{"id":257,"date":"2004-09-07T21:45:00","date_gmt":"2004-09-07T21:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=257"},"modified":"2004-09-07T21:45:00","modified_gmt":"2004-09-07T21:45:00","slug":"257","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=257","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Pagans invented the wheel<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, yes, of course, if you think about it–presuming that you equate pre-Big Name Religion (Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, etc.) with “Pagan.” But first, let me acknowledge publication of Pagan Pride<\/em><\/a>, a book of short readings (in unusual square format) “honoring the Craft and Culture of Earth and Goddess.” Its premise is that we self-defined contemporary Pagans can be proud (and celebrate Pagan Pride Day<\/a>) because our religious predecessors, if not literal ancestors, gave the world so much: democracy, pottery, the Sphinx of Egypt, spinning and textiles, calendars, the Parthenon, etc.<\/p>\n

Item 40, “Rhetoric,” strikes a note similar to my first-day-of-class remarks in my “advanced composition and rhetoric” course, in fact.<\/p>\n

At the same time, playing with the rhetorical notion of kairos<\/em><\/a>, I have note the unspoken claims that such a book makes by its very existence. (And I have made them too.) In other words, this book–its title, subtitle, and content–make a statement in an ongoing conversation about these claims:<\/p>\n

1. There is a religious mode called paganism\/Paganism that underlies all religion and yet stands apart from “revealed” religion. (That is one of the claims made by Michael York in Pagan Theology<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

2. This mode can be defined to include almost all ancient, Classical, animistic, “native” religions as well as the self-consciously revived or created “new” Paganisms of today.<\/p>\n

3. Paganism is–or will become–the de facto civil religion of the entire globe as environmental crisis worsens. That is the argument York is developing in a book chapter that will be excerpted in the next Pomegranate<\/em><\/a>. I would argue that contemporary Pagans started making this argument right about the time of the first Earth Day<\/a> and continued emphasizing it from the 1970s onward. (The “ownership” of Earth Day is somewhat “contested,” as we academics say, but that is another story.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pagans invented the wheel Well, yes, of course, if you think about it–presuming that you equate pre-Big Name Religion (Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, etc.) with “Pagan.” But first, let me acknowledge publication of Pagan Pride, a book of short readings (in unusual square format) “honoring the Craft and Culture of Earth and Goddess.” Its premise is […]<\/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":[],"class_list":["post-257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-257","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2938,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2938","url_meta":{"origin":257,"position":0},"title":"How to Talk with the Non-Pagan Press","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 27, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Lots of Pagan sites are talking about a magickal showdown with some Christian spiritual warriors over the District of Columbia. Jason Pitzl-Waters has the thoroughly hyperlinked details. Here Hecate, who helped start this particular rolling, says some valuable things about framing the issue when talking with non-Pagans. When talking to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"journalism\"","block_context":{"text":"journalism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=journalism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7317,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7317","url_meta":{"origin":257,"position":1},"title":"CFP: Conference on Current Pagan Studies","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 6, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"12th Conference on Current Pagan Studies Call For Papers: Social Justice The overall theme for the 2016 Conference is Social Justice We face issues of social justice everywhere we look, from something as overwhelming as #blacklivesmatter to the seeming trivial Wiccanate privilege.\u00a0 Like the innumerable heads of the Lernaean Hydra,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"conference-logo-transparent-background1-300x300","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/conference-logo-transparent-background1-300x300.gif?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":116,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=116","url_meta":{"origin":257,"position":2},"title":"\"Hello, Pagan\" Despite the best\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 14, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Hello, Pagan\" Despite the best efforts of those of us at The Pomegranate and such writers as Michael York, author of Pagan Theology (and a member of The Pom's editorial board), some people continue to use \"Pagan\" as a synonym for \"irreligious.\" Consider the \"Pagans Only\" page at the fundamentalist\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8262,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8262","url_meta":{"origin":257,"position":3},"title":"Call for Papers: Family, Home, and Ways of Life: Living Paganisms in a Globalized World","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 19, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Information on the upcoming Family, Home, and Ways of Life: Living Paganisms in a Globalized World conference in Krakow, Poland, 24-25 March 2017, may be found at this link. Presentations may address various issues within the following (suggested) topics: Everyday life of contemporary Pagans Understanding human relationships: from till death\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":1267,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1267","url_meta":{"origin":257,"position":4},"title":"Contemporary Pagans: Indigenous or Not?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 14, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"A kerfuffle over who said what about which flavors of Paganism at the just-concluded Parliament of the World's Religions is summarized over at The Wild Hunt.This year's parliament in Melbourne listed \"Reconciling with the Indigenous Peoples\" as one of its key topics.Some contemporary Pagans have been playing the \"indigenous card\"\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":[]},{"id":519,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=519","url_meta":{"origin":257,"position":5},"title":"Saturday with the PagansRocky Mountain\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 19, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Saturday with the PagansRocky Mountain News religion writer Jean Torkelson goes to Denver's Pagan Pride celebration and writes a middle-of-the-road \"Pagans are mostly just regular folks\" column.Behind each pagan, a story: Dressed in brooding black, Michael Torres looked like a shadow falling across the sunlit park. Raised in the intense\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257","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=257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}