Division and Politics (OR 'Why I'm a Reconstructionist')

I spent quite a while sticking to myself in the whole heathen thing. It's how I do most things, first taking them up in private and fiddling with and figuring it out before I get involved with anyone else or want to participate in a community. I think it's a prideful kind of thing: I want to at least look like I know what I'm doing before I open my mouth. That in itself is kind of a heathen sentiment - don't open your mouth unless you've got something worth saying.

When I finally did begin seeking out other heathens and trying to get a grip on the community, I was unprepared for the politics. Having been weened on Raven Radio, Asatru Lore, and the Recon community, I hadn't realized what a diverse - and divided - group the broader spectrum of heathens actually was. With the group being as small as it is (relative to other religious groups), I would have thought there would be more concern for similarities than differences. In a way, it reminds me of The Life of Brian.

"Judean People's Front? We're the People's Front of Judea!"... "The only people we hate more than the Romans are the fucking Judean People's Front."

Of course, this is perhaps to be expected. Heathenry is a religion that stresses the relationships between people in individual communities, rather than any kind of pan-heathen brotherhood. The notion that we should all be Brothers and Sisters in Christ Odin is leftover baggage from someone else's religion. Innangard is one of the core concepts from the world view and is by definition exclusionary. This is also a religion that encourages someone to stand their ground, and comes from a culture that celebrates independence and personal charisma, so heathens by nature tend to be both opinionated and stubborn, with no divine commandment of subservience or humility to stand in their way.

I'm the first to admit that I fit all of these issues to a T. I'm part of the problem. While I wish that there were a greater consensus on a number of things, I realize that most Heathens do, and like all other heathens I would prefer my version of the story to be the one that is agreed upon.

In my mind, however, there is a difference and here I will present a case for my position.

In the world of Heathenry, there are essentially two categories of declarative statement. The first falls broadly under Reconstruction. Reconstruction is essentially the factual, objective information we can point to the lore itself (sagas, eddas, etc), from outside texts (Tacitus, Saxo Grammaticus, ibn Fadlan), and from archeological and other scholarship. The other half falls under UPG - Unsubstantiated Personal Gnosis. Any time someone leads with UPG, what they are talking about is their personal experience and insight that is unsupported by outside sources. This doesn't mean that their UPG is wrong, or even goes against the lore, but any time it is UPG one cannot make the claim "This is true," they can only espouse a personal belief or opinion.

Even if I'm not the most deeply educated of heathens (yet), I tend to lean towards hard recon myself. What this means in practice is that I assume the humble position that the people who actually practiced this faith centuries ago understood their lore, gods, and philosophy better than I do. Thus, what is and isn't "heathen" to me falls squarely on the shoulders of "what did our ancestors believe?" In my view, if you're claiming to be heathen, then you assume that the answer to that question is what you should be incorporating into your religious practice. This is not to say that I'm entirely against UPG, I have some of my own. But it means that I assume UPG is like sexual preference - everyone's got some, yours has nothing to do with mine, and you should assume no one wants to hear about it unless they ask you directly.

So why would anyone ever not push for Recon? Well, there are some pretty common arguments I hear:

Recons live in a fantasy world / are trying to pretend they are vikings
This is a fairly common opening argument, usually because the person at hand doesn't actually understand what recon is. Reconstructionists are not out to put on costume and live in the 10th century, but instead are trying to understand the world view of those that came before and apply it to modern life.

We can never know what they believed, so why bother?
This comes from a simple ignorance of just how much we actually do know, and we know more every year. There are far fewer gaps in the collective scholarship than people would have you believe.. but.. of course, you'd actually have to do the work and study to understand that.

We live in a different world now.
This is also occasionally changed to sound something like "Heathenry is a living religion and it must be updated with the times." I find this claim to be both absurd and kind of misleading. For me, the philosophy is actually what brought me to Heathenry, so claiming that it needs to be updated is a kind of idiocy that could only be represented by idiocy as some kind of platonic ideal. The world itself is full of other religions and other schools of thought that are more "modern." To me, that is the biggest reason to choose heathenry, to get away from the shallow and sickly philosophical notions that permeate modern society and religion. And as stated before, if you don't actually follow the philosophy of a religion, why bother?

The real problem with this claim is the idea that the philosophy needs updating at all. Heathenism is a life-affirming and human-centric, humanistic religion and it's underlying philosophical tenants bear that out. If someone wanted to make a very well-reasoned argument about a specific point that could use changing, I'd be all ears. Unfortunately, this argument only ever really means "I want to import this non-heathen concept from some other religion, call it heathen, and have everyone else accept its validity."

Recons are as dogmatic as christians!
This is one of my favorites, and forms a nice catch-all for the rest of the issues that might come up. Heathenry has no dogma. It has a world-view, as does every culture and every religion. It needs no dogma, and no commandments (don't get me started on the "Nine Noble Virtues") because if you understand the world-view, none of the rest is required.

Generally speaking, this is the retort of someone who has tried to hybridize their heathenry, infusing it with their leftover christian baggage, or tried to import wicca or other new-age influences and presented it as "their" heathenry to other people. Some groups will be fine with that, but this is where pejoratives like "wiccatru" and other less than friendly accusations come in from the recon-crowd. It's not that there's anything wrong with wanting to be High Priestess Silver Odinswolf of the Mjolnir-Bearer's Coven. You are free to do that, but what you are doing is substituting what we factually know about the way heathens organized and worshiped historically with non-heathen sources. You can do it as you please, but what you are doing is not heathenry. Some embrace this openly, referring to themselves as part of "The Northern Tradition" instead. For the most part though, people who fall under these categories seem to be either new heathens who haven't learned any better yet or people who either simply don't care enough to learn what was actually practiced, or actively want to disregard what was practiced in order to craft a religion more suited to their own personal politics and convenience.

Ultimately, that's the best argument I can make for Recon. In many ways it strikes parallels with the role of the role the Constitution is meant to play in US government. Whatever differences in philosophy you might have or UPG or other ideas you might bring to the table, Recon serves as a neutral ground and a boundary line. It is an objective standard by which one can measure ideas and objective middle one can meet at and declare "this is heathenry." You cannot one day make the declaration "This is heathenry, and because I call myself a Gothi, I declare it so" any more than a president can stand up and declare himself king (try as they might).

And the case for those against recon? All I can say is that I've noticed that whenever someone comes out and states that some god or another, or their ancestors, or whatever source decides that they are such a special and remarkable individual that they can speak for the truth of heathenry, that source almost always sounds like "You are perfect just as you are, do what feels good" and almost never sounds like "we gave you this information already, we have been arguing for the same kinds of rites, rituals, and cultural values for thousands of years. Go out there and do the work."

Just a touch too convenient, if you ask me.