Yesterday, I ran into the following image over on Threads:

For those who cannot see the image, it’s a lovely block of text written by Witch Joseph. The text reads as follows:

Dear Religious People…I don’t know what I believe and post about offend you…it’s not like I follow a book that teaches that you will be torture in flames for eternity for not believing as I do…now that would be offensive.

Over all, I think it’s a powerful statement and one that I agree with. However, the fact that it’s addressed to “religious people” bothered me a bit. You see, I’m religious myself. In fact, a lot of witches are.

Witch Joseph and I had a brief conversation about that fact and I think was a productive one. To summarize, he acknowledged that he too is religious and that he’s using “religious” in the context of the above statement to mean a very particular kind of religiosity. In many ways, I can respect that. After al, I’ve written more than a few answers about what people possibly mean when they say they’re “spiritual but not religious”¹ over on Quora and those answers usually involve acknowledging that people using a very particular definition of “religiosity as well.”

And yet, I’m still personally uncomfortable with it. After all, I’m not convinced that people who read the text in the image are aware that the author is using a very particular definition of “religious people” or “religion” or that there are other definitions out there. As the title of this blog post suggests, it feels to me as though it helps to further embed the idea that “religion” and “Christianity” are synonyms. In a society where Christian hegemony is rampant and often goes unrecognized, I think that’s concerning.

I think it’s a bad idea to let Christians define what it means to be “religious” and surrender the word to their mechanizations. As someone who is a member of a minority religion, I think it’s important to point out that “religion” and “religiosity” comes in many shapes, sizes, colors, and flavors. Otherwise , we help pave the way for those who want to say that our religions are not “real religions” because they’re nothing like Christianity, the “gold standard” of religions in many people’s minds.

Relatedly, I want to draw people’s attention to Yvonne Aburrow’s series of videos in which they advocate for Pagans reclaiming certain words (including “religion“). I think it’s important to show that these words have other meanings and remind everyone that there are ideas in the “religious marketplace” that are substantively different than (a particular kind of) Christianity.

Footnote

1. Personally, I find that phrasing troubling as well, and for many of the same reasons. I think this is important to note that my issue is not with Witch Joseph (in fact, I think he’s awesome). My problem is with a broader trend that I find concerning because it’s so common. Joseph merely provided a recent example of that trend. ↩︎