The Top (Pagan) Religion Stories

The Religion Newswriters Association has posted their top ten religious stories of the year (though they actually list the top 20). Since Pagans didn’t even make the top twenty I present a few stories that I felt should have popped up on more religious journalist’s radars. Not surprisingly, they are all legal struggles.

The Cynthia Simpson case. Cynthia Simpson sued Chesterfield County after she was excluded from a list of religious leaders allowed to pray at Board of Supervisors meetings. The case which was initially won by Simpson, was then won by Chesterfield County on appeal (after they changed their prayer policy). The case was then appealed to the Supreme Court and was rejected by the court despite support from several religious groups backing Simpson.

Cutter v. Wilkinson. Cutter v. Wilkinson was a case brought by incarcerated minority religious practitioners (a Satanist and an Asatruar among others) who were denied reasonable access to religious materials under the RLUIPA act. The case was not only won, but earned wide mainstream religious support by groups from all along the political spectrum.

The Thomas E. Jones Jr. and Tammie U. Bristol case. Many were shocked when they heard about the case of a divorced couple (both Pagan) who were barred from teaching their son “non-mainstream religious beliefs and rituals.” by a Marion County judge. The blogosphere and mainstream press gave the story a lot of coverage, which culminated in the the decree being overturned by the appeals court, and a bit of crow-eating by the judge.

Heck, you could even combine them all into one long story regarding the fight for acceptance and equal rights for minority religions. If so you could also add in the pending Ayahuasca tea case recently argued before the Supreme Court and the San Francisco Peaks ski resort case. This has been a key year in the fight for the rights of all faiths to practice, be respected, and be included in mainstream society.

The Proper British Romans

Most Popular Hobbies in Ancient Rome as Portrayed in HBO’s Rome By Keith McIntire (from McSweeneys).

HBO’s Rome has made several best-of lists for 2005. Tim Goodman, SF Gate. Sid Smith and Maureen Ryan, Chicago Tribune. Mark Perigard, Boston Herald. Matthew Gilbert, Boston Globe. It has also been nominated for two Golden Globes.

Previous blog posts on ROME: Holy Bull Blood!

Back in May, I and several other “spiritual progressives” participated in a two-week online conference sponsored by The Rockridge Institute (a progressive think-tank lead by George Lakoff, author of “Don’t Think of An Elephant”). The goal was to discuss the interplay of religion and politics, and perhaps to find a way forward for people of faith unhappy with the current political climate.

The Rockridge Institute has finally issued their report on the conference. The entire document is available as a PDF file. The conclusion of the conference seems to be that we can work together so long as we concentrate on shared “values” instead of specifics of faith, and that further progress is going to be difficult and slow.

“The difficult task of analyzing modes of reasoning and discourse in order to know the existing elements of our shared “progressive theology” remains before us.”

There is a lot more to be said here. I’m still not sure that many of the criticisms of the conference were addressed fully by the report and that any clear way forward has been established for progressive people of faith to interact in a manner that equals (or even rivals) the political clout of the “religious right”. Despite my reservations, perhaps I should be flattered that I was quoted in the conclusion paper (unattributed, but all the same).

The Otherworldly Enya

Slate profiles a favorite musical artist for many modern Pagans (and all other sorts of “spiritual” folks) Enya.

“Who is Enya? More to the point: What is she? It’s a question you can’t help but ask of the 44-year-old singer from County Donegal, Ireland, who, over the past 20 years, has carved a niche as popular music’s faerie queen. She’s slathered her songs in otherworldly reverb, overdubbed her voice into angelic choirs, and appeared in music videos gliding through mist-shrouded landscapes. When we last heard from her, in 2002, she was crooning songs on the Fellowship of the Ring soundtrack?in Elvish. On the cover of her new album, Amarantine, she gazes out with big dewy moon eyes, wearing what appears to be a spinnaker. Search beneath its billows and you would undoubtedly find a pair of wings and a wand.”

Her latest gimmick seems to be creating her own language to sing in, “Loxian”. A language that is supposed to be somewhat alien in nature. One wonders if she was inspired by Icelandic post-rockers Sigur Ros who sing in the made-up language of “Hopelandic”.

You Are A Coven Of Witches

The Wicca-Pagan Times has posted an interview with Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone, transcribed from a 2001 radio interview. The whole things starts off with how Gerald Gardner started Wicca and talks about the evolution of modern Witchcraft and Paganism.

“That’s difficult because it’s hypothesis. There’s no factual basis, there’s only hypothesis to go on. We believe and I think a lot of other people out there believe that he actually didn’t really find Witchcraft. He believed he’d found Witchcraft but you’ve got to remember that during that period people studying the occult were very upper class. People like ourselves and your self wouldn’t have had a hope in Hel of being involved in the occult scene. We are talking of the wealthy; the elite. Gerald had been a tea planter out in Malaya and when he returned to Britain it was just after the First World War. You’ve got to remember how many people in Europe died in the trenches in the 1st WW and as a result of that there was a revolution going on. People wanted a spirituality; they’d lost it. So many people became involved in the occult via things like Rosicrucionism, Theosophy and so on. It would have appealed to these upper class people. We think that what Gerald actually found when he went to the New Forest when he discovered the Rosicrucian Theatre, wasn’t a coven of Witches but a group of Theosophists. He so wanted to believe they were the remnants of an old religion that he actually said to them, “You are a coven of witches.” I think it’s very possible that they turned around and said to him, “No, we’re not,” and tried to explain to him what they were, but he wouldn’t have it.”

The whole thing is worth a read. Including the parts about how several Wiccan leaders were all coming to a consensus on self-initiation at around the same time.

Christmas War is Over (If You Want It)

Now that the annual “War on Christmas” has died down we plunge head-first into New Years celebrations. Will there be any invented friction here? Bill Wangemann, writing for The Sheboygan Press lays out the pagan history of our New-Year festivities.

“There are many traditions related to the New Year. One of the common symbols of the holiday is a newborn baby, which represents a new beginning or a rebirth of the New Year. The tradition of a baby to signifying the celebration actually dates back to Greece in about 600 B.C. The celebration of a New Year is the oldest of all holidays. It was first observed in ancient Babylon about 4,000 years ago. In those distant times, New Year’s began with the first new moon after the vernal equinox (the first day of spring). To people in those long ago days, it made perfect sense to celebrate a New Year and a new beginning on the first day of spring. It is the Romans that we have to thank for New Year’s Day being celebrated on Jan. 1; or more correctly, Julius Caesar. In 46 B.C. he rearranged the calendar, which by that time, was way off sync with the sun so that New Year’s Day fell on Jan. 1. To do this, he had to extend the previous year for 455 days. The early Christian Church banned the celebration of ushering in a new year as a pagan custom. Jan. 1 has been celebrated as a holiday by western nations for only about 400 years.”

Of course Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and some protestant sects are in the midst of the twelve days of Christmas. But these are hardly acknowledged by the popular culture outside of the Christmas carol. So perhaps a temporary truce will be drawn. At least till we get to Easter and the other rites of spring.

Another Counterculture Conversion

It is a well-worn tale by now. Person falls into sin and immoral behavior, person hits bottom and finds a caring voice and a place in a Christian church. Person turns life around and shares testimony. You could write a mad-lib version. The trick to keeping people interested is to find new twists and turns on the old conversion story. David Kithcart writing on the WDC Media web site focuses on professional skateboarder (and former drug addict) Jay Haizlip.

“Jay lived from one crack-cocaine high to the next. In between hits, he planned when and how he would be able to do the drug again. But he never would have imagined that he would end up doing some of the things he did. He was so driven and tormented to do drugs that he took his son into violent neighborhoods, crack houses where people were shot outside the front door, places the police would raid.”

So far, so good. The story is the usual drugs and madness conversion tale spiced up with the fact that Jay is a pro skateboarder. Sure to appeal to that coveted youth market. But then, perhaps feeling that drugs, violence, a broken home, and having your kids watch you smoke crack isn’t enough they throw in an occult chaser.

“The man and his wife [who lead Haizlip to Christ] had sensed other things in Jay’s life such as witchcraft. (Jay’s mother had been involved in Wicca and similar things growing up.) Through prayer, they broke the powers of everything that had ever worked in Jay’s life.”

So now his mother’s dalliances with Wicca while he was growing up helped lead him to an evil world of crack-smoking? Since they never hint that Haizlip himself was involved with the occult this seems to be a case of adding “spice” to the story. The truly modern conversion tale has to have occult practices and witchcraft in it to be complete it seems. The prayer warriors must be fed with spiritual battle so a “witch” must be produced. I somehow doubt that if the mother had been into Buddhism the article would report that “Jay’s mother had been involved in Buddhism and similar things growing up.”

I suppose Wiccans should feel flattered that they hold such a place of prominence in modern Christianity. After all they are naming what form of rebellion their children should take when they become dissatisfied with Christianity.