Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “abandon,” came with this note:
Ending the year on a hopelessly optimistic note. Happy New Year to all youl ovely patrons! Here’s the article upon which today’s strip is based.
After many tries, I managed to call up that archived article, but here’s the same one I found in the Times from December 2 that you can probably access for free (click on screenshot). They’re the same.
And an excerpt:
Paganism is the most popular spiritual destination for British Christians who convert to another faith, outstripping Buddhism, Islam and Judaism, a study has found.
Religious faith is “fragmenting” in the UK as more than one in ten people who abandon Christianity in Britain take up paganism, wicca or another form of “spiritualism”, according to the report.
While Christianity is still gaining new adherents, these arrivals are outnumbered by people quitting the faith, figures showed. This is leading Christianity to dwindle in Britain overall, casting doubt on recent reports suggesting that a revival may be under way.
So much for a slowdown in the waning of Christianity! Here the barmaid explains the decline to the pair, BUT note that many of these apostates still accept some form of woo.
Hard to understand why they would use the term “paganism” in the discussion, as it can mean anything from “the other guy’s (shit) religion” to “non-Abrahamic religions” to “whatever kind of woo is on today’s menu.”
I’ve also run into atheistic pagans.
It makes sense then that a garbage can of possibilities would appeal to people leaving more formal, rigid systems. From what I can tell the only thing all pagans have in common is some sort of commitment or connection to nature.
It is true or Moss Matthey, according to the article. He likes his new pagan religion because he gets to create his own values and beliefs, something that his old Christianity would not have allowed him to do:
“From what I can tell the only thing all pagans have in common is some sort of commitment or connection to nature.” — Sastra
And a fondness for old European mythologies.
I attend a Unitarian Universalist congregation, with UU containing many members who fled the Evangelical or conservative Christianity of their youth. Along with many atheists, agnostics, and secular humanists, Pagans are fairly common. To be candid, I’m not entirely sure what paganism is about.
“Great god! I’d rather be a Pagan suckled in a creed outworn…”
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45564/the-world-is-too-much-with-us
Must agree with barmaid. 47% of 11% is 5%, hardly a resounding number of converts to paganism. One of the attractions to paganism is how flexible it is in terms of a belief “system”. Also, with paganism and wiccan, you don’t have to wait for Halloween or cos play conventions to dress up in costume.
I think part of the reason people go from organized religion to “spiritual but not religious” or “new age” or various other spiritual traditions, is that it is just too much of a jump for them to abandon the spirit-idea in one go. Abandoning religion happens not because suddenly a person sees how illogical it is, but simply because of being fed up. Atheism initially feels like too radical a step. I’ve been there. The first step was to say “catholicism is just not for me”, the second, decades later, was “all this spiritual mumbo-jumbo makes no sense after all.”