Fistful's thread about the young (ostensibly) pagan lady troubling his church, and my recent pre-response ruminations got me thinking about something interesting.
Most of the pro-gun people that I've found are Christian, and at least a significant percentage of Christians are pro-gun.
Contrarily-wise, the vast, almost overwhelming majority of Pagans are anti-gun. I understand that the reason for that is likely that the sort of liberal, granola-eating, pantywaisted bedwetting types who become Pagan tend to follow the Democratic Party line to the letter, under the mistaken impression that they agree with it (and I say this advisedly, knowing that I'm one of those Pagans, although I haven't been Liberal in the current political sense since the 7th grade, and I've pretty much got the bedwetting under control).
But there are philosophies working at cross-purposes here;
Pagans are, for the most part, entirely unconcerned with other people's beliefs and practices; we generally feel that your own spiritual life is your own, and that your own physical life is your own, and as long as you're not impinging on someone else's rights, you're pretty much morally free to do as you like. Pagans are free to worship, or not, with a Circle, Coven, Grove, Sept, Enclave, or whatever, or by themselves, when and where they choose.
Christians, on the other hand, seem in my experience, to be more authoritarian in what is and what is not acceptable, philosophy-wise (and here I'm not casting aspersions -- Christianity is what it is, and by its nature, its adherents believe that theirs is the One True Way. If they don't, they're not actually following the tenets of their own faith, which would be rather silly of them). Things like pornography are verboten, because they are "wrong" (malum prohibitum, as long as the people in the pictures are there voluntarily. Unless one counts that the sex act is, by its nature, morally wrong, but that's not an absolute - it requires a faith-based moral framework that sets up certain things as "sinful").
So on the one hand we have the Christians, who believe in general that certain things should be prohibited because they are "wrong" (the aforementioned pornography, homosexuality, drug use, Blatant Moral Turpitude, what-have-you), but most of whom believe that people should have the free choice to own guns as they like.
On the other hand we have the Pagans, who for the most part take a rather skeptical view of anyone telling them not to do anything "because it's wrong", opposed to guns "because they're wrong". I've had members of my Grove recoil in horror at the idea that I own a couple EBRs (which are perfectly legal) but not a one of them would bat an eye if I decided to smoke a joint (which is illegal and, potentially, more intrinsically harmful to me than the mere owning of a gun) as long as I didn't then do something idiotic like go driving while stoned. (Oh, and for the DEA lurkers -- the drug thing was an example...I'm quite strange enough without drugs, so I don't bother taking them).
I don't want this thread to become an us-them, "my god can beat up your god" rivalry. I'm just interested in why these two major and competing philosophies seem to have these peculiar areas of belief that seem to run counter to the faiths' basic premises.
Thoughts?
-BP
