GG: Can we now get back to your defense of Melnyk-style Druidism as being compatible with Christianity?

With pleasure, but the first thing I need to make clear is that I'm not the right person to ask.

Back when I was a UU, there were essentially two major components of the denomination: the freethinker-humanists and the nature-mystics. Whatever your belief system--Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, pagan, whatever--you inevitably found yourself in one of those two categories. Well, I fell squarely into the former. I don't think the state of nature is holy; I think the state of nature is wicked and has to be overcome. In this respect I have something in common with Pat Robertson, St. Augustine, and...Richard Dawkins. Yes, I said Richard Dawkins. I don't agree with the man on very much, but I think I can give a word-for-word imprimatur to this excerpt from his introduction to The Selfish Gene:

"If we were told that a man had lived a long and prosperous life in the world of Chicago gangsters, we would be entitled to make some guesses as to the sort of man he was, We might expect that he would have qualities such as toughness, a quick trigger finger, and the ability to attract loyal friends. These would not be infallible deductions, but you can make some inferences about a man's character if you know something about the conditions in which he has survived and prospered. The argument of this book is that we, and all other animals, are machines created by our genes.

"Like successful Chicago gangsters, our genes have survived, in some cases for millions of years, in a highly competitive world. This entitles us to expect certain qualities in our genes. I shall argue that a predominant quality to be expected in a successful gene is ruthless selfishness ... Much as we might wish to believe otherwise, universal love and the welfare of the species as a whole are concepts that simply do not make evolutionary sense ...

"My own feeling is that a human society based simply on the gene's law of universal ruthless selfishness would be a very nasty society in which to live. But unfortunately, however much we may deplore something, it does not stop it being true. This book is mainly intended to be interesting, but if you would extract a moral from it, read it as a warning. Be warned that if you wish, as I do, to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly towards a common good, you can expect little help from biological nature. Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to."

The humanist/modernist v. nature-centered parallel is carried over in liberalism as a whole, not just the UU church, and, again, my theology is not nature-centered. I doubt this comes as much of a surprise to you, since you know my theology well enough by now to recognize, I'm sure, that my defense of gay and lesbian relationships is not based on natural law or anything resembling natural law. Natural law, from my vantage point, is morally blind--sometimes good, sometimes evil, always oblivious as to which. Natural law says that infants born with life-threatening defects deserve to die, the strong deserve to rule over the weak, and so forth.

Now, a nature-centered theist is somebody who has found a way of redeeming nature and seeing it as a positive, life-affirming force. In terms of what I actually believe about nature, I'm as far away from that as you are--maybe farther. But I know that the goal of the nature-centered theist can be achieved, and I respect folks who are able to hold a nature-centered theology together without sacrificing or marginalizing the principle behind the Great Commandment, e.g. love of God and neighbor.

A Christian druid, to my way of thinking, would be nothing more than a Christian with a particularly high ecotheology, a high doctrine of nature as a means of expressing God. That's not a particularly uncommon thing these days; read the Rev. Matthew Fox, for example, who is very openly a green Christian. Their tradition goes back at least as far as the Celts, even further if you look at some of the early Jewish commentaries on God and nature. There is a definite strain of what could be called Christian druidism that can be traced almost as far back as Christianity itself.

You might also have some concerns about the syncretic liturgy, but maybe we should wait until the season of Ishtar is over to discuss them.

In short: There has been a documented tradition of "green" (druidic) Christianity dating back at least as far as the Celts; there has been a documented tradition of syncretic liturgy dating back at least as far as Constantine; so from a historical standpoint, Christian druidism isn't an incoherent concept. It isn't my cup of tea, so the right guy to ask is Bill+ or someone else who is in a better position to defend it, but this isn't really a particularly novel or even a particularly challenging idea unless we go from a definition of Christianity based on patristic orthodoxy, in which case I wouldn't make the cut, either and, depending on which pater one cites, neither would most of the people reading this.

Cheers,

TH