A Christopagan Experiment

My husband and I are a ChristoPagan couple with plans for a family. What does this mean? To us, this means that though he is a Christian and I a Pagan, we are not only able to build a life together, but that we are able to worship together. While I do not believe in/worship Elohim or his son, I can agree with his teachings. And though my husband does believe in Elohim and his son as Jesus the Christ, he is able to incorporate that into our Pagan rituals.

Even though our beliefs are incredibly different, we are both deeply spiritual and our beliefs are important to us. So finding a way to bring them together was extremely important. The fact that my husband is a non-traditional Christian - a Christian that is more concerned with his spiritual than any set of dogma - made this transition easier.

When we met, I had been practicing Paganism for six years and was fairly open about my beliefs, so he knew when we met. He was interested in my way of worship and I welcomed him to join me and others that I occasionally celebrated holidays with. Because we were open, and a group of people whose individual beliefs varied person by person, it didn't take long before he felt comfortable joining our rites. And because most teachings of Christianity are teachings that are found in all beliefs and all cultures, we found that we often see eye to eye on major points of faith.

When it works for you, it is beautiful. When it doesn't, we simply have to find a way around it. For our marriage, we had a handfasting ceremony in 2007 and a Christian ceremony - which was the legal wedding - in March of this year. We celebrate Christmas and Yule, Ostara and Easter; but whenever we are able, we call all our deities together, honoring them individually in our hearts and together through our rituals. In bringing this important part of our lives together, we deepen our relationship.

All of this is important for us because we want to raise a family some day soon. It is one thing to build a family. It is another to mesh to beliefs into a working life. But if we are able to find a working system before we bring children into this world, at least we will be able to teach them in a way that we both agree on.

So that we can work out answers to some of the harder questions that we know will come one day. We have already decided that our children will have a Pagan-style naming ceremony, and that our children's godparents will be both Pagan and Christian. We know that in all things we will try to be honest with our children and give them enough room to make their own decisions about what religion is the right one for them.