©1999, Paul Kershaw
A friend of mine tells of his time among the Native Americans. A tribe took him in, adopted him, and taught him their spiritual ways. After a while, though, as much as he learned from the experience, he felt spiritually empty. The tribal shaman told him that it was because the Native Americans were not “his people,” and that it was time for him to find his own way, and his own people.
He sought his path, founded a local church, and went on to become the spiritual leader of the largest organization of its kind in the world. Setting himself free from the fetters of what he thought was the way – Native American spirituality – opened him up to what was, truly, his way.
I think my friend’s initial plight is typical of many in the Pagan and Alternative Spirituality paths. Native American spirituality, Eastern traditions such as Buddhism and Confucianism, and African Voudon and Santeria are seductive to Americans in search of an identity and a cultural standard to draw upon. But these traditions get distorted by Americans of European stock for the same reason that my friend was encouraged, ultimately, to leave his tribe – they aren’t our ways.
Meanwhile, American Wiccans, Druids, and Heathens are drawn to their paths because of cultural affiliations (those of British descent are drawn to Druidry, for instance, while those of Germanic and Scandinavian descent are drawn to Heathenism). They strive to recreate the Old Ways – that is, the European folkways before Christianity – but they rarely succeed. Instead, the groups tend to get bogged down in crossfire bickering: the Druids claim that the Wiccans aren’t “doing it right” because the four-element system is Platonic and reliance on the tarot and the watchtowers is QBListic; Asatru groups break down because of an argument over the true nature of the manifestation of Thor; and so on.
Why should someone of German descent have so much trouble identifying with their ancestors, to the degree of understanding that is necessary to truly enter the mindset of the pre-Christian heathen? Why can’t a Druid see the world through the eyes of a first century Irish peasant?
Because they aren’t our people.
Imagine if you will a Christian taking up Dante’s Inferno or the Malleus Malificarum and patterning their life after these works. Or, even further, imagine someone attempting to recreate life as it was in biblical times and seeking spiritual fulfillment from it. For a rare few, it may succeed, but modern life even in the Fertile Crescent is significantly different than it was two millennia ago.
Culture has changed. Society has changed. With them, ways of thinking have changed. While ways of doing are relatively easy to replicate (a daytrip to a colonial village demonstrates this), ways of thinking are significantly harder to replicate.
Does that mean that Christianity has succeeded in what many see as its malevolent goal: The annihilation of any Western religion other than itself (and its cousins, Judaism and Islam)? No, it means that we can’t go back to the Old Ways merely by wishing them back into existence.
Does that mean that reconstructing the religious practices and beliefs of our pre-Christian ancestors, or exploring the spiritual ways of non-Europeans, is pointless and doomed to spiritual vacuity? Not at all; I know many Americans of European descent who are practicing reconstructed or syncretized Pagan or New Age spiritualities who are fulfilled by them (including the friend I mentioned at the beginning of this article).
What it means is that, for many of us, the answers don’t lie in following the path of some other culture, be it pre-Christian European, Native American, Asian, or African. The answers, such that they are, lie in finding our own people, and their beliefs.
So who are our own people?
European Americans have come to view themselves either in terms of an ethnic identification – German, Polish, French, British, Jewish – or, for those of us with very mixed ethnic lineage, as mutts. Many of us look fondly at what we perceive of as clearly distinguished, historically rich European cultures and crave that clarity for ourselves. But the distinctions don’t exist in modern-day Europe any more than they do in modern-day America, and I doubt they ever truly did exist. It is, as Jello Biafra puts it, “Nostalgia for an age that never existed.”
And there is a difference between ethnicity and enculturation, and those of us raised in this country are, with very few exceptions, not cultural Germans, Poles, Brits, or Jews (note that I’m making a distinction between Jewishness as an ethnicity and Judaism as a religion). We are Americans. Any spirituality that we would generate would be American spirituality.
Where do we turn to find that spirituality? Where are the seeds of American spirituality?
To answer that, we need to look at who carried the seeds of the Old Ways, in other cultures. The story-tellers, the bards, and the priests carried the core of societal morés and religion. Who are our story-tellers now? Moviemakers and novelists. Who are our bards? Pop/rock musicians. Who our are priests? Talk show hosts and magazine editors.
In the old days, people would gather around the hearthfire and listen to the storyteller; now, we gather around the TV set. In the old days, minstrels would wander from village to village; now, we drive around the streets in our mechanical horses, our car radios blaring. In the old days, priests would articulate the faith and the values of the culture; now, Jerry Springer takes a moment to reflect on “what we learned today.”
Social critics speak disparagingly of these changes, because of the isolationism they create. Story-telling and listening to minstrels were social activities, whereas now that most households have multiple TV sets, members of the same family aren’t even compelled to watch the same thing, let alone members of the same community. Portable stereos and headphones allow people to listen to whatever they please, often without affecting people in the same room.
For one thing, though, it is this isolationism that makes it difficult for us to recreate the ways of thinking of people only a century ago. For another, the isolationism isn’t complete: Concerts and movie theaters are still well attended, despite the wide availability of recorded music and commercial videotapes.
Most importantly, it isn’t clear that this isolationism is inherently bad, any more than community is inherently good; nor are the concepts of isolationism and community necessarily mutually exclusive opposites. Rather, they are a different ways of thinking, different mindsets, and thus carry different flavors of spirituality.
Another social criticism is that modern stories are impermanent. This is ironic, given the widespread literacy in our culture, which allow us to access stories from hundreds of years ago. But while the physical medium lasts a long time, the number of cultural items that fall by the wayside is incredibly large. As Paul Simon says, “Every generation throws a hero up the pop charts.”
Anthropologists tell us, though, that stories in other cultures aren’t much more permanent than those in our own. Frequently, the myths of the Old Gods are presented as if they were unchanging for centuries, even millennia; actual study shows this isn’t true; stories vary by region, by age, and by the political structure of the community in which they were expressed. There is some evidence, for instance, that the !Xù bushmen of the Kalihari, popular mainstream examples of the Way It Was and Has Been for Centuries, have only been living their current lifestyle for a few decades, and that their culture was significantly more agricultural in the last century. American society is not some bizarre cultural anomaly that has grown up in the last few centuries and which has replaced some clearly defined set of stagnant, monolithic cultures. Society is in constant flux, and always has been.
What remains consistent are themes. The stories change, but the themes of the stories, not the stories themselves, are what reflect important cultural and spiritual values.
Our people are Americans. Our holy texts are Star Wars and Life of Brian. Most of us are so uncomfortable with these concepts that stating them may seem like blasphemy or, worse yet, satirizing religion. Indeed, the attempts that I’ve seen to codify the spiritual values of American society (outside of academia) have been satires and farces, the clearest examples being The Church of the Subgenius and The Principia Discordia.
We are not used to thinking of Americanism as an ethnicity, as a culture, or as a potential source for spirituality. Critics have taught us that America is socially, ethically, and morally vacuous, except insofar as it takes things from other sources. We are a country of guilt and shame: All of the troubles in the world are the cause of the Caucasian American, particularly the male; we are a plastic country with no heritage, the land of the Big Mac; we are imperialist bullies whose one goal in life is to inflict our own brand of obscenely variegated and culturally diluted democracy on the rest of the world.
Given that context, it’s no wonder that the people who feel alienated from the traditional religions of Christianity and Judaism likewise feel compelled to distance themselves from the American lifestyle by reconstructing ancient European folkways or co-opting spiritualities from Asian, African, or Native American sources. After all, it’s obvious that mainstream America doesn’t have any answers, isn’t it?
Or is it?
Two comedy movies which have significant religious components and which were largely successful in this country were Life of Brian and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. The former is a Monty Python movie based on the premise that the Magi mistakenly visited Brian, another newborn on Christmas Day, before visiting the Baby Jesus. The movie follows the adult life of Brian, in a culture that is starved for new spirituality, as he gets swept into a rebellion and is ultimately crucified. The closing theme – “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” – has become identified with the movie. Although the song is used ironically, the theme of optimism in the face of trouble remains.
The latter movie, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, is about two unmotivated high school students who are failing history, and in doing so are likely to fail high school, until they are met by a man from the future who helps them gather up historical figures using a time machine. The teens are destined to inspire a universal religion, but will fail to do so if they fail high school. The credo of the new religion is “Be excellent to each other” – a worthwhile credo, similar to the Rede and the Golden Rule.
On the other side of the coin, the dramatic trilogy of Star Wars stand as three of the most successful movies of all time, with the prequel, The Phantom Menace, being the most anticipated movie of the decade. Many commenters have noted that Star Wars is an epic on a par with The Iliad, with clear, philosophical themes of heroism, teamwork, and the importance of the individual.
And while many pop/rock songs are either wholly opportunistic and prurient, or standard teen angst anthems, many also address serious social problems, and in so doing reflect popular American cultural values and ethics. As Paul Simon writes, “The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls.” Our Judeo-Christian heritage has taught us to think of religion and spirituality in terms of the arcane and the mysterious – so much so that the Wiccan Rede is in faux Old English – but American spirituality is to be found in the record aisle at Media Play and the new releases wall at Blockbuster.
My goal, as an American and a pagan, is to decant the philosophies and ethics of American spirituality and integrate it into a neopagan framework of worship and practice. Here are the basic fundamentals of Pop Culture Paganism (PCP):
· We are proud of our American heritage.
· We respect other religions and spiritualities.
· We are cultural relativists: We honor other cultures and cultural values, but we realize that our ways of thinking are American, and will remain so, and feel no shame in this.
· We eschew ignorance and strive to look beyond the superficial to educate ourselves.
· Our teachings are the teachings of American pop culture – its movies, its music, its art – placed into a threepart ethical framework of individualism, kindness, and optimism.
· Our worship is based on anything fundamentally fin de mille American, so long as it integrates into the ethical framework.
I feel that I cannot stress enough that this is neither a farce nor a blasphemy; PCP is not about ridiculing religion, nor is it about making jokes and calling it faith (although humor is a wonderful thing in PCP, properly integrated). Likewise, it’s not about the morals alleged by mainstream America, but rather the actual values promoted by a specific subset of American culture, the fin de mille pop culture arena. Furthermore, I do not pretend to create or support a system which is the one, only, final, conclusive American Pagan spirituality, but rather to offer a system which is rooted in selected core American values.
Hopefully, this serves as a clear and helpful introduction to my focus and goals within my nascent spiritual system. In the future, I will be writing on more specific topics. I encourage feedback… feel free to write me. And be excellent to each other.