{"id":500,"date":"2005-08-30T21:51:00","date_gmt":"2005-08-30T21:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=500"},"modified":"2005-08-30T21:51:00","modified_gmt":"2005-08-30T21:51:00","slug":"500","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=500","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

“What’s on your iGod?”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mark Morford has some fun with the “spiritual but not religious” meme. He thinks it’s a good thing, too<\/a>. I’m not sure where the “homogeny” is, however. I see plenty of variety in the passing religious spectacle. But let Morford continue:<\/p>\n

I have seen [this profound change] at yoga retreats and Wicca gatherings and in all related offshoots, Druidism and Pantheism and Animism, etc. I’ve heard it in the talks of modern gurus and nontraditional pastors and felt it in our deep cultural fascination with mystical powers and dream energies and supernatural phenomena, and it is perhaps most visible in the Religion & Spirituality aisle of your bookstore, the most explosive section of the publishing market, $2 billion worth just a few years ago alone, countless thousands of titles shooting up like flowers and very few having to do with how to kneel in abject guilt-addled faith to a solitary sullen disapproving deity and instead almost every single one having to do with how to take some sort of larger view — or rather, a deeper, inner view, profoundly personal and free of typical religious dogma and churchy groupthink and send us your money now so the pastor can make his Lear payments.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“What’s on your iGod?” Mark Morford has some fun with the “spiritual but not religious” meme. He thinks it’s a good thing, too. I’m not sure where the “homogeny” is, however. I see plenty of variety in the passing religious spectacle. But let Morford continue: I have seen [this profound change] at yoga retreats and […]<\/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-500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-500","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1304,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1304","url_meta":{"origin":500,"position":0},"title":"Magical Dolls and Missionary Board Games","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 5, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"From Publishers Weekly, a short review of a new book co-authored by Nikki Bado-Fralick, my co-editor in the Pagan Studies book series (This book is not a part of that series, however!)Toying with God: The World of Religious Games and Dolls by Nikki Bado-Fralick and Rebecca Sachs Norris, Baylor Univ.\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=1602581819","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2640,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2640","url_meta":{"origin":500,"position":1},"title":"Quick Review: Caesar’s Druids","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 12, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I am a little more than halfway through Miranda Aldhouse-Green's Caesar's Druids: Story of An Ancient Priesthood. As the British archaeologist Stuart Piggott pointed out back in the 1960s, there are no texts written about Druids by Druids. The sum of what ancient writers of the Greco-Roman world wrote would\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"Cover image of Casar's Druids by Miranda Aldhouse-Green","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/51AAWVY--yL._AA160_.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3646,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3646","url_meta":{"origin":500,"position":2},"title":"Why is Saturn\/Cronus in Saturnalia?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 30, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"At this time of year, when the popular press runs articles on Christmas customs, a few rhetorical bases are always touched. The Christmas tree is a \"Pagan survival,\" that sort of thing. And that Christmas bears some relationship to the Roman celebration of Saturnalia. At Religion Nerd, Louis A. Ruprecht,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Greece\"","block_context":{"text":"Greece","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=greece"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":962,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=962","url_meta":{"origin":500,"position":3},"title":"Is This a Nation of Only Monotheistic Believers?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 6, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Under the United Blogging Act of 2005, I should have said something about Mitt Romney's speech about how being a Mormon does not make him unfit to be president.Hrafnkell picked up on a news release from Americans United, a group that did a lot for us during the pentacle grave-marker\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":168,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=168","url_meta":{"origin":500,"position":4},"title":"The fastest-growing religion? The notion\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 21, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"The fastest-growing religion? The notion that Wicca is America's fastest-growing religion has achieved meme status. Everyone says it, but who started it? Thanks to Jim Lewis, I have been looking at some of the data collected by the American Religious Identification Survey, conducted at CUNY, and comparing sociological changes in\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13099,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13099","url_meta":{"origin":500,"position":5},"title":"UK Pagans “More Established”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 29, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"The Guardian newspaper (UK) cherry-picks a few things from the 2021 England and Wales census, including a rise in the number of self-identified Pagans. 2) Pagans and wiccans are becoming more established More established [than self-identified shamans] are pagans [sic] , who number 74,000 people (up from 57,000 in 2011)\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"census\"","block_context":{"text":"census","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=census"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/stonehenge-2018-1024x614.webp?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/stonehenge-2018-1024x614.webp?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/stonehenge-2018-1024x614.webp?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500","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=500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}