{"id":7995,"date":"2016-04-29T15:34:34","date_gmt":"2016-04-29T21:34:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7995"},"modified":"2016-05-12T14:23:36","modified_gmt":"2016-05-12T20:23:36","slug":"a-small-victory-in-the-struggle-for-the-capital-p","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7995","title":{"rendered":"A Small Victory in the Struggle for the Capital P"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was contacted some time ago to write an article on contemporary Paganism for the <a href=\"http:\/\/religion.oxfordre.com\/\"><em>Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion<\/em><\/a>, now in production. After the usual writerly procrastination, I cranked out my 8,000 words (or whatever it was) and sent it in.<\/p>\n<p>Then, in April, the copyedited version arrived for my approval. No problems there \u2014 except every instance of the word &#8220;Pagan&#8221; had been lowercased, except where it began a sentence.<\/p>\n<p>I was quietly furious. <a href=\"http:\/\/wildhunt.org\/2013\/12\/pagan-voices-sarah-anne-lawless-oberon-zell-chas-clifton-yvonne-aburrow-and-more.html\">The campaign for the capital P<\/a> is not going to be won in a day.<\/p>\n<p>One thing caught my eye \u2014 the editor who had contacted me (not the copyeditor) had a Indian name, Krishnan P_______. So whether a devout Hindu or not, perhaps he would be receptive to an argument based on a sort of semantic parallel. Like this:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;Pagan,&#8221; like &#8220;Hindu,&#8221; was a term imposed by outsiders.<\/li>\n<li>Like &#8220;Hindu,&#8221; it covers a variety of worship traditions and philosophies \u2014\u00a0 admittedly not quite so many. But every bit as old, if you apply it all the way back, which I do.<\/li>\n<li>Finally, the people whom it describes have come to use it as a neutral or even positive descriptor of who they are.<\/li>\n<li>And publishers and academic groups increasingly use the capital P in the interest of fairness as a parallel to capital-M Muslim and so on.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And to my delight, he replied, &#8220;Thanks for writing to me. As per your concern, we will retain the capitalization for the word &#8216;Pagan&#8217; throughout the article.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Some British academics have been slow to accept this eminently sensible approach. At least one scholar I know wants to treat &#8220;paganism&#8221; as a collection of practices that pre-date the Big Five religions but are also found within them.<\/p>\n<p>For instance, in his system, a pilgrimage to a sacred site is &#8220;pagan&#8221; no matter who does it. So my cousin who is currently four days along the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Camino_de_Santiago\"><em>Camino de Santiago<\/em><\/a> (I think he is in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pamplona\">Pamplona<\/a> tonight) is carrying out a &#8220;pagan practice.&#8221;((I would love to walk it myself, and I am obviously not Christian, so I am not sure how I would categorize that!)) But I think that &#8220;Pagan&#8221; has more use as an umbrella for more than the new religious movements usually associated with it.\u00a0 So onward to lexicological victory!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was contacted some time ago to write an article on contemporary Paganism for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion, now in production. After the usual writerly procrastination, I cranked out my 8,000 words (or whatever it was) and sent it in. Then, in April, the copyedited version arrived for my approval. No problems there [&hellip;]<\/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":[4,12],"class_list":["post-7995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-scholarship","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-24X","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10568,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10568","url_meta":{"origin":7995,"position":0},"title":"Pagan with a Capital P","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 28, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"In editing the current issue of The Pomegranate, one of my \"favorite\" issues came up again: whether or not Pagan is capitalized. American scholars and Pagan authors tend to say yes. There has been a small campaign to convince the editors of the Associated Press Stylebook, widely used in the\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\/05\/Letter-P.gif?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2748,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2748","url_meta":{"origin":7995,"position":1},"title":"Army Appoints Hindu Chaplain (Sort of)","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 7, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"There about 1,000 identified Hindus in the U.S. Army, and now they have a chaplain, Captain Pratima Dharm. Yes, that is probably fewer than the followers of Pagan paths in uniform. The Buddhists have been recognized too, but a qualified Wiccan officer was rejected. But there might be more to\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":308,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=308","url_meta":{"origin":7995,"position":2},"title":"Shinto's struggle Although I have\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 21, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Shinto's struggle Although I have never visited Japan, I have often wondered if Shinto in some ways best resembles classical Paganism, in so far as the shrine and the gods come first--there is not the idea of minister + congregation. In Pagan Theology, Michael York asks something similar about Hindu\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":120,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=120","url_meta":{"origin":7995,"position":3},"title":"Saint Valentine . . .\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 16, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Saint Valentine . . . not a culture hero? Those fundamentalist Saudis mentioned earlier are not alone in their hatred of hearts, flowers, and by extension, divine Eros. They have company on the Indian subcontinent, where other Muslims and the Hindu Shiv Sena party also rage against the evil foreign\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":7995,"position":4},"title":"&#8216;Western Pagan Cult&#8217; 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":6128,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6128","url_meta":{"origin":7995,"position":5},"title":"Orthography and the Modern Pagan","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 2, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"One thing I did at the recent American Academy of Religion annual meeting was stop by the University of Chicago Press booth and get the name of the managing editor of the press's Manual of Style, which is the holy book, all 1,028 pages of it, for editors of academic\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":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7995","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=7995"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8029,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7995\/revisions\/8029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}