{"id":864,"date":"2007-04-27T22:32:00","date_gmt":"2007-04-27T22:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=864"},"modified":"2007-04-27T22:32:00","modified_gmt":"2007-04-27T22:32:00","slug":"wiccas-legimacy-as-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=864","title":{"rendered":"Wicca’s Legimacy as Religion"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is often a bad idea to read the comments on political blogs. They tend to degenerate into vicious name-calling by anonymous persons all too quickly.<\/p>\n

A recent post on the pentacle grave marker case at the political blog Winds of Change<\/a> bemoaned the fact that Americans litigate over religion:<\/p>\n

I abhor the kind of attitude that leads to people hassling Christians over creches at Christmas, and that spurred the ACLU to threaten to sue a Christian cross off the seal of the County of Los Angeles California.<\/em><\/p>\n

At the same time, blogger David Blue continued, <\/p>\n

This long struggle for religious fairness for those who have died defending America has now reached a satisfactory end, mostly because George W. Bush shot his mouth off too much, and consequently it was better for the US Department of Veterans Affairs to settle, with a non-disclosure agreement, than to defend a weak case in court.<\/em><\/p>\n

And he praised Jason Pitz-Waters’ “brilliant, link-rich posts at The Wild Hunt Blog<\/a>” for their coverage.<\/p>\n

The comments that follow are interesting. Many commenters argue for fairness: given that there are hundreds of Wiccans in the military, they deserve the same treatment as followers of Eckankar<\/a> and other new religions, not to mention avowed atheists, who have their own military grave marker symbol.<\/p>\n

Some comments make much of the newness of Wicca, while others note that all religions start as new religions. I was impressed that a couple of comments came from names that I know from religious-studies circles.<\/p>\n

Personally, I found the comment thread interesting because it reminds me that much of the blogosphere is an echo chamber. People read bloggers with whom they agree, or they read their ideological opponents just so that they can make nasty comments, usually anonymously. I read some of these comments, and I wonder, “How can anyone still think that way?”<\/p>\n

But of course they do. It is good to be reminded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is often a bad idea to read the comments on political blogs. They tend to degenerate into vicious name-calling by anonymous persons all too quickly. A recent post on the pentacle grave marker case at the political blog Winds of Change bemoaned the fact that Americans litigate over religion: I abhor the kind of […]<\/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":[10,49,6],"class_list":["post-864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-american-religion","tag-military","tag-wicca"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-dW","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1221,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1221","url_meta":{"origin":864,"position":0},"title":"‘Cultural Appropriation’ is not a Religious Issue","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 11, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Part One here.Arguments about \"cultural appropriation\" are usually dishonest.Although they often take place in venues devoted to religion, spirituality, and magic, they are not about religion, spirituality, or magic.Instead, they are political arguments about cultural survival, usually taking the form, \"We\/You took everything from them\/us, and now we\/you want 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":195,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=195","url_meta":{"origin":864,"position":1},"title":"Barbara Bradley Hagerty, part 2","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 1, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Apparently, I'm a late arrival at this particular meme party. Various people have been all over Hagerty's religion reporting on NPR before now. The gist: she lets her born-again evangelical values influence how she covers stories, and NPR administrators ignore her violations of their reporter's code of ethics.\"Daily Kos,\" the\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":912,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=912","url_meta":{"origin":864,"position":2},"title":"The Fall of an Intellectual Thug","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 25, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"The University of Colorado has fired Ward Churchill, plagiarist, pseudo-American Indian, and intellectual thug.In case you have not guessed, I am happy about that.If a student had committed as much plagiarism as Churchill did, he would flunk the course. (My course, at any rate.)Some people will try to argue that\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":1267,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1267","url_meta":{"origin":864,"position":3},"title":"Contemporary Pagans: Indigenous or Not?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 14, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"A kerfuffle over who said what about which flavors of Paganism at the just-concluded Parliament of the World's Religions is summarized over at The Wild Hunt.This year's parliament in Melbourne listed \"Reconciling with the Indigenous Peoples\" as one of its key topics.Some contemporary Pagans have been playing the \"indigenous card\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"nature religion\"","block_context":{"text":"nature religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=nature-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2264,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2264","url_meta":{"origin":864,"position":4},"title":"The ‘Sickness’ of Monotheism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 5, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Prompted to write on \"Muslim-Christian relations\" for the Washington Post's \"On Faith\" section, Jason Pitzl-Waters changed the terms of the usual interfaith conversation and \"spoke truth to power,\" thus: These events are the sad fruits of mixing raw social and political power with religions that operate on a exclusionary, one-true-path,\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":2521,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2521","url_meta":{"origin":864,"position":5},"title":"Aphrodite Smiles","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 4, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Back when this blog was young, I wrote a post called \"Aphrodite will not be Denied\"\u00a0 about the botheration caused to some Muslim clerics by the sultry Lebanese singer Haifa Wehbe. If there is anything that drives the mullahs and imams mad, it is female sexuality. The bloom is off\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Aphrodite\"","block_context":{"text":"Aphrodite","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=aphrodite"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/media.hotair.com\/greenroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/Veena_Malik_300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864","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=864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}