{"id":5016,"date":"2013-01-10T13:02:36","date_gmt":"2013-01-10T20:02:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5016"},"modified":"2013-01-10T13:11:30","modified_gmt":"2013-01-10T20:11:30","slug":"the-p-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5016","title":{"rendered":"The P-word"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since the early 1990s, I have been working in my small way to get the word Pagan capitalized in books and articles \u2014 of course, I was not the only one doing that. Ironically, the most resistance seems to come from certain British academics. Neither of the two conflicting editing gangs<\/a> has published an official statement yet, so it’s up to us. I was looking today at the copyedited ms. of\u00a0Modern Pagan and Native Faith Movements in Central and Eastern Europe<\/em><\/a>, and it looks as though the Brit copyeditor is leaving our capital P’s alone.<\/p>\n

When people vocally announce that they are not going to call themselves “Pagan” anymore<\/a>, they are acting right within the mainstream of contemporary Paganism, where individual choice, transaction-based relationships,\u00a0 and the voluntary joining and leaving of groups trump any notion of organic community. (That was the point I tried to make when Heather from The Wild Hunt<\/em> asked me to comment on “solidarity.”<\/a>)<\/p>\n

If I read him right, Peter Dybing suggests that this kind of behavior guarantees that contemporary Paganism is a long way from having oppressive institutions.<\/a><\/p>\n

Pagan studies scholar Lee Gilmore writes on her Facebook page<\/a>, “All this hand wringing over terminology is, I think, indicative of both Pagans\u2019 struggle to construct authenticity, and also of larger social anxieties about religious boundaries, which also seem to increasingly locate authenticity outside of ‘religion’ (i.e., the whole \u2018spiritual but not etc.\u2019 thing).”<\/p>\n

To further complicate things, some people persist in using the word “pagan” \u2014 and here I would lowercase it \u2014 in ways like this:<\/a><\/p>\n

Paganism is a sustainable way of life that has existed for thousands of years. Sometimes mistaken as a religious path (true pagans do not worship deities), paganism will appeal to anyone who cares about the environment or is interested in maintaining an organic lifestyle.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You silly people who thought you had a religion! Go cultivate your gardens!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since the early 1990s, I have been working in my small way to get the word Pagan capitalized in books and articles \u2014 of course, I was not the only one doing that. Ironically, the most resistance seems to come from certain British academics. Neither of the two conflicting editing gangs has published an official […]<\/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":[5],"class_list":["post-5016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-paganism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1iU","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5217,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5217","url_meta":{"origin":5016,"position":0},"title":"Parsing Paganism, Rejecting the F-Word","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 15, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"This whole issue of \"Pagan fundamentalism,\" Pagan identity politics, and related disputes have been giving me a lot of agita. In fact, I do wish that \"the f-word\" had never been introduced, because rather than helping the conversation, it shuts it down. As soon as you refer to someone as\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12836,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12836","url_meta":{"origin":5016,"position":1},"title":"CFP: Pagan Studies Conference at Masaryk University","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 11, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Paganism and its Others 13-14 June 2022 Masaryk University, Faculty of Arts, Brno, Czechia The Department for the Study of Religions at Masaryk University invites your participation in a conference on the overall theme of \u201cPaganism and its Others\u201d to be held in Brno, Czechia, 13-14 June, 2022, with in-person\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5825,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5825","url_meta":{"origin":5016,"position":2},"title":"Defining Paganism (1.5)","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 13, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The first definition of Paganism that I offered, that of Prof. Michael York, should be placed in its context, which was primarily the academic study of religion. (Amazon link to York's published books.) When it was published in 2003, academic interest in the study of contemporary (or neo-) Paganism had\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1121,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1121","url_meta":{"origin":5016,"position":3},"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":2371,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2371","url_meta":{"origin":5016,"position":4},"title":"Seeking AAR Pagan Studies Papers","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 18, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"After reading the Call for Papers, now is the time to submit proposals for the Contemporary Pagan Studies Group's sessions at the American Academy of Religion annual meeting. We have two topics this year: What does Pagan studies offer to academic analysis and critique? How do historical constructions of \u201cpaganism\u201d\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":676,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=676","url_meta":{"origin":5016,"position":5},"title":"Let's drop 'Neopagan'Back in the\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 11, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Let's drop 'Neopagan'Back in the 1970s, when Tim (now Oberon) Zell was editing Green Egg (America's leading Pagan zine at the time), \"Neopagan\" or \"Neo-Pagan\" was a cutting-edge term for a collection of religious movements from Wicca to Egyptian Reconstructionism.More recently, the British Pagan scholar Graham Harvey has suggested dropping\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\/5016","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=5016"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5021,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5016\/revisions\/5021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}