‘A hint of paganism’

Sydney Carter, who wrote the hymn “Lord of the Dance” to a tune (“‘Tis a Gift to be Simple”) originally created by the Shakers, a movement of 19th-century American religious communalists, has died. Says the Daily Telegraph in Britain, “But the optimistic lines “I danced in the morning when the world begun/ and I danced in the moon and the stars and the sun” also contain a hint of paganism which, mixed with Christianity, makes it attractive to those of ambiguous religious beliefs or none at all.”

Full story here.

And some of us hear only Gwydion Pendderwen’s more blatantly Pagan version in our minds when we think of it.

Thanks to GetReligion for the link, where blogger Douglas LeBlanc is discomfited by those pagan overtones too.

But she is not a Western goddess

Right-wingers complain that naming the new planet Sedna is a manifestation of liberal white guilt or something.

No doubt they would have been happier if the astronomers had chosen “Hekate.”

Not being Inuit, the name merely reminds me of a former comic strip in the Pagan magazine PanGaia, in which Sedna had a role.

A kinder, gentler Anglo-Saxon invasion?

New tools of DNA analysis are causing British archaeologists to rethink the idea of the Anglo-Saxon invasions that followed the collapse of Roman rule. Anyone who has imersed themselves in the Arthurian period tends to think of Anglo-Saxon versus British conflict as something resembling “ethnic cleansing.” I remember as a kid reading Walter O’Meara’s The Duke of War, one fictional treatment of Arthur, the “decisive battle” of Mount Badon, Romanized mostly Christian British versus heathen Saxons, etc.

New studies of teeth in cemetaries of the period, however, are showing fewer persons than expected who were born outside Britain, as the BBC reports here. Was the change, the language shift, more cultural than violent? It’s still an open–and interesting–question.

Heresies

Yesterday by the photocopier, Colleague A (Political Science) cornered me. She and Colleague B (Psychology) had been at the local Barnes & Noble store and seen the B&N edition of The Encyclopedia of Heresies and Heretics, which I wrote in 1991 when a friend was acquisitions editor at ABC-Clio and invited me to do a book for them. “Is that our Chas?” wondered Colleague A. That’s what happens when you teach in one field and write in another!

Frankly, I was amazed a few years ago when B&N reprinted it. The check was a nice surprise too. Now it’s apparently out of print. I had been curious who bought the book, aside from the original intended market of librarians. This review from British e-zine editor Matthew Cheeseman gives one suggestion. (The lower trade-book price doesn’t hurt, either.)

A little Googling: here is an someone with an online Christian ministry building a virtual homily around my introduction. (Unlike Cheeseman, Timothy King evidently does not Google his sources.)

And speaking of a different sort of “heresy.” My humor column from the earlier, print version of “Letter from Hardscrabble Creek” on “Training Your Soul Retriever” pops up on an actual dog-training web site. (Scroll down). Or you can read it here. It was a gentle parody of retriever experts such as Eloise Heller Cherry and Richard Wolter. What would happen if Wolter collaborated with neoshaman Michael Harner?

Reincarnation

A study from Barna Research Group on beliefs about the afterlife shows 18 percent of Americans accepting the idea of reincarnation–even some evangelical Christians. Other contradictions abound as well. Thanks to Joe Perez for the original link.

The Roller Coaster

In a little bit of a haze from some hay-fever medication, I finished the first draft of Her Hidden Children, my book on the rise of contemporary Paganism (mainly Wicca) in America, over the weekend.

Now I have started the complete re-editing, and that means I am on the emotional roller-coaster. It’s pretty good. It’s pathetically sophomoric. I have some original insights. No, it’s just a miserable dribble from the cauldron of scholarship. It would have been better if I could have written it ten years ago; now it is dated, and who will care, anyway? No, I had some original insights.

And so on and on and on.

The only thing to do is to get it into the publisher’s hands (only a year and a half late) as soon as possible and move on to the next thing.

Meanwhile, I am awaiting my copies of The Paganism Reader. Co-editor Graham Harvey says–and the illustration here, from Routledge’s web site, seems to confirm, that Routledge stayed with their utterly dreary cover design.

In the real world: I saw my first kestrel, flying low against a strong northwest wind, while driving to the university today. I left home wearing a leather jacket over a fleece vest, but at some point realized that I need not need the Jeep’s heater on (not that a 1973 CJ-5’s heater produces all that much warmth), and by the time I reached Pueblo, I was shedding layers. Spring comes on in a rush. When is the next blizzard due?

Vanity vinyl

From the Pork Tornado blog, a couple of pages of the strangest and/or worst album covers ever. Most date from the 1970s, but that’s not the problem. As someone who was alive and buying albums back then, I can say that some of these would have chilled my blood even then.

But it’s like “vanity publishing:” if you want to pay for it, you can be a recording, uh, artist.

Next, the Associated Press Stylebook

Wren at Witches’ Voice posts an item about a student Pagan group meeting in a Kentucky high school, much to the surprise of administrators.

But here is the interesting part: the reporter’s last paragraph explaining what Paganism is. In fact, he repeats the Pagan “party line” about the antiquity, earth-centeredness (whatever that means–I’m trying to define it in a book), and pervasiveness of Pagan beliefs. The scholar in me makes a wry expression; the Witch in me smiles.

I recently bought a new copy of the reporter’s bible, The Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law, which has no entry for “Paganism,” although it does cover other religions and denominations within them, with instructions for writers, e.g., “Episcopalian” is a person but not an adjective. At this rate, I can see a small change coming for the next edition.

Aphrodite Bats Last

A New York Times report by a Columbia University sociologist on the virginity pledges promoted by some Christian groups such as True Love Waits finds that pledge-takers do delay the onset of sexual activity, yet tend to contract sexually transmitted diseases at about the same rate as their peers, suggesting that they do not get additional education on STDs.

Key paragraphs:

By age 23, half the teenagers who had made virginity pledges were married, compared with 25 percent of those who had not pledged, the study found. Dr. Bearman said he did not know whether the teenagers who had broken their pledges did so initially with their fianc?s or with others, because the data had not yet been analyzed.

But he said, “After they break their pledge, the gates are open, and they catch up,” having more partners in a shorter time.

Link courtesy of Religion News Blog.

Aphrodite Bats Last

A New York Times report by a Columbia University sociologist on the virginity pledges promoted by some Christian groups such as True Love Waits finds that pledge-takers do delay the onset of sexual activity, yet tend to contract sexually transmitted diseases at about the same rate as their peers, suggesting that they do not get additional education on STDs.

Key paragraphs:

By age 23, half the teenagers who had made virginity pledges were married, compared with 25 percent of those who had not pledged, the study found. Dr. Bearman said he did not know whether the teenagers who had broken their pledges did so initially with their fianc?s or with others, because the data had not yet been analyzed.

But he said, “After they break their pledge, the gates are open, and they catch up,” having more partners in a shorter time.

Link courtesy of Religion News Blog.

Aphrodite Bats Last

A New York Times report by a Columbia University sociologist on the virginity pledges promoted by some Christian groups such as True Love Waits finds that pledge-takers do delay the onset of sexual activity, yet tend to contract sexually transmitted diseases at about the same rate as their peers, suggesting that they do not get additional education on STDs.

Key paragraphs:

By age 23, half the teenagers who had made virginity pledges were married, compared with 25 percent of those who had not pledged, the study found. Dr. Bearman said he did not know whether the teenagers who had broken their pledges did so initially with their fianc?s or with others, because the data had not yet been analyzed.

But he said, “After they break their pledge, the gates are open, and they catch up,” having more partners in a shorter time.

Link courtesy of Religion News Blog.

Aphrodite Bats Last

A New York Times report by a Columbia University sociologist on the virginity pledges promoted by some Christian groups such as True Love Waits finds that pledge-takers do delay the onset of sexual activity, yet tend to contract sexually transmitted diseases at about the same rate as their peers, suggesting that they do not get additional education on STDs.

Key paragraphs:

By age 23, half the teenagers who had made virginity pledges were married, compared with 25 percent of those who had not pledged, the study found. Dr. Bearman said he did not know whether the teenagers who had broken their pledges did so initially with their fianc?s or with others, because the data had not yet been analyzed.

But he said, “After they break their pledge, the gates are open, and they catch up,” having more partners in a shorter time.

Link courtesy of Religion News Blog.

Grading with Gollum

Putting off sitting down to a pile of student papers, I find this, as if I were not already halfway there tonight.

Hates them. Ssstupid sstudentses, don’t even read the textbook, no preciouss.

Link courtesy of Crooked Timber.