{"id":537,"date":"2005-10-18T19:05:00","date_gmt":"2005-10-18T19:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=537"},"modified":"2005-10-18T19:05:00","modified_gmt":"2005-10-18T19:05:00","slug":"537","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=537","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

I still won’t shop there<\/strong><\/p>\n

Canadian journalist finds Wicca books on sale at Wal-Mart and views with alarm<\/a>. (Link from Wren’s Nest<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Somehow I connect this story with another of today’s headlines, about the continuing drop in major crime<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Despite variations on this news over the past couple of years, one of my evangelical Christian students wrote in a rough draft what must be a commonplace in her religious community: she wrote that crime is rising. If crime is rising, then it’s due to “taking God out of schools” and so forth.<\/p>\n

But if crime is falling<\/em>, what then? Whom do you blame?<\/p>\n

Now it is true that Americans’ economic situation is generally worsening. Big corporations cut pensions that were supposed to be rock-solid (Delta, General Motors, many others). Health care gets more expensive. Inflation is rising (Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina, etc.)<\/p>\n

Somehow those declines are not easily blamed on “taking God out of the classroom.”<\/p>\n

Tags: Wicca<\/a>, Wal-Mart<\/a>, Crime<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I still won’t shop there Canadian journalist finds Wicca books on sale at Wal-Mart and views with alarm. (Link from Wren’s Nest.) Somehow I connect this story with another of today’s headlines, about the continuing drop in major crime. Despite variations on this news over the past couple of years, one of my evangelical Christian […]<\/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-537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-537","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":13919,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13919","url_meta":{"origin":537,"position":0},"title":"Did the Professor Die for What He Knew of His Mentor’s Past?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 11, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Shortly after 1 p.m. on May 21, 1991, a secretary working on the third floor of Swift Hall at the University of Chicago heard a faint \"pop,\" as she described it. The sound came from the men's restroom next to her office. It was produced by a .25-caliber (6.35 mm)\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\/2025\/02\/lincoln-secrets-lies.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3811,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3811","url_meta":{"origin":537,"position":1},"title":"Thought Crime in the Writing Classroom","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 11, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I taught writing for twenty years. I heard some shocking stuff\u2014especially in the \"Creative Nonfiction\" class, which occasionally produced some, shall we say, highly confessional material. And there was one outright psycho student who, lucky for me, fixated on a different professor as the cause of all her problems\u2014not to\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":8023,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8023","url_meta":{"origin":537,"position":2},"title":"Being an “Oxbridge Scholar”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 12, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Yesterday's mail brought my contributor's copy of The Cambridge Handbook of Western Mysticism and Esotericism, to which I contributed an article on contemporary Paganism. There ought to be a long German compound word for \"fear of looking at something you wrote several years ago.\" The back cover of this hefty\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=soutrocknatub-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0521509831","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2163,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2163","url_meta":{"origin":537,"position":3},"title":"More Mainstreaming of Wicca?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 14, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Go here and read the third comment (Bella's).\u00a0 Either it has become a commonplace observation or we, truly, are everywhere. I, however, am more in agreement with the second (Clay's): isn't this\u00a0 what you call\u00a0 a victimless crime?","rel":"","context":"In \"weirdness\"","block_context":{"text":"weirdness","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=weirdness"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":89,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=89","url_meta":{"origin":537,"position":4},"title":"Nightmare Alley Last November, Jim\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 1, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Nightmare Alley Last November, Jim Lewis, the editor of Syzygy, the journal of new religious movements, tipped me off about William Lindsay Gresham's 1946 crime novel Nightmare Alley. He suggested that this book about \"carny\" life--with its attitude that most people are marks, rubes, sheep and that all religions are\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":916,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=916","url_meta":{"origin":537,"position":5},"title":"The Dark is Rising . . . on Film","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 31, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"In the heart of the English Fen County, Pluvialis is spitting . . . . . . chips and blood. I am crackling with furious static. Any minute now, small pieces of paper, coins and pens are going to drag themselves across the tabletop, bent and pulled towards me by\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"movies\"","block_context":{"text":"movies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=movies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537","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=537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}