The Christians, the Pagans, and Me

I first started thinking about the topic of the Christian-Pagan divide after my breakup with my Buddhist boyfriend. Once again, I found myself attracted to a Christian man.

I had thought this type of attraction some sort of sick addiction. At the very least, it seemed an embarrassing tendency to get over. I wrote about it endlessly in my journal, examining past "crushes" on Christian guys, hoping to find and exorcise the demon that plagued me and kept bringing me back towards the fold of sheep, a born-again Pagan, a wolf as it were, roaming free and high in the hills of Pagan fundamentalism.

I had in effect forgotten my own Christianity. When I first became a Pagan, I carried over all my prior religious experiences into my Paganism with ease. After all, this was the 1980s and I was a Feminist Wicca. Dianic, or Feminist Wicca, was fuzzy about pantheons. Simply put, any Goddess from any pantheon was fair game to the Goddess-worshippers. At that time, there was a lot of work going on also to re-look at Christianity and the Bible from a feminist perspective.

I studied both, looking to enhance my understanding of my spirituality as I explored my feminism. The inclusion of Mary as a Goddess seemed to fall seamlessly into this exploration to me. I didn't have any trouble embracing the idea that the woman whom I had sat on the distaff side of the church worshipping as a child, was actually a co-opting of the Great Goddess.

I didn't talk about my feelings about the male gods, God, or Jesus, because during that time frame and place, the male side of God seemed unimportant. The deep thirst for a female deity superseded any relationship with that which had been so ubiquitous in childhood. However, I said and felt that Christianity was PART of my paganism. Having gone from Catholicism to born again Christian to born again Christian Catholic to Baha'i -- which religion presented everything from Zoroastism to Muslim at having been brought to earth by God to teach His people -- paganism seemed to me to be a WIDENING of my earlier beliefs rather than SWITCHING my beliefs.

I used to celebrate ALL holidays for instance, claiming that as a pagan, that meant that I could celebrate ANY religion.

I knew even then, in the 80s, when neo-paganism was a relatively tiny young movement, that it would gain adherents. That numbers of people would force more rigorous definition and attract more converts who would look at the teachings and codify them. I was NOT looking forward to that. I stayed out of the mainstream as a solitary for a long time.

When I poked my head back out into community, I found a movement that for the most part, completely rejected Christianity. Since I had not been an active Christian for a long time, I found it little problem to side step or even accept the divide. It was more than just a rejection of Christian ideas and beliefs, though. Sometimes it seemed like an active hatred of Christianity.

Sometimes hatred of Christianity verged into a victim stance, claiming a personal experience of a past life torture and death at Christian hands. Definitely cases of Christian prejudice towards pagans continue, along with loss of jobs, custody of children, and so forth. Families often disown members with Pagan beliefs -- to be fair this happens in non-Christian families as well as Christian families.

During this time as I participated in pagan community and continued my spiritual practice, I found that sometimes particular deities would "adopt" me. It is a fairly common practice among the eclectic to work with various pantheons or individual deities when doing specific work, but I was NOT alone in the experience of sometimes having a particular God/Goddess seem to loom large in my life, and through coincidence, meditation, and intuition, seem to be saying "work with me" regardless of my personal choices.

At a certain point, Guadalupe, the Virgin de, that is. I saw this as no problem to my paganism, because of the aforementioned Feminist Wiccan background. I was aware of Her connection to Tonantzin, the Aztec goddess. Living in the Arizona Sonoran desert, I sought, as a good Pagan to connect with the land I live on, not just with the Gods/Goddesses' of my European ancestry. She heard my longing and came to me, like the Force that She is.

Most of the pagans in my community at that time had no problem with me having Mexican Catholic religious artifacts on my altar along with my althame (ceremonial knife), chalice, and candles. But a small but vocal minority DID find it offensive. That was my first brush with anit-Christian pagan reaction to my Christian Paganism ways.

I looked into a Christian Pagan coven and found that they were Christians who practiced Wicce-based magick rather than those who truly were combining two Faiths. I let it go. Guadalupe was my Goddess, she had adopted me, I practiced with her in all her forms. I visited her Shrine in Mexico City and was moved to tears. I could feel Her there and feel Her Love, as real to me as the smog and the white-and-green taxis.

I learned to downplay any Christian side of my practice around Pagans, even when they were engaged in "Christian-bashing". After all, it is true that many Christians WERE insufferable, believing that they had the ONLY RIGHT WAY and everyone else was going to Hell, with an especially hot-burning fire reserved for us Pagans. I did not often mention the many Christians I knew personally who were open-minded: a sponsor who attend a ritual I led, dear friends and family who loved me no matter what. I only tangentially at times would mention Guadalupe and never, never Jesus.

Although at times, I continued to pray to Jesus. Mostly for my friends and family who were Christian, I admit, but at times for myself. I had had a personal relationship to Jesus, you see, and I didn't feel that it had ended. He didn't seem jealous of the other Gods and Goddesses at all, but He always seemed like a dear Friend of mine. He didn't seem as powerful, say, as Odin or as materially bountiful as Ganesh, but he was there, one of my Gods.

I knew at the same time that Christians as a whole would NOT see me as Christian but rather as Pagan. So it was easier to keep the label of Pagan and keep my Christian "sidelines" to myself. However, I continued to have troubling attractions to Christian men.

During this same year when I struggled with this issue, I approached my anniversary of 19 years clean from drugs and alcohol. Being a recovering addict, each year my anniversary has meaning to me. This time I found myself involved in regret for all the harm I had done, particularly to my daughter. As I approached my "Clean Date" I also went through the "other" anniversaries: anniversary of the last friend deciding she couldn't deal with my addiction, anniversary of the therapists intervening for my daughter, anniversary of her walking down the steps with a cut face, anniversary of me admitting I was an addict but not yet getting clean, anniversary of her going into the hospital.... even though I rejoiced at her present adulthood, the victory of getting and staying clean, the healing we both experienced since then, this year for some reason the horror that I had put her through reverberated through the days and the years.

Not only saddened, I was depressed and angry at myself for my past. On that very 19th anniversary of the date I consider "my bottom" or the crisis point in my addiction that caused me to get clean, I was sitting in a church. I was in the church for my regular 12 step meeting, a non-religious program. I did not pray to any specific deity but I was sitting there quietly in meditation when a old but familiar feeling of Forgiveness filled my heart. And I recognized it as the same feeling I had years ago at age 12, when I was first born-again, saved as a Christian.

It felt great but I was also afraid. I prayed to this new/old God, who was adopting me, "What do you want me to do?" In the past, when I was born-again, people tried to get me to give up my best friend as her mother worshipped in a spiritualist church. I was afraid Jesus would try to get me to DO things. The answer came back, "Nothing". I didn't have to do anything, I was simply forgiven.

I have found then that the attraction to Christian men, in part, has meant that I was longing for a side of myself that I had lost. (That is not the only aspect of it, but that is another blog!)

Tentatively I have been re-exploring my spirituality, re-embracing all sides of it. I have found that for me, my Savior is not jealous of my Paganism; but , in fact, seems to welcome it. I continue my study of Paganism, and I rejoin my past study of Christianity and merge both of them with my general spiritual studies of all religions and my daily spiritual discipline necessary to stay clean and continue my recovery.

At the same time, I find that Pagans in general do not feel that I can exist. Just this morning, someone tweeted me to tell me that Christian Pagan is an oxymoron. And I am not sure what Christians are going to feel about this. I know my dearest friends and family will take it in stride as they love me. After all, they have accepted that I am Pagan. I hope they don't get offended that I am actually both.

In reality, I expect hostility from all sides, and yet, somehow I realize that I was MEANT to explore this great divide: the apparent gap between Christianity and Paganism. What does one side have that the other doesn't? What are their common historical experiences? What spiritual principles do each espouse and evince that a seeker can benefit from?

Those and many other questions concern me, mostly on a personal spiritual level, less on a theological level. I will not confine my spiritual topics to these. I love Zen Buddhism, I love Sacred Circle Dancing, I practice the 12 steps, I read Tarot and practice divination, but moreso I am on a personal spiritual journey. That is what concerns me most: personal spiritual experience and how religion can ENHANCE that, rather than control it. And so this blog begins.

Rose Anne Wilcox (birth name)
a.k.a.
Rose NorthCrowe LeMonde (pagan name)
a.k.a
Rosie Grace (my real name)