AFA NOW ACCEPTING MEMBERS!

from AFA Update April 2005

For some time, the AFA has heard from our friends and supporters within the Germanic spiritual community, urging us to accept members. These were people who wanted a sense of community, fellowship, and common cause in furtherance of our Folkway – people who, reading our AFA Updates or visiting our web site, wanted to take an active part.

We’ve decided they’re right. By popular demand, the AFA is now offering membership to individuals supporting our goals.

In the paragraphs below, I’ll describe our mission statement, our goals, and a vision of what Asatru can become, and explain how those who are interested can become members in the AFA.

The AFA’s Mission

The AFA, in the words of its mission statement, is “to practice, promote, and further evolve the religion of Asatru, thus forging it into a powerful and effective tool for building a better world.” Note the active tone here: We want to make a difference!

Since its founding in 1994, the AFA has sponsored countless gatherings, written groundbreaking documents, published successful newsletters, and been repeatedly quoted in the national and international media. The AFA has proposed new ideas, challenged the status quo, and generally pushed the boundaries of the possible.

…And now, we are ready to do much more!

The AFA’s Goals

Some of the tasks we have set ourselves, are:

1. Encouraging people to live noble lives and to grow spiritually, with ever-increasing wisdom, personal empowerment, and joy.

2. Bringing the might of the Holy Powers into the world through sacred ritual, on the group and individual level.

3. Making Asatru a viable, respected, and well-known alternative in the modern world.

4. Vastly increasing the number of people who follow Asatru. We have not even begun to tap our potential for growth!

5. Making the world a better place by positively influencing the culture in which we are embedded, enhancing the life-affirming and freedom-promoting values of our ancestral Folkway, and building a strong community among followers of our faith. The AFA’s Vision Imagine a world where the names of our holy Gods and Goddesses are instantly recognized in ordinary households across the country…where our places of worship are dotted across the land, regularly packed with scores – or hundreds! – of eager men and women who have come home to their spiritual birthright…where the writers of textbooks, the shapers of legislation, and the molders of public opinion will have to take into consideration those of us who follow the Germanic Folkway – in short, a world where our cultural voice is loudly heard.

Imagine, too, that these people (Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands?) are bonded together with our own voluntary systems to help each other in a multitude of ways, both spiritual and practical…Odin’s Nation here in the realm of humankind. This won’t happen overnight. It will take time and hard work, but with the help of people like you, it can be done!

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