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Saxon
Christianity
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Introduction Germanic or Saxon Christianity is a term used to
describe a form of the Christian faith that grew out of the Christianisation
of the Germanic and particularly the Anglo and Continental Saxon people. |
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Examples of medieval Christo-Saxon syncretism may be found
in the development of chivalry and of the Eigenkirche
or Propriety Church. This was a church or abbey built on private ground by a
feudal lord, over which he retained certain propriety interests, such as
nominating clergy. This provided the local dryhtens
or chieftains with checks and balances to the power of the, usually Italian,
popes. In England, the Royal peculiars have remained propriety churches to
this day. Accommodating Germanic folk religion
and the re-interpretation of Christianity The following extract of a letter from Pope Gregory to
Abbot Mellitus in the early days of Augustine’s mission to the English,
demonstrates how the Church hoped to retain and adapt ancient folk customs as
a way of making Christianity more familiar to the people and of increasing
its chances of taking root. This is a
process known as inculturation and still used today.
However, an earlier letter from Gregory to the Kentish King
Æþelbert,
was less accommodating and shows that he would have preferred the pagan
temples and holy places to have been destroyed and completely replaced with
Christian places of worship. This was the more familiar process that had been
used elsewhere in Europe as Christianity gradually spread northwards and
westwards. His change of tact owed more to real politique than anything else. He
recognised that the pagan faith and traditions of the Saxon English were
simply too embedded in the folk culture for a complete replacement to have
stood any chance of success. Yet, his policy of inculturation meant that the
true nature of conversion was never really understood and ensured that
significant elements of the old religion were absorbed into the new.
Importantly, the mission of St Boniface to the continental Saxons over 100
years later adopted a similar approach with much the same result. Religion and socio, ethnic & cultural identity Broadly speaking, there are two types of religion; folk
religion which tends to be ethno-specific and universal religion which
proclaims a universal truth to all peoples. Native European religions were folk based, of which the pre-Christian Germanic heathen
religions were a part. One of the most important aspects of a folk religion
is the folk group itself. A key feature of Indo-European religion is what is
often called ‘ancestor worship’, but is really a tribal bonding process that
recognises and honours those members of the tribe that have gone before and
attaches great significance to the bonds between its living and dead members.
This is the basis of an ethnic religion, in which adherents are not just
members of a religious community, but are part of the same blood family with
blood ties that go back to the distant past. The tribe or folk group thus
becomes the basis of the religion, the folk related not just to each other
and to their ancestors but to the very gods themselves. The sacredness of the
community is expressed in ritual ceremonies that celebrate its relationship
with its own exclusive gods and which ‘promote a strong sense of in-group
identification and loyalty’ Pearson, R:
Introduction to Anthropology 1974.
An example of this is the Greek polis, which was originally perceived
as a living community, based on ethnic kinship in which as much societal life
as possible revolved around the extended family. According to Plato in Laws, the polis religion ‘is not tuned
to the needs of the individual... but rather shapes the community, pointing
out and expressing its functions through its gods’. This concept of polis
would appear to have grown out of the Indo-European tribal institutions and
religion. Like the ancient Greeks, the Germanic people are part of
the wider Indo European or Aryan family, although very significant
differences have clearly emerged between the different branches of this
group. Despite this, it is still possible to identify Indo-European social
and religious characteristics which form the basis of social structure and
religious mythology and practice of all Indo European peoples. Identifying the impact of these
characteristics on medieval Christianity helps to define and quantify the
impact of pre-Christian Germanic religion and culture on it. Edgar Polome (Essays on
Germanic Religion), for instance, identifies a number of these
characteristics. He considers Indo European society to be ethno-centric and
patrilineal, essentially based around the patrilineal extended family. Kindred was the cornerstone of this structure – a grouping
together of families into clans claiming descent from a common ancestor.
Clans were grouped into larger structures or tribes, also based around some
common ancestor. Ethnic solidarity was the means by which the tribe or clan
defended itself against outsiders and maintained its own security and social
systems. It is generally thought that the oldest Indo European
mythology saw a supreme god expressed as Sky Father, who was the creator of
the cosmos, protector of the clan and often as the primal ancestor. The Roman
historian Tacitus says of the lowland Germanic peoples, ‘In ancient songs,
the only kind of record or annal they have among
them, they celebrate the god Tuisto born of the
earth. To him they attribute a son Mannus as the
origin of their people, to Mannus three sons and
founders from whose names those nearest the Ocean may be called the Ingaeuones, those in the middle the Herminiones
and the rest the Istaevones’.
Honour and loyalty At the heart of the warrior system lay
the Saxon notion of honour. This is honour in the sense of glory, splendour
or everlasting fame. It was a notion of external approval and praise being
granted by the Chieftain and tribe for acts of great courage performed on
behalf of the tribe. This externalised concept of honour stemmed from a
desire not to be publicly shamed and can be contrasted with the Christian
concept of internalised honour based on guilt and personal sin. Central to
the Indo-European social system was the idea of war and the heroic warrior
cult as a religious practice. This was probably because of the central
importance of the warrior to defending the homeland and to winning more
territory for the expanding tribe to farm. Thus, the warrior and farming
classes were closely inter-related and depended on each other. The warrior
code was itself central to the social bonds that defined the tribe and gave
it such strength. This was a system based on honour, bravery and the winning
of eternal glory. The poem Norse Havamal puts it succinctly: ‘Cattle die,
kinsmen die, thyself will soon die; but fair fame will never die for him who
wins it’. Nowhere else was this ethos as strongly embedded into
social structure as it was in the Saxon and wider Germanic social system. Warriors were bound to their Lord by an oath of
loyalty that they could not break. They would be expected to fight for and
defend their Lord in battle even if that meant their own death. In fact,
surviving a battle in which the King was killed was a great shame to the
warrior. However, the King was bound to his warriors by the same code – bound
to gain favour from the gods in both battle and agriculture. This ‘favour’
with the gods formed the basis of the Saxon notion of holiness to which the
words holy, healthy and hail were originally applied. As the process of
Christianisation took hold, so the concept of holiness changed to one of
personal holiness. This concept of loyalty to the warlord and folk group was
so central to Saxon society and world view, and so different to the
cosmopolitan Christian world view, that the early missionaries simply could
not directly oppose it. Instead, they sought to present their religion in a
way that was compatible with this world view and then sought to slowly adapt
society to true Christian values. However, although this code was to some
extent adapted by the advent of Christianity, it remained extremely strong and
continued to form the basis of Saxon society witnessed through the
development of both the feudal system and of the military orders and
chivalry. A principle way that this occurred was through the portrayal of
Christ as a victorious Saxon warlord or warrior hero such as Beowulf. Poems
such as ‘Dream of the Rood’ and the
‘Saxon Gospel’, The Heliand,
portray this very clearly. Indeed, authors such as Lars Lonnroth
(writing in the American Scandinavian Society in 1917) find in Saxon
Christianity a sympathy for the old codes of worldly
honour and loyalty to the family and tribe, even a reserved approval of the
revenge principle. For instance, the C13th treatise called ‘the
King’s Mirror’ from Moral Values in Icelandic Sagas advises: “keep your temper calm though not to the point of suffering
abuse or bringing upon yourself the reproach of cowardice. Though necessity may force you into strife,
be not in a hurry to take revenge; first make sure your effort will succeed
and strike where it ought”. In a similar vein, St Odo,
abbot of Cluny monastery (d. 944), radically redefined the concept of a
virtuous and saintly life by explicitly including the warrior ethos and
lifestyle. In defence of this, he states “truly, no one ought to be worried
because a just man sometimes makes use of fighting, which seems incompatible
with religion”. Here was a clear attempt to not just integrate the warrior
ethos into the Christian ethos, but to adapt it to the basic principles of
Christian morality – warfare for a higher or just cause and not just for its
own sake or for temporal glory. Russell believes that many of the pre-Christian
Germanic values were absorbed into medieval Christianity and that this
suggests that many of its own core values, such as cosmopolitanism, its world
rejecting ethos and pacifism were either rejected out of hand or
significantly adapted to the Germanic world view. In other words, the core values of Germanic
Christianity were quite different to those of Judaeo-Christianity to which
the Churches are currently seeking to return.
World accepting Germanic religion
versus world rejecting Christianity The interaction between Christianity and Indo-European
‘world accepting’ religions did not begin with its expansion into the
Germanic lands. By the time of Christ, the classical religions of Greece and
Rome had absorbed eastern mystery cults such as Mithraism. As such, their
original Indo-European religiosity had become diluted, but nevertheless was
still apparent. The meeting of Christianity with these religions had a
profound effect on its early development and on some of its main theological
positions. This was the point at which Christianity ceased to be a Semitic
religion, an off shoot of Judaism, and became something quite different and
fundamentally European. The impact of Greek pagan philosophers such as Plato
and the Roman hierarchical and legal structures on the development of early
Christianity are two examples of this process. As Christianity spread
northwards into Europe, it encountered successive waves of increasingly homogenous
peoples with increasingly ‘pure’ Indo-European based folk religions. Thus, by
the time it encountered Germanic folk religion, it had already been affected
by its sister religions of southern and central Europe. Indeed, according to
Russell, the most significant effects of the Celto-Saxon
Indo-Europeanization of Christianity were the emergence of a sense of a
specific European Christianity, which encompassed both a spiritual and
political context and included a magical or folk religious undercurrent that
pervaded early medieval Christianity. It is important to understand that pre-Christian Saxon
society, whilst sharing common Indo European origins, was fundamentally
different to the pre-Christian Hellenistic societies that Christianity first
took root in. Those societies had already become cosmopolitan, world
rejecting and emphasised gnosis or
esoteric knowledge. Saxon religion, at its point of contact with
Christianity, was not philosophical but rather a national cult religion as
both Greek and Roman religion had originally been. It was concerned with the
here and now, with the day to day life of the folk, not with philosophising
over the nature of the afterlife and how to attain it. It is also important
to understand that it is from this perspective that Saxon and other Germanic
societies came to terms with Christianity.
Germanic religion at the time of conversion was actually very strong
and vital. As with the Japanese of modern times, they saw little merit in the
new religion and so resistance to it was strong. This is why the Church
adopted a process of inculturation and hid the deeper meaning from the
people. As a result, those magico-religious aspects
of Christianity that had parallels with the heathen faith were emphasised,
whilst its world rejecting and ethical side was played down. For this reason, Saxon Christianity
emphasised the veneration of objects such as relics, Saints and the magical
power of the mass. As Russell puts it, the world accepting, heroic, magico religious, folk centred Saxon world view led to a
worldly, heroic, magico religious, folk centred
Christianity. Russell argues that whilst there is a general tendency for
folk religions to be supplanted by universal ones, there are occasions where
the universalist religion is re-interpreted in terms of the folk religion and
culture. Such a situation occurred in Japan between Buddhism and Shinto and
also in the Saxon lands. This situation appears to occur when a universalist
religion expands into areas where the folk religious culture is solidly
entrenched. One of the main reasons for this is that whilst a people may take
on the trappings of a new religion, they are not necessarily truly converted
to it. In other words, our ancestors may appear to have been converted to
Christianity, but in practice this ‘conversion’ was only skin deep. Failure of the Church to achieve a
full conversion The term ‘conversion’ does not simply refer to a change in
one’s religious allegiance. In the New Testament, St Peter declares that
people should repent and be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ (Acts 2:38)
and St Paul declares people should repent and turn to God (Acts 26:20-21).
The English word ‘repent’ comes from a Latin translation of the Greek word metanoia to poenitentia, which mean both repentance
and penitence. Indeed, the Christian concept of conversion implies a form of
repentance from a state of sinfulness and thus the two concepts became
intertwined. Furthermore, conversion in this sense implies something more
than a one-off event such as being baptized. It implies an on-going and ever
deepening process of conversion both at an individual and a societal
level. However, there was a relative absence of a concept of
sinfulness in pre-Christian Germanic culture. An absence of any real notion
of sin in the Christian sense means that early ‘converts’ to the faith would
not have been able to repent of their sins in the sense implied by
‘conversion’. Thus, whilst ‘conversion’ to Christianity amongst the Germanic
peoples did mean a change in religious allegiance, there has to be a real
doubt about whether this constituted a ‘conversion’ in the real meaning of
the word. Whilst individuals may have come to understand the deeper meaning
of conversion through repentance, it is extremely unlikely this was true of
an entire society. This is important because it means that the behavioural
change implied through true conversion did not happen throughout Germanic
society. People were baptised, absorbed some of the Christian beliefs and
went to Church, but conversion did not go much deeper than a general adhesion
to it. Indeed, there is evidence that well into the sixteenth century
ordinary people in Saxony had only a very vague knowledge of Christian
teaching, but still used sooth sayers, cunning
women and other practioners of forbidden arts. (MacMullen, R: Christianizing the
Roman Empire 1984). This disparity between Germanic and Judaeo Christian world
views is also reflected in their different concepts of history. This can be
seen by comparing the allegorical and moralistic orientation of Augustinian
salvation history epitomised in ‘De Civitate Dei’ with the more objective Germanic
depictions of historical events set out in say Beowulf, the Nibelungenlied and the Icelandic sagas. Whilst these
works were written at a time when Christianity was apparently entrenched in
their respective societies, none have the Christian vision of creation and
last judgement as end points of time. Neither do they have a
providential force acting in secular events. The fall, original sin,
guilt, redemption or salvation play no role in them.
The ethical integrity of the warrior heroes in these poems is that of the
heathen not the Christian religion. Concepts of sin, redemption and salvation
history were not simply Christian modifications of the older world view. They
were fundamentally new and alien to it. However, this is how Christianity was
dealt with by most Germanic people, including the Saxons. Christ was simply
seen as another powerful god to be added to the existing pantheon, indeed
maybe just another expression of existing gods such as Ingeld.
Thus whilst orthodox Christianity is something fundamentally different to
Saxon folk religion, what took hold in medieval northern Europe was not this
form of Christianity but rather a Germanised folk Christianity that retained
and adapted large elements of the pre-Christian heathen religion.
Christianity requires a conversion of the soul, a
repentance and an acceptance of ethical and doctrinal beliefs rather
than just intercessory appeals to worldly problems. Germanic folk religion had little concept
of the former, but a strong sense of the latter. This was carried into
medieval Christianity. Even the Eucharist or Mass was re-interpreted in this
way and private intercessory or votive Masses became a feature of Germanic
Christianity. The mass therefore became one of a number of ‘good works’ that
could intercede for good fortune, a view which marked a radical difference
between the early and the mediaeval church of Northern Europe. To this
extent, therefore, it can be argued that what actually took place was a
syncretic development rather than any real Christianisation. Inculcating a sense of the need for salvation was very
difficult to achieve in a population that had no real concept of sin and
therefore of a need to be saved from it. Thus, the central doctrine of Church
teaching was essentially lost on the Germanic peoples who were sold the new
religion more on the basis that Christ wielded stronger magic than the old
gods. Thus, the Church had to convince the people that they needed salvation
before they could bring that salvation to them. They did this by emphasising
the notion of sin and of eternal damnation for those who did not receive
salvation through the Church. This process directly led to the mediaeval
obsession with these issues and a change from a world accepting culture to
one that saw horror in this world and looked on the prospects of the next
with fear. The Celtic Church may have had a different response to
this same question over how to introduce the concept of sin and repentance
into a culture that had no real grasp of these concepts what this was.
Although branded a heresy, the British monk Pelagius adopted an essentially
Stoic position on the doctrine of free will and the essential goodness of
nature which is only modified by sin rather than corrupted by it. In this he
opposed the conventional position propounded by Augustine of Hippo who
believed that nature, though created good, had become so corrupted by sin
that virtue is impossible without grace.
Augustine’s position was needed in order to argue that humankind
cannot find salvation through its own efforts, only by the grace of God
through Christ. Pelagius, therefore,
was attempting to reconcile a world accepting Celto-Germanic
position to that of the world rejecting nature of Judeao-Christianity. The Germanization of Christian liturgy
and observance
Josef Jungman goes further and
states that in terms of worship, canon law, monastic life and theology, from
the ninth century it was the countries to the north of the alps that took the
lead. From the tenth century onwards, this tradition spread ever southwards
and became the cultural standard in Rome itself (Jungman, J.: the defeat of Teutonic Arianism and the revolution in religious
culture in the early middle ages.)
Examples given by Jungman of this Germanization
include an increase in private votive masses commemorating Mary and the
Saints, the increased use of making the sign of the cross at mass and the
introduction of silent prayer with folded hands – which is derived from the
posture of a vassal pledging fealty to his lord. Devotion to the saints became
more profound and widespread, a replacement of appeals to the old folk gods
with appeals to the deified saints. He also attributes to Saxon influence the
increased emphasis on representing events in Christ’s life in the mass as
well as the weekly liturgical cycle. Also attributed to the process of
Germanization is the emergence of Christmas as a
rival festival to Easter and an increased stratification of clergy and laity,
represented by a growing distance between alter and worshippers and the
introduction of a communion rail. Saxon Christianity also placed greater emphasis on objects,
such as the cross, the real presence in the Eucharist, the blessed virgin and
the scriptures compared to more subtle processes such as spiritual growth to
perfection. Pre-Christian Germanic religion had a strong magical component
and words were seen as powerful magic in their own right. Indeed, the word
‘Gospel’ has a double meaning. The better known one is from the Anglo Saxon
words ‘God Spel’, meaning ‘Good News’. However,
there is another meaning which goes deeper into the culture of the Anglo
Saxon people receiving this Good News. For ‘Gospel’ can also be seen as
deriving from the words ‘God Spel’, meaning God’s
magic – literally God’s spell. This play on words was used by the Church to
convince Anglo Saxon Kings that their God’s magic (the Bible) was more
powerful than the Holy Runes of the Germanic peoples. The Germanic concept of time Germanic and Christian concepts of time are completely
different. The former developed from the North European cycles of nature and
gave rise to a sense of the cyclical nature of time. Germanic religion saw
time in terms of things that had already come to pass, things that were now
and things which were coming to pass. Fundamental to understanding this
concept is the notion of Wyrd which
is sometimes explained the Saxon equivalent of fate. Wyrd is the force of the
past that helps to form the present and the present that is yet to come – the
nearest the Saxons had to a concept of future. Thus, the present and the
present yet to come are influenced by the past. The Sisters of Wyrd represent
these aspects of time; that which was, that which is and that which should
be. The third sister, Sculd, represents this notion
of future as that which ‘should’ be, as a result of what has been and what
is.
The Germanic and Christian concepts of
Hell Germanic heathen religion certainly had a concept of the
afterlife. Our modern word hell comes from that heathen religion, but its
meaning is very different. Usually
using just one ‘l’ to distinguish the two, the original ‘hel’ was seen as a
place of healing and regeneration. Indeed, the word ‘hel’ is etymologically
linked to our words healing, health and whole. In other Germanic languages, it means
‘light’. Something very odd happened with the process of Christianization,
resulting from the need to inculcate a sense of sin requiring salvation
through grace. As the Middle Ages progressed, so the pre-Christian notions of
the afterlife as one of purification and paradise was gradually replaced by a
Judaeo-Christian concept of it as a terrifying place of eternal torment.
Medieval Christians became obsessed with this imagery and with the need of
salvation to avoid it. To understand this, is to understand the most
important influence on the mind of the medieval European. Another key change
to the Germanic world view caused by the Christianizing process was the
replacement of pre-Christian notions of fate and destiny (Wyrd) with a world
view based on sin, repentance and salvation. We therefore see a situation in
which the pre-Christian ideas of the afterlife as a pleasant place of
regeneration and purification gave way to Judaeo-Christian ideas of an
afterlife dominated by a hell of eternal torment and the consequent world
view of sin, repentance and salvation to avoid it. Whilst salvation came from
God through Christ, it was the Church that determined ones chance of
achieving it, giving it a powerful hold over people’s lives and leading to
the mediaeval custom of selling indulgences.
The development of Germanic Arian
Christianity Not all Germanic Christianity was Saxon. Arianism was first
put forward by Presbyter Arius of Alexander (a Greek living in modern day
Egypt) who lived between 250 and 336. He believed that the Logos (Christ) was
not consubstantial or co-eternal with God the Father, being of a similar
rather than the same nature to Him and being begotten by Him at some time
before creation, but nevertheless that there was a time when He did not
exist. This view conflicted with the Trinitarian position that held that the
Father, the Logos and the Spirit to be separate personalities within a single
unity of the Godhead; each consubstantial and co-eternal. Commonly known as
the ‘Arian heresy’, this position became very popular within the Eastern
Church. The Council of Nicaea, which produced the Nicene Creed repeated in
Churches throughout the world, was specifically held to counteract Arianism.
Whilst it eventually withered away, Arianism and its many off-shoots has never gone away and today forms the basis of non Trinitarian traditions such Unitarianism and the
Jehovah’s Witnesses. However, what is important to this study is that as it
was declining within the Eastern Churches, Arianism took hold within several
Germanic societies, though not amongst the Saxons. As we shall see though,
the Germanic Arians were not defined so much by the non
Trinitarian doctrine of Arius, but rather by a folk adaptation of it
that enabled Germanic societies to maintain their separateness from Roman
Catholicism. It is this adaptation of an alien creed into an ethno-centric
Germanic folk faith that is interesting to this study rather than to the
doctrinal issues themselves. The first major contact between Christianity and a
Germanic people occurred in 376 when the Visigoths, who had occupied the
former Roman province of Dacia (modern Romania) in the previous century,
crossed the River Danube into the Roman province of Moesia (in modern day
Western Romania, Serbia and northern Bulgaria) seeking refuge from the
advancing Huns. Russell considers that the leader of one of the larger Gothic
tribes, the Tervingi, negotiated with the Arian
Christian Emperor of the Eastern Empire and adopted his religion in return
for asylum. The Gothic ‘conversion’ was therefore primarily political and, as
we saw above, was not a real conversion in the deeper meaning of the word. Perhaps the most famous exponent of Gothic Arianism was
Bishop Wulfila (Ulfila)
who had the bible translated into Gothic Germanic. Arianism was spread to
many other Germanic tribes over the course of the next few centuries, though
not all. The reason many Germanic tribes did accept Arianism had much to do
with the fact that it was not the official religion of Rome, which was
Trinitarian Catholic Orthodoxy. If they had accepted this version of the
faith, they would have been quickly absorbed into the Roman culture,
something they had been resisting for centuries. They would also have lost
some of their freedom of organisation and tribal power as Priests would have
been subject to the Roman power structures, ultimately the usually Italian
Pope. Arianism as practised by the Gothic and other Germanic tribes was not
as centralised, being organised into more local and independent
Churches. Theology, specifically the Arian denial of the Trinity, was
not a central concern to the Germanic Arians. Germanic people in general as
noted above, were not especially interested in the convoluted theological
arguments of the eastern Churches. They were more interested in the practical
benefits of the new religion and these were essentially social and political.
Because of this, and because of a lack of any real conversion, Arian
Christianity was slow to penetrate the pagan cult practice so long a part of
agrarian life. It allowed them the
advantages of being part of the wider Christian world whilst retaining a
great deal of distinctiveness, their Gothic identity and pride in their
ancestors. Martin of Braga’s catechetical guide, De Correctione Rusticorum
(c.574), reveals an interesting insight into ecclesiastical concerns
about the considerable heathen survival and recidivism amongst the common
folk of the Germanic Suevic Kingdom. Russell argues
that, in terms of universal and folk religions discussed above, Germanic
Arianism can be considered ‘ a thoroughly indigenous
reinterpretation of a universal religion, a Germanization of Arian
Christianity’. Conclusion As this article has unfolded, it has become difficult
to avoid a number of conclusions. The first and most obvious is that contrary
to received wisdom, the introduction of Christianity into the Germanic lands
produced a fusion of sorts and to the development of a unique folk
Christianity that was fundamentally different to the original Judaeo
Christianity that evolved in the middle east. This fusion produced a form of
Christianity that was strongly influenced by Saxon notions of honour,
heroism, social structure and devotion to magico
religious practices such as votive masses. However, it is hard to escape the
conclusion that some aspects of the original pagan religion were incorporated
into this folk Christianity in a way that became quite negative and even
terrifying. The pagan notion of the afterlife was a place of refreshment and
healing, but it became a place or torment and fear for medieval Saxon Christians.
Saxon Christianity was also characterised by
hierarchical social structures and unswerving loyalty to one’s superiors.
This can be both very effective and very damaging to an organisation
depending on the calibre of the leadership. It also led to monarchy as a
natural system of Government – not the constitutional monarchies of modern
Europe, but the dictatorship of earlier centuries. One of the most profound consequences of this fusion
is that of militarism and the incorporation of the warrior cult. The heroic
nature of Saxon culture was in itself a positive aspect of Saxon Christianity
and the Church sought to use these codes to the good by defining an ethical
basis for warfare. Whilst medieval Christians became obsessed with death
and the horrors of hell, a modern faith inspired by this fusion can draw more
directly from the pre-Christian Germanic ‘world accepting’ ideas that the
world is not inherently bad and that we should enjoy life in the here and now
and not worry too much about what waits us in the afterlife. Furthermore, it
can and should, look to the original meaning of hel rather than the place of
torment it was turned into. The notion of hel as a place of regeneration fits
in better with the view of time as being cyclical and the ‘birth, death,
rebirth’ cycle that follows from this.
Any modern faith that draws from the syncretism of
Saxon Christianity can also be more open about spirit beings, Elfs, land and
water spirits. It can honour our ancestors and see them as being able to
intercede for us in the next world. Saxon notions of folk and identity,
linking ourselves to our ancestors and those of us yet to come, is also an
extremely important legacy that our pagan past has brought to Saxon
Christianity. In short, the notion of a folk centred ethnic religion that
grew out of the contact between Christianity and our ancestors’ pre-Christian
traditions is something that will appeal to many people in our modern day. |
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