{"id":1319,"date":"2010-03-13T18:21:29","date_gmt":"2010-03-14T01:21:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1319"},"modified":"2010-03-13T18:39:42","modified_gmt":"2010-03-14T01:39:42","slug":"wicca-as-the-untrustworthy-other-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1319","title":{"rendered":"Wicca as the (Untrustworthy) Other, Again"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For environmental news of the West, I have subscribed since the 1980s to <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hcn.org\">High Country News<\/a>,<\/em> a biweekly magazine.<\/p>\n<p>For the first time since a rancher named Tom Bell started the magazine in Lander, Wyoming in 1970, HCN has jumped on the bandwagon of anti-Wiccan snark.<\/p>\n<p>In a blog post called &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.hcn.org\/blogs\/heard\/witches-and-rifles\">Witches and Rifles<\/a>,&#8221;  editor Jonathan Thompson last month took on the well-covered issues of the Air Force Academy&#8217;<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1295\" target=\"_self\">s earth-religions worship circle<\/a> and managed to blend it with the other well-covered issue of the <a href=\"http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/Blotter\/us-military-weapons-inscribed-secret-jesus-bible-codes\/story?id=9575794\">Bible verse coded into rifle sight systems made by military contractor Trijicon<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>COLORADO<\/p>\n<p>Should the Urantians face persecution for their religious beliefs, they could always consider buying real estate in another part of the West, namely Colorado Springs. There, the U.S. Air Force Academy has set aside an outdoor worshipping area for \u201cPagans, Wiccans, Druids and other Earth-centered believers,\u201d according to the Associated Press. The academy has long been criticized for erasing the line dividing church and state in a heavily evangelical Christian-leaning manner.<\/p>\n<p>It was recently revealed that the military had been using rifle scopes that were engraved with biblical references by the manufacturer. No news yet on whether any future firearms will be engraved with secret Wiccan code.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Jonathan Thompson&#8217;s attitudes are typical of what you find in most elite media outlets as well as academia, however. It is not Wicca that is suspicious\u2014<em>all religious affiliation is suspicious to people like him.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Having worked in both journalism and academia, here is my quick guide towards religion as typically understood by inhabitants of both those worlds (such as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/jonathanpthompson39\">Jonathan Thompson<\/a>):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Jews are generally all right, particularly if they write for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tikkun.org\/\"><em>Tikkun<\/em><\/a> magazine, but Israelis are scary.<\/li>\n<li>Christians are at best hypocrites. At worst, you can expect them to fortify themselves in rural compounds and commit incest\u2014-and those are the Presbyterians.<\/li>\n<li>The Catholic Church, however, is easy to cover (except for the parts that are in Latin) for anyone experienced in big-city &#8220;machine&#8221; politics, such as Democrats in Chicago.<\/li>\n<li>Buddhists are all right if they are poets. Ethnic Buddhists (for example, Vietnamese) are invisible.<\/li>\n<li>Hindus, Sikhs, ethnic Taoists, etc., are generally invisible.<\/li>\n<li>Muslims must be treated carefully because they might explode.<\/li>\n<li>And Pagans? They are easy to ridicule because, after all, people like Jonathan Thompson, editor of <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hcn.org\">High Country News<\/a><\/em>, don&#8217;t know any.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Somehow I think that Tom Bell, the old rancher, might actually have been more accepting. But I never had the privilege of meeting him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For environmental news of the West, I have subscribed since the 1980s to High Country News, a biweekly magazine. For the first time since a rancher named Tom Bell started the magazine in Lander, Wyoming in 1970, HCN has jumped on the bandwagon of anti-Wiccan snark. In a blog post called &#8220;Witches and Rifles,&#8221; editor [&hellip;]<\/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":[1],"tags":[10,7,6],"class_list":["post-1319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-american-religion","tag-publishing","tag-wicca"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-lh","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11755,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11755","url_meta":{"origin":1319,"position":0},"title":"&#8220;The Woman Who Inspired Wicca&#8221;","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 25, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"This popped up on Twitter recently: There is no conference that I know of, which may say something about how small a set of academics are interested in Wiccan history. Maybe we Pagan-studies types do not have anything new to say right now, because this issue has been covered pretty\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"journalism\"","block_context":{"text":"journalism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=journalism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/witch-cult-tweet.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/witch-cult-tweet.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/witch-cult-tweet.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":538,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=538","url_meta":{"origin":1319,"position":1},"title":"Writing on Paganism helps journalist\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 19, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Writing on Paganism helps journalist earn awardFreelance writer and religion journalist Kimberly Winston won this year's American Academy of Religion journalism award in the category of \"news outlets with more than 100,000 circulation or on the Web.\"Her work has included writing on Wicca and Paganism, including a piece that I\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":874,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=874","url_meta":{"origin":1319,"position":2},"title":"Quick Notes","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 16, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00b6 I went away for a high-school graduation and a small family reunion in one of the non-fashionable parts of Colorado, a trip that prompted these thoughts in my other blog.\u00b6 Ian Jamison, a British Pagan graduate student, seeks people to take The Pagan Environmental Engagement Survey. In some instances,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":197,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=197","url_meta":{"origin":1319,"position":3},"title":"\"Rebutting\" Wicca I did write\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 2, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Rebutting\" Wicca I did write to National Public Radio reporter Barbara Bradley Hagerty to share my question about why only Wicca, of the various new religious movements covered in her series, deserved to have someone outside its faith community comment on what was wrong with it--in other words, evangelical Christians.\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10035,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10035","url_meta":{"origin":1319,"position":4},"title":"Season of the Witch(crap), Part 3","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 5, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Season of the Witch(crap), Part 1\" \"Season of the Witch(crap), Part 2\" \"Witchcrap\": superficial journalistic treatments of Wicca, Witchcraft, and related Pagan paths. \u2022 In The Atlantic,\"Young black women are leaving Christianity and embracing African witchcraft in digital covens.\" Except the article discusses a convention and gets to the digital\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/mercator.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/mercator.jpeg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/mercator.jpeg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":194,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=194","url_meta":{"origin":1319,"position":5},"title":"A delayed reaction to Barbara Bradley Hagerty&#8217;s NPR pieces","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 31, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Two weeks after blogging about it, I finally listened to National Public Radio reporter Barbara Badley Hagerty's interview with the (mostly) teenaged Wiccans.A thought struck me: Is Wicca still the only religion that requires a rebuttal? In this base, Bradley Hagerty goes to some teens at some big evangelical church\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":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319","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=1319"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1393,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319\/revisions\/1393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}