I started in on this on twitter, but realized there was a lot more than I could cover in even a series of tweets here.
ADF is, at its core, welcoming to Pagan laity. We hold public high day rituals because we want people to come and worship the Gods. We don’t force everyone who comes to our rituals to join ADF, and we don’t force everyone who joins to complete their Dedicant work, and we don’t even require attendance at regular study meetings, let alone mandatory ritual celebration (solitary or in groups). Can you spend a lot of time studying in ADF? Absolutely. And I think there’s a ton of value there. But if you just want to show up, get your worship on, and then go home and continue with your life… THAT’S OKAY.
It is 100% okay to want to be a practicing Pagan and just do your thing, practice your devotions to your gods, and live your life.
ADF is a public Pagan church. That inherently includes both priests and laity. And this is good! Not all Pagan groups are run with laity in mind!
So let’s knock off the shit about how we’re more spiritually enlightened because we have bookshelves worth of study materials and enjoy debating the finer points of paleo-religious theory. You can be pretty damn spiritually enlightened with a small home altar, some candles or a triple hallows, and heartfelt devotion to the Kindreds or your spiritual beings of choice. And, in fact, if you’re actually practicing and doing the religious devotional work, you might even be MORE spiritually enlightened than someone who never does any actual religious work but spends all their time reading without applying or doing anything with what they’re learning.
ALSO WHILE I’M WEARING THE RANT PANTS.
Someone believing in the disproved “Great Ancient Mother Goddess Religion” of Gimbutas and her ilk DOES NOT MAKE THEM WICCAN. It makes them ignorant of current scholarship. There are lots of ways to be Wiccan (of various flavors and types – it’s a hugely diverse religion), and most of those ways are at least duotheistic, if not truly polytheistic (the Trad coven I was part of the outer court with was polytheist). Also there is an entire religion devoted to a Great Mother God that has nothing to do with Wicca.
(Also with the “this person believes a stupid thing about a goddess therefore WICCA”? WTF? Wiccans are not uneducated morons.)
If someone says “I believe in the Goddess, but I’m not Wiccan” you say “okay”. You are not the arbiter of other people’s religion. You don’t try to force them to change their mind about how they’re really secretly Wiccan. Double especially if you’re trying to convince them to be Wiccan because they’re disruptive and embarrassing, and you just want them to go away and stop coming to your particular group’s meetings. Be straight with people about their behavior. If they’re a pain in the ass, tell them so and ask them to shape up or stop coming. The Wiccans don’t want embarrassingly disruptive people either.
So. Let’s be welcoming to the laity, and encourage them on their spiritual path(s). Let’s encourage, rather than one-up, each other, and remember that studying might make you knowledgeable, but it doesn’t make you a better person. And let’s quit it with the ridiculous assumptions about Wiccans. Many Wiccans (especially coven/Trad Wiccans) have just as much homework as the more well-known-for-being “studious” traditions, and often more spiritual discipline to go with it.
And in case it wasn’t painstakingly clear from the rest of this post, if you choose to use my comments section to bash Wicca, I will send your comments straight into the spam oubliette.
Little Druid on the Prairie 
lol, the spam “obliette.” Anyway, I love this post and I agree 100% with all you’ve said here. 🙂
Yeah. Given that an “Oubliette” is a particular type of walled dungeon with only a small trap door at the top for an entrance, it’s a good place to throw spam. (I stole the idea from Chuck Wendig, who is awesome.)
Guessing this was in response to some ADF is superior to Wicca types? There’s actually quite a few people who practice both. I’ve never heard of Filianism- it seems like some of the Western All-One-Goddess types combined with Shaktism (a sect of Hinduism) to try to make it seem more legit. I’d be totally cool with it, other than they seem rather prone to bashing polytheism as “inferior”. The “just goddess” form of Wicca isn’t really Wicca anyway- its feminist witchcraft.
Not ADF specifically, no. Though that train of thought comes up every now and again, this was a non-ADF discussion in a periphery group. It hit more than one nerve, across the board, in multiple posts and replies. Hence the Rant Pants ™.
I had to go look up “oubliette”. Good word! 🙂 I agree with what you’ve said here 100% too. Thank you!
I think what a lot of folks can lose focus on, especially with the notion that ‘everyone is their own priest’, is that being laity is just as good as being a priest. The majority of people engaged in religion throughout time have been what we might term laity. Priests, and other spiritual specialists, serve the communities they are part of, whether that is solely the Gods, Ancestors, and vaettir, or as a bridge between Them and their human community/communities.
A very good friend of mine gave me a great quote: ‘Everyone is their own priest -that is, until they need one.’ There’s nothing wrong with being laity, and being a priest doesn’t make me better than another person. It should mean that I have the experience and skills necessary to fulfill that role and maintain good relationships with the Gods, Ancestors, and/or vaettir.
That’s exactly it. Being a priest is a specific calling to a specific set of duties – and one that not everyone is cut out for. (Fortunately I very rarely see actual priests saying things that suggest they think they’re better than the communities they serve because they happen to be priests. This was specifically someone who was saying that they were “more into spiritual enlightenment” because they were into a religion with lots of homework.)
People attach so much baggage to “clergy” and “laity” that I just decided to use more generic terms in a general community context- https://paganleft.wordpress.com/2015/07/08/spiritual-specialists-vs-general-practitioners/ I also like that in ADF, there are many other options- including ones that overlap with Priestly stuff. What I find among Pagans, is since the groups are usually small, everyone does small pieces of clergy work- at least when its run sustainably, that is!
I like the term “spiritual specialist” a lot – especially given how many specialties there really are. There are tons of ways to be a priest, seer, etc.