The one where I joined a church
BEFORE I BEGIN...
...If you're new around here, I live in BFE, Louisiana with very little cellular signal at home and no internet service whatsoever. This means not only do I have to write my Substack essays offline and upload them the two or three days a week I go to my friend's house or to the library, I also usually cannot research things while I am writing. Sometimes I leave myself little notes to look something up when I'm next online so I can add it in to the essay. Most often I will tell you to look it up, whatever it is. Please do. I can't hold your hand through everything.
Same applies to links. Sometimes I can remember a website address. More often I'd have to google it. No internet = no Google. So if you want to know about something, YOU google it.
Okay. End note. Onward.
Some people in their twenties do useful shit like go to college and begin developing a career. If they hit the jackpot on the career development, they may even buy a house.
I wasted my twenties trying to change society through weird religious ideas.
Potayto, potahto.
Briefly, my religious background: Baptized in the Catholic Church but never confirmed; could probably count on one hand the number of times I have actually attended their services. (No more than two hands, certainly.) Voluntarily attended Baptist church as a preteen and a teenager, then briefly attended another church (Baptist-ish? Definitely Protestant) as a young adult. I was a huge Greek mythology buff as a kid, then my stepmom put the idea in my head that maybe the Greek gods actually existed but no one was worshiping them anymore. I remember praying to Artemis as I rode in my parents' car looking at the moon out my car window. Got to high school and discovered I wasn't the only weirdo who thought about such things. Flirted briefly with a classmate's odd version of Wicca, an already-strange religion. Scared myself back to Christianity for a couple more years. Lost my taste for it when I learned about the Council of Nicaea and that human beings, and men at that, once got to decide which books were "God's Word."
Uh-huh.
Most people who learn about this shit are in college or university when they learn it, and it's required reading. I was an unrepentant nerd (was???) and I read about this shit on my own because I wanted to. I started out acquiring a book my high-school "witch" friend had owned and I read the resource appendices in the back and got more books and then moved on to newsletters and magazines and it just sort of snowballed from there. I will not pretend my resources were academic. Considering the state of academia these days, that's not really an issue for me. Stop telling me that people born with dicks can be women and maybe I'll care that Gerald Gardner committed plagiarism or that Llewellyn Worldwide publishes a lot of crap. This stuff broadened my horizons regardless. Can't fault that.
Anyway, the meaning of paganus, the word anglicized as pagan, translates as something like "hick" or "redneck" from the Latin. We're talking fairly simple and often illiterate people. Pagan religions were never meant to be academically rigorous. Besides, all too often the universities were breeding grounds for the Church's, and later Rational Man's, war against the dirty, dirty heathens. I have to admit to a little bit of schadenfreude (roughly translated as "enjoyment of the trainwreck") watching the tables being turned now. Not so funny when it's you, huh?
The problem is that women and kids are getting caught in the crossfire, of course.
Relatedly, believe it or not, my religious explorations back then bought me a front-row seat to the development of our current mess.
Enter the Church of All Worlds. Because I did.
If you dig around on the internet you will find several essays, some quite long and ponderous, describing the origins of the Church of All Worlds (CAW) in the late sixties. Briefly, three college buddies were inspired by Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land (original publication, not expanded version) to start a church with the same name as the one founded in the book. There was a lot of back and forth and farting around to figure out what exactly they wanted to do with it, but eventually they solidified their identity as a Neopagan religious organization. Also true to the book, their congregations are called "nests." Or Nests with a capital N.
If you've read SISL, you know the followers of the Earth guy who was raised by Martians are able to develop quite the range of amazing psychic abilities. If I'm remembering the plot. It's been years. The real-life CAW doesn't claim anything like that, though they have experimented here and there over the years to learn more about and maybe improve human potential. Not like Scientology does. A bit more haphazard. A lot cheaper, too. If you wanted to be counted as a formal member you had to pay dues, but it was less than a hundred bucks a year. (I want to say thirty or forty dollars, but it's been too long and I have Middle-Aged Brain.)
But! You would recognize some of the things they got up to.
First there was the time Oberon Zell, one of the founders, taught himself how to make a goat grow just one horn in the middle of its forehead. If you watched Ripley's Believe It Or Not in the 1980s, you may have even seen those "unicorns." Those were Oberon's. I vaguely remember them from childhood, and was later delighted to learn I'd joined a church founded by the guy who raised them. (I have since toned down the delight when I consider the animal welfare issues, of course.)
Then there was the word polyamory. If you've spent enough time in certain corners of social media, that word is everywhere. Yup. We can blame Oberon for that one too. Actually it was coined by Oberon and his then-wife, Morning Glory (she has more recently died of cancer). CAW became widely known in the larger Neopagan community for welcoming and encouraging the practice. Back then, this was seen as unusual or even abnormal among other Neopagans. Given how things have turned out, I doubt that's still true.
Also, if you have ever heard of the atmospheric scientist James Lovelock, he formulated a concept he referred to as the Gaia Hypothesis. I think that was also in the 1980s. Right around that time, Oberon Zell published an essay he titled Theagenesis (translates as "birth of the Goddess") about the same concept, but with somewhat religious overtones. The idea of Earth as an organism or living being in its own right grabbed Oberon pretty hard and more or less became his life's work. He even created a sculpture meant to express the concept visually: the Millennial Gaia. You might have seen knockoffs of it here and there at Renaissance fairs. I own a legit copy of the real deal, and it's got his autograph on the bottom.
Also, I've met Sara Robinson, the woman who modeled the arms of Oberon's Millennial Gaia sculpture. She later went on to serve on the board of the National Abortion Rights Action League (which has since changed its name).
ALSO, one other member was a certain redhead named Parris McBride. If that name rings a bell, you must be a Game of Thrones fan. She is the wife of George R. R. Martin, the author of the books upon which that television series was based (in later seasons, VERY loosely). I was a member of CAW from 1996 until 2003 and Parris and I were both on a church-related email chat list for a few years, so every time George was working on a new book in the series, we all got to hear about it. No spoilers, obviously.
Yeah, CAW got around. It wasn't even intentional, far as I know. It was just sort of the way things went. We definitely wanted to influence society in a better direction, or at least some of us did, but it wasn't like the Illuminati or anything. (The term "Pagan Standard Time" was coined for a reason. Also, I have yet to set foot in a household populated by Neopagans that would come close to giving Martha Stewart a run for her money. Just sayin'.)
Well, I was in the membership for about seven years, as I said. I was younger, thus more impulsive, and my normal tendency to be an introvert sort of disappears when I am online (no, really) and so I really didn't have much of a filter. So there were some growing pains in the first few years. Three years into it my life blew up (the first time) because my wasband became a felon and I had to cope with that whole mess. Five years into my membership I met my daughter's father in person (previously we had met on the email chat list; his one memory of me from then was a fight he'd had with me, which should have been a huge red flag), and then my life went shitty in a different way. About the same time I met him, I wound up on the outs with a boyfriend who I wasn't exclusive with anyway but who was another church member. It was the weirdest breakup I've ever had, and I've gotten a husband arrested for two felonies. Naturally, people we knew took sides, even as they claimed they were not taking sides. None of this was helping me get along with people in the general membership. And then we had a final big argument because Sara Robinson's husband Evan posted an article about working mothers to the email chat list and I started grousing about how hard it is to keep a job when you've got a small child to raise and I'm pretty sure I opined that society should be more supportive of mothers in that specific situation. You would have thought I'd called for kicking puppies and drowning kittens. EVERYONE let me have it with both barrels. Including, weirdly, Sara (yes! Later-NARAL-board-member Sara!), who informed me that mothers should be home with their kids and that I shouldn't make women feel guilty for wanting to do that. They were all along for the ride when my at-home motherhood left me vulnerable when my ex went felon. I was stunned the lesson had not sunk in. Fed up with the constant drama and feeling hurt that people were attacking me when I had not attacked them (again! For what seemed like the millionth fucking time!), I left the church. A couple times in the years since, I have encountered Sara online and attempted a conversation, only to be stonewalled and ghosted. She had been one of my favorite people in CAW, too.
It was a bad time and it made me sad, but in the years since I have looked back at what went on then and I look around at what's happening in society in general now and I can see some patterns repeating. I'm sure it wouldn't be fair to blame CAW for all of it, but they had a widespread membership and at least some of them were in positions of relative influence. They read the same books as the assholes who are running our current societal shitshow, for sure.
So here are some things I experienced that will sound awfully familiar to some of you.
"I fEeL uNsAfE." Two other women and I who were participants in the email chat list were often outspoken on said chat list and sometimes expressed opinions that were not kosher with some of the other list members. For some reason I cannot fathom, we always came down on the Way Fucking Wrong side of those disputes. And those three words were always spat out sooner or later. For extra added bullshit and drama, our accusers would tell us that we had made someone else feel unsafe but that we didn't get to know who it was because, well, the someone else felt unsafe so of course they weren't going to come forward.
We were just talking, remember. No fists raised, no guns pointed, no nothing. Talking. In a text medium, mind you, so there wasn't even a tone of voice to hear.
There was this one young man on the list who seemed to be the token social conservative and was always saying something stupid and offensive but for some reason never seemed to warrant the degree of intervention we three women did.
This church claimed to be feminist and Goddess-worshiping, by the way. This apparently did not extend to actual living, breathing women who must be shut the fuck up at any cost if we set one toe out of line.
Gender being more important than sex. This isn't just CAW. For all that they tout themselves as feminist and woman-honoring, every single Neopagan belief system I've ever encountered relies heavily on stereotypes about tHe FeMiNiNe, and that includes Dianic Wicca. Decades before most Western governments decided that "woman" is an identity anyone can adopt, the Neopagan religions had decided the Divine Feminine counted more than female human people did.
This came out in a couple interesting ways during my time in CAW. CAW was an early adopter of Being Accepting Of Trans People, of course, though we hardly knew any. I even saw my first neopronouns (zie, zir, etc.) on the email chat list, because a lot of CAW folks back then cross-pollinated with the online sci-fi community, which seemed to be where the neopronouns were coming from. And I was once privy to a conversation about the annual May Day festivities and how CAW ought to allow a gay male couple to serve as the May King and Queen for the year. Yes, you read that correctly. Two men representing the membership rather than a man representing the men and a woman representing the women. Because it's all about The Feminine, don'tcha know. Anyone can be feminine, right?
(No. No, they can't. But that's another essay.)
It didn't happen while I was in. I wouldn't be surprised if they've made it happen since my time, though. If nothing else, they've probably elected a "trans woman" to the May Queen role at least once.
I should point out the May Queen wasn't just symbolic. It was supposed to be a spiritual role and it was supposed to be important. So what was being suggested was women being shut out of an important spiritual role for an entire church with basically a worldwide membership, because some gay dude or some fucking cosplayer wanted to muscle his way in to replace us. Meanwhile, of course, no women were suggesting they should be May King. So there was potential for men to take over both roles for the year. Leaving nothing for the women.
Yeah, I know. That shit's everywhere now.
Women wanting female-only spaces being "oppressors." I don't know if any of you ever heard about that Pantheacon incident in the 2010s (I think it was) where a bunch of people threw a gigantic collective fit about a women-only circle that did not allow "trans women" to participate but, speaking of Dianic Wicca, I would be surprised if the woman-only versions of that faith are welcome at that convention anymore. If the organizers are even still holding Pantheacon, and I devoutly (see what I did there) hope they are not.
Pantheacon isn't (wasn't?) a CAW project as far as I know, but there tended to be quite a few of the CAW contingent in California attending every year. They would post about their experiences on the email chat list. So I have no doubt that if there's still significant CAW membership in that state and the convention is still happening, they're still going.
Even before Neopagans in general started insisting that "trans women" are women and thus should be included in female-only rites, they were questioning the motivations of the woman-only Dianic groups. Men were demanding to be let into women's spaces long before they stopped calling themselves men.
"Feminist," remember. "Goddess-worshiping," remember.
Ironically, CAW's first official bard, Gwydion Pendderwen, defended women-only spaces. Unfortunately he died in a car crash in the '80s, so I have no idea how that might have fallen out later on had he lived. He was also a lot more religious than the average bear, at least by CAW standards, and I wonder if that played a role. He wrote some quite nice music in that vein.
The planet is burning, but let's not actually change anything. Important because, as I already mentioned, one of the church's founders got REALLY heavy into Earth spirituality and views our big blue marble as an actual living being. There were a couple half-assed efforts at obtaining land and setting up a physical presence there but, practically speaking, most of us couldn't take advantage. Environmental issues were one of the biggest argument triggers on the chat list, and in the end it seemed most people active in the membership were there for the easy sex and didn't give a shit about environmentalism except when they wanted to be performative for social points. I doubt that's changed much.
Speaking of easy sex... When I was in, sometimes we would have discussions about polyamory. Sometimes in those conversations we would hear from some monogamous person who felt very much the odd person out. I have no doubt the people into normal ("vanilla") heterosexual sex felt a bit excluded too. (As in "normal plus heterosexual", not "homosexual sex is not normal." Just to make that clear.) Every dumb sex fad you hear about these days, with the possible exception of choking (at least, outside of BDSM -- these days, choking has escaped that category and everyone's fucking doing it, seems like), went on amongst the CAW membership twenty or more years ago. People being into restraints and ball gags and light whipping bothered me a lot less, though I didn't really partake, than the overall cavalier attitude about relationships in general. If your relationship ended it was just because you had "learned its lessons" and were meant to move on, not because you were (or your ex was) a fucking trainwreck who didn't know how to treat people nor relate to them. I had enough problems with that in my own life. Put a bunch of people with those problems together into an insular social group where everyone seemed to fuck everyone else sooner or later and you have a surefire recipe for social instability. Which is exactly what happened. It seemed like the worst drama always started around the time Oberon or someone else was going through a breakup. There were a lot of breakups. Basically there was a lot more talking about "learning lessons from a relationship" than there was actual learning happening.
I know going back to the patriarchal nuclear family with divorce being banned is not the answer, but treating romantic partnership like used Kleenex definitely isn't.
Ironically, and I will address this again if I ever write more in-depth about my polyamory experiences (I probably will), a lot of the people claiming to be "poly" just wanted to be able to have one or more side pieces without getting yelled at or dumped for it. I got into poly to avoid the side-piece problem and just wound up being shoved back into that box again after being gaslit about how important I was to the shovers. It made me miserable. No one cared. Given how much everyone insisted I made them feel unsafe, that was rich.
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I used to believe that a lot of society's ills could be cured if we could just encourage people to adopt different religious beliefs. Certainly, I thought, women in particular would be able to advance in society if Goddess became as important as God is.
I could have saved myself a lot of grief if I'd just looked up India's rape and femicide rates thirty years ago. That one country's probably got more goddesses than the rest of the world put together; if Hindus feel some area of life is underrepresented in religion, they just invent a new deity to cover it. But goddess-worshiping has accomplished exactly fuck-all for the women of India's betterment. If India couldn't pull it off, I don't feel much hope for the rest of us.
So anyway, I'm agnostic these days. I still love the idea of Earth as a giant organism, but I feel like I can grapple with that idea without making a religion out of it. I find I'm a lot happier that way.