{"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":{"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":[],"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":519,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=519","url_meta":{"origin":776,"position":0},"title":"Saturday with the PagansRocky Mountain\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 19, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Saturday with the PagansRocky Mountain News religion writer Jean Torkelson goes to Denver's Pagan Pride celebration and writes a middle-of-the-road \"Pagans are mostly just regular folks\" column.Behind each pagan, a story: Dressed in brooding black, Michael Torres looked like a shadow falling across the sunlit park. Raised in the intense\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":733,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=733","url_meta":{"origin":776,"position":1},"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":2},"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":737,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=737","url_meta":{"origin":776,"position":3},"title":"I have seen the future of Paganism, and it’s polyester","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 14, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Jason Pitzl-Waters adds more on Paganism in the YouTube era. He wonders, \"More importantly, will modern Paganism change to become more 'video friendly'?\"Take, for instance, the videos posted by the publicity-hungry Corellian Nativist Tradition. There you may see CNT leader Don Lewis dressed like a small-town insurance agent. His sport\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8749,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8749","url_meta":{"origin":776,"position":4},"title":"Let’s Have More Writing about Pagan Experience","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 18, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"I used to complain about the dearth of American Pagan biography and autobiography. Michael Lloyd's Bull of Heaven: The Mythic Life of Eddie Buczynski and the Rise of the New York Pagan\u00a0and John Sulak's The Wizard and the Witch: Seven Decades of Counterculture, Magick & Paganism made a big dent\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":56,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=56","url_meta":{"origin":776,"position":5},"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":[]}],"_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}]}}