{"id":2026,"date":"2010-11-18T07:00:25","date_gmt":"2010-11-18T14:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2026"},"modified":"2010-11-18T09:49:05","modified_gmt":"2010-11-18T16:49:05","slug":"when-you-meet-the-buddha-in-the-road-bite-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2026","title":{"rendered":"When You Meet the Buddha in the Road, Bite Him"},"content":{"rendered":"

We have a best-selling series of romance novels about vampires<\/a> written by a Mormon.<\/p>\n

But we also have a popular, if not so huge, series of romance novels about people in Amish communities<\/a>, by a writer who grew up around Amish people but is not herself Amish.<\/p>\n

Is this a great country or not? That’s one way to learn about religion. Or you can wait for the English translation of Saint Young Men<\/a>. <\/em>Jesus and the Buddha, roommates! The “odd couple” formula works in manga<\/em> too, evidently.<\/p>\n

But wait, you say. Vampires? Religion? Consider that NYU Press has published Paranormal America: Ghost Encounters, UFO Sightings, Bigfoot hunts, and Other Curiosities in Religion and Culture<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Jeffrey Kripal, whose book Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred<\/a><\/em> I am just starting to read, not surprisingly tells the New York Times<\/em> that scholars of religion should take “the paranormal” seriously.<\/a><\/p>\n

Is that the “paranormal” as opposed to the “supernatural”?<\/p>\n

According to Dr. Kripal, [four famous paranormal researchers’] omission [from scholarly investigation]\u00a0 is evidence of a persistent bias among religion scholars, happy to consider the inexplicable, like miracles, as long as they fit a familiar narrative, like Judaism or Christianity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Meanwhile, someone needs to write a novel: Ghost-hunting single Amish girl falls in love with a vampire and discovered Buddhism. Quick!<\/p>\n


\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We have a best-selling series of romance novels about vampires written by a Mormon. But we also have a popular, if not so huge, series of romance novels about people in Amish communities, by a writer who grew up around Amish people but is not herself Amish. Is this a great country or not? That’s […]<\/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":[10,97,7,22,12],"class_list":["post-2026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-american-religion","tag-ghosts","tag-publishing","tag-weirdness","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-wG","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6087,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6087","url_meta":{"origin":2026,"position":0},"title":"Vampires and the Big Blue Marble","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 5, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"I shared a cabin with Margot Adler and some other presenters at the Florida Pagan Gathering four years ago. At that point she had read about seventy vampire novels and was still going strong, looking for the answer to the question, \"Why do literary vampires fascinate us?\" Now she thinks\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"environmentalism\"","block_context":{"text":"environmentalism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=environmentalism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7308,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7308","url_meta":{"origin":2026,"position":1},"title":"Renn Faire: “Disneyland for Rednecks”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 5, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Wiccan, as well as satanic, symbolism was in nearly every gift shop.\" \u2014 from a Yelp.com review of the Georgia Rennaisance Faire, quoted in Well Met (237). Rachel Lee Rubin's Well Met: Renaissance Faires and the American Counterculture is, obviously, not about contemporary Paganism, but the two topics cross paths\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"abandoned-renaissance-fair-26133","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/abandoned-renaissance-fair-26133.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3007,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3007","url_meta":{"origin":2026,"position":2},"title":"Beards and Religiosity","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 6, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Religion journalist Mark Oppenheimer begins a New York Times article on the religious significance of beards this way: Go ahead, picture a religious Jew. Now picture a Muslim cleric. Now an Amish farmer. What do they have in common? Beards. And not neatly trimmed beards, but, in the popular stereotype,\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\/www.sacredtribespress.com\/stp\/images\/stories\/Druidry_cover_sm.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5982,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5982","url_meta":{"origin":2026,"position":3},"title":"A Pastafarian Prophet","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 28, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"This recent post on Religion Clause describes the victorious struggle of a Texas Pastafarian for the right to wear the sacred pasta strainer in his driver's license photograph. It caught my attention because I had just finished editing an article by Joe \"Vampires\" Leycock, \"wandering anthropologist of the occult,\"\u00a0 for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"A surrealist and a proto-Pastafarian, SE Portland, Oregon. ","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/pastafarian.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1677,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1677","url_meta":{"origin":2026,"position":4},"title":"Teens, Vampires, and Seventeen magazine","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 15, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"If I were still teaching magazine writing, I would be sending students to this blog (which I found on Rod Dreher's blog). What a great feature-writing idea, albeit in blog form. (Which all goes to show how publishing is changing, &c. &c., and I am glad not to have to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"teens\"","block_context":{"text":"teens","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=teens"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7119,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7119","url_meta":{"origin":2026,"position":5},"title":"Links: Exorcists, Vampires, Shamans, and the New Gothic","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 13, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"So many links, so little time to comment. Pick one, two, or three of these to read. Mix and match. Fill your plate. Come back for more. \u2022 Sexy vampires threaten Catholic youth, thus encouraging \u2014 you guessed it \u2014 \"dabbling.\" \u2022 Witchy craft: I am building these. \u2022 Another\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Christianity\"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=christianity"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.independent.co.uk\/incoming\/article10174021.ece\/alternates\/w460\/v2-21-True-Blood.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2026","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=2026"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2030,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2026\/revisions\/2030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}