It's replacing a dominant religious/cultural paradigm with a minority one, it's not removing the religious connotations entirely.
Yes! Hi, sorry, I've been reading these and not commenting because I didn't have anything useful to add since there's enough "me too"s about the dodginess of people's reactions, and I didn't want to derail the discussion.
But given that you started the topic... :) (and it's far enougn down the chain that it's unlikely to start a paralell "OMG paganism sucks" thread)
I think the issue is that people conflate paganism the actual, modern, practised religion, with the ubiquitous traces of the old pre-christian religion which are embedded in european culture and christianity but tend not to be taken very seriously by not-actual-pagans. Paganism may not have been the dominant religion for a Very Long Time, but like christianity it's such a part of the furniture that it's easy to take it's acceptance (in it's diminished form as folklore and tradition) for granted.(*)
Non pagans have an attitude of "This is a fun tradition but noone actually believes in it" while pagans can tend to be smug about how their religion doesn't have all the offensive wars and oppression that are "the only reason" people object to religion ie christianity. Both attitudes (while somewhat contradictory, and I'm sure the former irritates the heck out of pagans) give paganism this vibe of friendly inclusive harmlessness.
In the name of full disclosure, in the last few days I have had an arguent with a somewhat judgementally anti atheist pagan friend and done a bunch of research about viking paganism, so am seeing it as less friendly and harmless than I might otherwise :D
(*)Further tangent: I wonder if paganism osmosed it's way into european judaism at all? The only european jew I know very well celebrates easter and christmas, so she's probably not representative :)
tl;dr paganism tangent
Yes! Hi, sorry, I've been reading these and not commenting because I didn't have anything useful to add since there's enough "me too"s about the dodginess of people's reactions, and I didn't want to derail the discussion.
But given that you started the topic... :) (and it's far enougn down the chain that it's unlikely to start a paralell "OMG paganism sucks" thread)
I think the issue is that people conflate paganism the actual, modern, practised religion, with the ubiquitous traces of the old pre-christian religion which are embedded in european culture and christianity but tend not to be taken very seriously by not-actual-pagans. Paganism may not have been the dominant religion for a Very Long Time, but like christianity it's such a part of the furniture that it's easy to take it's acceptance (in it's diminished form as folklore and tradition) for granted.(*)
Non pagans have an attitude of "This is a fun tradition but noone actually believes in it" while pagans can tend to be smug about how their religion doesn't have all the offensive wars and oppression that are "the only reason" people object to religion ie christianity. Both attitudes (while somewhat contradictory, and I'm sure the former irritates the heck out of pagans) give paganism this vibe of friendly inclusive harmlessness.
In the name of full disclosure, in the last few days I have had an arguent with a somewhat judgementally anti atheist pagan friend and done a bunch of research about viking paganism, so am seeing it as less friendly and harmless than I might otherwise :D
(*)Further tangent: I wonder if paganism osmosed it's way into european judaism at all? The only european jew I know very well celebrates easter and christmas, so she's probably not representative :)