Univerzita Pardubice Fakulta filozofická

Univerzita Pardubice

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Publikace detail

Changes in Neopaganism: On Hidden Christian Tendencies in Contemporary Neopaganism

Autoři: Horák Pavel

Rok: 2014

Druh publikace: ostatní - konference, koncert

Strana od-do: nestránkováno

Tituly:

Jazyk	Název	Abstrakt	Klíčová slova
eng	Changes in Neopaganism: On Hidden Christian Tendencies in Contemporary Neopaganism	Neopaganism is quite a new phenomenon in the western religious scene. Neopagans try to reconstruct and continue practising ancient European preChristian traditions, especially Celtic, Slavic and German. The first institutionalization of a Neopagan group was in USA in 1962. With some examples of recent development of Neopaganism in Czech republic and in the USA, I would like to show how Neopaganism has been changing over time since its beginning. There have been two unsuccessful attempts to register Neopaganism as a “state registered” religious society so far. After registration, the registered group receives special rights such as vacations for religious reasons or the right to have religious funerals. Three Neopagan umbrella groups have been found in Czech republic in last few years. In general the current trend shows that followers would rather prefer to be seen as (neo)pagans and not as wicca or druid, for instance. Neopagans discuss the nature of gods, notion of (neo)paganism and what is considered as pagan and what not. The situation in USA was similar with the only difference being the tendency to see Neopaganism as something satanic due to the strong influence of anti cult movements. These along with some other factors have led American Neopagans to draw up “articles of faith” or creeds. There is something similar going on in the Czech Republic.However, it is motivated by the need to achieve state registration. Putting it simply, Neopagans under the pressure from various sides and/or even from their own point of view, conceptualize their Neopaganism within the framework of Christianity, by creating institutions, systematic “pagan” theology and confession of faith among other things which according to S. N. Balagangadhara, who greatly influenced my research, are among the features of religion (Christianity). The framework of this particular branch of New Religious Movements is implicitly Christian.	Neopaganism, contemporary Paganism, Institutionalization, Wicca, doctrine