Pagandom
1 member Religion
Gathering, discussion and socialization. Paganism is not an organized religious system. The use of the word dates back to the times of the roman empire when its meaning appears to have been originally akin to countryman or citizen. This was prior to the advent of Christianity. With its arrival, the word took on a derogatory and religious connotation to refer to non Christians or followers of religious systems other than Christianity. Today, in an attempt to self identify and differenciate from abrahamic religious ideologies, many subscribe to the term pagan, either as a way to mean other than the aforementioned, or to imply a return to the old gods and religious systems of pre-Christian cultures. There exist a great ideological diversity among adherents of paganism. There is no generalized consensus or centralization and therefore ideas and practices may and often deffer greatly from individual to individual and from group to group. Not one individual or group defines what paganism is, nor should any individual or group become the basis for stereotype, judgement or reputation for the rest, as every individual and group operates independently from each other. Many will not subscribe to the pagan label stating that the giving of names to a religious system does not appear to have been a thing in ancient times, while other won't because they feel a label cannot effectively define all the complexity and variation there is in human thought, and yet others will not subscribe to it because they don't want to be associated with what they consider negative traits they feel have taken over main stream paganism. Paganism is just a wide umbrella term for a diverse group of modern systems, ideologies, philosophies and attitudes that may or may not be religious in nature, and that ranges from those who seek to reconstruct specific cultures from the past, to those who are more open to modern reinvented expressions of these, or something else entirely different. Heathenry, Celtic paganism, Druidry or Druidism, Wicca, traditional witchcraft, and other forms that may or may not subscribe to shamanism and animism are examples of different expressions within this huge umbrella. Even among these specific branches exists a lack of general consensus. Different forms of theism within a religious context may be also present such as polytheism, pantheism, panentheism, henotheism, monolatrism, monism or even monotheism. Some may even subscribe to agnosticism and atheism whether openly or implied.
Black Wolf
What Did We Get Wrong?
4 members Religion
When I started looking into the cultural reality of various time periods in biblical history because of inconsistent concepts much changed. This all happened when I experienced a rather unique thing that was the catalyst that started answering questions that are rarely asked. I soon realized that I did not know to ask the questions that were now super imposed, like an IMAX movie, in virtually every aspect of my personal biblical study. This group is about concepts that are forced into the biblical story because each one of us has no connection to the world that the biblical writers lived in. We are the lay people living in a western culture, keeping less and less pews warm. None of the biblical account is born out of a western culture!
JeffSMorton
James Goodwin
Linda
Thoreus Abomindoom Maethi