{"id":5325,"date":"2013-03-13T01:42:19","date_gmt":"2013-03-13T07:42:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5325"},"modified":"2013-03-12T21:42:56","modified_gmt":"2013-03-13T03:42:56","slug":"sarah-pike-on-witchcraft-and-american-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5325","title":{"rendered":"Sarah Pike on Witchcraft and American Religion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Religious studies professor Sarah Pike, author of Earthly Bodies, Magical Selves: Contemporary Pagans and the Search for Community <\/a><\/em>and New Age and Neopagan Religions in America<\/a><\/em> discusses her work at the Religion and American History blog.<\/a><\/p>\n

In a chapter I wrote recently on \u201cWicca in the News\u201d about changing representations of Witches in American news media since the 1960s (Oxford Handbook of Religion and the American News Media<\/i><\/a>, 2012), I argue that reporters today rarely depict Witches as evil or satanic, even though stereotypes from the 1960s and 1970s of sexy young female Witches or cuddly cookie-baking elderly Witches-next-door still remain. In the past 25 years since I entered my first occult shop and started asking questions, the boundaries between categories like religion and magic and the differences between \u201cfolk,\u201d \u201cpopular,\u201d and \u201cinstitutional\u201d religion are treated with more nuance. And scholars of American religions are more likely to take traditions like Wicca seriously than they did when I was a graduate student, because Neopaganism has become firmly established across North America and formally recognized in government branches and institutions such as the military and prisons.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the rest.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Religious studies professor Sarah Pike, author of Earthly Bodies, Magical Selves: Contemporary Pagans and the Search for Community and New Age and Neopagan Religions in America discusses her work at the Religion and American History blog. In a chapter I wrote recently on \u201cWicca in the News\u201d about changing representations of Witches in American news […]<\/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":[10,5,29],"class_list":["post-5325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-american-religion","tag-paganism","tag-witchcraft"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1nT","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1226,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1226","url_meta":{"origin":5325,"position":0},"title":"That Theodish Political Candidate","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 17, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Sarah Pike of California State University, Chico evaluates Dan Halloran's run for a New York City Council seat as an \"out\" Pagan and concludes, \"Since for many Americans, the Republican Party is inseparable from conservative Christianity, Neopagans were surprised that the party stood by Halloran, and took it as a\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":9245,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9245","url_meta":{"origin":5325,"position":1},"title":"Our Salem Film Festival","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 8, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Prompted by J. W. Ocker's A Season with the Witch: The Magic and Mayhem of Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts, M. and I held a little Salem film festival. (We skipped The Lords of Salem.) In order of creation, we watched these three movies:\u00a0 Three Sovereigns for Sarah (1985), Hocus Pocus\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":10422,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10422","url_meta":{"origin":5325,"position":2},"title":"A Festschrift for Ronald Hutton","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 28, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Magic and Witchery: Celebrating the Twentieth Anniversary of 'The Triumph of the Moon' will be published in September by Palgrave Macmillan. I love rolling the word Festschrift around, and if you are not used to it, this is what it means: \"In academia, a Festschrift\u00a0 (plural Festschriften) is a book\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\/04\/magic-and-witchery-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8868,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8868","url_meta":{"origin":5325,"position":3},"title":"They Were Not Witches \u2014\u00a0They Are Our Martyrs","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 18, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"This is the memorial created in 1992 for the victims of the Salem trials in Salem, Mass. Each \"bench\" contains the name of an accused person: \"Margaret Scott. Hanged. September 22, 1692.\" Walk there, and you know that it has become a shrine. Then you realize that you are walking\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/red-coat-3.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/red-coat-3.jpeg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/red-coat-3.jpeg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":8711,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8711","url_meta":{"origin":5325,"position":4},"title":"Pentagram Pizza Cut into 12 Slices","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 23, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"\u2022 Everything old is new again \u2014 young Chinese discover the Western zodiac and think that it is cooler than \"Year of the Monkey,\" etc. \u2022 \"Witchcrap\" from The Daily Beast website \u2014 \"These Modern Witches Want to Cast a Spell on You.\" Modern witchcraft combines feminism, self-help, and wellness.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Albania\"","block_context":{"text":"Albania","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=albania"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/pentagrampizza1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7724,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7724","url_meta":{"origin":5325,"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\/5325","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=5325"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5328,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5325\/revisions\/5328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}