Pagans & Christians: The Personal Spiritual Experience
Seeking to reconcile Christianity and paganism, diZerega regards both as "unique and valuable" ways of knowing "the Sacred," and he disarmingly grants grievous moral failures in practitioners of both. But what is best about the book is its unwaveringly ameliorative, peacemaking tone. DiZerega, a modern wiccan, first explains the faith that more needs explaining, paganism. Pagan spirituality's distinctive characteristics are pantheism (all that is, is divine) or panentheism (divinity is immanent and transcendent); animism (the divine is manifest in everything); polytheism, which doesn't, however, deny a single source of all being; "the Eternal Present" (spiritual reality is cyclical and mythical); and nondualistic morality (there is no Satan or principle of evil). In discussing these characteristics, diZerega demonstrates that all of them can be found within Christianity, too, which is one reason Christians ought to tolerate paganism. The Christian tenet that powers antipagan feeling is the claim that Christianity is the one true religion (Islam is similarly, and Judaism differently, exclusive), and the great dissipater of antipaganism should be the divine immanence recognized by panentheism and by Christian mystical concepts of indwelling divinity. Besides this main argument, diZerega ponders four particular Christian criticisms of wicca and two wiccan objections to Christianity. This personal and experiential book won't convince those who prefer scholarly and intellectual religious disputation, but they, too, will appreciate its warmth and nobility.Ray OlsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved