Curious Christian

As we enter an age of nanotechnology, cyborg medicine, genetic engineering and augmented reality, the familiar distinctions between animate and inanimate, dream and reality, human and animal, are becoming blurry once more. Our technology is ironically creating a plausibility structures for animistic consciousness. And it is occurring at a time when society is questioning the outcomes of forensic reductionism. Is it any wonder that spiritual traditions that embrace animism are thriving once more? As a Christian I am prompted to search for where the Spirit is at work in this shift.

Following are some excerpts I have gleaned from Margot Adler’s “Drawing Down the Moon” in the course of my research. I do not intend my quoting to be taken as an endorsement of any specific ideas expressed but I do suggest that we need to listen to neo pagan voices on this subject.

Most Neo-Pagans sense an aliveness and “presence” in nature. They are usually polytheists or animists or pantheists, or two or three of these things at once. They share the goal of living in harmony with nature and they tend to view humanity’s “advancement” and separation from nature as the prime source of alienation. They see ritual as a tool to end that alienation. (pg4)

If you were to ask modern Pagans for the most important ideas that underlie the Pagan resurgence, you might be well led to three words: animism, pantheism, and – most important – polytheism. Neo-Pagans give these words meanings different from the common definitions, and sometimes they overlap. Animism is used to imply a reality in which all things are imbued with vitality. The ancient world did not conceive of a separation between “animate” and “inanimate.” All things – from rocks and trees to dreams – were considered to partake of the life force. At some level Neo-Paganism is an attempt to reanimate the world of nature; or, perhaps more accurately, Neo-Pagan religions allow their participants to re-enter the primeval worldview, to participate in nature in a way that is not possible for most Westerners after childhood. The Pagan revival seems to be a survival response to the common urban and suburban experience of our culture as “impersonal”, “neutral” or “dead.” For many Pagans, pantheism implies much the same thing…(Pg25)

In general, Neo-Pagans embrace the values of spontaneity, non-authoritarianism, anarchism, pluralism, polytheism, animism, sensuality, passion, a belief in the goodness of pleasure, in religious ecstasy, and in the goodness of this world, as well as the possibility of many others. (Pg180)

The Paleo-Pagans, diversified though they were, held among them certain common viewpoints. Among these were: veneration of an Earth-Mother Goddess; animism and pantheism; identification with a sacred region; seasonal celebration; love, respect, awe and veneration for Nature and Her mysteries; sensuality and sexuality in worship; magic and myth; and the sense of Man being a microcosm corresponding to the macrocosm of Nature. (Morning Glory Zell – Pg299)

To restate my position, I am not endorsing an animistic view of reality by my examination of this subject. But this resurgence of animistic consciousness does prompt me to reconsider (1) the Christian teaching of God’s immanence in creation and (2) the poetic language used to describe creation in the Bible.

I have to ask myself, have Western Christians hitched their wagon too readily to reductionist philosophies that view matter as inert and the universe as a lifeless mechanism? Tentatively I would suggest that the Spirit is prompting us at this time to reawaken to poetic modes of awareness and expression which acknowledge the universe as a living creation of the living God, animated by God’s breath of life.