Stoicism and Religion II

In the last post, I concluded that Stoicism isn't a religion, but could be religious, at least in a sense.  But is that truly the case?

I think that strictly speaking it can be if we use "religious" according to its dictionary definition as set forth in Merriam-Webster online.  A Stoic certainly can be devoted to a deity or underlying reality (the vague "Divine Fire" or "Divine Reason").  We can and do say that someone who believes in God is religious.  But the "God" commonly referred to when we say that word isn't an immanent "God" of the kind we find referred to by the ancient Stoics or other pantheists, nor is it the "god of the philosophers" we see referred to often enough even by those ostensibly devoted to institutional religions.

Who and why the reference is made is interesting, however, and indicates that the meaning of "God" is dependent on that who and that why.  Christian apologists, theologians and philosophers throughout history have managed to maintain that the "god of the philosophers" or something very much like that "god" is, in fact, the Christian God.  When they do that I think they necessarily must disregard Jesus as he is depicted in the Gospels, though (despite the Gospel of John's use of the word "logos" which must then, perforce, be made flesh and walk among us--something it's rather hard to imagine logos doing).  Nor is it possible to claim that the Christian God as he is actually worshiped in Christian churches is the god of the philosophers, if the ceremony of worship is considered.

And so I wonder whether it is entirely honest, if it is disingenuous in other words, to claim that Jesus is the god of the philosophers as is attempted from time to time.   Maybe those who do that are like some of the ancient philosophers who claimed that people should engage in the traditional worship of the gods despite the fact that the myths pertaining to them were silly at best.

If worship as ceremony, or ritual, is required for one to be religious, however, it would seem that a Stoic would not be religious.  Western history would seem to establish that worship is communal, something that groups of believers participated in generally at regular times and in a particular manner.  That was the case as far as I'm aware in pre-Christian and Christian times.  The ancient mysteries involved ceremony and invocation in group settings; sometimes large groups as in the case of the Eleusinian mysteries, sometimes in very small groups (the temples or caves in which devotees of Mithras would meet suggest 20 to 50 men would participate in worship).  Pagan worship involved parades and feasting and rituals of various kinds.  Christian worship certainly is communal, though one hears of hermits and folk who lived on pillars and other ascetic extremes, but these are rarities, and meant to be.

I find it hard to picture Stoics gathering for any similar purpose.  For that matter, I find it hard to imagine what they would do.  I personally am adverse to religious gatherings and ceremonies of any kind, though I've noted before my sentimental fondness for the old Catholic ritual.  This is one of the reasons I avoid not only Catholic but other Christian, and even Unitarian gatherings (from what I hear, Unitarians are similar to Christian church gatherings, with singing and reading from I'm not sure who--perhaps the New England Transcendentalists).  The only current non-pagan form of worship I can think of that might be tolerable would be Quaker, where it seems nothing is required beyond silent contemplation unless someone gets the urge to testify--which I like to think would be infrequent.  As for the so-called modern pagans, I suspect that Wiccans, Druids etc. do whatever they do in groups and that some sort of ceremony and liturgy is involved.

Are there any forms of worship engaged in by Stoics, or pantheists, or panentheists?  If so I don't know.  And this makes me wonder whether worship of such a kind can be, and also wonder whether it is possible for them to be considered religious.