I saw a number of wonderful sessions yesterday that might interest our larger community.  Too many to put a blog together before fatigue led me to bed.  One of particular importance was on Pagan involvement in interfaith work.  (Reports on more will follow.)

Out here in California we have been active in interfaith for over twenty years, and this has led to a great many good things.  Among a wide spectrum of religious groups, in Northern California Pagans are treated with respect by many leaders of other traditions.  This respect and understanding led to our deep involvement with the Parliament of World Religions and the United Religions Initiative.  That involvement in turn has led to wider recognition of who we are and what we (really) believe around the globe.  That is now leading to a growing NeoPagan connection with indigenous and Pagan traditions worldwide.

In areas of our country with less interfaith experience with NeoPagans, even liberal Churchmen often disapprove of us.  I suspect this is because, in their heart of hearts, for some it is OK to tolerate nonconforming views by black, brown, and yellow people as they have never “gotten it right” in the first place.  Western Pagans are another matter, having found the tradition they were usually raised in insufficient.  Tolerating us, let alone respecting us, requires moving from toleration for those you do not find threatening to toleration to those you might.  That so much of the Old Testament consists of accounts of killing Pagans does not make this process any easier.

The only remedy is enough cooperative contact so that imagined fears can be dispelled by personal experience.  That requires us to reach out.  It is not always easy.

Interfaith is a grass roots effort by people of good will in many religious traditions to over come the misunderstandings that have led to so much distrust and violence, and then find common cause addressing issues of common concern.  In a striking image given by Angie Buchanan, who serves on the governing board of the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions, each religious community is an island, and interfaith builds bridges between those islands.

Interfaith work does not seek a common understanding on basic spiritual tenets of belief, it seeks toleration of one another’s separate paths while finding what I call “second order” issues where we can agree.  For example, I find this world a direct manifestation of the sacred, deserving of respect and good treatment.  A Christian may think it is God’s creation, and because God created it, it deserves respect and good treatment.  We will likely never agree on WHY we have come to a conclusion, but we can agree about the conclusion, and what to do about it.

Even among people of good will with better understanding, progress can be slow.  When engaging in interfaith work, Buchanan advocated practicing “aggressive listening.”  As an example, she described encountering a panel on the “Divine Feminine” composed of Christians, Jews, and a Muslim at the 2004 Parliament of World’s Religions held in Barcelona.  She walked in to listen, only to hear the women of these faiths congratulate themselves on how well they were responding to this ‘newly important’ dimension of spirituality.  Later she confronted them, asking “How dare you” have such a panel without any representatives of the Goddess oriented religions present.  It would be like if Pagans had a panel discussing religious celibacy without having anyone present from a tradition that practiced celibacy.  She was met with tears.  The women answered we had not “been on their radar.” We are now.

In a sense we are in a privileged position. Our celebration of divine immanence means that as Buchanan put it. “the social issues of the world are already in our spirituality.”   Our celebration of diversity within our own community means that we can easily celebrate the diversity of other communities.  Buchanan asked that we act on this foundation.  But the several thousand year record of suppression bin the name of Abrahamic religion has led to a mixture of fear and contempt on the part of many contemporary practitioners.  Patientpersistence is the best resposes  As Buchanan put it, that we do not agree on theological matters does not mean we cannot cooperate in installing a water filtration system in Africa.  And from those projects comes benefits not only for the recipients of this help, the helpers also benefit, not last in developing deeper respect for one another..