{"id":776,"date":"2006-12-09T02:58:00","date_gmt":"2006-12-09T02:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=776"},"modified":"2006-12-09T02:58:00","modified_gmt":"2006-12-09T02:58:00","slug":"wicca-trendy-phony-and-constitutionally-protected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=776","title":{"rendered":"Wicca: trendy, phony, and Constitutionally protected"},"content":{"rendered":"

If I were not teaching rhetoric, I would not have found Michael Medved’s column on Sgt. Patrick Stewart’s pentacle memorial<\/a> while looking for a good political column for my students to analyze.<\/p>\n

After insulting the religion–“it\u2019s a trendy, phony potpourri of druidical, primitive and New Age elements that\u2019s more a pagan cult than an organized faith”–Medved grudgingly admits that “the Constitution leaves no room for the government to discriminate against its adherents.”<\/p>\n

Uh, OK, thanks, I guess. And we are<\/em> a Pagan cult, in fact, if you want to be technical about it. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, his fellow Townhall.com<\/a> columnist Dennis Praeger, who has been bent out of shape over a Muslim Congressman wanting to take his oath of office on the Koran, responds to his critics<\/a> and adds,<\/p>\n

I am a Jew (a non-denominational religious Jew, for the record), and I would vote for any Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Mormon, atheist, Jew, Zoroastrian, Hindu, Wiccan, Confucian, Taoist or combination thereof whose social values I share. <\/em><\/p>\n

A couple of nights ago I guest-lectured via telephone to Jeffrey Kaplan’s<\/a> class in new religious movements at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh.<\/p>\n

I said that I thought that Paganism–Wicca in particular–was becoming the new designated Other on the American religious scene–and these columnists bear me out. Get used to “What about Wicca?”<\/p>\n

However, I expect that it will be a long time before the first Wiccan elected to the House of Representatives has to worry about on which book to swear an oath. For the record, no holy book is required anyway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If I were not teaching rhetoric, I would not have found Michael Medved’s column on Sgt. Patrick Stewart’s pentacle memorial while looking for a good political column for my students to analyze. After insulting the religion–“it\u2019s a trendy, phony potpourri of druidical, primitive and New Age elements that\u2019s more a pagan cult than an organized […]<\/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":[],"tags":[10,17,11],"class_list":["post-776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-american-religion","tag-scotland","tag-shamanism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-cw","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":733,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=733","url_meta":{"origin":776,"position":0},"title":"‘Western Pagan Cult’ Comes to India","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 6, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Wicca reaches India, reports The Telegraph of Calcutta. It's just a \"study group\" now, the paper says. (Sure!) There is a Web site, of course, which suggests that the organizers have been Wiccan for some years, in fact.A month after bisarjan, a western pagan cult worshipping the Mother Goddess looks\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9742,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9742","url_meta":{"origin":776,"position":1},"title":"Pentagram Pizza with Magic Wands (Serves Five)","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 19, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Years ago I made a wand of alder wood cut somewhere up Ute Pass, west of my Manitou Springs, Colo., home. And then I made a fancier one in Craft class, a dowel with an iron rod running through it and silver wire wrapped around the handle. I pretty much\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"magick\"","block_context":{"text":"magick","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=magick"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/pentagrampizza.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":56,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=56","url_meta":{"origin":776,"position":2},"title":"Barbie, the Hot Pagan Witch","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 29, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"I am in debt to Mark Morford's SF Gate column on the latest, must-have Barbie doll. (Mattel offers a dark-complexioned version as well.) She would be just right to look down on you and your plushies while you are reading some of Llewellyn Publications' latest teen-witch fiction.","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":11755,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11755","url_meta":{"origin":776,"position":3},"title":"“The Woman Who Inspired Wicca”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 25, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"This popped up on Twitter recently: There is no conference that I know of, which may say something about how small a set of academics are interested in Wiccan history. Maybe we Pagan-studies types do not have anything new to say right now, because this issue has been covered pretty\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"journalism\"","block_context":{"text":"journalism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=journalism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/witch-cult-tweet.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/witch-cult-tweet.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/witch-cult-tweet.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1310,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1310","url_meta":{"origin":776,"position":4},"title":"Is Your Tuesday Fat or with Pancakes?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 16, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Venetian Carnival reveler taking a cappuccino break.It's that fat Tuesday again, and Boston.com offers a selection of Carnival pictures from around the world.This one comes from Venice. \"But Italian Catholicism always had a strong pagan residue in its cult of the saints as well as in its vaguely erotic sadomasochistic\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/inapcache.boston.com\/universal\/site_graphics\/blogs\/bigpicture\/carnival_02_15\/c03_22043139.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7494,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7494","url_meta":{"origin":776,"position":5},"title":"New Issue of The Pomegranate Published","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 5, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"The newest issue of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies, has been published online and is at the printer. Book reviews may be downloaded free. There is a charge for longer articles \u2014 or request them (after an interval) from your library's interlibrary loan service. Table of Contents:\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"Pom cover","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Pom-cover.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776","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=776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}