ABSTRACT
It used to be straightforward to say “Paganism is a nature religion”. One conference about “Contemporary Paganism” (at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1994) was followed by another on “Nature Religions Today” (at the University of Lancaster in 1996) debating similar topics and with a significant overlap in the list of speakers and participants. Since then, the referents and resonances of the three words-Paganism, nature and religion-have become more difficult to be clear about, especially when collocated. The reasons for this are closely entangled with changing and contested uses of the term animism in both popular and scholarly contexts. What was once a synonym of religion, emphasizing “belief in spirits” (Tylor 1871) and thus prioritizing metaphysics, has become more closely allied to nature than to supernature. It speaks of interactions with the world rather than of its transcendence, and of ontology rather than epistemology. Precisely these dynamic and ongoing contests over the uses of “Paganism” and “animism” encourage and reward further critical reflection on what ecology means in relation to religion and/or spirituality, and vice versa.
