What is a Pagan Perspective? Note the hedge of ‘a Pagan Perspective’ ensuring that the multiplicity of Pagan voices be given adequate space. These voices will give rise to questions on some of the themes presented by both Schwartz and Partridge with some other concerns on our obligations to future generations.
Pagan voices are being heard in discourse about ecology and ethics. David Kinsley, in his Ecology and Religion, writes that Pagans, along with other religions, are involved in ecofeminist spirituality[1]. Kinsley points towards the general Pagan belief that all of nature is sacred and there is an interconnectedness of life.[2] From of this sense of interconnectedness, and having a religion based in experience, Pagans are often more concerned with right actions than with right beliefs.
I have claimed that Pagans are people of piety[3]. Piety is the right action towards a relationship; the idea of orthopraxy (όρθοπραξις). Relationships may be towards the gods, other humans, or the world. This may be close to what Emma Restall Orr has in mind with honorable relation.
[1] David Kinsley, Ecology and Religion (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1995), 206-209.
[2] David Kinsley, Ecology and Religion (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1995), 209.
[3] 2009 Conference, Piety (Єύσέβεia) as Pagan Religion
