Inclusive Heathenry: The Use of German Pagan Rhetoric in the Construction of a Progressive Contemporary Religion

Abstract

Germanic Paganism, or Heathenry, is a New Religious Movement (NRM) which first started in the late 1960s and has developed through the following years. Early research focused on the Heathen movement in its violent and racial forms, resulting in an anchoring bias which subsequent scholars of Heathenry are working to move past. In the current moment, Heathenry’s dominant form in Canada is “Inclusive Heathenry” which actively embraces and celebrates diversity in participants’ race, gender, and sexual orientation. This thesis analyzes the use of rhetoric in the development of Inclusive Heathenry in a North American, but predominantly Canadian, context. Recent scholarship on Heathenry has aimed to focus on tensions surrounding racism and anti-racist efforts. I discuss three such tensions faced by Inclusive practitioners as the movement matures. The first are the ways Inclusive practitioners are forced to navigate the legacy of racism as they construct their practice as a legitimate movement in the category of “religion.” The second is how understandings of masculinity are inherent to Heathenry’s beginning and ongoing development as practitioners create and enact male-coded “Heathen acts.” Now, some Inclusive Heathens are critically analyzing the legacy of gendered ideals as they “queer” the movement into what I suggest is its own unique form of “Queer” Heathenry. The third is the relationship that Heathens, like other contemporary pagans, develop with locations as a “sense of place.” I posit that Heathens are encouraged to develop both a “lived-in” and “mythic” sense of place which overlap and merge through Heathen practice. Inclusive Heathenry now shows signs of moving away from the Heathen movement to fall more in line with the progressive politics seen in other forms of contemporary paganism.