‘What ideas influenced the religion of the Aztecs?’ (short 300-word response)
‘Why do intangible gods and God have genders?’ (short 300-word response)
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The term “natural” raises several questions: do Pagans have a closer “spiritual” connection to nature than members of the Abrahamic traditions? Can all Pagans be described this way? Is the Pagan’s religious consciousness more “natural” in terms of understanding the true essence of religion? I will assume the questioner has the natural environment in mind since this is the area Pagans arguably stress the most.

Paganism indeed has a marked connection with nature. The ancient Celts, for example, date back to the fourth century BCE, and later sources (Caesar’s Gallic Wars, Irish sagas, etc.) describe them as practitioners of astrology and magic who often met in nature in groves to perform their rituals.

There has been a romanticization of the ancient Celts over the past three centuries, much of it in response to patriarchal religious traditions. The Earth may be seen as Mother, or, for many, as a supreme Goddess. Members affirm magical worldviews pertaining to unseen relations between all elements of the cosmos, and that an individual can participate in these relations. These often take place in communal covens and groves on mountains or in forests. Pagans want to protect the natural world, and various animals are considered to have special powers.

These pagans are pantheists who believe the world is inherently divine. Alternatively, the Abrahamic traditions disagree and consider the natural world the creation of a deity who transcendentally exists outside of the world itself. This likely explains the less marked dimension of environmental concerns among members. Some, particularly historian Lynn White, argue that Christian belief in human dominion has caused environmental devastation, which has prompted theologians to outline appropriate theological models for understanding the connections between God, humans, and nature.

Further, for many, the fact that the world is God’s creation engenders respect for it. A Muslim scholar, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, spearheaded ecotheology for decades and critically discussed the entanglements between religion and environmental crises.