Virtue: Piety

[hth]

Neopaganism is often called a "religion of doing" rather than a "religion of believing" -- in classical theological terms, it relies on orthopraxy (right action) rather than orthodoxy (right thinking). The idea is that neopagans are united as a community of religions by the fact that they perform rituals and worship together in a certain broadly recognizable form, often even when individuals and small groups have wildly different ideas about the Big Questions, such as who and what the gods are and even to what degree they "really exist," what happens to us after death, and to what purpose we gather for worship.

The advantage to that is that neopaganism has been able to benefit from the talents of a diverse group of people; pagan festivals, magazines, publishing companies, advocacy organizations, and community groups would be much less effective at the work they do if everyone involved in their success had to come to an agreement on everything before they agreed to lend one another their support. In that sense, somewhat unexpectedly, neopaganism really does reflect the pragmatism of its predecessor religions: the central goal is the vibrancy, health, and fertility of the community, not the rigorously examined and evaluated contents of each individual's soul and mind.

Pagan piety, then, hinges on worship as one pivotal tool for maintaining the health and welfare of the tribe. We participate in whatever religious activities are needed not because the "impiety" of nonparticipation is an esoteric stain on one's soul, but because the better the relationship between the people and the Powers, the more benefit there is to everybody. Seen this way, piety is a civic duty; like voting and paying one's taxes on the physical level, every member of the community theoretically has to lend their support on the spiritual level to nurturing the goodwill that exists between gods and people.

I like this idea, although I realize why some people don't. Paganism, as a religion of converts, naturally attracts people with a decidedly spiritual bent; there simply aren't enough second- and post-second-generation pagans to create a sizeable mass of people who identify as pagan primarily out of custom or tradition. We are, like all young religions, made up of believers, and it makes sense that we want our beliefs to matter. Additionally, many pagans have left cradle religions that they perceive as too dependent on rote words and gestures empty of any real significance or spirituality. The idea of pious behavior as an obligation to be performed instead of a feeling that rises up automatically from our innermost selves can seem to some people like a mockery of the idea of faith.

In this respect, oddly, we are very influenced by the largely Protestant religious background of Amreican culture, where "faith alone" is the differentiating factor between the saved and the unsaved. We are influenced by the Christian idea of God-as-love that suggests to us that our gods are so unmixedly loving and beneficent that worship and sacrifice exist only to put us in the right frame of mind to acknowledge their love, not to literally influence the gods' feelings about us; pagan gods are, however, much more human in their range of feelings, and are quite capable of feeling antipathy, frustration, anger, and disinterest in us, as well as love, loyalty, and pride. A third influence on neopagan ideas about piety is the dualistic idea, usually operating subconsciously in pagans, that functions of the "higher faculties," the state of one's soul and the possession of belief without callow insistence of proof, are automatically to be privileged. The best relationship with the divine, in a dualistic theology, is based on pure motives, not built on the back of a fairly prosaic pattern of prayers, sacrifices, and observations. We should worship because we feel worshipful, not because one is expected to worship; if our all-important hearts are not in it, then it doesn't matter what our basically insignificant bodies are doing.

I am, as I've said, sympathetic to this desire for authenticity, but at the same time I'm suspicious of its idealism. Genuineness of feeling is not antithetical to rote duty, and in fact the former often inspires the latter. I love my mother profoundly and without reservation, but I buy her a gift every May because I'm supposed to, because Mother's Day creates an expectation of some tangible action, the lack of which would be embarrassing for me and hurtful for her and would perhaps in some minor way damage our relationship. It is by no means a bribe -- my mother's affection is hardly conditional on a bottle of hand lotion once a year -- but it contributes to an overall sense my mother has of me as a daughter who cares about her, which is valuable to me in both physical (I can borrow money from her, and expect presents on my birthday) and nonphysical (I am simply happier and less neurotic than I might expect to be if I had a bad relationship with my mother) terms. I can imagine that she has dealt with me the same way plenty of times; she can't really have wanted to read Lengthy that many times to me, but she did that, and many other things because I asked for them, whether or not she felt like doing them at the time.

This is exactly the kind of pragmatism that underlies the Indo-European world view. Its disadvantage is that the cool rationality of debts, gifts, and responsibilities can feel less emotionally rewarding than the blazing heat of sacred passion. Its advantage, though, is that it reinforces the sense that everything we do, we do for a reason. It makes us examine our actions and our inaction in term of how we affect our own lives and everyone else's. We can't fall into the trap of believing that whatever feels good is good; indigenous Indo-European ethics require us to pay attention and to ask the hard questions.

From this point of view, fulfilling one's obligations to the gods is not just empty hypocrisy. It is a tangible way of reinforcing our connection, our connectedness, not only when it feels good, but always. Some days, we come to prayer and devotion and ritual because we are hungry for it, because it fills us with joy and hope and balance and other gifts. Some days, we come feeling bored or restless, wanting another twenty minutes in bed, not sure if there's any point to this at all. In such states, it is not at all inauthentic to skip the whole thing; the inner voice is telling us to do exactly that. But piety calls for us to do it anyway, to offer our time and attention for duty's sake, because it demonstrates our commitment, because we care what the gods think of us, because we choose not to ignore them, and because our bond with them is not conditional on the mood of a moment. I find that idea strengthening, and I certainly hope the gods feel the same way about being responsive to us.