Embedded Files
( - previous issue - )
Apologia Report 13:17
May 2, 2008
Subject: Update on the Neopagan movement
In this issue:
HINDUISM - why it's often a tactical error to emphasize historical support in dialog with Hindus
NEOPAGANISM - joint review presents broad analysis of the movement
WORD-FAITH MOVEMENT - new book said to analyze influence of the "prosperity gospel" on politics
-------
HINDUISM
"Historical Christian Beliefs and Apologetics in a Hindu Context" by John Varughese -- "The historical nature of Christian beliefs brings to the fore some problems associated with history. In the wake of enlightenment, the objective and scientific nature of historical enquiry made historical research take precedence over religious beliefs. The vulnerability to falsification often forces a believer to obtain an accurate account of the historical event and avert any possibility of believing what could be wishful thinking. Conversely, the unbeliever is normally unconcerned with the historical accuracy of someone else's beliefs unless he sets out to know the truth or to prove the believer wrong.
"In this article, I intend to discuss the issue of historical religious beliefs in relation to apologetics in a Hindu context. I shall consider two factors: the influence of modern-enlightenment on a Christian approach to historical religious beliefs and the oft-ignored Hindu sense of history. These, I believe, are pivotal to an effective apologetic discourse in the predominantly Hindu context of India."
After developing his argument, Varughese summarizes that "the cyclical view of time in the Hindu system provides no scope to appreciate a unique historical occurrence. The challenge for the Christian apologist is to work through and often despite the Hindu sense of history to present the unique historical Jesus.
"However, the association of historical rigour of modern-enlightenment thinking with Christian beliefs is often redundant and ineffective as it is often met with genuine indifference in a Hindu context. Hinduism, because of the nature of its beliefs, has given rise to rigour in its speculative philosophy where the emphasis is on the coherence of thought rather than correspondence to facts, visible in the orthodox schools and also its ritual practises."
Varughese concludes, in part, that: "The value of evidential apologetics then is not as an evangelistic tool, but rather in its corroborative value. ...
"[T]he possibility of verification and empirical content of the Christian faith itself does not confer a superior status to Christian beliefs vis a vis Hindu beliefs. Because, the leap that a Christian has to take from what is historical knowledge to trust in God is not qualitatively different from the leap that a Hindu has to take from belief in myths to trust in the Christian gospel." Dharma Deepika, Jul-Dec '07, pp42-49.
---
NEOPAGANISM
In his joint review of related titles, Jon P. Bloch notes that in Her Hidden Children: The Rise of Wicca and Paganism in America [2], Chas S. Clifton, "an English Professor at Colorado State University, provides an account of the rise of Wicca and Paganism in the United States that focuses not on social upheaval so much as on popular cultural symbols and artifacts, key individuals, and popular texts as instrumental in the said rise. The author establishes early on that Wicca is a 'textual religion,' asserting that the prototypical practitioner is likely to own an abundance of books and periodicals on neo-Paganism - even as Wicca also places high value on face-to-face training and initiation. Clifton discusses numerous key texts that have informed the neo-Pagan movement, including Gerald Gardner's 1954 Witchcraft Today [3], and Raymond Buckland's 1971 Witchcraft from the Inside [4]. He also outlines the contributions of openly Wiccan individuals such as Aiden Kelly, as well as historical figures such as Thomas Morton [1], who often has assumed a mythical, prophet-like status in Wiccan circles. Not surprisingly, the 1960s counterculture is seen as helping to set the stage for the Pagan resurgence, and secular events such as Earth Day further helped set in motion, according to Clifton, the identification of Wicca as an 'earth religion' - an identity that was then highlighted at key festivals."
New Age and Neopagan Religions in America, by Sarah M. Pike [5] "explores the history and current status of not only neo-Paganism in the United States, but of New Age as well, noting the similarities as well as strains between these two movements. ... According to Pike, key distinctions between New Age and neo-Paganism include: the former's future orientation as compared with the latter's past orientation; more emphasis upon nature and the earth in the latter; less emphasis upon ritual in the former; and more emphasis on professional-client relationships in the former as a tool to self-growth and healing."
In Helen A. Berger's anthology, Witchcraft and Magic: Contemporary North America [6], Michael York "outlines shamanism in an historical and anthropological context and then goes on to explain what shamanism means in both New Age and neo-Pagan contexts. In the former case, the emphasis is more on self-healing, while in the latter the emphasis is more on reuniting the self to natural forces."
The book Researching Paganisms, Jenny Galin, Douglas Ezzy, and Graham Harvey, eds. [7], is "a volume that puts research on neo-Paganism on a meta-level: What is it like to research neo-Paganism, and what sorts of methodological concerns does one encounter?" The first of four parts, "Performance and Reflexivity," considers "researching as an insider verses an outsider." The last, "Re-Locating the Researcher," says Bloch, "raises issues as to the intrinsic and extrinsic political nature of neo-Paganism itself as a response to the status quo, whereby the very act of researching this movement takes on new kinds of social meaning. ...
"[T]he volumes are of interest because they provide invaluable sociological records not just of a religious/spiritual movement per se, but one that by its very nature - and survival strategy mutations over the centuries - embodies a form of social protest. Issues such as the symbolic rebirth of the goddess, earth-based spirituality, or even the relative lack of formalized dogma or dictates, cannot help but be responses to a status quo seen as patriarchal, more interested in momentary profit than the survival of the planet, and overly eager to tell other people how they should live or what to believe. As these volumes attest, those who pursue neo-Paganism often feel marginalized not only for being a minority religious movement, but also for feeling relatively disenfranchised from what they experience as a highly exclusionary social order.
"There are, of course, many ways to rally against social norm or policy, whether through religious or secular venues - and there is, of course, the familiar argument that in effect all forms of religion are a kind of protest in that they articulate dissatisfaction with how the everyday world regards the human experience. But the neo-Pagan movement, as outlined in these books, does signal one means by which dissatisfaction with the mundane world can be given a spiritual meaning." Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 47:1 - 2008, pp171-173.
---
WORD-FAITH MOVEMENT
Church & State magazine (Apr '08, pp13-14) interviews Sarah Posner, author of the new book, God's Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters [8], which "examines the role advocates of the 'prosperity gospel' play in the Religious Right." Nothing in the interview suggests that Posner even comes close to comprehending the significance of the Word-Faith movement. However, a few interesting remarks are made.
She speaks of "a list of 1,000 'targets' - religious leaders of influence worth courting for the votes of their followers. The list included a lot of names you'd expect ... but also included some of the most prominent prosperity gospel evangelists.... The courting of these prosperity televangelists by politicians continues today, as we have seen Mike Huckabee touting his close relationship with [Kenneth] Copeland, and John Hagee and Rod Parsley campaigning with John McCain. ...
"It's certainly Parsley's goal to be a successor to [Jerry] Falwell. He proudly accepted an honorary doctorate from Liberty University last year. Parsley doesn't even have an undergraduate degree.... He has said he sees his Center for Moral Clarity, the political arm of his church, as the successor to Falwell's Moral Majority."
-------
Sources, Digital:
1 - If the name Thomas Morton here makes you wonder if there has been a mixup, consider the following:
<http://members.aol.com/srasmus/oldentext/merrymount.html>
<http://tinyurl.com/6yvgk6>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Morton_%28colonist%29>
-------
Sources, Monographs:
2 - Her Hidden Children: The Rise of Wicca and Paganism in America, by Chas S. Clifton (AltaMira, 2006, paperback: 206 pages) <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0759102023/apologiareport>
3 - Witchcraft Today, by Gerald Gardner (Citadel, 2004, paperback, 224 pages) <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0806525932/apologiareport>
4 - Witchcraft from the Inside: Witchcraft From The Inside: Origins of the Fastest Growing Religious Movement in America, by Raymond Buckland (Llewellyn, 2002, paperback, 240 pages) <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1567181015/apologiareport>
5 - New Age and Neopagan Religions in America, by Sarah M. Pike (Columbia University Prs, 15 July 2004, hardcover, 256 pages) <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0231124023/apologiareport>
6 - Witchcraft and Magic: Contemporary North America, by Helen A. Berger (Univ Penn Prs, 2006, paperback, 216 pages) <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0812219716/apologiareport>
7 - Researching Paganisms, Jenny Galin, Douglas Ezzy, and Graham Harvey, eds. (AltaMira, 2004, hardcover, 256 pages) <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0759105227/apologiareport>
8 - God's Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters, by Sarah Posner (Polipoint, 2008, hardcover, 207 pages) <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0979482216/apologiareport>
--------
( - next issue - )
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse