Tag Archives: American religion

Wicca Again as the “Designated Other”

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pasque flowersPasque flowers blooming in a thin layer of pine duff atop a boulder. I love them for their precarious and improbably habitat.

Spring is slowly coming to the forest, and within it the offer of new chances, a feeling that you might get it right this time.

Travel and editorial crises have killed my blogging for the past couple of weeks. I have this huge backlog of topics and probably won’t get to most of them.

But let’s start with the topical stuff. Wicca continues to move towards being the Designated Other in the American religious scene. It used to be “What will the Jews say?” or “How will the Jehovah’s Witnesses react?” to name just two groups that had their conflicts with the dominant religious paradigm.

At the same time, to many members of the Chattering Classes, Wicca (and other forms of Paganism) is not quite a real religion. Therefore, you can have even more fun when writing about it: “Mike Pence’s New Fan Club: Wiccans.

Yes, how do Wiccans react to Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act??

The religion is real to the practitioners, of course — but some of them have a little fun with the question too. (Marry a horse?)

It’s funny how things change. When the original Religious Freedom Restoration Act sailed through Congress and was signed by President Clinton, it was all about protecting the Native American Church — the Peyote Way. How colorful and traditional!

Now some columnists and bloggers put “religious freedom” in scare quotes, like it’s something icky than can only be handled with your Gloves of Irony.

As a follower of a minority religion, I still think that religious freedom (no scare quotes) is pretty damn important.

But if you want to get beyond all the idiots screaming for the social-nuking of Indiana in 140 characters or less, go to someone with a sense of the evolution of law, like Washington Post columnist and law professor Eugene Volokh.

Here is the short version: “Religious exemptions, RFRA carveouts, and ‘who decides?’ ”  He contrasts the popularity of religious freedom with the demands for limiting it for the larger good:

Yet surely religious exemptions can’t always be granted, and there can’t even be a very strong general rule of granting such exemptions (much as there is a strong rule against the government banning speech because of its content, at least outside traditionally recognized exceptions). There can’t be religious exemptions from laws banning murder, rape, theft, trespass, libel, and the like. There probably shouldn’t be such exemptions, at least outside narrow zones, from tax law, copyright law, employment law, and more.

For a longer explanation of the how Congress and the courts have wrestled with these topics and how players and teams have shifted, read his piece “Many liberals’ (sensible) retreat from the old Justice Brennan/ACLU position on religious exemptions.”

Clerical Dress for Respect, Christian and Pagan

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It happened this afternoon that I had tabs open to two different articles about clothing and social respect for (Protestant Christian) clergy as well as a Wild Hunt post about some kind of Pagan trying to prank the county commissioners in Escambia County, Florida, into abandoning their custom of religious invocations before meetings. (I am glad that around here we just pledge allegiance to the flag and then get down to business.)

I am not sure of the process here: apparently the guy in question just asked to be included in the list of religious invokers. But let’s move on.

One Wild Hunt mentioned his clothing — ” I would have worn something more like business casual dress”— and that dovetailed nicely with two pieces that I had been reading just moments earlier.

In one, Paul Walters, a Lutheran minister from Troy, Michigan, writes, “Pastors complain about the lack of respect they encounter in the world around them, and yet for some reason faded blue jeans and t-shirts are equated with work clothing . . . People will judge you based on your clothing every single time” (emphasis in the original).

Whereupon the commenters crucify him. One even says, “Being a pastor is not a profession.” (Huh?)

That post was linked by the doyenne of Protestant clergy fashion, the Rev. Victoria Weinstein, a/k/a PeaceBang, at her blog Beauty Tips for Ministers.

Protestant ministers are in a time warp, and in a reality warp. What they know of the new reality they have decided doesn’t apply to them because they don’t approve of it. Maybe the world has become more visual. Clergy don’t care, because they’re certain that words will solve social issues and save the world. Why should they wear heels and professional attire when a well-meaning slogan on a T-shirt or a big cross around the neck should communicate what they’re about to the public?

Weinstein is a Unitarian, in an old, rather churchy (for UUs) congregation on Massachusetts’ South Shore (no CUUPS Pagans at First Parish of Norwell, as far as I can tell).

She makes another point as well:

Today, in 2014, the mainstream Protestant and Jewish and Muslim and progressive Catholic movements are all in a big pot together in the public imagination. We’re just “those religious people” in our houses of worship doing our Saturday or Sunday thing, and carrying on with our quaint ways while the world increasingly fails to notice us or care about us. We’re nice to have in the neighborhood, maybe, but mostly for when you want a nice wedding or a kind person to say some words when Uncle Milt dies. If we step beyond those roles, we are regarded as dangerous, and in the United States, accused of violating the sacred separation of church and state enshrined in our Constitution.

Read her post on “Subverting and Interrupting Unconscious Scripts [of power]“— it is more honest than you usually see.

So, if you are any sort of Pagan moving into the public sphere, how do you deal with this perception that religion is “dangerous” and at the same time irrelevant? And how do you dress up for the job?

Back in the late 1970s, Raymond Buckland tried to start a vogue for wearing clerical collars with pentagrams embroidered on them. That went nowhere.

Some people like the stole. Patrick McCollum’s ubiquitous saffron scarf is similar, but it was given him by a Hindu holy man, as I recall. It may come from a “scarf of office” worn by imperial Roman officials, and it may also been worn by high-ranking professors, such as Hypatia of Alexandria. (I welcome clarification, if there is any historical record of this)

But the Catholics took it over as they did so much else of imperial organization, so what then? And the loose scarves are really more like the Anglican tippet, a/k/a preaching scarf.

Such a dilemma — especially in a culture where sloppiness = sincerity in some people’s minds.

Where Is Your Nile?

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After a living room talk to a group of Anchorage Pagans about different types of nature religion, I ended up in the kitchen with a woman who was an Egyptian reconstructionist — or revivalist, as she preferred to say.

Given my concerns, my first thought was that if the ancient Egyptian sacred year was organized around the flood cycle of the Nile, what was the Alaskan equivalent? If ships of ancient Egyptians had somehow sailed into Cook Inlet, how might that landscape have changed them?

Yes, it’s true that one of my religious studies professors called me an “environmental determinist,” and he did not mean it as a compliment. But I am not the only one wondering about how one’s religious practice becomes rooted in a particular place — and how do we get back to that situation?

Dolores LaChapelle in SW Colorado

Here in Colorado, one under-appreciated writer on these topics was the mountaineer and deep ecologist Dolores LaChapelle. Earth Festivals: Seasonal celebrations for Everyone Young and Old was written in the 1970s, while her big book, Sacred Land, Sacred Sex: Rapture of the Deep — Concerning Deep Ecology and Celebrating Life came out in 19972. (Visit her Amazon page to see all her books.) Both might be called “deep green religion,” to borrow a phrase — non-theistic nature religion but still exhibiting an approach to life that I would love to see more of in contemporary Paganism.

spirit of placeAnother writer who wrote a how-to workbook on integrating spirituality with nature is Loren Cruden, whose The Spirit of Place: A Workbook with Sacred Alignment involves study and doings through the cycle of a temperate-climate year.

Neolithic Shamanism: Spirit Work in the Norse Tradition by Raven Kaldera and Galina Krasskova, also takes a workbook approach. I was impressed by Kaldera’s original approach in his book Urban Primitive: Paganism in the Concrete Jungle, while Krasskova has herself written widely on re-creating ancestral cults and on polytheism. neolithic shamanism

The term “Neolithic” might be off-putting for some, especially those who — following some deep ecologists, philosophers like Paul Shepard, or Pagan thinkers like Fred Adams — see it as the “Fall” from the older Paleolithic life, which was dangerous but yet more leisurely.

The “Neolithic Revolution” (agriculture, domesticating livestock) also meant bigger social groups, hierarchies (the Big Man becomes the king, and you better bow down), turning women into full-time baby-makers (More sons, bigger farm!), and an overall decline in health and physique, at least in some archaeological studies, although not everyone agrees.

But perhaps the thought is of robust peasants living in somewhat more egalitarian societies on the margins of Europe.

Rather than organizing by the calendar, Neolithic Shamanism is organized by realm: Earth, Sun, Moon, Plants, Animals, Water, Fire, Craft, Air, Ancestors. Unlike the other books mentioned, this one is very much about spirit work:

We [authors] have many spirit allies; we also have plenty of experiences with spirits who weren’t interested in talking to us, or who took a firm dislike to us from the start. Remember that these are people. They aren’t human people, but they are People. Like all individuals, some will take a shine to you, and some will prefer someone else. Don’t take it personally. (Italics in the original.)

This book is densely packed, and it would take months to work through the exercises, but to do them all would change you permanently.

One question always in my mind, however, is to what extent we can impose a pantheon, so to speak, on the gods of our place. (There are at least two polytheistic theological questions in that sentence.) Do we “summon, stir, and call [them] up” or do we hang out and see who is there?

This is especially a question when in new places — new hemispheres — and there is only one piece of evidence — that I know of — in which a Pagan ancestor dealt with it.

Unfortunately for the story, almost all the Norse who visited North America during the time of the Greenland settlements (roughly 1000–1400 CE) were Christian, from Leif Erikson on down. So the episode from Erik the Red’s Saga about “Thorhall the hunter” has passed through many layers of Christian tellers and redactors, meaning that Thorhall is portrayed as an anachronism at best and a fool at worst.

To me it is a very poignant story:

They [the Norsemen] stayed there [in Vinland] that winter, which turned out to be a very severe one . . . . They ran short of food and the hunting failed . . . .Then they prayed to God to send them something to eat, but the response was not as prompt as they would have liked.

Meanwhile Thorhall the Hunter disappeared and they went out to search for him. They searched for three days; and on the fourth day Karlsefni and Bjarni found him on top of a cliff. He was staring up at the sky with eyes and mouth and nostrils agape, scratching himself and pinching himself and mumbling. They asked him what he was doing there; he replied that it was no concern of theirs, and told them not to be surprised and that he was old enough not to need them to look after him. They urged him to come back home with them, and he did.

A little later a whale was washed up and they rushed to cut it up. No one recognized what kind of a whale it was, not even Karlsefni, who was an expert on whales. The cooks boiled the meat, but when it was eaten it made them all ill.

Then Thorhall the Hunter walked over and said, “Has not Redbeard turned out to be more successful than your Christ? This was my reward for the poem I composed in honor of my patron, Thor; he has seldom failed me.”

When the others realized this they refused to use the whale meat and threw it over a cliff, and committed themselves to God’s mercy. Then a break came in the weather to allow them to go out fishing, and after that there was no scarcity of provisions.

Whether in Iceland, Greenland, or Newfoundland [?], to Thorhall it was all one realm.

Missing Sekmet Statute Mystery Solved

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When the statue from the Temple of Goddess Spirituality in southern Nevada disappeared last April, many Pagans wondered if it was a hate crime or what.

“It was foolish kids doing foolish things,” said Candace Ross, temple priestess.

Kids who freaked out and smashed the statue. But a new one is in place.

Passing of Margot Adler—Will NPR Admit She was Wiccan?

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For those of you not on Facebook, this was the announcement of Margot Adler’s passing, posted by her son, Alex.

Old friends, long time fans, today at 4am Margot breathed easily for the first time in two weeks. Later today, at 10:30am she was pronounced deceased.

Her condition had been getting much worse over the weeks and months and the brain radiation (which she had a treatment of scheduled today, tomorrow, and wednesday) was thought to help her double vision, since it was the cause.

Well, Margot and John both won’t be seeing double anymore, but they will be seeing each other for the rest of time.

With much love and difficulty do I write this,

Her son, Alex

I told M. about it as she was listening to National Public Radio’s  “All Things Considered,” and her first question was why NPR had not mentioned it, given Margot’s many years as a reporter there.  Maybe they cannot move that fast. When they do, do you think that they will mention that she was composing hymns to the Olympian deities as a teenager, let alone that she was a Gardnerian Witch?

I suspect that they will be more comfortable with her politics and status as a “Red-diaper Baby” than with her religious views. Link to the Facebook tribute page.

UPDATE: At least the NPR blog mentioned it, but putting it after the facts that she was Alfred Adler’s grand-daughter (though she never met him) and that she wrote about vampires: “Margot had a long-standing interest in the occult.”

Ah, “the occult.”

UPDATE 2: You will find more updates on news media treatments of Margot’s passing in the comments.

Passing of Loreon Vigne

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Loreon Vigne, priestess of Isis, who created the Isis Oasis sanctuary and retreat center at Geyserville, California, passed away last night. There are tributes on her Facebook page.

Here is an earlier post of mine about visiting Isis Oasis.

Her memoir, The Goddess Bade Me Do It, tells her story of how a young artist, jewelry designer, and art-supplies dealer in Beat-era San Francisco became a full-time priestess.

The Danger in Being “Ministerial”

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When I saw a headline on The Wild Hunt, “Wiccan Minister Kathryn Jones to Run for Office in Pennsylvania,” it stopped me in my tracks. Not because Ms. Jones is running for office, but the use of the term “minister.”

Immediately I thought of John Michael Greer’s recent column in Witches & Pagans 28, “A Bad Case of Methodist Envy: Copying Christian Models of Clergy is a Pagan Dead End.” Geer rightly points out that today’s concept of “clergy” is quite different from the Pagan past:

There were no seminaries or divinity schools for [ancient] Greek priests and priestesses, and the thought of asking a priest of priestess for moral of spiritual counseling would have seemed absurd to the ancient Greeks — you went to a philosopher for that, for Apollo’s sake! Nor, for that matter, did they perform wedding ceremonies. . . .  [in Egypt] being a priest or priestess was a career, one of the professions open to the literate . . . . this kind of priesthood included few or no “pastoral” functions as we know them.

The essence of priest/esshood is the relationship with the deity. You maintain a shrine, hold ceremonies, and otherwise put people into their own relationships with the deity. You may serve as a conduit of power — even today at some Japanese Shinto shrines (perhaps the nearest thing to Classical Paganism in a functional way), you can pay a small fee to have your new Toyota blessed by a priest.

At the other pole is the pastoral function. Pastor is Latin for “sheepherder” (as we say out West), and its is the function of nudging and exhorting and teaching and correcting the “flock” to  keep them living according to the commandments of the religion.

As Greer writes, in ancient Paganism those functions were usually not combined in one person — although here Thorn Coyle writes about how she combines them, together with her writing.

In my experience, the “clergy” issue emerged in American Paganism in the 1980s. Before that, the coven model was more clandestine.

A few “church” organizations existed before then, such as the Church of Wicca, and some Pagan groups signed up with the Universal Life Church. Such actions, in my recollection, were often at least partly about avoiding taxes, such as declaring the covenstead to be a “church” and hence exempt from property tax. The Covenant of the Goddess was formed as a credentialing and networking organization in 1975.

M. and I were married by our coven HP and HPS in 1977 in a ceremony that was both religious and legal, because Colorado does not require any sort of clergy credentials to perform a wedding. Perhaps because of the then-youthful Pagan demographic, performing legal weddings was a growing issue for Pagans, and many states do require some kind of organizational credentials.

Chaplaincy issues (hospital, prison, military) arose a little later, and in those cases, the bureaucratic monster had to be appeased. This issue Greer does not address, but it is a  big one. How do you keep governmental and social structures from turning you into their concept of a “religious minister,” i.e.,  service-provider?

This need for credentials to show to bureaucrats was an impetus for the founding of Cherry Hill Seminary. I was neutral about CHS for a while, but after attending one of their seminars in April 2013, I gained more appreciation of what they are doing.

Contrary to what some excitable voices have shouted, CHS is not trying to define Paganism for the outside world. Nor will they make you a witch or priestess; in fact, they say that their courses “[supplement]  existing ritual and magical skills with training for professional ministry and pastoral counseling.”

I expect that students should learn something about counseling, and the laws pertaining thereto, something about the academic study of religion, and something about the history of contemporary Paganism and its philosophy, for starters. And they will learn the suitable jargon to speak at interfaith luncheons and in meetings with prison administrators. (Just saying that you are Lord Moontoad from the Coven of the Sacred Toadstool is not enough.)

But we walk a knife’s edge. If we end up thinking that acting “ministerial” is all there is to it, then we Wiccans, for example, would be just Methodists with pentagrams. It’s not about counseling, it’s not about social programs, it’s not about “saving the Earth” (Unpack the hubris in that phrase, if you have the time!) — being Pagan is about a relationship with the deities at all levels. At least CHS is honest in saying that they cannot give you that. They might teach you how to talk about it in a polished way that other religious professionals can recognize.

Consider the issue of counseling. My first encounter in a Pagan context was hearing about Z Budapest’s unsuccessful attempt  in the 1970s (and she was not the only one) to beat an illegal-fortunetelling charge by saying that Tarot reading was “counseling.”

Historically speaking, she was right. When polytheists needed counseling, they asked Grandma, performed divination or had a specialist do it for them, or maybe (if they had the resources) consulted an oracle. Or perhaps they took sought visions or other supernatural guidance.

Monotheists, however, asked a Holy Book specialist to explain what the Book said, as modified by the commentaries of generations of specialists (hadith, Talmud, etc.). Drop the Holy Book component, and you have the modern counselor, a 20th-century phenomenon.

That is the ministerial/pastoral function, focusing on people’s needs, as opposed to the priestly function, focusing on the cults of the gods — our relationships and how we acknowledge them.

I think this is a bigger issue than “Shouldn’t we have paid clergy?” (Consider the Mormons, who have a worldwide religion administered mostly by non-paid clergy, albeit within a tight, top-down hierarchy.) I have argued before for the “tent, not a cathedral” model — set up structure for a limited time and purpose, then collapse it.

In the long run, how can Pagan religions function as “religions” in the generally accepted sense, while resisting cultural pressures to turn them into “Methodists”?

POSTSCRIPT: A follow-up post is here.

The “Job” and the “Work”

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deliver usOne of “New York City’s finest” has a second career as an exorcist.

Now there will be a movie, Deliver Us from Evil, from Sony Pictures. The movie, in turn, is based on his book.

If he is right, it could threaten the foundations of the corrections industry.

Egyptian Reconstructionists Won’t Like This

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(Trigger Warning: Texas, iced tea, demons)

From D Magazine in Dallas: “The Exorcists Next Door,” a profile piece on two Protestant exorcists.

Dozens of what appear to be demons manifest and depart during this day’s session. Larry coaxes out their names and functions, a veritable pantheon of entities known and obscure: Maranthia, who cuts wicked deals; Horus, Egypt’s falcon-headed god; Molech, who the Bible describes as “the detestable god of the Ammonites.”

What, the god of kings has sunk to possessing “the soft frame of a 38-year-old suburban mom we’ll call Ruth”?

What Does the New AP Stylebook Say?

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Last December I reported on an effort spearheaded by Oberon Zell to get Pagan (in the religious sense) capitalized in both the Associated Press Stylebook and the University of Chicago Press’s Manual of Style.

The first is used mainly by journalists (when they remember), the second by writers and editors for university presses and other publishers of serious nonfiction books. Both are periodically updated.

A new AP Stylebook is out and receiving comment. Apparently 200 new religious terms were added. Has anyone seen a copy yet? Even Terry Mattingly at Get Religion says he has not yet seen one, but Emma Green at The Atlantic has and makes some comments, such as this:

“Holy Spirit” and “Holy Ghost” are both capitalized, but the former is the preferred usage, spirits being the more acceptable metaphysical entity. “Satan” is capitalized, but not “the devil.” Also noteworthy: “Voodoo,” the religion, is capitalized, but “voodoo,” roughly meaning “shenanigans,” is not, “especially when ascribing magical solutions to problems, as in voodoo economics.”

Anyone can buy either one of these books, of course, and more writers should. My copy of the AP Stylebook dates from 2004. Time for an update? But I am more of a Chicago guy these days.