life.”

Really? I thought.

What are we supposed to go by? This assertion, so often made by the would-be moral police on the Religious Right? Or the assertions supposedly made by God himself and his followers and preserved in the pages of the Bible?

The Bible is supposed to be the inerrant word of God after all, and there is some pretty anti-life stuff in there. As religioustolerance.org summarizes, “These include religiously-motivated genocide, stoning non-virgin brides to death, burning some hookers alive, treating women as property, etc.”

I mean, nasty stuff. Not pro-life at all. Since we can’t ask God and the prophet business has dried up over the past few thousand years, let’s do the next best thing and flip through the Bible.

Things don’t begin well for the pro-life argument. Ezekiel 34:31 states:

“And ye my flock, the flock of my pasture, are men, and I am your God, saith the Lord GOD.”

Yes, only Jews are human to YHWH. The Nations (Gentiles) – in a word, everyone else – are beasts. You remember what Jesus said about them, don’t you? Swine and dogs.

Now of course, the situation is complicated by the fact of three competing monotheisms, all claiming to be descended from Abraham.  Everyone knows the Jewish “Chosen People” spiel but there seems to be a lot of that going around.

Muslims point to Genesis 15:18 as proof that they got the prized covenant from Abraham via Abraham’s firstborn child Ishmael, son of Abraham and his second wife, Hagar. The Jewish claim rests on the assertion that God passed the covenant on to Isaac (Genesis 17:19-21), the son Abraham and main wife, Sarah. And of course, Christians believe it passed on to them via Jesus.

Which would be fine, but apparently this covenant is exclusive property. They can’t all have it.

And they hate each other for it. We’re used now to Christian attacks on Mohammed but in the Talmud, both Jesus and Mohammed are “dead dogs.” America’s Talibangelicals seem to hate Islam with the same fervor they once reserved for Judaism.

The result is the followers of the “god of love” have as much hate as the god they worship. If we judge the tree by its fruit, it’s clear that the god of love is no such thing. It is also clear that his stance is anything but pro-life.

Let’s climb up and look at the tree some more.

We don’t have to look far:

Exodus (22:20): “Whoever sacrifices to any god, save to the LORD only, shall be utterly destroyed.”

Ouch. Yeah, not so much pro-life.

And it’s not like Jesus steered away from this platform. Yes, old YHWH said you should hate your enemies (after all, he did) and Jesus said to love them, but for both the end-time scenario was the same.

Everyone else has gotta go. Off the planet.

It’s no wonder Christian conservatives feel comfortable saying the US is by and for Christians. That’s actually a step down from their God’s platform. Maybe we should be grateful they’re being so moderate.

It is really difficult to find this god who is pro-life in the pages of the Bible. It’s filled with atrocity after atrocity and many of them at God’s own command. It’s no wonder it has sometimes been called one long hate speech.

Look at Numbers 31:17, concerning the Midianites:

Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.

The god of human sexual trafficking.

Exodus 22:18: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”

This is not very pro-life. It obviously means everyone who doesn’t follow YHWH needs to be killed.

Deuteronomy 32:9-43 is white hot in its opposition to non-believers, as is Deuteronomy 13:6-10:

If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son, or your daughter, or the wife of your bosom, or your friend who is as your own soul, entices you secretly, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods…you shall kill him; your hand shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. You shall stone him to death with stones, because he sought to draw you away from the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.’

Is this pro-life?:

“If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. they must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads” (Leviticus 20:13).

And then there is always the pesky issue of human sacrifice. Can a pro-life god demand babies be sacrificed to him?

Exodus 22.29 literally, YHWH demanded human sacrifice as well: that of the first-born son:

Do not hold back offerings from your granaries or your vats. You must give me the firstborn of your sons. Do the same with your cattle and your sheep. Let them stay with their mothers for seven days, but give them to me on the eighth day.

Ezekiel (20.26) certainly takes God’s command literally:

“I let them become defiled through their gifts – the sacrifice of every firstborn – that I might fill them with horrors so they would know that I am the LORD.”

The ever-reviled Baal and Moloch have nothing on this guy.

Of course, some apologists claim that this was not literally sacrifice but only consecration. Problems arise, however, when we see for example how in 2 Kings 21.6 King Manasseh “sacrificed his own son to the fire.”

And Levicitus (27.28-29) makes clear this is sacrifice, not consecration:

But nothing that a man owns and devotes to the LORD – whether man or animal or family land – may be sold or redeemed; everything so devoted is most holy to the LORD. No person devoted to destruction may be ransomed; he must be put to death.

Then there is story of Jephthah, one of the Judges of Israel who lived in the time before the first king, who in fulfillment of a vow sacrificed his own daughter to God (Judges 11:29-39).

Did Jesus really change anything? No, not really.

(Luke 19:27):

“But as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slay them before me.”

Luke 14:26:

If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”

The Bible has been used to support and justify all kinds of hate and intolerance and violence. Yes, the Bible gets misused and abused and misquoted and taken out of context but the ideas of hate are there; they are not invented. The hate is there and those who follow the Bible get as riled up by God’s speeches as people once did by Hitler’s.

But making statements like the one found on that bumper sticker is not based on any biblical evidence that I can find.  Saying it doesn’t make it so, however convenient the wish might be for the so-called pro-life movement (otherwise known as the anti-mother movement) and taking it upon oneself to speak for “God” seems a risky undertaking.

The arguments used to advance this pro-life point of view are weak and general: Nehemiah 9:6 that God gives life to everything; Job 12:10 that God’s hand is in the life of every creature; Deuteronomy 30:19-20 where God tells the Jews to choose life over death. The argument that because God creates life he is pro-life is a weak one. He obviously also created death and later, we are to believe, sent his own son to be killed. And while Deuteronomy is used to promote the pro-life cause, as we have seen above just a couple passages later God is expounding a very pro-death point of view (Deuteronomy 32:9-43). The most mis-used passage relates to a very special person, and not to all people. That is Jeremiah 1:4-5: The word of the LORD came to me, saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” A very special case, said nowhere to apply to humankind generally. In fact, it is a unique statement in the Bible.

You want abortion examples from the Bible? Hosea 9:11-16; Hosea 13:16; Numbers 5:11-21; Numbers 31:17; 2 Kings 15:16. You want the murder of infants? 1 Samuel 15:3; Psalms 135:8, 136:10; Psalms 137:9.

It would be more accurate for the bumper sticker to read: “God is anti-life” because if there is one thing God seems to love in the Old Testament, it’s murdering babies, inside and outside the womb.

Richard T. Hughes, Professor of Religion at Messiah College and author of Christian America and the Kingdom of God writing for the CNN BeliefBlog, argues that “If those Christians lived as they are taught to live by the teacher they claim to follow, the American public square would be a very different kind of place.”

It is difficult to find room for disagreement with Professor Hughes’ assertion. After all, as he says, “based on their words and behavior, we may safely conclude that many of the Christians who dominate America’s public square routinely reject the teachings of Jesus, in spite of their claims to the contrary.”

There are a few short rules to follow, and he provides examples of the way in which they are ignored.

Jesus tells his followers to tell the truth.

Jesus tells his followers to make peace.

Jesus tells his followers to turn the other cheek.

Jesus tells his followers to bless those who persecute them and pray for those who misuse them.

Jesus tells his followers to extend justice, especially to the poor and the dispossessed.

Jesus tells his followers to serve as bridge-builders and agents of reconciliation.

And Jesus tells his followers to love one another, even their enemies.

This put me to wondering what all this would mean to a Heathen like myself. Now granted, making such a comparison is not easy. Heathenism is not revealed religion. Our gods did not come forth and dictate to us a list of rules to be followed. The closest thing we have are the “Sayings of Hár” – the Hávamál – sage words of advice offered by none other than Óðinn.

Of course, we also have our prized sagas, and a few other writings, and out of these a distillation has come usually known as the Nine Noble Virtues.

The problem will always be, for Pagans of any stripe, that as Bart Ehrman says of Mediterranean paganism, ”What mattered were traditionally sanctioned acts of worship, not beliefs.”^[1]

With that proviso in mind, we might consider what the American political landscape would look like it if were people by Pagans – Heathens specifically.

In the 1970s the Odinic Right introduced the Nine Noble Virtues:

1. To maintain candour and fidelity in love and devotion to the tried friend: though he strike me I will do him no scathe.
2. Never to make wrongsome oath: for great and grim is the reward for the breaking of plighted troth.
3. To deal not hardly with the humble and the lowly.
4. To remember the respect that is due to great age.
5. To suffer no evil to go unremedied and to fight against the enemies of Faith, Folk and Family: my foes I will fight in the field, nor will I stay to be burnt in my house.
6. To succour the friendless but to put no faith in the pledged word of a stranger people.
7. If I hear the fool’s word of a drunken man I will strive not: for many a grief and the very death groweth from out such things.
8. To give kind heed to dead people: straw dead, sea dead or sword dead.
9. To abide by the enactments of lawful authority and to bear with courage the decrees of the Norns.

The Ásatrú Folk Assembly (AFA) offers a slightly different version:

1. Strength is better than weakness
2. Courage is better than cowardice
3. Joy is better than guilt
4. Honour is better than dishonour
5. Freedom is better than slavery
6. Kinship is better than alienation
7. Realism is better than dogmatism
8. Vigor is better than lifelessness
9. Ancestry is better than universalism

Now it is clear that the Norse wisdom offered here is more about family and kinship than kings and rulers and electorates. But there is wisdom still for people like Sarah Palin:

To be bright of brain       let no man boast

But take good heed of his tongue:

The sage and silent         come seldom to grief

As they fare among the folk in the hall.

A key lesson to be learned here is that what is given should be returned in equal measure, as in the old oaths of fealty. As the Hávamál has it, “pay back gift for gift.” Depending on your translation this means “laughter for laughter” or “mocking with mockery,” and “fraud with falsehood.” In other words, do NOT turn the other cheek and do not hesitate to give back what is returned.

The presidential and vice-presidential debates would have gone far differently in a Heathen context, as the Republican candidates rolled out their spin and stuck to it in the face of every fact revealed. And Barack Obama and Joe Biden remained courteous throughout.

Imagine those debates with two Heathen candidates in place of Obama and Biden.

If you act like a witless oaf, there should be no hesitation among listeners to remain polite or to hold their tongues in return. Do not turn the other cheek but give in equal measure.

Professor Hughes observes that “When Christians so widely and publicly embrace such blatant distortions of the Christian religion, they abandon one of the roles they might have played in America’s public square: fostering civility and dialogue and building lasting bridges of reconciliation.”

Should a Heathen politician act like a Christian when entering politics? It might garner more votes, seeming to be like everyone else, but the focus on honor, on realism over dogmatism, or as I’ve always put it, “good old fashioned Scandinavian pragmatism” the political landscape might be a refreshing place.

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[1] Ehrman, Lost Christianities,  92.

This is a long overdue review of Diana Paxson’s Essential Ásatrú, a book mentioned by S.M. Stirling as a resource for his Emberverse series (previously reviewed here). Diana Paxson is both a Pagan and an author – not only of speculative fiction but of nonfiction works relating to various aspects of Paganism.

Essential Asatru: Walking the Path of Norse Paganism (Citadel Press 2006) is billed as an “accessible guide” to Ásatrú, as well as a “practical guide for its modern followers.” Obviously there is need for such a book. It cannot be denied, as the back cover says, that Heathenism is “often misunderstood.” It is no secret that I feel many works by Heathen scholars fall far short of the mark.

Obviously, there is wide latitude in the reconstruction or revival of any ancient religion. Our sources are always incomplete (in the case of Heathenism deplorably so) and people come at it from a variety of directions, including Germanic (often Saxon) and Scandinavian. Ásatrú has been classified as “Wicca with homework” and I think this fairly assesses the degree of dedication to reviving ancient customs existing in modern Heathenism as opposed to say, Wicca, which is a new religion, or a “reincarnation” as one Wiccan priestess has put it. For that reason alone no single guide can be everything to everyone. That does not mean it cannot provide a useful (and necessarily general) starting point, and that’s what I’m really interested in here.

Essential Ásatrú is divided into three parts:

1) Heroes and Ancestors (which I think is a very good place to start as a Heathen);

2) Gods and Goddesses;

3) Toasts, Boasts and Oaths (which any Heathen knows is very much a part of our ancestral customs – and oaths are generally holy, not only to Heathens but to Hellenes and others as well).

Ms. Paxson begins at the beginning, as it were, tracing history from the Stone Age through the Migration Period and Viking Age before looking at the “conversion” and the modern revival. Again, I think this attention to the historical record is something that sets Heathenism (as well as Hellenism and others) apart from more modern religions like Wicca.

I thought her treatment of our gods and goddesses to be good. Ms. Paxson correctly points out that a man is effeminate if he is submissive in sexual matters, not if he is attracted to men. This is a point often missed even by Pagans today (the same is true of the Romans, where the male is seen as the penetrator). Again, this is a topic I have covered here in some depth.

She also points out that Loki is not necessarily a god at all, though some Heathens treat him as such. On the other hand, I do have a problem with Ms. Paxson’s discussion of “Hella.” There are interesting gaps in Ms. Paxson’s bibliography; for example, she completely ignores Rudolf Simek’s Dictionary of Northern Mythology. This, to me, is inexplicable. As Simek points out, Hel (or Hella as Paxson calls her) is “probably a very late poetic personification of the underworld Hel.” Simek concludes that “On the whole nothing speaks in favour of there being a belief in a goddess Hel in pre-Christian times.” Granted, Davidson states that “a we have a persistent tradition for a goddess of the dead” but this only goes to demonstrate that the matter is far from an open and shut case.[1]

Ms. Paxson admits that Hella is a “shadowy figure in the lore” but points out that “she has become an important deity to a number of heathens today.” This may be, but it seems to me that we should not ignore evidence that Hel was not a goddess at all in the minds of our ancestors, but a late poetic device. People interested in returning to the customs and traditions of their ancestors ought to know where there are doubts about the existence of specific deities (as with Loki). Obviously, there is room for both interpretations and if people want to include Hel in the pantheon an argument can be made for this but equally, an argument can be made that Hel is no goddess at all. In the interest of historical accuracy both possibilities should have been mentioned.

In the second part of Essential Ásatrú, Ms. Paxson offers a brief discussion of sacrifice. I’m not entirely satisfied by this, not only because it is very brief – a mere five pages are devoted to sacrifice and 25 to magic – and sacrifice – not magic, unless you consider all religion magic – was the essence of ancient religion. Ms. Paxson admits this, saying (p. 100) that sacrifice “was universal in the ancient world” and correctly points out that most modern Heathens lack the requisite skills to kill animals and that therefore “our festal food usually comes from the grocery store.”

The discussion of a Heathen altar includes a “Thor’s hammer” which seems here to substitute for a Wiccan“ wand”. I suppose people can put what they want on heir altars but there is no historical evidence for hammers that I am aware of. Gold ring dedicated to Thor, yes. His hammer, no. There can be no doubt that the hammer as an altar implement is a modern, not an ancient, convention.

In the third part of her book Ms. Paxson addresses the subject of toasts, boasts, and oaths. Here she leads us on a discussion about Norse cosmology, wyrd and orlog and afterlife, where she correct points out that “In the lore, we find a variety of possibilities depending on time, place, and even individual preference.” She also discusses the all important virtues, courage, truth, honor and the rest. She does make an interesting comment at the end of chapter 10: “Heathenism is a religion that prizes self-reliance and personal responsibility.”

This is a rather broad and general statement and it does not pay enough attention to the historical record, in my opinion. If you’re speaking of the Viking Age, I would say the focus on self-reliance is closer to true but even then, as Robert Ferguson writes, “Viking Age ethics were based on the opposition of shame and honour.”[2] Our ancestors lived in small communities and the myth of the rugged individualist would have struck them as alien. These small isolated communities put people in great dependence upon each other. It was an age where in the law a family member was responsible for everyone else in that family. You could not be a “rugged individualist” and get by. If you did something wrong, anyone in your family could suffer as a result; the whole community could suffer. The Viking Age broke these old barriers down and so yes, speaking of that later Age I would find some truth in her words.

As James C. Russell writes,

Since the early Germans could not rely upon the protection and assistance of a bureaucratic empire when they were threatened with attack or famine, it was incumbent upon each man and woman of the community to adhere to the fundamental sociobiological principle of group survival embodied in the bonds of familial and communal solidarity. One’s status in society depended upon how closely one adhered to this fundamental  principle. Those who behaved honorably, thereby contributing toward the advancement of their community, were materially rewarded and thus increased their wealth, power, and influence. It is likely that the coalescence of honor, wealth, influence and power within Germanic society inhibited the spread of status inconsistency and its potentially anomic effects, and served to further reinforce Germanic group solidarity.[3]

If there is something modern Heathens ought to be bringing into the present it is this idea of group solidarity and community, not to mention family.

In Chapter 11 she moves on to a discussion of questions and conflicts, discussing UPGs and lore and variation in practice due to time and place, as well as the applicability of the term “earth religion” – all important topics of discussion. She concludes the chapter with a discussion of various approaches to Heathenism, from folkish to tribalist to universalist and makes a comparison of Asatru and Wicca. I find myself in agreement with her statement that while some Heathens denigrate Wiccan-style practices as “Wiccatru” she doubts that “the gods themselves care about the style in which they are worshipped” though she believes (as I do) “that they can be more completely understood and perceived more clearly when honored in a Germanic cultural context.”

The book concludes with an examination of Heathen organizations, online and elsewhere, and she includes a useful piece called “Surviving Your First Heathen Event.”

On the whole, I find Essential Ásatrú to be, if not essential, then close to it – certainly very helpful. Ms. Paxson presents a clear, coherent picture of one possibility of modern day Heathenism and while she picks and chooses from among her sources, which of us do not, for one reason or another? If we know little about the details of ancient Heathen worship, we do know that there were many different types of Heathenism based on considerations of chronology and geology. It would be impossible in the span of two hundred pages to discuss every possibility. In the end, we must all make decisions about what we do and why. We must do the best we can.

If you are new to Heathenism and are looking for a helpful guide to get you started, you can do far worse than this introductory work. It is a step above – several steps in some instances – of some of the books put out by Llewellyn, and better too than some of the books Ms. Paxson includes in her bibliography, which only goes to show that the results of her work are greater than the sum of its parts. Buy the book, read it, use it, and don’t be afraid to broaden your studies outside of it lest you lock yourself into one particular way of being a Heathen without examining the alternatives.

Perhaps best of all, the book is short and easy read, and Ms. Paxson illustrates her points with modern day examples, of how a group of Heathens go about being Heathen. And that, after all, is what Heathenism is all about – not philosophical discussions, not talking about it – but doing it, being it. As I have always said when asked for advice, the best way to become a Heathen is to go out there and be one, and this book, I think, will help you with that.

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[1] Rudolf Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mythology (D.S. Brewer 1993), 138; H.R.E. Davidson, The Road to Hel: A Study of the Conception of the Dead in Old Norse Literature (Greenwood 1968),  75.

[2] Robert Ferguson, The Vikings (Viking 2009), 31.

[3] James C. Russell, The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity (Oxford 1994), 120.