{"id":1105,"date":"2009-01-06T16:09:00","date_gmt":"2009-01-06T16:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1105"},"modified":"2009-01-06T16:09:00","modified_gmt":"2009-01-06T16:09:00","slug":"pagans-are-not-a-community-nor-a-tribe-not-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1105","title":{"rendered":"Pagans are not a Community nor a Tribe — Not Yet"},"content":{"rendered":"

The lively discussion at The Wild Hunt over “moving on from Paganism<\/a>” should put an end to the notion that Pagans constitute a “tribe” or a “community.”<\/p>\n

Not yet, anyway. We are still part of modern society with its cafeteria spirituality.<\/p>\n

Many Pagans, such as Emma Restall Orr in her book that I recently reviewed<\/a>, are fond of the idea of “tribe.”<\/p>\n

Jews, for example, are a tribe (or several). A Jew might never cross the threshold of shul, synagogue, or temple–may even be an avowed atheist–but he or she is still a Jew. Only conversion to one of the other Abrahamic faiths might change that fact — after a time — and even then, you still have “crypto-Jews<\/a>” popping up. (Everyone wants to be special.)<\/p>\n

A Navajo Indian might follow traditional religion, Mormonism, some kind of Christianity, or the Peyote Road, but is still a Navajo.<\/p>\n

What we have is a network<\/em>, not a community nor a tribe. Maybe in a few generations that will change, who knows? (For you anthro and sociology majors, it is the Gemeinschaft \/ Gesellschaft issue,<\/a> no?)<\/p>\n

Everytime I hear someone going on about “the Pagan community,” I say to myself, “Not yet.” Not when you can walk in and walk out so easily.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The lively discussion at The Wild Hunt over “moving on from Paganism” should put an end to the notion that Pagans constitute a “tribe” or a “community.” Not yet, anyway. We are still part of modern society with its cafeteria spirituality. Many Pagans, such as Emma Restall Orr in her book that I recently reviewed, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-1105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-paganism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-hP","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11101,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11101","url_meta":{"origin":1105,"position":0},"title":"“Pagans,” a Short Documentary Film","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 25, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"? Oooh, scary Pagans! We spend a lot of time with the curtains drawn, gazing at candles, right. We wear black robes . . .\u00a0 Seriously, there is some good stuff here: Pagans, a short documentary. To tell the story of the dramatic rise of neo-paganism in America, though, you\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":12836,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12836","url_meta":{"origin":1105,"position":1},"title":"CFP: Pagan Studies Conference at Masaryk University","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 11, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Paganism and its Others 13-14 June 2022 Masaryk University, Faculty of Arts, Brno, Czechia The Department for the Study of Religions at Masaryk University invites your participation in a conference on the overall theme of \u201cPaganism and its Others\u201d to be held in Brno, Czechia, 13-14 June, 2022, with in-person\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6979,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6979","url_meta":{"origin":1105,"position":2},"title":"Looking at Your Polis as a Pagan","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 31, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"A Wiccan email list that I am on recently went through a discussion of teaching \"theology\" to children. It is one of the perennial questions among contemporary Pagans: teach the kids or let them make up their own minds as adults. Surprisingly, some discussants reported that said adult children-of-Pagans regretted\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"childhood\"","block_context":{"text":"childhood","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=childhood"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":814,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=814","url_meta":{"origin":1105,"position":3},"title":"Animal Sacrifice and Authenticity","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 8, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Last month Classics scholar Mary Beard suggested that contemporary Hellenic Pagans were not quite authentic because they omitted the centerpiece of ancient Paganism: animal sacrifice. (I discussed her critique here, and she responded.)Orthodox Christian blogger Rod Dreher's recent post--and especially the comments--pretty well illustrate just how squeamish today's population--even omnivores--are\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Greece\"","block_context":{"text":"Greece","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=greece"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1271,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1271","url_meta":{"origin":1105,"position":4},"title":"Our ‘Open-Source’ Religion","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 21, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Paganism as an open-source religion. (That approach works for some Jews too.)Douglas Cowen, in his book Cyberhenge, goes even further, making an explicit analogy to computer coding: \u201cPagans are \u2018hacking\u2019 their own religious traditions out of the \u2018source codes\u2019 provided by pantheons, faith practices, liturgies, rituals, and divinatory practices drawn\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5809,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5809","url_meta":{"origin":1105,"position":5},"title":"Defining Paganism (1)","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 8, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"A couple of a weeks ago, on another blog, a commenter, wishing to insist that his sort of Paganism was different from some other people's Paganism, concluded his comment by asserting that there was no overall definition of Paganism anyway. I decided to step in and disagree, since I could\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1105","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=1105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1105\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}