Ritual and Paganism

As I study postcolonialism, I become interested in decolonizing my practice of ministry. The matter of cultural appropriation is a regular live question, so I seek what traditions I can draw from to deconstruct whiteness and empower historically marginalized racial groups. This is not an easy question: it is complex. One strand I investigate is whether reaching into European traditions can function in a decolonial matter. Understanding that whiteness is a modern concept, do pre-white European traditions counteract colonialism? Is using, for instance, Gregorian chant part of reaching into my tradition? Is Gregorian chant white? Does using Gregorian chant make it white? Is there some sense of cultural appropriation in which using Gregorian chant is reaching into a culture that is not my own? Not easy questions.

(I function on the understanding that cultural appropriation is about power relationships, not about cultural sharing or cross-cultural mutual exchange. It is always about who is gaining, retaining, or exercising power over another group.)

With this in mind, I keep the question of European indigenous groups live, recognizing that Christianity functioned imperially for centuries and eradicated groups or pushed them to the margins. Are indigenous European rituals a part of my heritage? Or would practicing pagan rituals be a colonial act?

I am very interested in the Wheel of the Year. I find this wheel of seasons and holy days to be a powerful connection for me with nature and movement in time. I am also very interested in how there are pagan vestiges in contemporary Christian ritual. There frequently markers and Christian holy days around the same times as the Wheel turns. Christmas is a Sun festival and Easter is a Moon festival. Historically, these developed because of the imperial church appropriating these dates and persecuting those who would be found in groves at this time. And yet, somehow this leaves these religions a part of Christianity forever, transforming it and enabling new discovery about the Christian connection with nature.

So alongside all my other work, I am ritually investigating paganism and other indigenous European groups. This is not easy, as one thing I've read comes up again and again: No ancient group performed every single ritual and modern understandings are reconstructions. This doesn't legitimize the religions. Rather, it humanizes them in recognizing that they never existed in some romantic utopia where people group existed separately from history.

Christian murder of indigenous groups cannot be minimized. Patrick's murder of indigenous priests cannot be minimized. These atrocities cannot be forgotten. Anamnesis: Remembrance.

And there is a complex relationship as, is said of other oppressed groups, the colonized in some way colonize the identities of their colonizers.

At the end of the day, this work must produce power for the oppressed groups. That is what makes it liberative, producing decolonized relationships rather than producing knowledge for the colonizer group.