Can They Get Our Religion?
One of the primary themes of this blog is how the media portrays and reports on modern Paganism. While there are the occasional bright spots, for the most part coverage is flawed at best, and downright insulting at worst. So I always take great interest when other commentators on religion in journalism take a look at the Pagan “problem”. Most recently, journalist Daniel Pulliam a contributor to the Get Religion blog, critiqued an article that appeared in the Portland Tribune.
The piece itself is your general ‘lets interview a real live Witch around Halloween’ article that pops in ever-growing numbers every Fall. The usual bases are covered, modern Witches aren’t green-skinned Satan-worshiping hags, Witches don’t have powers like in “The Craft”, and quotes from Christians on their views (in the name of “balance” I would suppose). In short the kind of article I generally ignore unless it offers some interesting twist on the usual theme. However, Pulliam as an outsider to modern Paganism, felt that the article didn’t tell enough and was too vague to be useful.
“Rather than focusing on the fact that there are witches in the community who are not afraid to talk about it, why not go a bit deeper and explain the actual beliefs of witches and other modern pagan believers? Like, what exactly are those things that take a lot of involvement? Watching Monday Night football? I do that too.”
But really, the frustration that Dan faces here is the same frustration that the Get Religion blog covers all the time. The press just doesn’t get religion. Especially if that religion is outside of the Judeo-Christian mainstream. Journalists often don’t have the time or inclination to dig a littler deeper and explore the intricacies of our faiths. That matter isn’t helped by the fact that many Pagans go out of their way to seem as benign and “good” as possible to the mostly Christian audience reading the article. Something I explained in the comments of the post at Get Religion.
“Frankly, modern Pagans are tired of being the media’s freak show every Halloween (well, most of us anyway). So it has been learned through painful experience not to trust the press to do right by us. So you’ll often get superficial platitudes instead of the “off-beat” stuff because we don’t want to see another Pagan get fired, or lose their kids, or get their store burned down, or get “holy” salt thrown at them by Catholic youth. There is no pay-off for your average Pagan to talk in-depth about practice and belief. If a reporter wants more, there are experts, scholars, and elders in our faiths ready to be talked to. But that takes determination and effort, effort most journalists looking for a good Halloween Witch story can’t be bothered…”
Yet, from Get Religion’s commentary, I feel like what Dan was looking for was dirt. To be entertained with our “wacky” religion’s practice and belief. That he was a bit peeved by a perceived agenda on the part of the article.
“…the article focused heavily on how the religion, if you can call it a religion, has been heavily persecuted in the past. And those stereotypes continue, the article tells us, and gives a few examples of those who have been persecuted. Wicca is nevertheless growing in popularity, but we are never told why. Just that if you join Wicca, you should be prepared to be discriminated against, but for no reason at all because their beliefs are so benign that just about anyone could embrace them…Since when do alternative newspapers attempt to force their subjects into the mainstream of normalcy? I don’t want to read about how Wicca is oh so normal. I expect to read about it’s more off-beat characteristics.”
In short, Dan seems to believe modern Pagans are outside the mainstream of faith and should be treated as such. That journalists should explore the “controversy” of our faiths (as if that theme hasn’t been done to death in the sixty years since modern Paganism “came out” to journalists), and why some Christians don’t like us very much. The idea that modern Paganism could be adopted by any normal rational person seems to rankle a bit. Perhaps what Dan is really looking for is “how we are very much not like Christians”. In which case the answers are numerous. Feminine divinity, polytheism, magic, not seeing the Bible as the word of God, attributing divinity to nature, duotheism, and not acknowledging Jesus as our personal savior among them.
This article was just fluffy journalism, and its easy to trash fluffy journalism (believe me I speak from experience). If you want good journalism dealing with modern Paganism I would suggest this transcript of an interview with Adrian Ivakhiv on the radio show Speaking of Faith. I would also suggest that any journalist who cares to report on modern Paganism accurately and in-depth should go beyond Wikipedia and read at least one good book on the modern Paganism movement. “Drawing Down the Moon” was just updated and re-released, and I have several recommended books listed, here. But if your deadline is too tight, just drop me an e-mail and I’ll provide a list of people you should contact to give you a deeper look our our faiths. Like the bloggers at “Get Religion”, I too await the day when most journalists “get” our faiths.
6 responses so far
I read the article and I agree it makes a pretty sad presentation. It says even less for Dan than it does for Paganism, and just goes to show how badly in need of education the public is and how badly in need of exposure – fair exposure – modern Paganism is.
Maybe I’ll just take your advice and read the article you recommended. Anything that steps one foot outside the Judaeo-Xian norm is never going to get a thoroughgoing, even-handed examination by the mainstream press unless there’s a norm of some kind to be served by doing so.
Though I suppose one can live in hope
Get Religion is right; the media doesn’t get religion, and the public doesn’t either. Most people don’t understand their own religion in depth, and have no idea how their religion differs from other religions.
This is a drum I beat a lot because I see it all the time. Most atheists will talk about “religion” this and “religion” that and describe things that apply only to Christianity or only to monotheism. “Religion is bad because we shouldn’t get our knowledge out of just one book” is the quintessential example.
The fact that anyone ever uses “Judeo-Christian” with a straight face speaks to the root of how ignorant people are. The American public knows jack shit about Judaism, and yet Judaism is constantly the poster child for religious diversity.
Seriously, how many of your readers know how a Jew prays, or what a Jew considers the most important part of being Jewish, or what the Jewish approach to sin is, or what Jews believe about death or abortion? How many of your readers can name four Jewish holidays or two Jewish fast days?
Yet we complain about ignorance of modern Paganism?
Personally, Deborah, its not the general public’s ignorance of my faith that bugs me, it is that they claim to know what I believe and use this “knowledge” as an excuse to ridicule and pursecute people. And, I think Jason was speaking to the ignorance of folks who go around calling themselves “journalists” who don’t bother to learn jack sh*t about their topic before writing an article about it and making statements as if they *do* know. As for the Christian next door, he is welcome to be ignorant of my faith has long as he doesn’t, therefore, feel fit to judge it in any way.
I’ve blogged about this several times recently, but I find that, strangely enough, small-town papers often do a better job of covering paganism than do, say, the WaPo or NYT. The LAT doesn’t even really even pretend to cover religion at all.
I think it’s even simpler than the fact that “they” don’t get religion. The simply cannot or will not see the difference between religion and faith.