With this definition in hand, we can now turn to an extremely thorny question: is paganism a religion?

The Stakes

This is an essential issue, because the answer has legal ramifications. In the US military, for example, only certain religious symbols can be legally placed on tombstones, and your religion determines where you are buried. If you don’t belong to a major religion, you probably can’t get your religious holidays off of work. You have to get a chaplain from a religion recognized by your state government in order for your marriage to be legal. Your child may have religious jewelry taken away at school. You may have to go to court to prove that you are mentally competent, so that you can retain custody of your children.

Whether paganism is legally defined as a religion is at the heart of this issue, because the US officially provides legal protections and freedom of religion. The US Supreme Court has defined religion as a belief or practice which holds a place parallel to God in the life of an individual — in other words, if it’s kind of like Christianity, it’s a religion. While this may seem vague and unhelpful, the court has refrained from being more specific than that, recognizing that the cultural definition of religion can change over time. And so far the courts have largely ruled that paganism is, indeed, a religion; but this is an ongoing battle.

Who Decides?

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather the Supreme Court of the United States not be the final arbiter on whether paganism is a religion. But if not the Supreme Court, then who?

One point of view is that pagans themselves should decide whether what they practice is a religion. As a pagan myself, I am sympathetic to this view, but ultimately I don’t agree with it. Here’s why.

Imagine that a chef is making a soufflé. Can he call it a “cake” if he wants? Sure — but that doesn’t mean anyone else will agree with him; and ultimately it’s the community of speakers that defines a word’s meaning. If he’s making a soufflé, then it’s a soufflé, regardless of what he wants to call it. He can make a cake if he wants, of course, but then it’s a cake, not a soufflé.

Similarly, pagans can (or should be able to) practice what they want, and believe what they want, but ultimately whether what they’re doing is religion depends on the meaning of the word religion, not on what pagans want to call what they’re doing.

What’s What

So in order to find out whether paganism is a religion, then, we have to figure out what, exactly, religion is. But even before that, we have to iron out exactly what we mean by this “is-a” relationship. What does it mean to say that paganism “is a” religion?

In formal semantics, the “is-a” relationship is exemplified by basic examples like “Socrates is a man”. It means simply this: if you take the set of all men, you will find Socrates among them. A slightly more interesting case is “a dog is a mammal”: this means that if you take the set of all mammals, then every member of the set of dogs is also in the set of mammals.

Unfortunately, this definition of “is-a” doesn’t go far enough for our case. It says nothing at all about the relationship between the two categories. How do we know whether all the dogs are in the mammal set? For that matter, how do we know whether Socrates is in the set of all men?

The answer is that men have certain features that distinguish them from other categories. They are adult humans (which means they have a certain kind of DNA and have reached a certain age) and they have certain physical features that are, I trust, familiar to us all. Knowing this, we can give Socrates a DNA test and ask him some personal questions and, assuming he’s truthful, we will know whether he’s a man.

Of course, Socrates probably has other features that are not essential to his membership in the manly set. Maybe, for example, he is dead, or owns a bicycle. While interesting, these features are unimportant to the question of whether he’s a man. The key is that there are certain defining features that determine whether someone is a man (human DNA, age, and the Y chromosome), and once we know whether Socrates has these, we can tell whether he’s a man or not.

So the “is-a” relationship can be usefully defined in this way: if category C (e.g., men) is defined by a set of features c (e.g., is human, is at least 18, and has a Y chromosome), and category D (e.g., Socrates) is associated with a set of features d (e.g., is a human, is at least 18, has a Y chromosome, is dead, has a bicycle, etc.), and the set c is a subset of d, then for all D (Socrates), D is a C (Socrates is a man).

Whew!

Ok, now let’s turn back to paganism and religion. It should be clear that in order to find out whether paganism is a religion, we have to know what the defining features of religions are. The defining features of manhood are human DNA, age, and the Y chromosome; what are the defining features of religion? And: does paganism have them?

What Is A Religion?

And here it gets very messy indeed.

It turns out it’s practically impossible to settle on the defining features of religion. Here’s what my favorite dictionary, the American Heritage, has to say about it (I have simplified slightly for discussion):

religion. n.
1. Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe.
2. A personal or institutionalized system grounded in such belief and worship.
3. A set of beliefs, values, and practices based on the teachings of a spiritual leader.

This might seem good enough to get on with, but it’s demonstrably nonsense. Buddhism, for example, has nothing to do with believing in creator or governor powers, and it’s perfectly possible to be Buddhist without believing in anything ’supernatural’ at all (assuming you can find a good definition of ’supernatural’). Perhaps Buddhism falls under (3), since the Buddha is widely regarded as a spiritual leader, but unless you define ’spiritual’ carefully (and I for one don’t think you can), you end up with fascism being a religion, too, led by the prophets Mussolini and Hitler. The religions of many indigenous peoples don’t have much to do with creator or governor powers or spiritual leaders, either, but concern themselves more with day-to-day interactions with spirits, ancestors, and the like.

The problem here is that religion, like the words pagan and house and game, does not have a sharply delineated definition, but is associated with a prototype. And would anyone care to take a guess at what the prototypical religion is?

A Class of One

There’s basically exactly one prototypical religion in western culture: Christianity. The more like Christianity something is, the more likely people will be comfortable calling it a religion. All other potential “religions” are measured against it.

• Believe in Jesus? But you also believe all kinds of other weird things? Who cares! Jesus is the Man — you’re a religion, welcome to the club.
• Believe in exactly one God, and it’s the same God as the Christians believe in? Great! Come on in, Judaism, we’ve got T-shirts.
• Hey Islam — you believe in exactly one God, but it might not be the same God as ours? Hmmm, what else you got? Prayer, monasteries, hierarchical church structure? Sounds good, you’re a religion!
• Buddhism, we’re not so sure about you: you’ve got lots of gods, but none of them are Jesus. On the other hand, you’ve definitely got monasteries and churches and stuff, and it sure looks like you’re praying, so ok, we guess you can come in.
• Pagans? You have all sorts of gods, and we can’t get a straight answer on whether you’re hierarchical or have churches or monks or what. And you cast spells sometimes? Is that the same as prayer? … You don’t know? … Just go sit by the door.

The problem here is that it’s not clear why Christianity is a religion.

Suppose you were given a picture of, say, a machine, a widget of some sort, and told that it was a ’scroovus’. And then you were given a picture of another machine, and asked, ‘is this a scroovus’? How would you know? You’d need to know what exactly made the first one a scroovus. What are the defining features of a scroovus?

Similarly with ‘religion’. With only one definite example of a religion, it’s impossible to know what the defining features of the class are.

A Question of Belief

That said, one thing that stands at the center of Christianity is the question of belief. If you believe in Jesus, you’re pretty much in the club, no matter what else you might believe. The question of belief is so central to Christianity that it is usually taken as a defining characteristic of religion itself. In fact, if anything is usually trotted out as the defining characteristic of religion, it is belief — especially belief in non-scientific things (i.e. the supernatural).

Why supernatural things? In ancient times, and in other cultures, there was and is no sharp dividing line between science and religion. But since belief is so central to Christianity, and since Christianity is the prototypical religion, belief is seen as central to religion; and since science does not rest on belief, a dichotomy has been set up between them.

But is carving up the people of the world based on beliefs a reasonable thing to do? More specifically: is paganism best defined by the beliefs of its practitioners?

As I argued in Prototypes of the Pagan, the answer is no. Paganism is a collection of prototypes — Druid, Witch, Shaman, Indigene, etc. — and most of them are not associated with defining beliefs.

The defining characteristics of, say, the Druid (spiritual and political leadership, tree reverence, standing stones) have little to do with belief. Sure, druids often believe in the supernatural, but that’s completely incidental; there are Christian druids, atheist druids, agnostic druids… Supernatural beliefs are not what make you a druid. The same goes for witches, shamans, indigenes, etc.

So asking whether paganism is a religion is a bit like asking whether swimming animals are mammals. Some of them could be, but they’re different kinds of categories, and don’t necessarily have anything to do with each other.

If It’s Not A Religion, What Does That Mean?

If paganism isn’t a religion, what is it? And what are the legal and social implications?

Just because paganism isn’t a religion doesn’t mean it’s deviant, or wrong, or a cult or whatever. It doesn’t mean it has no place in society. It doesn’t mean it should have no legal status. It’s not just another kind of country club, or a hobby people do in their basements.

But it does mean we need to take a hard look at the whole idea of religion as a category in our language, law, and our culture. Is this something that’s useful to have? Or does it simply confuse the issue?

Perhaps what we as a society should be asking is:

• How do we protect people’s right to believe what they want, and to act on those beliefs?
• To use symbols they find meaningful?
• To take a step away from work and life to nourish the soul, whenever and however is necessary?
• To bind themselves in matrimony?
• To define and discover their own moral codes, and act on those codes?
• To protect these rights without prejudice or cultural blinders, regardless of supernatural significance?

Now we can return and ask: what are the prototypes that make up the meaning of the word pagan?

There is clearly more than one, though they are closely related, and overlapping. Here are some obvious ones:

Druid. The prototypical druid is, of course, a religious and political leader of the ancient Celtic religion, and is associated with the sun, trees, and standing stones. To some extent, all modern druids aspire to this prototype, although there are different ideas about the best way to work toward that aspiration. For example, a Reconstructionist might think it most important to study the ancient druids and replicate as much as possible their practices and beliefs, while a Revivalist might think it most important to reach a modern spiritual understanding of the driving forces behind ancient druid practice.

Witch. The prototypical witch is female, works with herbs, magic, and the moon, is individualist, and holds hidden power. Again, to a great extent, all modern adherents of Wicca aspire to this prototype, although of course male witches need not aspire to be female, and indeed different witches may consider different aspects of the prototype to be central to their practice.

Shaman. The prototypical shaman is particularly associated with the spirit journey, communing with spirits of animals and ancestors, and powers of healing and divination. Shamanistic elements are found in modern druidism and Wicca as well as modern indigenous traditions worldwide, and the New Age subculture.

Indigene. The prototypical indigene — which, it should be emphasized, is different from the real-world indigene — is from a place invaded by Europeans sometime in the last few hundred years; is unfamiliar with the global marketplace and unprepared to compete in it, and therefore is destitute; yet has a rich cultural and spiritual life, passed down for untold generations, that is endangered by the encroachment of Western civilization. This is a caricature, but of course has elements of truth for many individuals around the world whose cultures and languages are indeed endangered, and who are struggling with crippling poverty. But like all prototypes, it is hard to point to a group of people and say, “All, and only, these people are ‘indigenous’.” Nevertheless there are many people who describe themselves as pagan and, strange as it may seem, aspire to this prototype, seeing themselves as guardians of a culture endangered for thousands of years by Christian oppression.

Earth-Centered Religion. The prototype associated with the description Earth-centered is an individual who reveres the Earth, or Nature, as a divine. Most, but certainly not all, pagans today would subscribe to this view — whether it be as actual worshippers of Nature, or contacting and cultivating relationships with Earth spirits, or viewing natural forces as spiritual beings.

Local Religion. The prototype here is of an individual whose spirituality is rooted in the local landscape. Instead of worshipping holy sites halfway round the world, or placing divinity only in the sky or in the spirit realm, the “locally” religious person sees spirit in elements of the local landscape — mountains, fountains, rivers or trees of special import. This is different from the Earth-centered religious prototype (though it often overlaps in an individual), because the Earth-centered religion need not attach particular importance to any one part of the Earth.

Pagan Pluralism

I’m not laying down any laws here, or the findings of a scientific investigation. These are examples drawn from introspection, and I’m sure it would be easy to come up with others, or suggest improvements to my list.

But the point is this: pagan is not a word with a single cut-and-dried meaning; and despite the stakes involved, there is no reason to hammer it down in black and white. At the same time, to shrug our shoulders and say it has no meaning is false and unhelpful.

If battle lines must be drawn, let’s not draw them over the word pagan. What is needed is open acknowledgement that its meaning is made up of multiple overlapping prototypes, and no one can lay claim to them all. Instead of saying “this person is or is not pagan”, we must accept the fuzziness and say, “this person most closely matches prototype X, but has features of prototype Y, and has other features not associated with any particular pagan prototypes”. This is more accurate and honest and doesn’t include or exclude anyone.

Paganism does not need the mantle of “indigenousness” to become a legitimate way of life. “Indigenousness” is an ill-fitting cloak in any case, as a glance at the prototypes will show. At the same time, just because someone doesn’t precisely fit into one of the prototypes does not mean that they are not a true pagan, or a true druid or a true shaman or whatever; none of us are absolutely true to the prototypes, since they are abstract concepts. All of us are aspirants in our own way.

True community is built by trust, and trust is built through honesty and vulnerability. We must be honest enough and vulnerable enough with each other to speak forthrightly about our aspirations and beliefs.

If I want to build community, I do not do it by speaking vaguely about the essential unity of all pagan belief, or by claiming that some other person is less pagan than we are, or by trying to attach myself to some other community.

I build community by admitting that I do aspire to these prototypes — to be a druid, in fact, even though I will clearly never be a political and religious leader of the ancient Celts. By admitting this, I build trust between us, I hope, and thereby strengthen our community, the bond between me and you. You may not agree with me, or hold the same aspirations or beliefs as I do; maybe you even think I’m a bit silly. But perhaps you recognize in me some of the same yearnings and admirations, some of the same reverence for these prototypes that are our inheritance. On this, rather than word-wrangling, is community built.

In the final post in this series, I’ll take up one more thorny question: now that we know what pagan means, is it possible to say definitively whether paganism is a religion?

So what is the real definition of pagan?

It might seem, from the previous discussion, that pagan has no real definition — or that it has half a dozen definitions depending on who you ask. But in fact I’d argue that it does have a single definition, and the confusion about the word only arises because of the high stakes of community and self-definition involved in nailing down the specifics.

Before I tackle pagan, though, I need to illustrate some facts about word meaning that are not generally known.

Fuzzy Houses

If you take a word — any word — and try to define it precisely, you will run into problems, even with words that may seem very simple, like house. The usual sort of dictionary definition — something like “a building for humans to live in” — is generally sufficient for the vast majority of cases, but there are often strange things going on around the edges.

For example, what exactly is the difference between a house and an apartment building? Between a house and a hut? Or a tent? Are underground homes houses, or do they have to be built above ground? Are houses always stationary, or could a mobile home count as a house? (Baba Yaga famously had a mobile home — a house with chicken legs…) And does it have to be a human dwelling? Suppose robots become sentient and built homes for themselves; would we call those houses, too? How about aliens? How about birdlike aliens that had nests with roofs?…

You can play this word game with just about anything you care to name. Wittgenstein famously played this game with the word game itself, pointing out that there really was no definition for the word that covered exactly those things we call game and excluded everything we don’t call a game.

The point is not that language is vague, or full of exceptions, or messy, or anything like that. It’s that word meaning is different from the way most people think of it. Conceptual space isn’t carved up by words into definite domains, such that everything in the world gets a nice tidy label.

The House Prototype

So how does word meaning really work?

Well, think of house. What comes to mind? I’m guessing it’s a single-family home, free-standing, with one or two stories and maybe a garage and some windows and a lawn. Obviously not all houses are like that, but when you think house, that’s the image that comes to mind. It’s a stereotypical house — or, to use a more accurate term, a prototypical house. When you think of a game, you probably think of something like chess — a two-person board game, or maybe a card game. When you think of a bird, you probably think of a small wren-like creature, and not a penguin.

Words tend to be associated with prototypes. This is why the dictionary definitions are full of equivocating words like especially or usually or often, words that allow the dictionary’s lexicographers to describe the prototypes behind the words without forcing them to list out all the potential exceptions.

Words need not be associated with just one prototype. Usually the prototypes are related in some way, unless the word is genuinely ambiguous (like bank referring to a river’s edges, an aerial maneuver, and a place for losing your money). Game, for example, has a cluster of them, including prototypes like card game and board game and computer game and ball game. These prototypical games have some things in common — they are done for recreation, they involve more than one person in competition, using some sort of plaything, etc. — but these things held in common do not suffice for a necessary and sufficient definition of the word. They are separate but related prototypes that are associated with a single word. Given an activity like solitaire, we judge that it is a game without much difficulty, even though it involves just one person and no competition. It’s close enough to the prototypical card game that we can easily stretch the game concept to accommodate it. Similarly, patty-cake is also called a game, even though there is no competition and there are no cards, balls, computers, or boards involved; the fact that there are two players and it’s done for recreation is enough.

In the next post, we’ll take this theory of word meaning and apply it to pagan.