Green Mtn. CIRCLE WORKS, 11:9 - 7 -

Pagan Empowerment and Unitarian Universalism

Rev. Dr. Christa Heiden Landon
DrCHLandon@aol.com


In 1984, after 12 years as a priestess in the Pagan Way, I came to the conclusion that effective leadership in the Aquarian Age was going to require a different model of leadership and membership. I studied the Unitarian Universalists because they were even more diverse theologically than Pagans, and yet succeed in having over a thousand congregations (most of which own their own sacred space), two seminaries, many publishing houses, and a collaborative model of organization that protects minority rights while actually getting things done.

After a few years, I understood something of how they do it. I graduated from a UU seminary and was ordained, and have tried to build connections between UUs and Pagans over the years, as well as pass on to the Pagan community what I learned about truly Aquarian organizational principles.

I was touched by the lines of another poster to the OPI-D list: "I will not drag you along; I will not leave you alone; I will stand by you and have my hand there for you to hold when you need to. SO MOTE IT BE!!!!!"

These lines describe the collegiality extended to me by UU ministers and lay leaders, only some of whom happen to be Pagans. In a quarter-century of engagement in the Pagan movement, I found few Pagan leaders ready to make that covenant with me. (Landon's Law: The respect which one Pagan leader has for another is in direct proportion to the distance between their covensteads.)

I have been a part of the Pagan community since initiation on February 2, 1971. All my adult life, I have been frustrated by the disempowerment of ore" movement. We blamed the Inquisition, we blamed the Christian Right, we blamed capitalism. The real cause is dysfunctional behavior.

Dysfunctional individual behavior is both the parent and the child of our dysfunctional organization culture. Because we are afraid of commitment and do not trust each other, we have no institutions which can train, support, and hold leaders accountable. Instead, each "leader" is an entrepreneur, "in business" for her/himself. The coven system, grounded in the feudal culture of the Piscean Age, is not sufficient as the organization of Paganism for the Aquarian Age.

I used to fear that the twentieth century revival of the Old Religion would survive into the XXI century only as buried in footnotes in dissertations on the "Hippie Movement: Mid-XXth Century Romanticism."

In 1985, when I fast started gathering like-minded souls to form CUUPS (Covenant of UU Pagans), I had hoped for a small support group for folks who found neither UUism nor Paganism to be sufficient alone. UUism has changed to include Pagans; its institutional forms are coherent with Aquarian values; its earliest thinkers were deeply impressed by ancient Pagan thought. Last year, the UU World magazine announced that 19% (38,000) of all UUs chose "nature/earth-centered spirituality" as their primary theological identity. ("Unitarian," CW II:3:3.)

I now am content that the Old Religion will survive even the "Witch Wars." It will survive supported by the institution of the Unitarian Universalist church. I know that I have gotten wonderful support from many of my UU colleagues in ministry, and that I have been empowered by UU lay leaders in ways which I have never known in the Pagan community.

Can Paganism develop institutions equally congruent with our Pagan values and aspirations? I don't know. I do know that any good scholar, scientist, or inventor begins by reviewing what has already been learned, and tests it for fit, before discarding it. No one has time to reinvent the wheel.