My new post, Islamophobia and an American Heathen, is up at Pagan + Politics. You can also find a recent post on this subject by me at PoliticusUSA, here

What are we to think when we read comments like this, “Either we might think of Christ purely as God, in which case he is no longer human, has no share  in our human experience, and becomes a divinity in the sky like Zeus or Thor, or else, in contrast, we focus so much on his humanity that we underplay the divine element and deny the Incarnation.”[i]

“Divinity in the sky”? Zeus? Thor?

Philip Jenkins, the author of those words, is a professor of the Humanities in history and religious studies at Penn State University and Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University. He is the author of several books.

You might expect him to show a little more awareness of Pagan realities, even if his real subject matter is Christianity.

Zeus and Thor come off in this comparison as remote and unapproachable. YHWH would have been a better example.

Why drag our gods into it?

The fact is that the gods of polytheism could not be more approachable. After all, their worshipers believed them to dine with them at the sacrificial feasts, right there among the mortal diners. In the ancient Middle East, gods would actually go traveling, visiting other countries with their attendants.[ii] In ancient Greece, gods were clothed and perfumed and anointed.

YHWH was remote. He didn’t even have an image. He was invisible and lived behind a curtain. The gods of polytheism were very visible and very approachable.

To simply call them “divinities in the sky” is to do them an injustice.

But I suppose that is how someone brought up in a Judeo-Christian worldview, and probably still part of it, might view things. After all, it is difficult to take idols seriously, and the gods are no more than this to monotheists, unless they are demons.

I doubt very much that my own ancestors viewed Thor in such a way. Stories abounded about the Norse gods participating in mortal life here on Midgard. The Greeks told similar stories of their gods. YHWH, on the other hand, remained aloof in Heaven and did not walk among humankind. Jesus did, but only briefly. And then he became like his father, or himself, or however that whole trinity thing works out.

The issue may be a small one in the grand scheme of things, but it goes to illustrate the vast gulf that still exists between monotheism and polytheism. We polytheists are all too well aware of how the god(s) of monotheism is perceived, but monotheists remain completely uninformed and unaware of Pagan realities.

Our spiritual landscape is invisible to them.

Still, as I said, you would expect a distinguished professor of religion to be better informed.

Clearly, too much attention can be given the old Indo-European Sky God routine. Just because the sky father is a sky father and the earth mother is an earth mother does not mean the earth mother is more approachable.

A note to monotheists (and professors of religion), our gods are benign and approachable, to be contrasted with a god who is remote and ill-tempered.

[ii] Amanda H. Podany, Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near East (2010).

Since Akhenaten’s failed experiment with monotheism in the fourteenth century B.C.E. monotheism has waged war on mankind. It was not enough for Akhenaten to simply install a cult devoted to one god, or even as one god as the only god. He had to demolish the other gods and their worship.

It was the same with Moses. “Thou shall have no other gods before me,” YHWH is to have said to Moses. At once an acknowledgment that other gods lived and an injunction against them, this rabid and unreasoning intolerance of alternatives to itself has been monotheism’s hallmark for close to thirty centuries.

That’s a long time to hate.

And it’s a lot of insecurity.

Polytheism never had a problem with other gods. Just plug another god into the pantheon or add a pantheon and worship one, two or ten. It made no difference to the worshiper and it made no difference to the gods. Jealousy is a thing felt only by a god who wants to be the only one.

Or, at least, by his followers. After all, as the emperor Julian said in the fourth century, it’s a libel upon god to accuse him of such shortcomings.

When Jesus came around the same problem cropped up. But now the focus was not on YHWH but on his son, and it was his turn to be the big cheese. Everything was about Jesus; it still is in Christian culture. YHWH belongs to the OLD Testament.

Mohammed offered the same stark distinction: there is no god but Allah.

None. Zip. Cancel Jesus’ claim and push him out the door. And all the other gods with him.

And on and on polytheism persisted, accepting every god that came along and rejecting none. The Romans thought people who believed in just one god were a little odd but there was no legislation against it, let alone a persecution that lasted centuries.

But monotheism has never been content to live and let live. Its entire history is one of holy wars, persecutions, book (and people) burnings, and inquisitions. Monotheism is by its very nature intolerant. It is part of the package.

And after all the long years we’re stuck with three of them, all hating each other and the rest of us, demanding that their own system of belief be privileged above all others and claiming unique access to the divine. Everyone belly-up, kneel, or bend over and praise god.

Millions have died over a question of divine jealousy and insecurity. It is rather difficult for a non-monotheist to imagine anybody wanting to honor a god who is capable of such childish motivations, but monotheists thrive on it.

Banished are the benign gods and welcomed is the angry sky god with his wrath and threats of eternal damnation. It’s difficult to find something monotheism doesn’t hate.

Choice, the first fruits of a liberal democracy, is a bogeyman. There is a reason that choice is equated with heresy, because choice negates orthodoxy. There is only one thing to believe and there is only one way to go about believing it. Any veering from the path leads to catastrophe.

A polytheist can only throw up his hands in wonder. Everybody knows, after all, that there are many truths and many paths, and that each culture has the religion that is right – and true – for it.

People have a right to believe anything they want, including nothing at all. As Thomas 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.”

That is the assurance we have from the United States Constitution, ratified by every state in the Union.

And now under attack by conservative Christians who have decided that since the history of the United States is not to their liking that it should be re-written and our nation established retroactively as one made by and for Christians and Christians alone.

And only a specific type of Christian.

We’re even being told that Islam isn’t really a religion and therefore First Amendment protections do not apply to it. Who is making this ruling after the fact? A conservative Christian. And of course if the world’s second largest religion isn’t really a religion, you don’t have to work your brain very hard to figure out where everyone else stands.

It is to prevent such madness that the First Amendment exists. It is for that reason that conservative Christians are re-writing our nation’s history, and interpreting the First Amendment and the Wall of Separation out of existence.

As Sarah Palin says, the Ten Commandments trump the Constitution. Sharron Angle wants to legislate Old Testament law.

You don’t have to be a genius to see the outcome for those who, as George Carlin said, give the wrong answer to the god question.

To polytheists, atheists, secular humanists, liberals, progressives, and everyone else who might worship one god but not in the approved way, bend over and kiss your golden idol goodbye.

Christians are always asking themselves, “What would Jesus do?” though there is no real evidence they ever answer the question; perhaps because they don’t want to know. It would likely oppose what they’re so eager to do.

How often do I ask myself, in a similar vein, “What would my ancestors do?” It’s a question that is bound to come up among those who adhere more strongly to historical standards in the reconstruction and revival of ancient religions. We tend to be very ancestor oriented and traditional minded, even as those traditions are being reconstructed and reinterpreted in light of the passing of a thousand years or more.

Of course, I’m not a reconstructionist but a revivalist, if I must take a label. Heathen reconstructionists are no more able to reconstruct the past than Christian reconstructionists. The main reason is that it’s gone and past. Many centuries have passed and the world has changed.

That’s just my opinion and you’re welcome to challenge it. I know there are some pretty strict reconstructionists out there. But look at the context of the past for starters. The climate has changed – twice in some cases, perhaps more if you go back far enough. We’ve had a Little Ice Age and a global warming periods and now an upward trend in temperatures that make a solid case for anthropogenic global warming.

In that respect alone the world is different. Some ways of living will be more or less difficult as a result. Whales are on the decline and protected and my Norse ancestors loved to hunt whale.

The world has also gotten smaller. Communications and technology have changed everything. The three-tiered universe has been discounted. There may still be people who believe the gods are up and the dead below and we humans are in the middle. I suppose a case can be made in a metaphysical sense that there are other ways to look at this point, or maybe multi-dimensional physics could take care of it.

We mostly live in larger communities. We’re not isolated by geography and climate. There is no place we can’t go, no influence we can entirely avoid. Things just aren’t the same.

We can’t even raid monasteries anymore. But then, on the flip side, those Christian reconstructionists, though they might want to, can’t burn us at the stake or pour molten metal down our throats to make us convert either, so there are some trade-offs I can live with.

But my point in all this is to say that I can say, “What would my ancestors do?” in a given situation except that the situation in question would probably never have arisen in my ancestor’s world and he would be ill-equipped to deal with it now, were he here.

We have no idea how our ancestors would have coped with some of the changes of the past ten to twenty centuries. We can try to imagine but there is simply no telling, not with any degree of certainty.

That’s not to say we should just throw up our hands and surrender to a world culture. We have our gods and we have our beliefs and we treasure the wisdom passed down to us by our ancestors. Across the centuries, they have something to tell us, some important things.

Like honor and ancestry, like family and clan, like courage and moderation.  Some of these things are timeless and will serve us as well as they served them. Our ancestors were a pragmatic lot, not given to violent swings of ideological or religious fervor. You might get outlawed like Hjalti Skeggjason, a proponent of Iceland’s conversion, for calling Freyja a bitch, but you wouldn’t get hounded into death and long-term persecution because you refused to abandon Christianity. The Norse ruled in Ireland and Norway and other places without forcing everyone to become Heathens like them.

Historical lessons like this tell us something about what our attitudes towards other religions should be. Respect and honor our gods and defend that honor, but do not impose your beliefs on others. There are other lessons we can learn, which give us some clue as to how our ancestors might respond today. For example, our Heathen ancestors practiced exposure of infants. It might be suggested from this that they would be pro-choice. It seems a reasonable assumption, since they themselves practiced what might be termed abortions after the fact.

But our ancestors also engaged in violent feuds and held entire families accountable for the actions of a single member. These are things most of us would likely not do today. In a small, isolated community such a practice might make sense. It kept social order by forcing clans to police its own. But in today’s world it makes no sense, and most governments discourage feuds. We have laws and courts for such things. So that would be an entirely wrong lesson to learn. My ancestor might draw his sword and kill the man who insulted him. I would not want to do that.

Sometimes you have to ignore the little ancestor on your shoulder. Sometimes you would do well to listen.

But that is largely why I am a revivalist. Our customs and traditions are important, but they must make sense in the context of the 21^st century, not the first or the seventh or the ninth. Even the Amish, isolated as they make themselves, have to abide by the law, and those who oppose being bound by the Ten Commandments or Sharia Law would do well to avoid proposing the enforcement of old Pagan law codes.

So ask yourself what your ancestor would do, but keep in mind when he answers that this is the 21st century America (or wherever) and not 9th century Norway, and if somebody tries to tell you what Jesus would do, remind them that this is 21st century America and not first century Judaea, the Romans are not our overlords and that neither of you are Second Temple Jews.

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