On political dimensions of Heathenism

This short article began with an item, requesting information, which I saw on an Ásatrú email list.

"Does anyone get the Runestone? In the Yule edition of Marklander there was a very disturbing article stating that in the most recent Runestone Mr. McNallen >was suggesting that to expand our ranks that we should consider forming >alliances with what he calls the "traditional mainstream" (a phase that can mean many things, not all pleasant...). If the man who brought modern Asatru to the States is suggesting that we make common cause with conservative Christians as it implies, the brouhaha over Kennewick man will look like a gentle summer shower...
"Need more info...can't make decision...brain hurt........"

I saw this, just received Marklander (thanks Lavrans!). I went to the runestone website. I assume it's the article entitled "Christianity & the Betrayal of European Americans", the title of which is enough to set off warning bells in my mind, (though I can't read it as the article's not on the web that I can discover in a hurry) reminding me as it does of a certain obsessive poster to a.r.a...

For a while now it's been plain that Ásatrú cannot be one community. There are several, each with their own focuses, each constructing their own worldviews and alliances in their attempts to blend the lore and our understandings of the deities with the 20th/21st century world we live in. Rather than seeing this as being divisive or destructive, I think it's best to view it as an opportunity for each of us to create our own communities and develop Heathenism or Ásatrú as we see fit.

Mr McNallen has given much to the re-vitalisation, in our time, of Ásatrú. This current obsession however is something that it so contrary to my understandings of the world or of the God/esses that anybody associated with it is clearly in a very different community from myself and my kindred, family and friends. I for one will be working to promote other kinds of Heathen communities, and other kinds of alliances, as I hope will many on this list. Allying ourself with other causes, speaking about what is important to us, and showing ourselves to be part of the spiritual, political and social spectrum, in North America and elsewhere, is the best way, in my opinion, to deal with this. Ásatrúars come in many political stripes. Let's make it clear by our actions and our own writings that Mr McNallen speaks for only his own small group.

Wassail ...

This debate is couched within a discourse that links religion and 'race'. I would like to step outside this framework.

I must confess to a lack of understanding of the phrase 'traditional mainstream'. It lacks a context. Mainstream of what, and for whom? Those 'traditional' christians with whom I have most contact, in North America, would not see themselves as under attack for being European Americans or European Canadians. For good reason: some of the most 'traditional Christian' people I meet are members of African churches, and the 'alliances' I'm likely to have with them are about things like human rights issues, housing standards, equality of access to education, and threatened cuts to the public school music program. Others would see themselves as 'European-', but 'alliances' I had with them would not be on that basis. We would be making common cause over, once again, housing standards, education, the music program and human rights...

And alliances formed with non-traditional Christians, or with Buddhists, or Pagans, or Muslims would likely be over similar issues. A recent discussion with a Mennonite woman comes to mind. We shared an awareness of problems that women still faced in our common society, and she raised an example from her church, which I could easily relate to. But I suspect this was not what the writer of the article had in mind.

In other words, I see myself as a member of my society. I engage with this society of many levels. I help to shape it. I don't merely 'react', but in my daily life, in the decisions I make, in the causes I support and in what I say to my students I act with intent, as a political being among other political beings. And that 'being' is formed, informed and re-formed by the many influences on my life, physical, emotional and spiritual, the layers of meaning within which I work and from which I choose my words and craft my poems.

Wihin that society, I see injustices and social problems. Most of these are of complex construction, and have no one-off, simple, straightforward cure. Rather they need to be examined, both in their social and historical constitution, and in their operation in the present day. To say that Canadian Aboriginal Peoples, to take one obvious and glaring example, have been disprivileged by the colonial system, is simply an (obvious and glaring) statement of what is, agreed on from almost all standpoints today. To say that this included attempts to suppress Indigenous culture and belief, the wrecking of Indigenous political, human-welfare and educational systems, and at times genocide, by design or by accident, is a rather more forceful expression of the same statement. Yet even some people who would accept these statements, would deny that they have relevance for the present day.

A more complex analysis would point out that many of the Colonial people whose work was profoundly destructive -- some of the people who founded and ran residential schools, for instance -- were acting out of what seemed to them good intentions: and that to do so they made 'alliances' with members of Aboriginal communities. Oppression isn't simple, and oppression that claims to be in 'the best interests' of those whose culture is wrecked is still, well, oppression. Others, on both sides, or all sides, were simply attempting to look out for their own interests and those of their children. The results were similar to those of planned devastation. For us today, all of us, whoever we are, they stand to show that we need to examine our actions in the light of history: everybody's history, not only that written by the victors.

The society I live in, the eductional system within which I work, have their bases in the same processes that disenfranchised, disempowered Indigenous peoples of Canada: and also in the processes that enabled many to resist and retain part of those cultures that they are engaged in reconstructing today. I live here and now, in the present, and am fully aware that past injustice shapes that present. I did not create these injustices: I and many of those around me however continue to benefit from them. As a 'European-' woman, I have access to privileges: the assumptions that others make about me so that it becomes, for instance, easy for me to get bank credit. This does not mean I am rich and famous. It doesn't mean that I don't work hard to earn my salary: it doesn't mean that salary is either guaranteed nor secure. But it does mean that the kind of things I can do or say result, often, from that historically-constituted privilege.

Does this concern me? Well, yes it does. I'm fully aware that there are things that I can take for granted, that others cannot. This isn't right and shouldn't be. I'm not about to waste my time, however, in 'white guilt'. Guilt is profoundly disempowering. I'm more interested in talking about responsibility -- for my life, for my children's education, for the actions I take and the words I say to those others around me with whom I come into contact. So I'll make my alliances, and I'll work for change. I ally myself with people I respect, who are working to develop their sense of self, their awareness of who they are, their diverse roots and history and biography, and how they live on the Earth -- as I try to do likewise.

And so I look to a personal politics of transformation. I see my friends, Heathen or otherwise, European or Aboriginal or African or otherwise, each as the product of socio-historic processes, each an intersection of personal and political, each attempting to break free of the pressures to conform to social assumptions of gender, 'race', ethnicity, class, sexuality, belief. And each is creating change around her or him, by the actions and choices of their everyday existance.

This short essay began with a venture into the politics of fear. This I reject. My allegiance is not controlled by the categories that others attempt to put me into. Indeed, all of us, within Heathenism, have at one time or other rejected the categorization of others. But I am aware that the processes that result from the politics of fear are part of what shape our choices today. The long hand of the past results in the suspicion of the present, the anger, the hatred. Fear of others, fear of self, fear of being wrong, fear of disprivilege, fear of difference, fear of ambiguity, fear of the unknown. Fear of being unable to exploit... fear of being done unto, as others did in the past. Fear of not being in control.

Much of the politics of western capitalism is indeed about fear. Those of us who have concerns about today's politics, today's intolerance, could do well to ask what it is that we, personally, most fear, and then to examine the roots of that fear. Not to apportion blame or guilt, but to further our understanding, to seek knowledge, to find modes of action, and in that seeking to forge alliances with other seekers who construct their own knowledges, create their own understandings.

Our society is the result of long processes of history. It is not finished, not final, not an end product, but constantly in change. Instead of reacting to something that 'they' have done, we can ask ourselves how our society might develop, and work towards that end: bearing in mind that we are each a small part of something much larger, and that no one community consitutes 'society' or should determine the fate of others. We can try to learn from history, so that we do not repeat it: and we can try to take responsibility for our own actions, in ways that reject the politics of fear, and strengthen the transformative processes that are underway.