Democratic Forest Trusts (PDF)in Watson, Alan; Dean, Liese; Sproull, Janet, comps. 2006. Science and stewardship to protect and sustain wilderness values: Eighth World Wilderness Congress Symposium; 2005 September 30-October 6; Anchorage, AK.Democratic trusts with leadership elected by citizen-members promise to solve many of the problems afflicting both traditional government and corporate ownership of forestlands. This article explores these issues in some depth.Complexity and the Dream of Human Control of Eco-Systems (PDF)in Watson, Alan; Dean, Liese; Sproull, Janet, comps. 2006. Science and stewardship to protect and sustain wilderness values: Eighth World Wilderness Congress Symposium; 2005 September 30-October 6; Anchorage, AK.The title captures it. I then explore the kinds of institutions compatible with both nature and the modern world that are implied from this analysis.Rethinking the Obvious: Modernity and Living Respectfully With Nature (PDF)The Trumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy, Winter, 1997.Modernity is usually considered a wrong turn in terms of respect for and sustaining the environment. I argue the reality is more complex, for modernity has freed us from personal dependence on agriculture, ended the economic value of children, radically reduced the likelihood of large scale wat, and shifted much production to intellectual rather than material capital. This partially decouples society from nature, which gives us important opportunities as well as problems.Towards an Ecocentric Political Economy (PDF)The Trumpeter, Fall, 1996.This paper begins my effort at showing how liberal modernity can be harmonized with an ecocentric perspective on our relationship with the natural world. It is a corrective to much “free market environmental” literature that sacrifices Nature to money as well as to anti-liberal attacks by well-meaning but economically naïve environmentalists.Unexpected Harmonies: Self-Organization in Liberal Modernity and Ecology (PDF)The Trumpeter, Journal of Ecosophy, 10:1, Winter 1993This is my initial paper exploring how what I term ‘evolutionary liberal’ thought can be an important means by which society and nature can be brought into greater harmony. The other Trumpeter papers build on it.Deep Ecology and Liberalism: The Greener Implications of Evolutionary Liberalism (PDF)Review of Politics, Fall, 1996.Liberal thought and deep ecology are usually regarded as mutually exclusive. But the “evolutionary” tradition offers a way to integrate the two through commonalties in the work of David Hume, Michael Polanyi, Arne Naess, and Aldo Leopold, providing a stronger foundation for liberalism while strengthening the case for an ecocentric ethic.(Related subjects: Ecology)Saving Western Towns: A Jeffersonian Green Proposal (PDF)in Writers on the Range, Karl Hess and John Baden, eds., University Press of Colorado, 1998.Developmental pressures in the rural and small town West involve three groups: long term residents, new arrivals, and environmentalists. Today their interests often conflict. This conflict is in part the outcome of institutions which prevent harmonizing competing interests. The concept of developmental trusts, both for rural regions and for small communities offers a means whereby these interests can be harmonized for the benefit of all concerned.(Related subjects: Politics)Social Ecology, Deep Ecology, and Liberalism (PDF)Critical Review, 6: 2-3, 1992.Murray Bookchin is considered a leading radical environmental theorist. However, his analysis is incapable of leading humankind towards a more respectful and sustainable relationship with the natural world. Criticisms of Bookchin from both the deep ecology and evolutionary liberal perspective complement one another, pointing the way towards a better understanding of how modernity relates to the environment.The paper as a whole offers an early discussion of issues that are more clearly addressed in later papers, particularly Deep Ecology and Liberalism (1996) and the three Trumpeter articles in 1997, 1996, and 1993. However, there are other ideas in the article which have not been developed more thoroughly elsewhere.
New Age Cowboy sparked some additional thoughts through his comments in my previous post, thoughts that I think merit a post all their own. Or rather a series of three. This one as foundational, another will follow on the Sacred Feminine, and another on Nature.
In an earlier discussion many of us wrote at length about the strengths and weaknesses of the Christian emphasis on spiritual equality, their failure to really practice this for almost two thousand years, and the crucial role Quakers and some other Christians played when slavery was finally abolished. I would add that John Locke’s liberal form of Christianity underlay his theory of human rights, which has had a powerful impact on the world, and for the better.
I think this very mixed bag was the result of several factors. First there was the genuine spiritual insight that people are in a very important sense, equal. This insight was not unique to Christianity by any means, but it was a central feature of its initial message.
Second, as Christianity became institutionalized it was deeply co-opted into existing power structures, and developed power structures of its own. It emphasized those aspects of its beliefs that were most compatible with a society based on slavery and domination were accentuated, aspects that were more challenging were ignored. Any idea of equality was rendered innocuous: it would happen after you’re dead.
Third, even so this liberating idea was preserved in its scriptures, retained as a possible influence once social institutions and events had developed so that this value might be adopted in society. Christianity kept the idea of equality around long enough so that when economic and political developments had reached a certain point, this value could become powerful in many ways.
Fourth, as Christianity fragmented, some groups recognized the value of these egalitarian passages, and ran with them to our universal benefit, even as other Christian groups remained as implacably opposed to any equality that mattered as much as they had ever been.
I bring this Christian example up to see what it might teach us Pagans about the socially transformative impact we might have on our society, for in my opinion our core beliefs are as challenging to business as usual as the belief in spiritual equality was to Classical slave-based societies. I think our emphasis on ritual and common practice masks for many of us just how far we are departing from the dominant Western worldview.
The difference between us and the Christian example, I think, is that if we grow either in numbers or influence we need not wait anything like 1700 years for our core insights to bear fruit. I think the modern world has the potential of adapting our core insights far more easily than did the Classical world and human equality. But many potentials are never realized. There are no guarantees.
The book manuscript I have just completed makes the case that we are the leading edge of a spiritual transformation in the role women and feminine values play in American religion, a transformation that is working its way through other faith traditions, only not as centrally. As I researched my book I was fascinated by how often Starhawk’s and other BNP women’s examples and teachings were cited by feminist scholars within other traditions, particularly Judaism, Christianity, and Buddhism, as important in shaping their own thinking.
The other religious dimension that most sets us apart from the dominant society is our recognition of the sacredness of the earth. The spiritual revisioning of Nature, and sacred immanence has had a similar, but weaker, impact on other faith traditions. But it is having an impact. Most faiths other than the Sauronic ones are now emphasizing the importance of preserving nature. In many cases this is still a small step, but it is an important one.
It is significant that the right wing and ‘conservative’ “spiritual’ movement that afflicts our country these days makes its most vehement and irrational attacks on precisely these two elements of society: feminism in all its forms, and environmentalism which they revealing attack as modern Paganism. They recognize just how subversive these values are to a culture rooted in domination by the strong, and they have stopped at nothing, including many murders, to fight against them.
Whether we like it or not, and I don’t, we are in a low grade religious war unilaterally declared by these people. But we have something to offer that they do not: a positive vision of the future. While it is easy to sink into despair, and I admit I sometimes do, we offer a future sane people of many faiths, and those of no faith at all, can look forward to. They offer a bogus ‘rapture,’ endless hypocrisy, and a politics of hate.
I think it is important, very important, that we as a community continue to push as hard as we can on how we can contribute to these two issues of the Sacred Feminine and the resacralization of Nature. My next post on this topic will focus on Pagans and the Feminine. Another will follow on Pagans and Nature.
posted July 8, 2009 at 7:08 am
I like this post.
Quick question: What is “Sauronic” faith? I don’t think I’ve heard the term before, and neither Wikipedia nor Google turned up any results for it.
Lately in local interfaith circles the world has seemed divided into three: Abrahamic (Judaism, Christianity, Islam); Dharmic (Hinduism, Buddhism, some other Eastern religions I can’t recall just now); Pagan (Wica, Wicca, Druidry, Asatru, Strega, Santeria, and often Native American trads from across the continent). Native Americans have sometimes suggested to me that they belong to a fourth category: genuinely-continuous Indigenous Traditions.
But Sauronic is a new one. What is it?
Thanks SO much, truly, for your gentle and erudite voice on BeliefNet.
–Maggie
posted July 8, 2009 at 9:04 am
He’s referring to conservative Christianity, comparing it to the followers of Sauron in The Lord of the Rings. Obviously it’s not a technical term.
posted July 8, 2009 at 9:05 am
Maggie, I took Gus’ use of “Sauronic” as a metaphor borrowed from Tolkien: Sauron and his predecessor Morgoth (in Tolkien’s mythopoeia) represent tyranny of action and thought. Gus will, I hope, clarify for us.
There is much food for thought here, Gus. I will return with my comments after they’ve finished percolating (and I have some more coffee).
posted July 8, 2009 at 9:26 am
(While I was typing my reply to Maggie, two accurate responses arrived. But here’s the background…)
Good question Maggie. But I regret causing you to spend so much time on a term that while I wish it were more widely used, is probably unique to this blog. I had been searching for a short, accurate term to label the “Christian” right.
“Christian” is certainly a misnomer if we want to also use that term for members of the United Churches of Christ and most Quakers. The word suggests some connection to Jesus beyond a rhetorical fig leaf.
For a long time I was tempted by “Satanic.” It fits them pretty well, but alas, it buys into their favorite rhetoric about absolute Good vs absolute Evil, only reversing their labels. I have no problem believing there are nasty spirit entities out there. I’ve encountered one myself. But not on the level of a Satan, who makes no sense to me.
Then there are the followers of the Church of Satan, founded by Anton LaVey. His “Satanic Bible” reminded me of Ayn Rand plus Magick. Not at all my cuppa tea, but far less objectionable than the “Christian” right. It wouldn’t be fair to link the two.
So I started labeling them “Minions of Sauron” after the Big Nasty in Lord of the Rings. Since it is a work of fiction, there is hopefully little ground for taking the existence of Sauron as literally true, or that I believe in the guy. But Randal Terry, Pat Robertson, and many others of similar mind would be among his favorite Orcs if he did exist.
From that came the term “Sauronic” – which combines Sauron with Moronic…
posted July 8, 2009 at 9:58 am
Gus
That was an illuminating post. I appreciate it.
I do hope you will at some point comment on the flawed relationship between Christianity and scientific theory. There’s no reason for it that I can see, other than a fear of not being the center of the universe. I hope that you will also speak to the easy acceptance of scientific theory (at least in my experience) by neopagans when you post on the re-sacralization of nature. At some point, as I develop my essays and benefit from others views, I will be speaking to those issues myself.
Thanks again!
posted July 8, 2009 at 11:40 am
No Christians can claim to have a genuine connection with Jesus, who was an observant Jew, as were all of his disciples.
Apuleius
posted July 8, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Apuleius: Written ex cathedra and ex nihilo. You open a debate, hold both sides of it, and close it all in one sentence. Well done. [/sarcasm]
For me, the tension comes from the conflicts inherent in the clash between experience and doctrine. Briefly (and perhaps simplistically) put: (modern*) pagans will say “This is what I experience, and this is how I describe and express it” and Christians (amongst all traditions that are based on holy text) say “This is how it is described and expressed, and this is how you will experience it.”
I sometimes term this “acquired vs. revealed faith”.
The perspective on immanence — especially in Nature — may be viewed in that light.
More (much) later (I hope). I’m up to my elbows in work messes.
posted July 8, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Darn, forgot the footnote to (modern*) pagans…
* I know a historian of significant international repute who asserts that I cannot call myself a “pagan” if I don’t practice blood sacrifice. That he is also a devout Christian and implies that I am deceived by Satan is just icing on that cake.
posted July 8, 2009 at 12:41 pm
Franklin: is there a “debate” concerning whether or not Jesus and all of his disciples were observant Jews? Or was there some other debate you were referring to?
And as far as “holy texts” go, the only ones approved of by Jesus were the holy texts of Judaism, so any reference to the so-called New Testament immediately call into question (to put it very mildly) one’s “connection with Jesus”.
posted July 8, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Apuleius, I regret having to post that footnote separately, because it supports and expands my point to you: you can assert anything you like, but the people who are of a faith are the ones who get to define their faith, not some armchair (the historian, not you) pundit who applies pseudo-academic discipline to a wholly (ahem) subjetive entity.
I leave it to you to decide if you resemble those remarks or have some other motivation for denying modern Christians their connection to Jesus. In the meantime, I’ll paraphrase my response to that historian: If you can deny any moral or ethical obligation for the excesses of Christendom in the past, then you can’t deny my choice to reject the practice of blood sacrifice. Otherwise, you are no more a Christian than I am a pagan.
posted July 8, 2009 at 1:25 pm
“the people who are of a faith are the ones who get to define their faith”
If a Christian makes a historical claim, namely, that they are “followers of Christ”, and by this they mean that they literally follow the religious teachings of the historical Jesus, then there is absolutely no reason not to subject this historical claim to the same kind of examination as any other historical claim.
Moreover, the case in point is that of a Pagan (Gus diZerega) claiming that he can discern which modern Christians follow the teachings of the historical Jesus and which do not. THAT claim obviously is open to dispute.
My opinion is that genuine religious teachings are never in conflict with reason, and that genuine religious beliefs never require blind acceptance, nor do they deserve any special exemptions from rational inquiry.
Apuleius
posted July 8, 2009 at 2:21 pm
I like the way Kevin Smith wrote it in the screenplay for the movie Dogma:
Rufus: He still digs humanity, but it bothers Him to see the shit that gets carried out in His name – wars, bigotry, televangelism. But especially the factioning of all the religions. He said humanity took a good idea and, like always, built a belief structure on it.
Bethany: Having beliefs isn’t good?
Rufus: I think it’s better to have ideas. You can change an idea. Changing a belief is trickier. Life should [be] malleable and progressive; working from idea to idea permits that. Beliefs anchor you to certain points and limit growth; new ideas can’t generate. Life becomes stagnant.
— and, at the end of the story —
Rufus: Are you saying you believe?
Bethany: No. But I have a good idea.
I’m all for rational inquiry. That point is well taken. But if that inquiry neglects context — and a key aspect to this topic is contemporaneity — then that inquiry is flawed from the start. A man listening to Jesus in the early 1st century has no connection to a “follower of Jesus” today, neither language, culture, politics nor where his next meal is coming from. That gap is bridged by ideas. If ideas were incapable of bridging such gaps, science would still be at the level of Aristotle and Ptolomy. Spiritual faith is composed of ideas. Beliefs are the current incarnation of those ideas.
posted July 8, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Gus, The term “Sauronic” isn’t unique to your blog anymore. I fully intend to appropriate it to use as a synonym for “Dominionist”. I shared your article with some friends and I would not be surprised if it hits Wikipedia in two years. *smirk!*
posted July 8, 2009 at 4:21 pm
Awww, (Blush)
Thanks!
posted July 8, 2009 at 11:10 pm
jaundicedi
July 8, 2009 3:41 PM
Gus, The term “Sauronic” isn’t unique to your blog anymore. I fully intend to appropriate it to use as a synonym for “Dominionist”. I shared your article with some friends and I would not be surprised if it hits Wikipedia in two years. *smirk!*
Unfortunately, there’s a new and improved version out for the dominionists, it’s call Christian Identity. Take a giant step to the right and you’ve got a new horror, for what it’s worth.