{"id":1776,"date":"2010-08-25T17:39:26","date_gmt":"2010-08-25T23:39:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1776"},"modified":"2010-08-25T17:40:33","modified_gmt":"2010-08-25T23:40:33","slug":"elders-down-the-memory-hole-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1776","title":{"rendered":"Elders Down the Memory Hole"},"content":{"rendered":"

All summer I have been editing and laying out a biography of the American Pentecostal<\/a> evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson<\/a> (1890-1944). I just sent the galleys to the writer, a professor in Arizona, and am working on my own corrections as well.<\/p>\n

There have been the usual hassles\u2014missing “essential” photos, notes that did not match the text, etc.\u2014but we are working through all of that.<\/p>\n

I mentioned the project on Facebook once, and got a response from a former student who was raised in the Assemblies of God, one of the larger Pentecostal denominations (the<\/em> largest, says Wikipedia<\/a>).<\/p>\n

She had heard about Aimee when she was younger, but thought of her as a “scary” person.<\/p>\n

Having lived with Aimee’s biography for six months, there is much that I could say about her, but “scary” is not a word that I would use. (I sent the student a PDF of the chapter about Aimee’s revival tour through Denver in the early 1920s.)<\/p>\n

Do Pentecostal Christians send their elders down the memory hole as effectively as Pagans do?<\/p>\n

Or does that process happen in all religions that do not have formal processes of canonizing saints or the equivalent\u2014something that fixes them in memory?<\/p>\n

I am still waiting for a serious academic biography of Gerald Gardner,<\/a> who is after all the founder of a world religion, now that Wicca is in India, Brazil, Germany, and other places.<\/p>\n

No doubt many young Wiccans have\u00a0 either (a) not heard of him or (b) think that he was some “scary” old guy.<\/p>\n

Philip Heselton (interviewed here<\/a>), the author of two<\/a> earlier<\/a> books about Gardner, is supposed to have a new biography coming out from Thoth, although as of today I cannot find it on their fancy-but-unsearchable website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I judged the earlier books as being strong on research and legwork, but weak on analysis and contextualizing. Credulous, even.\u00a0 There is probably still room for a biography written by someone with a background in discussing new religious movements.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Oberon Zell<\/a> is at work on some new encylopediac work about “wizards of the world.” He has been trying to convince me to a write an entry about Gleb Botkin.<\/a> Now there is someone who should be kept from sliding down the memory hole of Pagan history as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All summer I have been editing and laying out a biography of the American Pentecostal evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson (1890-1944). I just sent the galleys to the writer, a professor in Arizona, and am working on my own corrections as well. There have been the usual hassles\u2014missing “essential” photos, notes that did not match the […]<\/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":[10,21,7,6,12],"class_list":["post-1776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-american-religion","tag-england","tag-publishing","tag-wicca","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-sE","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3874,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3874","url_meta":{"origin":1776,"position":0},"title":"Yoga, Ectasy, Religion, and Sex","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 28, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Religion is sexy \u2014 at least some of the time. (To scholars of religion, all religion is \"sexy\" in an intellectual sense.) Last year, I edited and prepared for press a new biography of the evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson. She was a leading figure in American religion in the 1920s,\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":6360,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6360","url_meta":{"origin":1776,"position":1},"title":"The ‘Pentecostal Drift’ and Modern Paganism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 29, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Religion blogger Peter Berger, melding articles from\u00a0 The Tablet (Roman Catholic) and The Christian Century (mainline Protestant) notes \"the major demographic shift in world Christianity\u2014the fact that more Christians now live in the Global South: Asia, Africa, Latin America\u2014than in the old Christian homelands of Europe and North America.\" With\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":828,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=828","url_meta":{"origin":1776,"position":2},"title":"The tricky side of charisma","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 26, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Over at GetReligion, a blog devoted to the collision of religion and journalism, Terry Mattingly links to a story of a Pentecostal preacher in trouble.The details do not concern me. What caught my eye was this part of the linked posting:Again, in my opinion, this false teaching arose because church\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":2748,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2748","url_meta":{"origin":1776,"position":3},"title":"Army Appoints Hindu Chaplain (Sort of)","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 7, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"There about 1,000 identified Hindus in the U.S. Army, and now they have a chaplain, Captain Pratima Dharm. Yes, that is probably fewer than the followers of Pagan paths in uniform. The Buddhists have been recognized too, but a qualified Wiccan officer was rejected. But there might be more to\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":2226,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2226","url_meta":{"origin":1776,"position":4},"title":"DADT Repeals Raises Issues for Wiccan Chaplains–Assuming that We Had Wiccan Chaplains, That Is","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 22, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Terry Mattingly at Get Religion, a blog about religion and journalism, looks at some of the fallout from the \"don't ask, don't tell' repeal for military chaplains. His main question is whether a new military policy on homosexuals serving openly (they have always been there clandestinely) will affect the ability\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":4062,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4062","url_meta":{"origin":1776,"position":5},"title":"What’s Your Religious IQ?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 10, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"As I blogged yesterday, too much reporting on religion is written by people who are religiously illiterate \u2014 and, sometimes, proud of it. Every reporter at least ought to score well on this quiz from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Go ahead, take it. Fifteen questions \u2014\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\/1776","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=1776"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1789,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1776\/revisions\/1789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}