My friends who are scholars of new religious movements (NRMs)\u00a0 theorize about how NRMs develop or do not, become accepted or do not, assimilate or do not. Some engage in a “scholarship of advocacy,” defending in various fora the human right to start one’s own religion without being labeled a dangerous cult.<\/p>\n
But in many cases, I think that they also just enjoy the spectacle of religion, the sheer weirdness and variety of what comes down the road.<\/p>\n
Rod Dreher, a cultural commentator who often touches on religion, but not a scholar of NRMS as such, put up a light-hearted post <\/a>recently about “His Royal Highness Prince Rutherford Johnson of Etruria, who is also Rutherford Cardinal Johnson, the patriarch of the recently invented Anglican Rite Roman Catholic Church<\/a>.”<\/p>\n Some of the comments are quite good <\/a>and lead to other links about episcopi vagantes<\/em><\/a>\u00a0 \u2014 self-proclaimed or dubious bishops, archbishops, and anti-popes.<\/p>\n One commenter hypothesized an Asperger’s syndrome connection<\/a>, only with hierarchies, vestments, and churchiness rather than computers, trains, or some of the other intense fascinations <\/a>that Aspie kids often display.<\/p>\n It all reminded me of my wife’s step-brother. He had a fairly mainstream Roman Catholic childhood in upstate New York, but was always fascinated with orders of knighthood and coats of arms, which he designed for the family. He eventually found some decayed European aristocrat to make him a knight of the “Order of St. Constantine” or something, whereupon he put out a news release about himself, which appeared in his local newspaper.<\/p>\n “Do you think he was somewhere on that spectrum?” I asked her.<\/p>\n “He was always just weird,” she said.<\/p>\n Setting aside the dynamics of her family, maybe some people are just weirdly creative. On a scale of 1 to 5, how much weirder is starting a church than starting a garage band? (Both might have a secondary goal of improving your social life.) Both are creative activities.<\/p>\n Archbishop . . . archdruid . . . arch-whatever. Here comes the parade!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My friends who are scholars of new religious movements (NRMs)\u00a0 theorize about how NRMs develop or do not, become accepted or do not, assimilate or do not. Some engage in a “scholarship of advocacy,” defending in various fora the human right to start one’s own religion without being labeled a dangerous cult. But in many […]<\/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_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[10,22],"class_list":["post-3662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-american-religion","tag-weirdness"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-X4","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":493,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=493","url_meta":{"origin":3662,"position":0},"title":"Pagan studies, nature religion at\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 18, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Pagan studies, nature religion at AAR-SBLFor anyone attending the annual meetings of the American Academy of Religion and Society for Biblical Literature in Philadelphia in November, here is a quick--and not necessarily definitive--list of the Pagan-studies sessions.First, the all-day Conference on Contemporary Pagan Studies, which has been happening since 1998\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10167,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10167","url_meta":{"origin":3662,"position":1},"title":"“A Texas Witch on Trial” Now Published","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 17, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"In August 2016, I mused about having a Contemporary Pagan Studies on \"Paganism and Violence\" at the American Academy of Religion annual meeting, inspired by a recent gift of multiple cartons of archival material related to the murder trial of a prominent Wiccan figure in 1980. The universe was listening,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"Former home of Loy and Louise Stone near Hereford, Texas","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/stones_farm.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/stones_farm.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/stones_farm.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":8604,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8604","url_meta":{"origin":3662,"position":2},"title":"No “Neos” Here, We’re “Ethnic”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 30, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"A letter from one of the leading Hellenic Pagan groups to the government of Lithuania supports a request by the Lithuanian Romuva for state recognition. Just as the Hellenic Ethnic Religion, Romuva is by no means a \u201cneo-pagan movement\u201d or a \u201cnew religious movement\u201d. It belongs to the category of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Greece\"","block_context":{"text":"Greece","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=greece"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Romuva_flag-200x300.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":13168,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13168","url_meta":{"origin":3662,"position":3},"title":"The Passing of Jim Lewis, Noted Scholar of New Religious Movements","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 24, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"When I was new to Pagan studies \u2014 actually, \"Pagan studies\" had not even coalesced as a field of study \u2014 Jim Lewis's edited volume Magical Religion and Modern Witchcraft (SUNY Press, 1996) was one of my go-to volumes. I had an essay in it, not something I am proud\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/magical-religion-modern-witchcraft.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/magical-religion-modern-witchcraft.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/magical-religion-modern-witchcraft.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":6880,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6880","url_meta":{"origin":3662,"position":4},"title":"Sexuality and New Religious Movements","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 21, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Sexuality and New Religious Movements, a collection edited by Henrik Bogdan (associate editor of The Pomegranate) and Jim Lewis, an American teaching in Norway, has been released by the academic publisher Palgrave Macmillan. So far it is only in hardback, hence expensive. Jeffrey Kripal, a noted scholar on sex and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"sex & nrms","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/sex-nrms.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":164,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=164","url_meta":{"origin":3662,"position":5},"title":"Dealing with evangelicals About ten\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 18, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Dealing with evangelicals About ten days ago, while I was working at home (revising the book), the notorious M.C. took the dogs for a walk in the woods, leaving me without my first line of defense. As I was pouring a cup of tea in the kitchen, someone knocked at\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\/3662","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=3662"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3671,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3662\/revisions\/3671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}