{"id":314,"date":"2004-11-28T20:38:00","date_gmt":"2004-11-28T20:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=314"},"modified":"2004-11-28T20:38:00","modified_gmt":"2004-11-28T20:38:00","slug":"314","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=314","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Pastors on the playa<\/strong><\/p>\n

Over the past several years, the annual Burning Man<\/a> event in Nevada has gained a higher and higher profile. In some quarters, this event is viewed with alarm. Is it a convocation of “earth-worshipping pagans”<\/a> and a preview of Hell?<\/p>\n

Does the Lord tell you to “lead a team to Burning Man”<\/a>? Does it speak to one of the favorite notions of Abrahamic religion, that, “historically, God has chosen the desert as a backdrop when He wanted to strip the peripherals away”<\/a>?<\/p>\n

The third writer, Randy Bohlender, adds, ” I go to Burning Man because I want the church of the future to learn lessons that can only be learned when one goes to where the future is headed. ” (I have given the links in order of increasing theological liberalism, as I see it.)<\/p>\n

Undoubtedly, some Burners would flinch at seeing a Christian spin put on this determindly non-sectarian even–or a capital-P Pagan spin either. A Pagan theologian like Michael York, with his position that “Paganism is root religion,” could argue that Burning Man undoubtedly contains Pagan cultic elements at an almost unconscious level, an observation that would probably delight Thomas Horn, the first author linked to.<\/p>\n

I suppose it’s a dubious sign of success when people start trying to “spin” your event to fit their theologies and ideologies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pastors on the playa Over the past several years, the annual Burning Man event in Nevada has gained a higher and higher profile. In some quarters, this event is viewed with alarm. Is it a convocation of “earth-worshipping pagans” and a preview of Hell? Does the Lord tell you to “lead a team to Burning […]<\/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-314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-314","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":509,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=509","url_meta":{"origin":314,"position":0},"title":"On the Front Burner* Lee\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 11, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"On the Front Burner* Lee Gilmore and Mark Van Proyen are the editors of a new anthology, AfterBurn: Reflections on Burning ManContributors include the always-perceptive Erik Davis and Sarah Pike, whose work I have mentioned here before.*Sorry, couldn't resist.Burning Man","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":988,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=988","url_meta":{"origin":314,"position":1},"title":"When Librarians Strike Back","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 24, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"A fairly brilliant fund-raising idea in Alamogordo, New Mexico: funding a new library with photos of a local book-burning.The book burning pitted two opposing points of view. It was \"not a book-burning, but a holy bonfire,\" according to the church's founding pastor, Jack Brock.....On one side [of the street] were\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"libraries\"","block_context":{"text":"libraries","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=libraries"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4920,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4920","url_meta":{"origin":314,"position":2},"title":"End of Year Lists: Books, Movies","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 31, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Religion Dispatches lists five important new books on alternative and metaphysical spirituality in America \u2014 I prefer that to saying they are about the \"nones,\" which is a vague term \u2014 yes, well, so is \"alternative.\" Catherine Albanese of UC-Santa Barbara has done important work in identifying first the non-theistic\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":12715,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12715","url_meta":{"origin":314,"position":3},"title":"Celebrating Spring with a Castle-Burning","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 17, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Pagan writer Rhyd Wildermuth, now living in the Ardennes Forest, or as he prefers, \"The Forests of Arduinna,\" offers this video of a local end-of-winter celebration called Buergbrennen (castle-burning). He sees it as an ancient Pagan celebration taken over by the Christian church. Maybe so. Or maybe some Luxembourgish Ronald\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"equinox\"","block_context":{"text":"equinox","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=equinox"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3354,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3354","url_meta":{"origin":314,"position":4},"title":"Quick Day of the Dead Instructions\u2014And How Things Change","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 29, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Last Monday a notice popped up in my university email: It's time to build an altar for the Day of the Dead. (And do it in the correct, traditional manner!) Several professors of Spanish have organized an altar-building event in the student center for a number of years now. But\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":3939,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3939","url_meta":{"origin":314,"position":5},"title":"Pomegranate 13.1 Table of Contents","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 9, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"The newest issue of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies went to the printer last month. Contents are available online to subscribers or by purchase of individual articles. PDFs of book reviews and of Caroline Tully's article,\u00a0 \"Researching the Past is a Foreign Country: Cognitive Dissonance as a\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\/314","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=314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}