{"id":447,"date":"2005-05-29T22:25:00","date_gmt":"2005-05-29T22:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=447"},"modified":"2005-05-29T22:25:00","modified_gmt":"2005-05-29T22:25:00","slug":"447","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=447","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s that meme again<\/strong><\/p>\n

A New York Times<\/em> story on the Rites of Spring Pagan festival<\/a> (login required) quotes two contemporary scholars of Paganism, Helen Berger<\/a> and Sabina Magliocco<\/a> on, among other things, the numbers of American Pagans.<\/p>\n

Ms. Magliocco favors the higher number [700,000] based on data like surveys, sales of books with pagan themes and attendance at festivals. She said, “Paganism is one of the fastest-growing religious movements in North America.”<\/em><\/p>\n

The article also discusses the growth of Pagan festivals, which began in hotels in the early 1970s, modeled very much on the science-fiction fan “cons” of the time, and sometimes even with “con” in their names.<\/p>\n

I believe the first big outdoor festival was in 1980–the Pan-Pagan festival. If not, they started around then.<\/p>\n

The outdoor revival meeting is a theme in American religious history–think of the “brush arbors” <\/a> of the 19th century–but the growth of a religion through widespread festivals may indeed by something new. When a covener of ours came back from one of the first national festivals in the early 1980s with a new group of songs and chants to share, it was like seeing something sprout before your very eyes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s that meme again A New York Times story on the Rites of Spring Pagan festival (login required) quotes two contemporary scholars of Paganism, Helen Berger and Sabina Magliocco on, among other things, the numbers of American Pagans. Ms. Magliocco favors the higher number [700,000] based on data like surveys, sales of books with pagan […]<\/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_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-447","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":13863,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13863","url_meta":{"origin":447,"position":0},"title":"Talking about “Pagan Religions in 5 Minutes”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 21, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Pagan Religions in 5 Minutes brings together seventy short essays, each answering a question such as \"Do all Pagans follow the same festivals?\"1 or \"What are Technopagans?\" or \"What is the difference between Wicca and witchcraft?\" It's part of a \"5 Minutes\" series from Equinox Publishing, which also publishes a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Pagan studies\"","block_context":{"text":"Pagan studies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=pagan-studies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1121,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1121","url_meta":{"origin":447,"position":1},"title":"Handbook of Contemporary Paganism in Print","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 14, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"My contributor copy of the new Handbook of Contemporary Paganism from Brill arrived. (You can tell from the price that it is intended primarily for the institutional market.) Here is the table of contents:\"The Modern Magical Revival,\" Nevill Drury\"The Influence of Aleister Crowley on Gerald Gardner and the Early Witchcraft\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":7338,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7338","url_meta":{"origin":447,"position":2},"title":"How Do You Feel about Faeries?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 18, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"NOTE: The survey is now closed. Prof. Magliocco received more than 500 responses quickly, and they exceeded the number that the university's Institutional Review Board \"allowed.\" From Sabina Maglicco at California State University, Northridge, comes this request for help with a survey: My latest project involves research into the lore\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"fairies\"","block_context":{"text":"fairies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=fairies"},"img":{"alt_text":"Prof. Magliocco","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/magliocco-sabina.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":130,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=130","url_meta":{"origin":447,"position":3},"title":"Witchcraft and folklore Folklorist Sabina\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 27, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Witchcraft and folklore Folklorist Sabina Magliocco, an anthropologist at California State University-Northridge and a previous contributo to The Pomegranate, has a new book out, Witching Culture: Folklore and Neo-Paganism in America. From the publisher's catalog: Taking the reader into the heart of one of the fastest-growing religious movements in North\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":994,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=994","url_meta":{"origin":447,"position":4},"title":"The Scholar and the Festival","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 11, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"The registration brochure for the big Pagan Spirit Gathering in June came in the mail. I won't be going, but I read it for general information and found this:Pagan Scholars who want to conduct Pagan Studies research at the Gathering as part of their participation must submit a research proposal\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":1803,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1803","url_meta":{"origin":447,"position":5},"title":"Gallimaufry for a Cool September Day","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 3, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"\u2022 Check out Patheos' story package on The Future of Paganism. Solitaries? Personal paganism? What's next? \u2022 Musings on that \"Nazi\" label and whether the climate of the Pacific Northwest encourages \"black metal\" bands, at Bioregional Animism. \u2022 He comes to the festival as a lapsed Lutheran. He leaves as\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447","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=447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}