Tag Archives: American religion

Strictly Forbidden

A list of laws against Pagan practice, from the late days of the Roman Empire (4th-6th centuries C.E.), compiled by Christopher Ocker of San Francisco Theological Seminary.

Those Christian emperors just swung a big ax. On the other hand, the divine Julian’s ways of dealing with Christians were much subtler. After all, why force someone who does not believe in the gods to teach the Iliad, which is so painful to their conscience?

Medicine man granted ‘confession’ right

Courtesy of Belief Net via Gus DiZerega comes this federal judge’s decisionthat a Native medicine man can enjoy the same privilege of keeping secrets that Christian clergy enjoy, when those secrets are given in confidence during sacramental confession or its equivalent. (UPDATE: Link is broken.)

Barbie, the Hot Pagan Witch

I am in debt to Mark Morford’s SF Gate column on the latest, must-have Barbie doll. (Mattel offers a dark-complexioned version as well.) She would be just right to look down on you and your plushies while you are reading some of Llewellyn Publications’ latest teen-witch fiction.

Demeter on a John Deere

I love a good conspiracy theory, especially when it involves what I always thought was one of the most innocuous of fraternal orders. You will find a calmer discussion here.

Smokey and the Sacred

My paper “Smokey and the Sacred: Nature Religion, Civil Religion, and American Paganism” has been accepted for a special issue of the journal Ecotheology, edited by Graham Harvey.

The publishing agreement, however, forbids me from publishing more than the abstract online. (But maybe if you ask nicely.) I will supply a complete bibliographic citation to the printed copy as soon as it is available.

Maybe it’s the first Pagan Studies paper to invoke Smokey Bear as a godform, following the footsteps of Gary Snyder’s “Smokey the Bear Sutra.”

OK, so he is somewhat discredited as a forester in these “prescribed burn” days. Sometimes demigods have a come-down.

Eighties flashback

Maybe if more people knew that the Freemasons had sex slaves , their membership would not be declining!

‘Sacred’ but not ‘Religious’

A school teacher in my former home of Cañon City, Colorado, is in trouble with a cowboy-hatted pastor (his photo not on the web version) over alleged ‘pagan’ practices at the school. See how she employs the language of public-education casuistry.

African Religions Attracting Americans

This is not really new news, but the growth of religions of the African diaspora attracted the attention of this reporter.

From what I hear elsewhere, it is actually the new converts–not all of them necessarily of African descent–who are most insistent about purging Voudoun, etc., of syncretized Christian elements in order to make them purely Pagan.

A quiz on civil religion

Quiz: The removal of bronze plaques bearing Bible verses from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon is a defeat for Christian hegemony and a victory for

A. Secular humanism
B. Covert federally supported nature religion
C. The American Civil Liberties Union
D. Fundamentalist fundraisers
E. All of the above
F. None of the above

Sacred Ground

Rediscovering America’s Sacred Ground, subtitled “Public religion and the pursuit of good,” will be on my reading list as soon as SUNY Press releases it. The author is Pagan scholar Barbara McGraw, who “examines the debate about the role of religion in American public life and unravels the confounded rhetoric on all sides. She reveals that no group has been standing on proper ground and that all sides have misused terminology (religion/secular), dichotomies (public/private), and concepts (separation of church and state) in ways that have little relevance to the original intentions of the Founders.”