{"id":5,"date":"2003-03-08T04:53:00","date_gmt":"2003-03-08T04:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5"},"modified":"2012-03-12T19:23:28","modified_gmt":"2012-03-13T01:23:28","slug":"who-and-where-are-the-pagans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5","title":{"rendered":"Who and Where are the Pagans?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sociologist Helen A. Berger, author of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sc.edu\/uscpress\/books\/1998\/3246.html\">A Community of Witches: Contemporary Neo-Paganism and Witchcraft in the United States<\/a>, has a new book coming out in July, written together with Evan Leach and Leigh Shaffer.<\/p>\n<p>The title is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sc.edu\/uscpress\/books\/1998\/3246.html\">Voices from the Pagan Census: A National Survey of Witches and Neo-Pagans in the United States<\/a>. Like her first, it was published by the University of South Carolina Press.<\/p>\n<p>I plan to post a fuller review after I have read it. The &#8220;census&#8221; referred to was distributed by Berger and by Andras Corbon of Earthspirit Community. The authors claim that (this time) they reached more than just the festival-going Pagan crowd.<\/p>\n<p>According to the catalog, &#8220;The scholars . . . identify variations within the Neo-Pagan population, including those related to geography and to the movement&#8217;s multiple spiritual<br \/>\npaths.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sociologist Helen A. Berger, author of A Community of Witches: Contemporary Neo-Paganism and Witchcraft in the United States, has a new book coming out in July, written together with Evan Leach and Leigh Shaffer. The title is Voices from the Pagan Census: A National Survey of Witches and Neo-Pagans in the United States. Like her [&hellip;]<\/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":[5,4],"class_list":["post-5","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-paganism","tag-scholarship"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-5","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10799,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10799","url_meta":{"origin":5,"position":0},"title":"A New Study of Solitary Pagans","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 19, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Solitary Pagans: Contemporary Witches, Wiccans, and Others Who Practice Alone is a new study from Helen A. Berger, a sociologist of religion who has been studying contemporary Paganism for decades. Her body of work is large enough now that future scholars will be returning to it again and again for\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\/2019\/08\/solitary-pagans.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10197,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10197","url_meta":{"origin":5,"position":1},"title":"&#8220;Solitary Pagans,&#8221; a New Academic Study","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 4, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Back in the mid-1990s, Nancy Mostad, then the acquisitions editor at Llewellyn, told me that they estimated that 70 percent of purchasers of books on Paganism were solitaries.Hence the immense success -- by their standards -- of Scott Cunningham's Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner. Meanwhile, sociologist of religion\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":1203,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1203","url_meta":{"origin":5,"position":2},"title":"The Pagan Census, revisited","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 5, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Three researchers are working to update Voices from the Pagan Census: A National Survey of Witches and Neo-Pagans in the United States, originally published in 2003.Helen Berger, one of the researchers, writes, \"This survey builds on an earlier one completed over twenty years ago, primarily in the United States, which\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=chascli-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1570034885","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":12603,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12603","url_meta":{"origin":5,"position":3},"title":"Interview with Helen Berger, Leading Scholar of Paganism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 19, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"At his blog, now called On New and Alternative Religions, Ethan Doyle While interviews Helen Berger, one of the leading American scholars of contemporary Paganism. Since completing her PhD research on the early modern witch trials in the 1980s, Berger has devoted her career to the sociological analysis of modern-day\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\/2021\/11\/helen-berger.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1121,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1121","url_meta":{"origin":5,"position":4},"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":7724,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7724","url_meta":{"origin":5,"position":5},"title":"Core Books in Pagan Studies","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 4, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I recently completed an article on contempoary Paganism for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion, so when it appears, I can at least say that I have been published by Oxford UP. Yay me. But is there still a market for academic encyclopedias in this day when undergrads must be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"magical religion","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/magical-religion.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5","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=5"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3983,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5\/revisions\/3983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}