One on the main board there was a short thread concerning Christianity and Paganism. GOBF made a valid point about the numbers of Pagans vs the numbers of Christians. I'm sorry...I don't have that number for a comparison, but I can say that there are a lot more Pagans than a lot of people realize.
We don't advertise our religion, nor do we have public speakers on it. We keep a low profile because of the flack we catch for being Pagans. Our intent is not world domination, nor do we have "recruiting drives" to bring in more people as some religions do. We get most of our people by accident. They discover us...ask questions and it follows through from there. If they are interested...they join. If not...they walk away. We never try to coerce anyone into joining. We feel that it's their decision and they make it for themselves without any coaching, or prompting from us.
If one of us decided to leave and take up another religion, we have no problems with that. Here again...that's their choice. We don't attempt to keep them with us. We would like them to stay, but if they choose to leave we have no problem with that.
Our services are not conducted in a chruch. We need no fancy building for that. Usually our services (depending on the weather?) are conducted outside. A forrest setting is ideal. Our religion centers around life and living things...plants, trees and all living creatures. No...we are not the "tree hugging" people of Green Peace. We relate to their platform and we support it, but we will not participate in any of their demonstrations simply because this would be drawing attention to ourselves and we would prefer not to do that. We try to maintain a low profile at all times.
There are no stringent rules with our religion: "You must do this!" "You cannot do that!" There are also no dress codes with it either. When holding services....whatever you are wearing is quite acceptable. There is never a collection plate passed around at our services either. We don't conduct "training sessions" on "how to be a Pagan". There are a vast number of books written on Paganism. If someone needs to know, we refer them to any one of those books and they learn on their own.
So...Paganism isn't all that different from organized religions. We have our belifs...they have theirs and we respect them for it.
I thank your for your time in reading this.
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