Earlier last week, I had the honour of representing our local ADF grove at a public interfaith panel discussion as a part of Interfaith Harmony Halifax's “World Iunterfaith Harmony Week”. The public panel discussion, was one of 3 taking place in the city as IHH's “Library Conversations” series, to get an interfaith conversation going on the topic of how our faiths help or support us in nurturing connections in our lives.
Our grove has been involved (to varying degrees each year) with IHH for the past six years, but it was nonetheless very exciting to be approached and asked to participate in this event. I think it speaks volumes to the success of our grove's community outreach and involvement, that we were considered a reputable source to be involved in these interfaith conversations. Involvement in these types of event are so important, as they help us both in the promoting of our organization as a reputable public pagan church, and helps to “normalize” our Druidry within the religious diversity of our communities.
Our panel discussion lasted a little over an hour and a half, and the other faiths represented on the panel were Buddhism, Mormonism, and Islam. I want to share with you the moderator's questions and my responses (summarized to the best of my recollection)
“How has your relationship with your faith supported you to nurture connections in your life. This could be within yourself, with the natural environment, or with others.”
This was an easy one for me, as so many core elements of our faith are about relationship building. First and foremost, I spoke on how Druid ritual is world-affirming, and its focus on the importance of bringing the spiritual into the physical. Group ritual for us, is just as much about building and strengthening bonds with the community of human participants, as it is about establishing relationships with the sacred/deities/spirits. This focus on the here and now, rather than on some ultimate goal of some heaven or nirvana, demonstrates that the physical and the sacred can be one and the same, and exemplifies the importance of treating the people, places, and non-human creatures around you with love and respect, fostering deeper meaningful relationships with the land and your community. Naturally this led into a discussion on the core concepts of Ghosti and reciprocity, and that this focus on both giving and receiving entrenches the concepts of generosity, patience and understanding, which are so important to the development and deepening of healthy relationships.
“How does your faith tradition helps you to connect with the world outside of your faith and with the wider world. The assumption here is that your tradition has something beautiful and significant to offer to the wider world.”
It was a little difficult to separate the nature of this question from the first one, but my answer on this focused on the idea of ADF being an Orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy. I Stressed that a focus on “Doing the right thing” rather than “believing the right thing” makes it easier for us to work with people outside of our faith so long as we are working towards a common desirable goal. I used the example of treating a tree with respect or sustainable forestry practices – I care less about whether you believe the tree has a sacred energy of its own, was put here by a monotheistic god, or just has a pleasing aesthetic, than that you just respect the tree.
The other focus of my answer to this was around approaching our worldview from the perspective of Hard Polytheism. If i assert that my gods exist, it's fairly reasonable to assume that your (other) god(s) exist as well. If we're able to skip the insulting argument about whether each-other's deities exist at all, that makes interfaith cooperation that much more possible and simple. The obvious caveat to this argument is that a similar respect needs to come from the other side as well. This is difficult for followers of a monotheism to reciprocate, as they usually see our gods as either A) a delusion or idolatry or B) some malevolent manifestation of their god's evil counterpart. This led to an interesting follow-up conversation from the Muslim representative, who supposed that it could be possible that pagans or followers of other gods were “tricked” by Djinns or other similar supernatural beings into believing they were deities. While this still came across as (I'm sure unintentionally) insulting, i thought it a step in a positive direction from the all too common outright disbelief and rejection that we can often encounter from monotheists.
There were a number of other questions from the audience following the moderator's questions, and a couple of good tangential conversations between the panelists. Overall, it was a very positive experience, with a focus on thoughtful and respectful discourse that is seriously lacking in today's world. I would love to have the opportunity to participate in these events in the future, and would strongly encourage other groves to get out there and do the same if interfaith events are happening in cities near you. Nurture those connections in your communities. Show the public that we are people just like them. Show them that we are here, that we are putting in the effort, and that our views, (while different) are nothing to be afraid of. Show them the value of our orthopraxy, and slowly we may grow from tolerance to acceptance... as fast as a speeding Oak <3