Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Neo-Pagan Christianity

Especially in the environment that I grew up in, Pagan traditions co-existed with Christian (Catholic) ones. I don't simply refer to celebrating the birth of the Christ in December -- whether the Baby Jesus was born in December or some other month as contested by scholars as a possible alteration of the date by the early Church.

There were many superstitions that were incorporated into the Christian (maybe more into the Catholic) practice and doctrine. Maybe this is the true way that religion gets transformed through out time to accommodate Pagan beliefs of the masses.

Whatever the case, the practice of Christianity that I've seen forming around me is somewhat of a Neo-Pagan/Christian doctrine, in which people believe in God but don't trust the Church all the while doing as they please. For example, there are Christians who drink and/or do drugs, sleep around (recreational sex or looking for love) and/or refuse to go to any church (biggest group) all the while believing in God and even praying. This behavior would've been seen as HERETIC and even SATANIC several years ago (before I was born, most likely, great thing about being born after the hippie era). Nowadays this over all behavior's become part of most cultures in the Western world and hence tolerated by the Church.

As a matter of fact, most (99.8%) of the people I know (single, never married, separated or divorced) have been in a sexual relation with someone at least once at some point of their lives. Most of these people are good law-abiding citizens, good people in all. Of course, about more than half of this group have no desire to go to a church of any sort, but still consider themselves Christians or religious (myself included for about thirteen years).