Something that was just nice to see....

When I saw the title for Peters Stinfels NY Times article "A Pagan View of Waging War", I have to admit I was momentarily a bit worried.  One of the hardest parts of being a public Pagan is that I hear from many people who assume that Pagans are violent - engaging in bloody rituals and sacrifices - and that our acknowledgement that death is a part of the natural cycle of things, that somehow means we "worship" death and want to bring as much death into the world as we can.

While every religion has a wide range of theological intepretations amongst its practioners, and while every religion also has it share of dangerous crackpots, in general, you'll find that most Pagans are more likely to be pasifists than warmongers, that few condone - and even fewer practice - any kind of blood sacrifices (non-blood sacrifices would be actions that involve giving up something that is a particular enjoyment, making donations of money, clothing, or other physical items, or volunteering to participate in some kind of community service program), and that while we don't view death as something that is, by necessity, evil (we see it more as just something that *is*), we certainly don't "worship" it, either, nor do we have any desire to bring death to ourselves or anyone else.

Now, as I said, these are generalizations, and I'm sure it's not hard for someone to locate an example on the Internet of a Pagan promoting violence, killing animals for ritual sacrifices or proclaiming that s/he worships death and can hardly wait to get there.  Just be aware that they are no more representative of "mainstream" Paganism than people who claim God ordered them to kill someone, or that their religion tells them that whites are superior to all other races are representative of "mainstream" Christanity.

That said, I was extremely pleased to find these paragraphs about halfway through the article:

"Mr. Kaplan, a correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly with years of reporting experience from some of the world's most violent war zones, made the case for conducting United States foreign policy according to such an ethos in his book "Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos" (Random House, 2002).

Mr. Kaplan was not invoking the pantheistic spiritualities espoused by Wiccans and other contemporary adherents of nature religions. Rather, he was writing of the lessons to be drawn from the harsh world of the Peloponnesian Wars between Sparta and Athens as recounted by Thucydides, the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage as recounted by Livy, or the era of the Warring States in China in Sun Tzu's "The Art of War."

Maybe this doesn't sound like a real big deal, but having a article in a paper as widely read and generally viewed as "reputable" as the New York Times actually make the effort to distinguish modern Pagans from other uses of the word "pagan" - and to do so in a non-judgemental way is something of a rarity, so, for me, it's cause to be feeling really happy at the moment.   :)