by Julian Greene

Created on: May 21, 2008

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Hamlet, Act 1, Scene V.

Unlike most Pagans, I spent many years in Christianity. I was a devoted Christian in leadership in the Church. But the very thing that kept me a devoted Christian is also what led me out of Christianity and into Paganism - a deeply inquiring mind.

From pre-school through my mid-teens, Christianity was a pleasant social milieu. Then, when I became interested in my faith, I began to question everything, but I questioned it all in the context of Christianity. My grandmother was my role model, a loving, knowledgeable church leader, and it was my ambition to follow in her footsteps.

After my "born-again" experience at 16, my eyes were opened to rank hypocrisy. Despite some pretty hairy experiences, I had one burning question: where is this thing called "holiness" that everyone talks about?

I began visiting many different denominations and endlessly searching the Scriptures. But rather than make me a fundamentalist, my life-dominating quest created my own brand of Christianity. I became a candidate for ministry and pursued my quest. Each experience led me deeper, and deeper, but into what?

I learned that I loved ritual. High Church was for me. I was entranced from the moment I first embraced it. The first time I set foot in an Episcopal church, I began to truly feel at home. Then when I entered seminary, I began to understand much more when I studied the Catholic mystics. The experience of the mystics paralleled my own experience of God, or of the Other.

I began to realize why I was so different from my peers. Most other ministers I was around fairly sat on the edge of their seats when they talked to me - always somehow sensing the heresy in what I was saying, but unable to put their finger on it. It was because I knew the Bible too thoroughly, and I could find room for my beliefs in it, passage by passage every time. They had no clue how to refute what I was saying.

I was teaching, ministering, and preaching by that time. My classes and congregations sat on the edge of their seats, too, but for a different reason. Instead of sensing heresy, they sensed something real - a quality in what I taught that was somehow subtly, yet boldly different than anything else they had ever been taught.

I finally realized that most Christian pastors and church-people twist the scriptures in whatever way they see fit in order to fit their own belief systems. I didn't have

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