Tag Archives: American religion

When Is a Monk not a Monk?

When he or she is a student at the University of Pennsylvania.

Given that this is a religious-studies class (academic, not doctrinal) at a secular university,  I thought that the professor had an interesting idea.

The … course on monastic life and asceticism gives students at the University of Pennsylvania a firsthand experience of what it’s like to be a monk.

At various periods during the semester, students must forego technology, coffee, physical human contact and certain foods. They’ll also have to wake up at 5 a.m. – without an alarm clock.

Rather than reading or watching videos, they would have an embodied experience.

Now obviously it is a doctrinal-content-free experience on one level: it is just “monasticism,” not Catholic or Buddhist or anything else in terms of content. We might call it “core monasticism,” on a parallel with Michael Harner’s “core shamanism.”

The “faith-free” aspect—and the reporter’s failure to ask the how’s and why’s—annoyed Terry Mattingly at Get Religion, the blog critiquing journalistic coverage of religion. (Believe me, there is plenty to critique.)

I assume that there would be other ways of stating that requirement that the students eliminate “physical human contact.” That might have something to do with chastity and celibacy. One wonders why the story didn’t simply state that clearly, right up front. Perhaps it’s more shocking these days to discuss students giving up coffee and cell telephones.

The key to reading this AP report, however, is to strive not to focus on the content of McDaniel’s class and to try to figure out the degree to which the reporter did or didn’t miss some basic subjects.

But first, what is the tradition that shapes this form of monasticism that is acceptable on an elite university campus?

In the comments, Prof. Anthea Butler, another member of Penn’s religious studies faculty, promises a response in her column at Religion Dispatches. It is not yet published, but I will link to to it when it is available.

Did the class have a “spiritual” component? Should it have? Or is asking college students to give up cell phones and coffee and to take notes with a pen equivalent to hair shirts, self-mortification, and ora et labora in itself??

Actually, my first thought was, “Where is the music?” The students should meet at 5 a.m. in a large room with a good echo for half an hour of Gregorian chant. But that would be “content.”

More Reality TV Pagans

If you want, you can sign a petition against or about the treatment of contemporary Paganism on The Learning Channel and The Discovery Channel.

I’m glad that I don’t have cable TV, y’know?

2012 AAR “Call” Now Online

The call for papers for the next annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion is now available online. You will find the Contemporary Pagan Studies Group’s CFP here.

Cemetery Theory in the Upland South

From a blog about the archaeology of American cemeteries:

There are cemeteries that are formally laid out, for example, most city cemeteries (many of which follow the ideas of the Rural Cemetery movement, but that’s a topic for another day), then there are the folk cemeteries – those that follow a folk, or vernacular, pattern. The distinction is roughly analogous to that between Landmark Architecture (created by professionally trained and schooled architects) and Vernacular Architecture (everything else – often applied to barns, houses, and other structures). Like Folk/Vernacular Architecture, Folk Cemeteries follow a cultural pattern developed through tradition and practical experience. There are many different traditions in cemeteries, one of which is the Upland South Folk Cemetery as defined by D. Gregory Jeane. I’m going to prevent a sort of thumbnail sketch of the Upland South Folk Cemetery (USFC), if you’d like to know more check out suggested reading at the end of this post.

Fascinating reading.

 

Wicca without “Woo”

I linked earlier to one of Eric Steinhart’s series of discussions and critiques of Wicca from a non-theistic philosophical perspective. Here is the last, apparently, on Wicca without the “woo”:

It’s probably not possible for Wicca to renounce the culture of woo.  But an atheistic nature-religion in the United States is possible.

Despite Steinhart’s perspective, however, his blogging annoyed some of the heavyweights at Freethoughtblogs.com, of which Camels with Hammers is part.

Having read a few of Eric’s contributions, I am disgusted. Prolix bafflegab, confusion, thinly veiled attempts to rationalize pagan mysticism, and just general longwinded bullshit. Why have you invited him here? He’s awful.

Woo indeed. Apparently Wicca comes under the heading of Things That May Not Be Discussed if you are a committed atheist. (Condemnation from the security of one’s armchair would be all right, I suppose.) If you take it seriously enough to discuss the possibility of an “atheistic nature religion,” you have become ideologically unclean.

Ironic, eh?

Learning about Pagans for the Purpose of Converting Them

Last month, I answered some questions from a reporter for a Christian news site.

He had such response that now he is on the Pagan beat. So I give you “A Peek at Modern Paganism, Part One” and “Part Two.”

Soon — wait for it — you meet that reliable figure, the ex-Pagan who found Jesus.

(Sorry, but there is a long history of fraud about that. One example here: John Todd. I mentioned Todd to the reporter, Mark Hensch, but Christian reporters rarely seem to investigate the claims of ex-Pagans on the lecture trail. Todd was brought down by Christian journalists, it’s true, but he is just one example of the type.)

Understanding such multiplicity, says former Santeria-high-priest-turned-evangelical-Christian-author John Ramirez, is vital to befriending and ministering to pagans. Christians need grace, compassion and mercy, he said, to connect with their pagan peers.

Interestingly, the next expert quoted is James Beverley, a Canadian whom I know slightly from academic study of new religious movements, in which he is active. But here he has his theologian hat on:

“Witchcraft ultimately fails in the mythic and legendary nature of its gods and goddesses,” Beverley writes in Nelson’s Illustrated Guide to Religions’ chapter on Wicca. “The Roman, Celtic, Nordic and Greek deities dwell only in the followers’ imaginations. The lack of historical trustworthiness concerning Artemis or Zeus or Diana or Isis is in direct contrast the historical nature of the Gospel accounts of Jesus Christ.”

Bottom line: be strong in your faith, learn to appreciate nature, and you can get close to the Pagans.

 

What Do Pagans Get from Interfaith Activities?

What does “ecumenism” mean when you don’t “all worship the same god”?

Elizabeth Scalia, a/k/a The Anchoress, a Roman Catholic blogger at Patheos, comments simultaneously on posts by another Patheos Catholic blogger and by Star Foster, who manages the site’s Pagan portal. Both of the latter, in Star’s words, hold that “My faith is not a matter of style. It’s not like shoes or purses. It’s not a matter of deciding if I want tacos or pasta for dinner. It’s not something I can change on a whim.”

Scalia’s verdict: “Ecumenism has not been able to say that [not all religions are the same]; it’s been too busy trying to be all things to all people and placing equal values to things that are not equal in anyone’s mind. It’s been a lie.”

She ends up admiring Star for her honesty, at least. But her commenters, many of them, are not convinced.  “I couldn’t call myself a Catholic and not tell you that the practice of Witchcraft is evil,” notes one.

Which is why I sometimes wonder why we — Pagans in particular — bother with ecumenical and interfaith activities.

It’s true that I do often feel that religious professionals have more in common with each other and are more able to relate to one another than their congregants and followers are.

We Pagans do not seek unity with the same fervor that the Christians do (even as they splinter more and more). “Ecumenicism” refers to a promotion of unity, of purpose if not of organization, between different Christian bodies.

“Interfaith” has a somewhat different meaning.  At times the two words are used interchangeably, but they should not be. Were it not for the American constitutional tradition of religious freedom (and similar traditions in some other Western nations), I do not think that the Pagans would get a seat at the interfaith luncheon table. (Resolutions passed by the United Nations have no effect that I have ever seen.)

So my title is an editorial rather than a rhetorical question.  I have just been going over some material related to the Contemporary Pagan Studies Group in the American Academy of Religion —  the 2012 call for papers has not yet been posted but soon will be. I don’t know if that topic would fit the “call” perfectly, but a creative person could make it fit. Or write an article for The Pomegranate.

 

Top Pagan New Stories of 2011

Do visit The Wild Hunt and read “Top Ten Pagan Stories of 2011, Part 1” and “Part 2.”

Asperger’s or Just Garage-Band Religion?

My friends who are scholars of new religious movements (NRMs)  theorize about how NRMs develop or do not, become accepted or do not, assimilate or do not. Some engage in a “scholarship of advocacy,” defending in various fora the human right to start one’s own religion without being labeled a dangerous cult.

But in many cases, I think that they also just enjoy the spectacle of religion, the sheer weirdness and variety of what comes down the road.

Rod Dreher, a cultural commentator who often touches on religion, but not a scholar of NRMS as such, put up a light-hearted post recently about “His Royal Highness Prince Rutherford Johnson of Etruria, who is also Rutherford Cardinal Johnson, the patriarch of the recently invented Anglican Rite Roman Catholic Church.”

Some of the comments are quite good and lead to other links about episcopi vagantes  — self-proclaimed or dubious bishops, archbishops, and anti-popes.

One commenter hypothesized an Asperger’s syndrome connection, only with hierarchies, vestments, and churchiness rather than computers, trains, or some of the other intense fascinations that Aspie kids often display.

It all reminded me of my wife’s step-brother. He had a fairly mainstream Roman Catholic childhood in upstate New York, but was always fascinated with orders of knighthood and coats of arms, which he designed for the family. He eventually found some decayed European aristocrat to make him a knight of the “Order of St. Constantine” or something, whereupon he put out a news release about himself, which appeared in his local newspaper.

“Do you think he was somewhere on that spectrum?” I asked her.

“He was always just weird,” she said.

Setting aside the dynamics of her family, maybe some people are just weirdly creative. On a scale of 1 to 5, how much weirder is starting a church than starting a garage band? (Both might have a secondary goal of improving your social life.) Both are creative activities.

Archbishop . . . archdruid . . . arch-whatever. Here comes the parade!

An Atheistic Critique of Wicca

Blogging atheist Eric Steinhart, writing at Daniel Fincke’s Camels with Hammers, turns his rhetorical guns on Wicca. He thinks that a “woo-free Wicca” might be tolerable.

There are a number of separate posts, and I have not read them all. But I get the impression that he is engaging with a very limited number of books, chosen more or less at random from the Llewellyn catalog, plus something by the late Stewart Farrar.

The irony is that there are indeed a huge number of books about Wicca, yet everyone calls it a religion of experience, “embodied religion,” and so forth. I am not sure that Steinhart gets that part. Has he been in circle? Has he experienced the fire and smoke and music of a large festival?

I don’t mean that either experience would “convert” him, nor should they. And he probably would respond that they merely activate different parts of the brain, which has nothing to do with all those imaginary gods, etc.

What interests me here too is that his postings provide another data point in the increasing role of contemporary Paganism — and Wicca (broadly defined) as its largest segment — as the new religious “other.”

What people like Steinhart have yet to work out is that the rhetorical starting points are different when talking about polytheism, animism, etc. than when talking about the scriptural religions.