Neo-Paganism - Paganism as nature religion

Apologetics Index breadcrumbs You are here: Apologetics Index | A-Z Index | Neo-Paganism - Paganism as nature religion

Table of Contents for This Entry

Next: Neo-Paganism - The body, sexuality and nakedness
Previous: Neo-Paganism - Neopaganism as nonauthoritarian, anarchic

Urban living has cut humans off from the cycles of nature: fertility, life and death. The genuine respect a neopagan holds for nature and its cycles is obvious. Earth is sacred because the deity is immanent.[12]

Pagans are opposed to the abuse of any individual and of nature, both animate and inanimate. For pagans, abuse of the land is abuse of their mother. Mother earth provides and cares for them; to harm her is to harm self, so pagans go to great lengths to protect their mother. Neopagans insist on the need `to acknowledge through symbol and action their connection to nature' (St John: ch 7, 12).

Acute awareness of the earth and its adversaries causes many pagans to clash with the consumerist, materialistic world of the west.[13]

Neopagans strive for non-violence, nurture, social responsibility, global awareness, and responsible cooperative economics - all lacking in the capitalist west.

Many blame Christian culture that

seems to act as though the earth were merely raw material to be used up in getting somewhere else (either to heaven or to a golden future). Neopagans respond: We are at home here. Hence, the passionate protests to save forests or to celebrate rituals that attempt to connect participants with the cycles of nature [Paganism is] the spirituality of the ecological movement. (Kemp: 74)

Neo-Paganism - Neopaganism as nonauthoritarian, anarchic

Neo-Paganism - The body, sexuality and nakedness

Bookmark, Share, Print or Email This Page

More About...

Topic: A-Z Index, N

Comment

Responses are currently closed, but you can comment on your own website, blog, or elsewhere (e.g. Google+, Facebook) and include a 'trackback' link to this page.
Note: If the current entry includes a Table of Contents (top, right-hand corner), the comments section is located on the first page of the entry (and may indeed be open. Do check.) Also, on some entries, the comments section is located on a separate page. Again, see the topic's Table of Contents -- if included.