{"id":11048,"date":"2019-11-22T16:20:51","date_gmt":"2019-11-22T23:20:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11048"},"modified":"2019-11-22T16:33:18","modified_gmt":"2019-11-22T23:33:18","slug":"religious-scholars-incognito","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11048","title":{"rendered":"Religious Scholars Incognito"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

The AAR’s 2019 annual meeting graphic.<\/p><\/div>\n

When you are a scholar of religion, sometimes you forget how seriously people take religion.<\/p>\n

Riding across New Mexico this week on Amtrak’s Southwest Chief<\/a>, M. and I went to the dining car for supper. All the tables seat four, and to save space and facilitate service, if there are fewer than four of people, the steward will seat others at your table (or you at theirs) to fill them up. To some people, this is social event; others just greet you politely and then ignore you.<\/p>\n

We had just one companion, however, an older man who introduced himself as “Fred.” I don’t know how it came up, but he said that he wrote books on various topics, including theology. (Uh-oh.) Also, he said, he had produced a new version of the Bible in 21st-century English<\/a>. (What a concept! No one has thought of that before!) It became clear that his theology is very conservative<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He asked what I did. I said I had worked as a newspaper journalist and magazine editor, which is perfectly true. I did not say that I was on my way to the annual joint meeting of the American Academy of Religio<\/a>n and the Society for Biblical Literature<\/a>, because if nothing else, many people will think you are Bible Answer Man or something.<\/p>\n

Like the time I was riding a shuttle bus between my Chicago hotel and the McCormick Place convention center<\/a> and the bus driver shut the door, looked over his shoulder, and said, “I bet you gentlemen know when Jesus is coming back.”<\/p>\n

I let the Protestants on board handle that one.<\/p>\n

My encounter with Fred, though, was mild compared to what another friend encountered on her trip to San Diego this year:<\/p>\n

[I spent the flight] listening to some techbro explain to the Dean [of a certain seminary] how he and his friend started their own church based on self-actualization through electronic dance music.<\/p>\n

He ended the plane ride by making the Dean make a Facebook video for his gurufeed (his words) about what he was grateful for and the great synchronicity they had.<\/p>\n

I thought about trying to send the Dean a rescue party, but the Southwest flight attendants wouldn\u2019t allow it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you are shy or just feeling anti-social, sometimes it is better not to say that you are a religion scholar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you are a scholar of religion, sometimes you forget how seriously people take religion. Riding across New Mexico this week on Amtrak’s Southwest Chief, M. and I went to the dining car for supper. All the tables seat four, and to save space and facilitate service, if there are fewer than four of people, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[137,10,13],"class_list":["post-11048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-academia","tag-american-religion","tag-travel"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-2Sc","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4161,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4161","url_meta":{"origin":11048,"position":0},"title":"Pentagram Pizza for May 1","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 1, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Four toppings this evening. . . \u2022 This made me laugh. \u2022 Some occult-cult films from the past reviewed by Peg Aloi. \u2022 Teaching a course in \"world religions\" is not as simple as it looks, once you start sorting out \"religion,\" \"religious,\" and questions of group identity. \u2022 In\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/pentagrampizza-126x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1226,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1226","url_meta":{"origin":11048,"position":1},"title":"That Theodish Political Candidate","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 17, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Sarah Pike of California State University, Chico evaluates Dan Halloran's run for a New York City Council seat as an \"out\" Pagan and concludes, \"Since for many Americans, the Republican Party is inseparable from conservative Christianity, Neopagans were surprised that the party stood by Halloran, and took it as a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1214,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1214","url_meta":{"origin":11048,"position":2},"title":"Did a ‘Pagan’ Bury the Staffordshire Hoard?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 25, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"The \"Staffordshire Hoard\" is a cache of 7th-century Anglo-Saxon sword jewels and other items recently found in England (and a great boost for metal-detector sales, no doubt).The caption on one slide of the golden hoard suggests that because a gold cross was folded in on itself before burial, the person\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5657,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5657","url_meta":{"origin":11048,"position":3},"title":"A Country “Under Christian Occupation”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 19, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The BBC profiles some Hellenes \u2014 modern Greek Pagans \u2014 with minimal snark. [The summer solstice is] the most important annual festival for followers of The Return of the Hellenes - a movement trying to bring back the religion, values, philosophy and way of life of ancient Greece, more than\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Christianity\"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=christianity"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/news.bbcimg.co.uk\/media\/images\/68270000\/jpg\/_68270161_dsc_0476%281%29credit_eranlivni.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9849,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9849","url_meta":{"origin":11048,"position":4},"title":"Review: “The Final Pagan Generation”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 6, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"A review from the most recent (20.1) issue of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies. While the publisher does charge for articles, book reviews are free downloads. Edward J. Watts, The Final Pagan Generation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015) 344 pp., 29 B&W photographs, map. $34.95 (hardcover,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Christianity\"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=christianity"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5073,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5073","url_meta":{"origin":11048,"position":5},"title":"Gerald Gardner and the Question of Polytheism.","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 14, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"I recently reviewed Philip Heselton's latest biography of Gerald Gardner, but I did not have time to discuss one of his final observations, written in a too-brief closing chapter, \"An Assessment of Gerald Gardner.\" Heselton writes, \"Indeed, he really didn't, I think, have any of what we might call 'spiritual'\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"nature religion\"","block_context":{"text":"nature religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=nature-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11048"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11048\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11056,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11048\/revisions\/11056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}