Recently, there has been a bit of a race war (pre-Blumenbach usage of “race”) on Twitter/Tumblr/etc. regarding those Gods worshipped by the ancient peoples of Greece. There is a lot going on there and I’m not about to wade into the morass of who and what rightly constitutes “Hellenic” religion.
Kaye Boesme wrote a very heartfelt position piece on her Kallisti blog that takes strong positions- especially against allowing theological and ethical arguments to fall into petty abusiveness.
In addition of her condemnation of abuse for the sake of the abuser’s emotional satisfaction, she very rightly calls out the impact this has on the broader polytheistic population. Such persons often have no close community and are left with only online discussions as guidance for their own praxis and piety.
I’m publicly on-record as pushing for bringing polytheists closer together regardless of their tradition. I want to be clear that I’m not pushing for erasure or universalization. I simply recognize that our peoples have more common cause and shared worldview with each other than with monotheists and atheists. There is plenty of time for our traditions to move farther apart again once they have strength and stability.
I recognize that this is a privileged position. My polytheism, while recondite due to its apparent secularization, is arguably one of the most universal (if under-practiced) in the United States. I can see representations of my Gods all around me- not hidden away, but in positions of honor and importance.
Yet, my faith is trapped in a “catch-22”. Were my faith to gain wider recognition, those statues and bas-reliefs would, under our laws, be removed. The assumed “metaphorical” purpose of those idols and icons protects them, allowing the Gods of my nation to reach out and influence us even today. At the same time though, that “allegorical” labeling prevents many from acknowledging and offering cultus to Them as the Holy Powers They are.
However, specific to the terminology argument at hand, I have always shied away from the term “Hellenic” (and certainly “Hellenismos”) to describe my faith.
Why? Let’s consider some important aspects:
Syncretism
My faith is not directly rooted in a single, unbroken tradition. While a great many indigenous polytheistic faiths practice syncretism to varying degrees, here in the U.S.A., none of the Old World faiths are indigenous.
Furthermore, because of our physical residence in the New World, we owe respect and cultus to the spirits and Powers of this land as well. As such, while our dealings with Them are not part of an indigenous religious tradition, we are technically syncretizing our practices by incorporating Their worship- even in our bastardized and imperfect form.
Similarly, our worship of Old World Powers is not and cannot be identical to the traditions of ancient faiths. This is in part due to lost information, in part due to cultural and linguistic disconnect, and in other ways by necessity (see above).
Thus, while researching ancient knowledge of The Gods is important to the modern practice of my faith, it cannot be a direct template. Historical information provides points for triangulation and self-correction, but not a point-by-point liturgy or dogma.
American
I am neither Greek nor Roman. I am not even Celtic, Slavic, or Germanic, though my ancestors generally are. I am an American, both in the broad, hemispherical sense and in the narrower sense commonly used in the United States.
My faith is directly born of the syncretic nature of American culture.
Neo-Classical
The early generations of my nascent nation took inspiration from the ancient cultures of Greece and Rome. America’s founders looked to Athenian democracy and the Roman Republic for guidance on governance and the pitfalls thereof. The Enlightenment philosophies that justified the American Revolution (and Mexico’s) were built on attempts to reconcile Classical philosophy with the differing worldviews of Renaissance and Colonial Europeans.
Throughout Europe (and later the Americas), people began to draw inspiration from the Greek and Roman Gods and Their mythologies. These Gods, adopted first as allegorical icons, began to be covertly recognized as Themselves, however imperfectly scholars of the time understood the differences between Them.
Through Them, the illusion of “The One, True God” dissolved like cheap cloth left too long in the sun. In New England, once the epicenter of monotheistic religious extremism in the New World, an American of African descent openly praised without irony the Goddess Columbia. While monotheists and atheists might argue this was purely poetic, Wheatley’s words clearly denote Columbia- not Jesus or Yah, as the heavenly Power protecting our land.
One century scarce perform’d its destined round,
When Gallic powers Columbia’s fury found;
And so may you, whoever dares disgrace
The land of freedom’s heaven-defended race!
Fix’d are the eyes of nations on the scales,
For in their hopes Columbia’s arm prevails.
Following Independence, the peoples of our nation widely embraced many forms of Classical art and architecture. This trend started in Enlightenment Europe, but here our leaders sought to draw a direct visual connection between the new American Republic and the old Roman Republic. As a result, many of our most important government buildings, especially capitals, are built in this “Federal” or “American Neoclassical” style.
It is important to note, therefore, that my faith is new (in historical terms). It is a syncretic revival of Classical faiths interpreted through the numerous philosophical lenses that shaped (and continue to shape) my nation and the global civilization it helped to bring about.
Tradition
At the same time, my faith has direct person-to-person heritage going back hundreds of years. Our peoples’ relationship with these Gods in this form (through masks both ancient and more recent) is no longer a New Religious Movement (NRM).
Rather, it is a set of mythologies, assumptions (worldview), and practices (praxis) that are widespread and so commonplace as to be largely unremarkable to the average American. Yet, as with other faiths, mine is threatened by the twin Adversaries manifest in monotheist hegemonic oppression and in atheist/postmodernist erasure of meaning.
My goal is to restore health and piety to this extant tradition by exploring both the new masks worn by my Gods as well as ancient understandings of these Holy Powers. At the same time, I hope to restore right relation between my peoples and the sacred Powers and places of this new land we inhabit far from the homes of our ancestors.
So there you have it- my faith is the Syncretic American Neo-Classical Tradition.
-In Deos Confidimus