{"id":953,"date":"2007-11-16T15:48:00","date_gmt":"2007-11-16T15:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=953"},"modified":"2007-11-16T15:48:00","modified_gmt":"2007-11-16T15:48:00","slug":"his-noodly-appendage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=953","title":{"rendered":"His Noodly Appendage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>About to leave my hotel room for the off-program <a href=\"http:\/\/www.paganstudies.org\">Pagan Studies<\/a> session, I check the AP wire to learn that the most noteworthy session at this year&#8217;s American Academy of Religion meeting is the <a href=\"http:\/\/apnews.myway.com\/article\/20071116\/D8SUOUQG1.html\">one devoted to the Flying Spaghetti Monster.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Indeed, the tale of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.venganza.org\/\">Flying Spaghetti Monster and its followers<\/a> cuts to the heart of the one of the thorniest questions in religious studies: What defines a religion? Does it require a genuine theological belief? Or simply a set of rituals and a community joining together as a way of signaling their cultural alliances to others?<br \/><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>About to leave my hotel room for the off-program Pagan Studies session, I check the AP wire to learn that the most noteworthy session at this year&#8217;s American Academy of Religion meeting is the one devoted to the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Indeed, the tale of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and its followers cuts to the [&hellip;]<\/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],"class_list":["post-953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-american-religion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-fn","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5982,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5982","url_meta":{"origin":953,"position":0},"title":"A Pastafarian Prophet","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 28, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"This recent post on Religion Clause describes the victorious struggle of a Texas Pastafarian for the right to wear the sacred pasta strainer in his driver's license photograph. It caught my attention because I had just finished editing an article by Joe \"Vampires\" Leycock, \"wandering anthropologist of the occult,\"\u00a0 for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"A surrealist and a proto-Pastafarian, SE Portland, Oregon. ","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/pastafarian.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":394,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=394","url_meta":{"origin":953,"position":1},"title":"An anniversaryOne month ago today\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 26, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"An anniversaryOne month ago today I officially contracted Type A Influenza with Executive Option Package. And I still haven't completely overcome it, due partly to my own foolishness. I should have just crawled into bed for the first week of March, but, no, I had to be the hero professor.\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1165,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1165","url_meta":{"origin":953,"position":2},"title":"Blogging CESNUR, 2","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 12, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Yesterday's CESNUR plenary session focused on Western esotericism, which is getting more respect as a \"player\" in history.Gordon Melton passed out a fancy diagram of the Western esoteric tradition, including everyone from Swedenborgians to flying saucer religions to Wiccans.Wicca was placed under ritual magic, although at some distance. Fair enough:\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":7114,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7114","url_meta":{"origin":953,"position":3},"title":"Contemporary Pagan Studies at the AAR, 2015","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 4, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"All of the evaluating and negotiating is completed, and the Contemporary Pagan Studies Group of the American Academy of Religion will be presenting the following sessions at the annual meeting, held November 21\u201324, 2015, in Atlanta: 1 Joint session with the Indigenous Religious Traditions Group: \"The Problem of 'Religion' in\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":738,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=738","url_meta":{"origin":953,"position":4},"title":"The religious marketplace in late antiquity, or &#8216;the more things change . . .&#8217;","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 14, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Studying the program book from the upcoming American Academy of Religion-Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting, I came across this description of a joint session session between the Europe and the Mediterranean in Late Antiquity Group, the Manichaean Studies Seminar, and the Religion in Roman Egypt Consultation:This joint session addresses\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":669,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=669","url_meta":{"origin":953,"position":5},"title":"Pagan Studies at AAR 2006","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 29, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"These papers are scheduled for presentation at the Pagan Studies session during next November's annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion: \"The Pagan Explosion,\" James Lewis \"The Fourfold Goddess and the Undying God: Anatomies of Minnesotan Bootstrap Witchcraft Traditions,\" Murph Pizza \"Children of Converts: Generational Retention in the Neo-Pagan\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/953","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=953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/953\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}