ChristoPaganism is...

Omarose Sagira

My own bias, but I figured I would extend. Add your own biases (even corrections) and observations in the comments below.

ChristoPagans are NOT just Monotheistic.

ChristoPagans can be Monotheistic.

ChristoPagans are NOT just based on Wica God and Goddess.

ChristoPagans can be based on the Wica God and Goddess.

ChristoPagans can be Polytheists.

ChristoPagans can be Atheists using the God(s) as psychological and archetypal concepts.

ChristoPagans can work with ancestor worship.

ChristoPagans sometimes see the Gods as ancestors.

ChristoPagans are sometimes Get your Sukkots Tribal Jewish/Canaanite in their practices.

Being Christian and doing magic, does not a ChristoPagan make. That is a Christian witch.

Being Christian and playing with crystals, does not a ChristoPagan make.

Being a Christian with affinity for Nature based Christianity does not mean you automatically are ChristoPagan. It doesnt completely rule you out though. Animist Christianity is a thing. Primitive Christianity is also a thing. Nature-based Christianity is also. a thing. But again it doesn't completely rule you out. Some believe Yahweh is a Dragon.

ChristoPagans can be Ominists.

No it does not matter what denomination of Christianity you pull from.

No it does not matter what Pagan belief you pull from.

ChristoPagans do not have to be syncretic.

ChristoPagans are sometimes syncretic.

ChristoPagans can fully follow two different religions at the same time without conflict. Notice how nobody said a specific denomination for either Christianity or Paganism.

ChristoPagans do not have to be solitary. They can have ritual and prayer together.

ChristoPagans sometimes does magic. But not every ChristoPagan will allow themselves to perform magic.

ChristoPagans can work with Ba'al Hadad, and every other God that the Bible condemns because Christianity/ nor Judaism owns El, and he has been found in Multiple Canaanite Religions as the head God. In those religions he always has a Wife/Consort and Children. Ba'al Hadad is his son in Ugarit. So is Yahweh. El is the Bull God in multiple Canaanite Religions.

ChristoPagans can work with other Deities that do not have El as the main God because the point is the Dedication to Yeshua and the Yahweh-El power. It never states that you can not work with others. Only that if you belong to him, he is to be your main Focus.

ChristoPagans can work a strictly Christian Polytheistic religion. Some incorporate Gnosticism, others create their own Polytheistic beliefs based off of scripture, Dead Sea Scrolls, Apocrypha, and other "Banned" or New Found Books of the Christian Faith.

ChristoPagans are not just Pacifists. Some can be down right scary.

ChristoPagans can be Pacifists. They too can be down right scary.

ChristoPagans do not always believe in Hell, or eternal punishment.

ChristoPagans can believe in Hell or eternal punishment.

ChristoPagans can also believe in Hel, Hades, Sheol, Shebalba, Summerland, Tir Na Nog, and many other afterlife perspectives. They can also believe we are just dirt in the end, or reincarnate.

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Jesi Jones

i tend to agree with all the points i'd put them the following way, and for some these you are going to have to question if not give up the Nicene Creed. So if you feel it has to be Nicene/Orthodox Christianity you might have a problem. i think one certainly can be a Christian that also works with other gods and belief systems. i wouldn't say though that one could be a Baptist, a protestant or even a Catholic and be so. because that all comes from Catholicism which wiped out all the other sects for this um... heretic thinking as they call it. But you know.... feuds right? -Monotheism vs Polytheism- It is really going to depend on the era you draw from mainly. if you stick to more modern interpretations of the past few centuries you are likely to be a monotheists or modalist/trinitarian monist. The latter i feel is the most reasonable approach because the Holy Spirit/world soul ties in with the Sophia, the Shekinah and Asherah. so there is your Goddess figure... At the same time the Holy Spirit is said to be 7 in one just as the trinity itself is 3 in one. so of in the three that becomes 7 in one. The Seven spirits or lamps of God which are also associated with the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. There is precedent for polytheism there because as Christianity became the state religion of rome what were the beleivers of the Olympian pantheon told? They were told "Hey, those seven main gods are cool, they are just how we have ben understanding the seven spirits of god/the holy spirit, just dont put them before the eternal God" so we see an evolution there... if you draw upon earlier sources such as the Canaanite roots of Judaism, well that's polytheism and so was early Judaism. We see the same kind of transition. With Canaanite religion to Jewish religion we see a certain god become prominent. With Hellenism to Christianity we do see the influence of philosophers such as Plato on Christianity and then Christianity on the Roman world. Christianity actually helped bring the views of the Philosophers as found for thought for the religious masses. We start to see a more unified model of the spiritual world which became monotheism. I just see it as another level of understanding polytheism honestly. I think a lot of the fighting between poly- and mono-theist comes from both not really having a good background in historical theology. -Canaanite Christianity?- well sure, if the Canaanite culture had been around they might have have took to messianic prophecy. i figure it would have been different... less emphasis perhaps on unifying the bloodlines of Abraham. -maybe they did have their own messianic teachings i dont know actually. I'm not sure they would have felt so distant from their god and in need of reconciliation... but they lived at a different time so cira. Jesus they might have. You have messianic Jews believe Jesus was the messiah so why not Messianic Canaanites? I don't see why not.. But i dont even know where to begin to fit Jesus into Canaanite theology? I'm sure people have and i'm sure there is some continnum there as there is lineage.... and i'm interested in knowing how that works... and I understand how the work of the cross can work in a Hellenistic worldview... The crossroads are nothing new. I just couldn't personally tell people how to make the work of the cross integrative to Canaan theolgy though as far as I know it isnt incompatible. -Wicca, Wicca, Wicca- This works if you work, right this requires one to have themselves together and not walk all over themselves. When it comes to the structure of Wiccan theology there is no reason this cant work. The dryghten is even used in some Old-English bibles for The Lord. Because thats what it was, lordship by proxy of divine lord-ship/divinity. i've already explained how to make a Goddess work here, and Jesus can be your God figure and wed to the holy sea/church/spirit which also impregnated Mary. The great thing about that is you have some mythos and interaction between God and Goddess... more so than if you just say that God the father moved upon the waters, the mother and begot creation and also Christ the anointing of that word. Both can work the former gives you more to work with in ritual while the latter is much more abstract. -and of course if we are talking trad Wica , with the one c, well the practice has to be by the grimoire/book [of shadows]. so you'd be plugging your theology into that. The biggest problem with mixing with Trad wicca are the names of the God and Goddess.. Some would argue and be correct technically that under under different names it is not Trad wica. However there is a loop hole, those names often cme up in the consecrations which you can do beforehand. Now Gardner himself took an archetypal approach personally but said that you use the names of the deities of the land you are on or the culture you are in. That's never brought up.... so if thats the case changing out the names would not be a violation but the BoS does not expressly state this... and it wouldn't because details like that were often oral. This only becomes more confusuing because one of those names is Italain/Stregan. So..... i would say there are grounds for debating this. Some Covens do have their own names for them as well as the names used in the greater tradition. so there is that as well. -Christian Witchcraft- You'll have to trade your Bible in for one that is pre-KJV but i recommend that anyway. You know you are also going to have to be comfortable with a lot of the classical imagery of the devil that was adopted into the more traditional forms of witchcraft. But if you can get past that recognizing the Satan isn't such an evil guy in Judaism or that the scapegoat is part of the theological equation than I don't see any reason why you cant be a Christian Witch. Just realize it is like being a Grey Jedi, you probably wont be that popular.

-Atheistic Witchcraft- Well you'd still have a theology you work with so you'd still be theistic, if not in belief, but praxis. Thats the thing, the meaning of atheism changes somewhat depending on if we are talking about theistic belief or theistic praxis. most religions of the world are rooted in belief and atheist is usually taken as a lack of theistic belief. So we wont split hairs here, we will say somebody who doesn't have any literal belief in a god. Well in all honesty this is problematic because how much does it actually leave you with? i don't actually recall Jesus (assuming by Christ we mean Jesus) saying that you have to belief in God. i don't even think that was the majority of his message. A lot of that came after with the Church and Nicea. But at the same time i think you have to be honest with yourself that the people who write the scriptures werent Atheistis so if you try interpreting certain passages from an archetypal point of veiw.. you run into problems. they are only problems if you feel they should be a problem. Right, because its only a problem if you see scripture as infallible. If you don't hold it to that standard what is said can just be taken as the writers understanding. -Ancestor Worship- I don't see why a Christian or Christo-pagan couldn't and I encourage them to do so. The problem i can see is putting them before God. YHVH may not be very understanding of that. -ancestors as Gods- This all comes down to what one means by gods in comparison witht he most high. I would say that if you you aren't comparing them to a god of the three omni's (all knowing, all pervading, all powerful) than you are safe. -Christo pagan vs Witch- i would say that being a christian and practicing Magic makes you a Christian magi[cian] and that practicing witchcraft makes you a Christian Witch, but i follow and agree with the premise. -Animism- i agree that Animism does not in itself make one Pagan. i would also say that Pantheism in itself does not make one pagan, Not do these things make one Christian. So in themselves they do not make one Christo-Pagan. Though they do have a propensity towards polytheism because when you look at animist cultures there is some divine source or divinity that breathes its life into everything and so there is a little bit of the power of god or said entity throughout all animate things. so if you have divinity flowing through everything well who is to say that could cause lesser gods to arise? Pantheism also has this notion of a god whose "parts' or substance is inherent to all things but whose identity is often seen as transcendent because well, it is impersonal when it exists at every point. -and when you think about it the holy Spirit isn't too far away from Christian Animism. It's everywhere, it moves all things right? The only different is some will say you have to accept Jesus or you are cut off from it. i don't believe that myself, but do believe that anointing is becoming aware of it. -YHVH as a Dragon- Yep, some do.... i personally struggle with this one. on the one hand my own personal imagery of God in the sense of the transcendent omega, is a winged serpent that breaths the divine fire of life.... so I'm totally down with the imagery. At the same time i kind feel like the Dragon is associated here with YHvH because of a bad rep. A lot of that imagry comes from or was made popular with gnostic movements whom equated Yahweh with the demiurge. and the thing is... i do see YHWH as the demiurge. The wrathful god. I dont see him as the transcendent god. i see him as the god of the sum of all the parts but not the transcendence of all the parts. The doesn't make him evil but it does leave him without the wisdom of the sophia that Ehieh/el as.... -and you have this whole thing whereby YHVH is to be reunited with his Shekinah, the pressence of the Sophia in Assiah -and also with Asherah because its all connected there. This parallels the work of the cross as well. Because you had these two theologies that were getting at the same thing. You had christos whos work at the crossroads opened everybody up to be able to perceive the divine grace of the paraclete/Holy Spirit, and then you had Gnostism which went further and gave commentary on the teachings of the Sophia, the origins of Yahweh etc. That YHWH was born from the Sophia when the logos became the work of creation. The logos being Christ but the parts thereof also being Yahweh... according to Gnosticism not Canaanite religion. So that YHVH is kind of like the intellgence within and between all the stations/points of the world soul and the formative process of the divine word which is Christ. but for it to be in the name of God and redeamed the name has to descend. Well that is represented by the letter Shem. Ha-shem, the name. That's were we get Yeshua. Yod Heh Shem Vau Heh. The name Yeshua is Yahweh, with the divinie name residing within. Which is really really cool. So when Jesus came to save the world, he came to save the stations of the soul. so i guess i dont have a problem seeing Yahweh as a Dragon post Cross.. or i guess pre-Cross a Dragon that doesn't breath the holy hosts/spirit. Because you see this imagery elsewhere of the fallen dragon, the false god.... and it can be, if you put the image of it before the essence of the divine in which it just becomes an idol. but if you go back further the Dragon was this symbol of divinity flowing through creation. It was this very holy thing and you see it the world over..The Gnostics werent completely to blame for this because it was often anti-Gnostic works such as 'A Reveleation of John" So I would argue that its not Yahweh who is the fire-breathing Dragon, it is Christ. He was even depicted as a serpent of the cross and world tree. Or if Yahweh is the Dragon Christ is the fire of the Dragon and the rider of the Dragon. and to be fair Yahweh depicted in ways prior to this that some might call a Dragon. i dont know that i would use that world but i do get the imagery gets interpreted that way.

-Denomination- Eh, i dont think it matters what denomination you are inspired by but there's a reason denominations exist....schisms.... denominations can be pretty strict. so while you can pull from them that doesn't make you of said denomination. though interestingly some denominations dont have a central authority despite having tenets and teachings that make them said denomination. so there may not be anybody with the authority to enforce the interpretation of those teachings and tenets moving forward. -The Paganism you pull from- As long as the paganism is compatible i agree with this. now more often than not the Pagaism doesn't have any issue with it because most forms of Paganism aren't creedal. it really comes down to your brand of Christianity not so much your brand of paganism, usually. i mean I'm not going to say that there aren't ever problems but i find that most of the issues can be averted by reverting to an earlier form of Christianity and just being respective of both paths on their own terms. -and it helps that Christianity expresses itself as a universal teaching that comes out of a culture instead of a culturally specific teaching. That helps immensely because you don't really have to worry so as much about what you bring into it without corrupting it because it kind of does set itself up for universal application as long as you dont go against certain theological doctrines but again even that is going to depend on what kind of Christian you are. which leads us to: -Synretism- To make it clear to those who dont know, Snycretism isnt the same as eclecticism or cherry picking. it is the blending of cultures and systems because of, hopefully mutual, influence on eachother. It is a hybrid but comes out of people chosing or being forced to have a dual faith. its like a marriage, in a marriage you respect eachother and accept eachother for who are. That's the difference between a syncretist and an eclectic. a syncretist syncs them.. gets it just right. i say this because I do tend to be very critical of ecletics because they tend to dabble and to mix things they havent really taken the time to understand on their own terms. now a synretist blends their practices together to some degree. An eclectic may or may not. Most people start out eclectic, because they really dont have any specific place to start. If you are exploring divierse ritual and such that's perfectly fine. You can practice multiple things and not have an issue if you dont go haphazardly mixing them. You can always practice X and Y as long as it isn't leading you into any conflicts of belief or internal schisms of self which are just kind of unhealthy. But you shouldn't integrate Y into x without going and exploring Y for awhile so you can understand what you are doing when you mix them. Because thats the bog mistake that always gets people into trouble. -and if you know enough about X and y to know that they are compatible enough to get Z that is your syncretism. if you have to ask if you can, hold off on it can come back to it later when you are further along your path. Because people will say it is your path, you can do whatever you want. well sometimes what you what isn't what you need and you end up becoming what you dont want to be. you might what to be a grey witch like Anakin wanted to be a grey Jedi so he could save Padme, but what happened? he ended up being darh Vader because he was misled by the guy who wanted him to completely turn to the dark side. He should have studied under a grey Jedi. sometimes you are the first, which it it is even more important to listen to both the light and dark Jedi... but see anakin forsook one side for the other. He did not listen to what one side had to say and went to the other extreme. thankfully his son Luke, i do believe learned from his fathers mistake. -Magic- If you are a Christopagan and dont do magic[k] stay away from me because thats what they all say when they meet me.... and then.... -owning El- I would agree with that premise. El isn't owned by Judaism or Christianity. If anybody, it would be the Canaanites but it is pretty damn presumptuous to tell a god who they can an can not work with. The think i will comment on though is "because Christianity doesn't own..." it seems like you aren't defining Christo-Paganism as falling under Christianity here? So.... would you define Christianity as the institutionalized form of Christ's teachings but not the teachings themself which a follower is to have or.... how does that work? -Hell and punishment- i agree with everything you say here but will also add for those scared of hellfire this depiction isn't very Biblical and is largely influenced by Hades Fire, which was of the forge where souls that were too far removed from virtue were remade anew... so.. hellfire was actually understood to be purifying. painful no doubt but purifying.

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Omarose Sagira

I don’t think it is necessary to give up the Nicene Creed/Fundamental Christianity per say, as ChristoPaganism is a dual faith technically. It honestly depends on personal perspective. I have seen people work what their family normally does in a fundamental Christian Church, but then also place in some form of Paganism like Druidry. One prime example of this is the Arch Bishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams. While he may not place himself under the ChristoPagan title he is an Archbishop as well as a Druid at the National Eisteddfod. Another is retired Roman Catholic Bishop of Menevia, the Right Reverend David Mullins. To quote "Both the eisteddfod and Gorsedd are celebrations of Welsh culture. There is nothing in them which is at all anti-christian and Archbishop Rowan is proud to have been honoured in this way. " Others include The Queen-Temporal Head of the Church of England.

Monotheism vs Polytheism more came along the line because Emily was stating that all ChristoPagans are Monotheistic. I am stating this now that not all ChristoPagans are Monotheistic. I am not, and I am not the only one. Now personal ilk aside, it really does depend on if you are going to take El is the God head, and the other Gods are misinterpreted Malak-im (Malak./Mal-akh=Messenger, Im=God( Play with Malachi for a bit)), Ruach (spirit) HaKodesh (of God), etc. And as you spoke there are easily ways of Polytheism within Christianity without even having to look to outside sources.

Canaanite is not just outside of Jerusalem, but includes Jerusalem and the people there in. It is often interchanged with Near East, as it denotes a place, not just a specific people or religion. Though often I will use it to denote outside of Jeruslam, it is not always what I am talking about. There are Jews who are going back to their roots and incorporating polytheism into their beliefs which is why the wording- Tribal Jewish/Canaanite. Because the beliefs of the Jewish people in polytheism is utterly incomplete. So many like myself have to pull from other places that shows resemblance and history of the Jewish people. One other thing to bring up is the Habiru people. Habiru people are people who were the outcasts of Canaanite society. This is your Hebrew or Jewish people. Those who lived on the outskirts, could not survive in the city-states, and those who were kicked out. Literally your "lesser thans". They were not separate as per say from the Canaanite city-state people. Only in that due to their necessity for survival one has even called them predatory. This is honestly where I think Yahweh and his brutality came from. He was indeed a war God for the people who needed to raid to survive. Think of them as the Dalits of Indias caste system. The untouchables. However, they could go back into society of different city-states should they so choose too, and where able to. The jobs within the cities were very much family hand me downs, and so to break into a job position within the city was VERY hard to do. But not impossible. I will also state that Jerusalem was originally the Canaanite Urusalim with a completely different god than the Yahweh-El, but they did have Ba'al Hadad, which comes as El's son. Many of the attributes of Ba'al you can now see in the Yahweh-El platform. To be perfectly honest in my humble opinion, they did an almost perfect job of creating the Yahweh-El-Hadad trinity in the Old Testament. This is how you can have a Canaanite Christianity.

Wica honestly is out of my league, but with the explaination of orthopraxic it is entirely possible to work with that kind of system and interchange the names of the Gods. Now I think you should have a relationship with said Gods of your choosing, but this is throwing out into ChristoWicca territory, and I leave that to those who follow said platforms.

Also in ChristoPaganism because of said above platform some use, people can use different Deities from different belief structures. For those favoring more Paganism than Christianity they may have Pan as the God, and Asherah as the Goddess (or most likely Sophia). But considering their personalities and the fact that Ba'al didn’t even want to send Asherah to Yamm (El's chosen champion God of the Sea) to make peace, I doubt of their compatibility. But if it works, whatever. And some will do vica versa with Jesus and Morrigan. Or something. Which also blows my mind considering the history and their compatibility, but I guess both are warring types (yes sweet Jesus will swat you like a fly and not think twice).

Christian Witchcraft

It depends on what you call christian witchcraft. If it is folk practice like appalachian, the king james is what you use. There is specific wording, and meaning. That changes in each translation that you use. It may have similar standings, but like Valmikis words in Ramayanam, the placement of words are important.

Mā niṣādha, pratiṣṭām tvamagamaḥ śāśvatīḥ samāḥ|

yat kraun̄camithunādhēkam avadhīḥ kāmamōhitaṁ

“O, hunter!You will find no rest for the long years of Eternity for you killed a bird in love and unsuspecting”

Valmikis, "this curse is in form of a sloka with four parts with each part containing 8 letters following the rules of chandas and also it can be played on Veena"

The curse emerged from his mouth as a perfectly formed metrical verse, suitable for recitation to the accompaniment of musical instruments. Valmiki returned to his ashram, pondering this strange event. Suddenly his musings were interrupted by the arrival of the great creator divinity, Lord Brahma. The god informed the sage that it was he himself who had inspired him to create a new medium of verbal expression that had enable him to transform the powerful emotion of grief (shoka) into poetry (shloka). Brahma further informed Valmiki that the purpose of this divine inspiration was to enable the sage to render the highly edifying tale of Lord Rama that he had been told by Narada into a great epic poem that would be both morally uplifting and aesthetically pleasing. Valmiki with the benefit of the divine insight granted him by the god, then composed the Ramayana, a massive epic in seven books (kandas) containing some 50,000 lines of Sanskrit verse.

https://orias.berkeley.edu/ramayana>

Atheistic ChristoPaganism

Carl Jungians, and many more types. These people often are your psychonaughts, and pervaders of interesting theory and butt hurtiness. I've even came across a "white knight" psychonaught literally. Ill dip my toes into this field because expansion is better than stagnation. If I need a new point of view this is the place to get it from, removing the biases of religions beliefs, and twisting it on its head. You don’t have to respect the scriptures as literal to do this, nor respect the persons who wrote it.

Ancestor worship was sooo common in the bronze age. It was commonplace the womans duty. The people would be buried in a chamber right next to the womens work station, or even by the bedroom. Talk about your creepy level. While I do not have as much basis for this in the jewish tradition, seeing as how they are Habiru (imo). It is apart of *SOME* Canaanite (Near East) traditions, and many traditions around the world who had Christianity introduced through force or otherwise. Some will take their local paths and incorporate through either Syncritism or other methods, it is a returning to their roots so to speak.

There may be witches amoung ChristoPagans, but not every ChristoPagan is a witch. To some their tradition refuses to allow this sort of thing. Which is fine, imo a lack of traditional understanding between sanctioned and unsanctioned magic, but im not going to be that person.

Some people are taking El, Yahweh back to tribal basics 101. Ancestors as Gods. It honestly is not so far fetched on this platform, it also would not surprise me that these holy mountains end up being burial spaces. Actually looking it up the Silwan necropolis (Mount of Olives)is over 3000 years old. So my speculation is that these people may have it right is higher.

Animism, nor polytheism makes one Christian or Pagan. Pantheism, nor Ominism does this either. Not in and of themselves.

Yahweh as a Dragon is an interesting concept and I can see athering from the scriptural references how one can think that Yahweh is a Dragon (thus my rant from the other day of Yahweh and Yeshua being enemies. It isnt outside of Canaanite tradition. Ba'al ursurps El, Yahweh Ursurps El. Yeshua ursurps Yahweh. Not because they are evil, nor does it inherently take away the losing parties ruling right. Ba'al still needed El's help in building a temple for himself.) I also have an article on this either in this group, or the main Chi-Rho.

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Denomination

Honestly yes I can see where certain sects can be a problem. There are regiments, regulations, rules, and constant barage of community approval in many spaces. That doesn’t mean one can't use those beliefs and branch off into another sect. Which is inherently what ChristoPaganism Does.

Paganism

Well tbh you cant be apart of a Dianic coven and expect people to say yeah okay you can be ChristoPagan and be one of us. Its just not how it works. What you can take is the ideologies, and form your Pagan side around that. It may mean a lot of ostracizing and humiliation from members of said sect, but it isnt a completely unheard of way of doing things. ChristoDianic. Interesting perspective. (Yes I have had someone talk about this particular blending).

Syncretism

I think that your analogy of the Dark, Grey, and Light Jedi is good, except for the part where you see Bad, somewhere be tween, and Good. I get what you are saying, but thinking about it makes me wonder which one is Dark Vader? If you are going to Syncretise your beliefs, you will have to have a lot of give and take in this area. Doing away with what doesn’t fit, and keeping what is necessary to make your path work.

Magic

Just like I don’t force Pagans to perform magic, there is no point in forcing a ChristoPagan to perform magic. They may say prayers, etc. But it doesn’t mean that we have to force them to use terminology that isnt apart of their religious system. Native American: "No I do not want to use the terminology Spirit Animal".

Owning El

I do not define ChristoPaganism as Christianity or Paganism. If it was either it would not need a name like ChristoPaganism. Not everybody goes into the Gnostic beliefs when creating a strictly Christian pantheon. I personally find it insulting to remove El/ ila from his Canaanite family. BUT that is my path.

Christianity is those who follows and believes in Yeshua. However one translate that. Personal belief, Christianity is whoever believes on Yeshua as the intermediary between humans and the El Elohim. But there are those who only believes in the Yeshua teachings much like Buddhism. I don’t like it, but I understand it, and wont judge on it.

Hell has so many different theologies placed into it that in and of itself Hell in the Fundamental land is more Pagan than Scriptural. Starting with the name, and going further into the beliefs of what Hell is.