My semi-regular round-up of articles, essays, and opinions of note for discerning Pagans and Heathens.

Should you be judged by your graduate thesis? That very issue is heating up the Virginia governor’s race where Republican candidate Robert F. McDonnell is fielding questions concerning a 1989 thesis he submitted to Regent University in Virginia Beach. In it, McDonnell rails against feminism, homosexuality, contraceptives, and “occult” television shows damaging children. The solution to these problems? The government must empower the (Christian) church.

“…government at all levels must help create the legal and financial conditions to unleash the power of the church to restore broken families and create the safety net of pastoral care for families … every level of government should statutorily and procedurally prefer married couples over cohabitators, homosexuals, or fornicators.”

The local Democrats are jumping all over this while McDonnell claims that he’s “moderated” his views since that “academic exercise” in 1989 and shouldn’t be judged by it. However, as Wendy Kaminer at the Atlantic explained in a recent editorial, the thesis does bring up some deeper questions about McDonnell, such as what role he now believes sectarian religious beliefs should have within government. Can non-Christians in Virginia trust that he’s “moderated” enough to treat all religions fairly once in office?

The Southern Poverty Law Center, in their Fall 2009 Intelligence Report, focuses on the growth of Odinist and Asatru prison groups in the wake of court decisions granting them “certain rights” that prisons must accommodate. This being the SPLC, the majority of their focus is on racist manifestations of Norse Paganism behind bars, though they do admit that Asatru is largely “benign” in the free world.

“As practiced by Owen and others outside prison, Odinism tends to be a benign form of paganism, tolerant of others and close to nature. Behind the walls, however, it is likely to take on a more sinister cast, and many prison wardens have long regarded Odinism as the religious arm of white supremacist prison gangs. The U.S. Supreme Court has nonetheless ruled that Odinist inmates have certain rights that prisons must recognize. So while a decade ago a pagan volunteer like Owen would have been dismissed as a kook or, at worst, a gang liaison, Odinist inmates today can wear Thor’s Hammer pendants under their jumpsuits and request visits from outside leaders.”

The piece also debates what percentage of incarcerated Norse Pagans/Odinists/Asatru are racists. While one Asatru chaplain (Valgard Murray of the Asatru Alliance) says the number is as low as ten percent nationally, the Texas prison system says that racists are 90% of their Odinist/Asatru population. They also touch on a case where Murray testified against incarcerated Odinists in an ongoing lawsuit, garnering the ire of other Odinist groups. On the whole, this is a fairly even-handed report for a hate-groups watchdog and they should be commended for seeking out and interviewing Asatru/Odinist prison chaplains.

The New York Times gives a rather critical review to the new travel series “Andrew Zimmern’s Bizarre World” for not being all that, well, bizarre.

“He’s kept “Bizarre” in the title for branding purposes, but based on the Cuba episode, it now barely applies. In the course of an hour his most extreme activities are eating barbecued tree rat and taking part in a Santeria ceremony. The sight of his bald scalp covered in chicken blood is a bit unsettling, but he undercuts it with some all-American mugging and a big thumb’s up for the camera.”

Oooh chicken blood! Santeria! How bizarre! Nothing like exploiting a local religion to amuse your audience. The New York Times also dings Zimmern for conveniently overlooking the politics that led to all the “bizarre” idiosyncrasies of Cuban life (the fishing is great for tourists because Cubans aren’t allowed on boats, people eat tree-rats, all the cars are super-old), after all, we wouldn’t want to get too bizarre and upset the Cuban government now would we?

The Boston Globe reports on the increasing demand for hospital chaplains as patients admitted to hospitals now tend to be sicker and need spiritual guidance in dealing with life-or-death issues.

“Since 2004, requests for chaplains at the Brigham have jumped 23 percent. At Massachusetts General Hospital, requests have grown 30 percent since the hospital began tracking visits in 2006. And at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, which expanded its pastoral care program last year, monthly visits are expected to rise to at least 540 this month, a 10-fold increase over the same time last year.”

It remains unsaid in this article, but if demand for priests, ministers, rabbis and imams are growing, it stands to reason that requests for minority-religion chaplains are also increasing. This makes credible and thorough training for Pagan chaplains an increasingly important issue, one that growing organizations like Cherry Hill Seminary (disclosure: I’m on their BOD) are trying to address in their curriculum. As Paganism’s second wave hits retirement and deals with the illnesses that often come with old age, will our movement be ready to meet their spiritual needs?

In a final note, congratulations to Pagan blogger Betsy Phillips at Tiny Cat Pants and Pith in the Wind who is starting a guest-stint at the major-league feminist blog Feministe.

“I’m a heathen, though not a very formal one. I hope we can talk about that, too, why I, the daughter of a Methodist minister, left Christianity and became a polytheist. I know paganism, broadly, is loaded with feminists, and yet, it seems to me, we rarely talk openly about what we pagans believe and why to other feminists.  And for good reasons. I know I feel like a damn fool when I talk about it, but it’s important to me and a lot of the reason I left Christianity had to do with being a woman, so maybe we can just try it and see how it goes.”

You can read all of her guest-posts, here.

That’s all I have for now, have a great day!

Anyone who has read my blog knows that I’m concerned with the health of Pagan-run/owned media and the state of journalism within our communities. For some time I’ve wanted to take what I’ve been doing with The Wild Hunt, observing and reporting on the news affecting our communities, to the “next level,” whatever that might mean. With the recent merger of newWitch and PanGaia into Witches & Pagans, the decision of Thorn Magazine to go online-only after their next issue, and the folding of Modern Witch Magazine, I decided I couldn’t wait any longer. While blogs and podcasts seem ever more popular in our communities, perhaps unsurprising considering our penchant for individualism, print periodicals seem to be in drastic contraction. Meanwhile, Internet-only Pagan publications don’t seem to be doing much better, often suffering from a lack of regular high-quality content, virtually nonexistent revenue streams, and an all-volunteer staff juggling their jobs and lives with the demands of editing content and putting out quality products on a regular schedule.

This isn’t to say that Pagan-run media is uniquely in trouble. Our microcosm mirrors the painful changes the mainstream media is going through as they try to navigate a severe recession and a shift towards making new media journalism pay. However, our (relatively) small size does allow us some opportunities to collaborate and evolve into this changing market. I’d like to introduce a new venture that I hope will not only spark a renaissance in Pagan journalism, but also create the needed synergy to allow existing and forthcoming Pagan media outlets to thrive in an emerging world of hyperlocal news and “hyperdistribution”.

The Pagan Newswire Collective is an open collective of Pagan journalists, newsmakers, media liaisons, and writers who are interested in sharing and promoting primary-source reporting from within our interconnected communities. The idea is simple: a pool of journalists and writers within the collective share sources and collaborate on dynamic and timely stories of interest to the Pagan community; media liaisons from various Pagan organizations pass along news and current events for possible coverage; editors, bloggers, podcasters, and other media outlets can call for submissions, collaborate with the collective, and negotiate with individual writer(s) to distribute finished product. All work created from within the collective remains the property of those who produced it, and it can be distributed in any number of ways, from Creative Commons to more traditional arrangements with various periodicals.

The variety of possible coverage models are endless, from syndicated multimedia packages for large events, to local beat-reporting when “hot” stories emerge in local Pagan communities, to “evergreen” human interest stories suitable for periodicals that publish infrequently. In short, we hope to become the “Pagan Reuters”, as Yvonne Aburrow put it.

Since we are brand new, we are looking for Pagans and like-minded allies, especially those with writing or journalism experience, to join our collective. If you use Facebook, you can join our official Facebook group, or join our mailing list at Google Groups. Here’s to building a better Pagan media.

Yesterday’s post concerning the state of the Pagan press and Pagan periodicals has generated some interesting commentary on the continued survival of print publications and the future of Pagan news. Many seem to have accepted that the Internet is where you go to get up-to-date information concerning the Pagan community. Baruch Dreamstalker admits that he “long ago gave up dead-tree media as a source of “hot” Pagan news”, while Erynn Rowan Laurie opines that “Print can never hope to keep up with developing stories”. Interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, one of the strongest voices concerning the future (or lack of future) of print media comes from professional journalist Victoria Slind-Flor.

“I guess my question is why Pagan print media should escape the fate of the rest of print media? Bottom line, as I see it, is that we’re three-quarters of the way through a major technological revolution in journalism and print is not a media that will survive … We Pagans are smart savvy users (and, in many cases, creators) of the Web. We know and love the immediacy of Web communication. And I doubt very much we’ll ever embrace any form of print journalism again. Why get our Pagan information at the speed of post-office delivery when we depend on all our other information sources at warp speed?  Over the years I’ve contributed pieces to most of the Pagan print publications. And I have to say they largely share the same faults: they were/are produced on a shoestring, are indifferently edited, come in unattractive formats, and are published on irregular schedules at best. So why would anyone expect them to survive?  I wish them all well, but I am not sanguine about their prospects of survival. On the other hand, I’m immensely impressed with what Pagans are doing in Cyberspace.”

It wasn’t all bad news for Pagan publishing, Michael Night Sky argued that we should “support what printed zines do, serve the greater Pagan Community.” Night Sky also stated that he couldn’t imagine a would “without printed pagan magazines”. Finally, Jordan Stratford praises the PanGaia/newWitch merger, and agrees that “the “Abraxas” lit-mag style is the way to go – semi-annual publications of meatier articles, professionally edited, and landing in the $15 – $20 range”. Have something to add? Why not join the conversation?

Turning our attention outward, let’s look at some recent developments in the Pagan blogosphere and beyond. First, Chas Clifton announces that fellow Pomegranate editor Michael Strmiska has started a new blog entitled The Political Pagan. There is already a facinating post up about Nazism, Paganism, and Christianity, so be sure and add him to your blogrolls and feed-readers. Speaking of Nazis, over at Beliefnet, Pagan blogger Gus diZerega has a two-part essay exploring a Pagan perspective of fascism.

“People who don’t know much history, or are blinded by their ideological preconceptions, have often argued that Pagan religion has a tendency towards devolving into Fascism. I’ve encountered such stuff over the years, and had a debate with Peter Staudenmaier in the journal Pomegranate on this issue with special reference to environmentalism.”

Moving on from fascism and Nazis into the (slightly) less controversial topics of polyamory and Woodstock, we find the Get Religion blog covering both. First E.E. Evans wonders why recent high-profile coverage of polyamorous relationships have left out the religion angle, specifically the religions that are (generally) more welcoming to polyamorous families.

“While this particular triad is not, polys are also engaged in religious communities. Among them are Unitarian Universalists, pagans and those who represent other faiths. There’s no discussion of the religious connections here. But does the existence of approximately half a million polyamorous families mean that “traditionalists better get used to it?” That’s at least debatable. It’s also snarky, distracting readers from taking the piece seriously.”

This blog has tacked the, sometimes tense, issue of polyamory within modern Paganism in the past, and you can expect that conversation to continue as polyamory (and its intersections with modern Paganism) continue to gain mainstream attention. Meanwhile, Terry Mattingly explores the recent journalistic love-fest over Woodstock’s 40th anniversary, and how that pivitol festival changed religion in America.

“Now, on the religion side of the equation, you knew that someone was gonna connect the dots — Joan Baez and “Amazing Grace” right on over to Ravi Shankar — and make the argument that Woodstock is, in many ways, the tipping point that turned religion into spirituality for the Baby Boomer generation and, thus, for America. We’re talking sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll and do-it-yourself visions (often a combination of the previous three ingredients).”

The 1960s certainly did see modern Paganism, specifically British Witchcraft and various home-grown faiths, take root. But was Woodstock the “tipping point”, or simply the last gasp of the free-love/anti-war hippie era as it morphed into back-to-the-land movements, identity politics, and more mainstream/populist political endeavors? Woodstock may continue to reverberate through Protestantism, but in my mind the 1970s were far more influential a decade on the development of today’s religious diversity.

That’s all I have for now, have a great day!

Even though Newsweek claims we are no longer a Christian nation (we are apparently all “Hindus” now), it seems like the Pagan press hasn’t gained much benefit from the rising tide of “spiritual but not religious” folks who believe in reincarnation and that there are many paths to religious truth. After the recent merger of PanGaia and newWitch into Witches & Pagans, and the announcement of Thorn magazine ceasing their print edition, I decided to take the temperature of various Pagan periodicals and the resulting picture is rather grim. Of the 32 periodicals listed at the Witches’ Voice, only a handful seem to still be active, operating on a regular publishing schedule, and dealing primarily with Pagan subject matter. Modern Witch Magazine is “out of publication” after one year and three issues, Witch Eye: A Journal of Feri Uprising promises to return in 2009, but the clock is quickly running out for that deadline, and the two best-known Pagan newspapers PagaNet and Widdershins have been out of commission for years.

When you factor in publications that actually have a national or international reach that small grouping of surviving publications becomes even smaller. And the ones that do survive seem to focus less and less on news and current events and more and more on “evergreen” content suitable for journals that come out only two or four times per year. Perhaps Jack Lux and Michael Night Sky are correct when they asserted in the latest issue of Thorn magazine that Pagan periodicals in their current state can no longer act as a functioning news organ for the modern Pagan movement.

“…the purpose of a magazine changes to suit its audience, and Pagan journalism may be fixating on a role for which it is no longer useful … perhaps the most useful goal of Pagan publications is no longer to disseminate information about outer limits, but to delve deeper into the ideas of the past forty years and fill the gaps between them. With the Internet and the growing festival network, magazines are best suited not for community building, but for culture building.”

As if to confirm the idea of a shift toward culture-building within our publications, Treadwell’s bookstore and Fulgur have announced the launch a new journal of occultism entitled Abraxas. Scholarly and cultured, printed in a limited edition, it is marketed almost as a collectible art-object rather than a “zine” to thumbed through at your local newsstand.

“Nearly all the material is published for the first time. Here may be found inspiring essays from luminaries within the esoteric community, many of them written especially for the journal. Artists too are well represented, both established masters and emerging talents: a feast for the eyes and soul. Our poets include Allyson Shaw, Zachary Cox and, from beyond the veil, Aleister Crowley, whose evocative verse ‘Babalon’ finally finds itself in print more than sixty years after it was written. Produced in a large quarto format, with 128 pages printed on high quality paper and richly illustrated in colour and monochrome, we hope Abraxas will offer you a strange mirror through which may be glimpsed the zeitgeist of the global occult community today.”

I’m not singling out Abraxas for any sort of criticism, it looks very lovely and inviting indeed, but to point to what might be needed to succeed today in a contracted world of niche publishing.

So where does that leave Pagan news and Pagan journalism? It seems almost solely in hands of bloggers, podcasters, and e-zine editors. While there are several excellent places online where you can find news and incisive editorial aimed at a Pagan audience, a large number of Internet publications seem to mimic the world of print, publishing sporadically and sticking to think-pieces, rants, and lighter fare. This leaves Pagan journalism in a precarious position, one that could cast us back to a place where dissemination of news to our communities becomes increasingly haphazard, prone to errors, and one-sided. A place where rumor and baseless speculation runs rampant. A place where mainstream journalism defines almost unilaterally who and what is newsworthy within the world of modern Paganism.

We need to start having serious conversations about how Pagan news is created and disseminated. We need to ask how well our surviving print publications are serving us, and, if Internet publications are indeed the future of Pagan journalism, how they can become more stable, sustainable, and accountable to the readers. In the next six months I’ll be attending major Pagan events on two coasts, in Florida at the Florida Pagan Gathering for Samhain (where I’m presenting), and at Pantheacon in San Jose during February (where I’m going to see if I can do a presentation). For those of you concerned about the Pagan press, and attending one of these events, perhaps you’ll join me in-person for that discussion. Otherwise, I urge all of you to get together at your own local gatherings, large or small, and talk about the future of our news, our periodicals, and what we’ll need to keep subsequent generations informed about the day-to-day events and changes that surround us.

I just wanted to quickly note that fellow Pagan blogger (and published author) Dianne Sylvan has an editorial up at the Guardian’s “Comment is Free” section.

“I have been a Neo-Pagan since I was 16 years old. I’ve written pretty extensively about my religion both online and in print, and have taught classes on the subject. Yet when people ask me what, exactly, I believe, I still have to stop and think about it for a moment.”

Check out the whole thing, and feel free to leave your comments at the site.

Pagan author, teacher, and ADF Archdruid Emeritus, Isaac Bonewits explains his increasingly sporadic blog activity, and admits to having some issues with this whole “blogging” thing.

“I’m still a bit unclear as to what a blog is really for, if one doesn’t have something important to rant about day after day.”

I find it difficult to believe that someone of Bonewits’ infamy doesn’t have something to rant about day after day (or at least a couple times a week), I also find it odd that someone who has contributed to Daily Kos in the past isn’t quite sure about the many and sundry uses for the blogging platform (and ultimately a “blog” is just a transmission tool for content). However, I do agree that merely ranting every day isn’t that sustainable, that’s why most of the really successful blogs don’t simply climb up on soap-boxes and howl into the digital void. They share wonderful things, talk about books, promote music they love, provide you tips and tricks to an easier life, and discuss feminist issues. Heck there are even Pagan blogs who manage to find news items to share every day.

Ultimately, I think Bonewits portrays an interesting (and growing) development. Like many people, he’s doing most of his online discussion and interaction on Facebook, and as robust social networking sites become ever more ubiquitous, fewer people will feel the need to create a blog to establish themselves on the Internet. This is a good thing, not everyone is suited to a blogging platform, and we are now reaching a point where there are many ways besides the traditonal long-form regularly-updated blog to get one’s ideas and ideals across. That said, if you are looking for great regular Pagan blogging content (aside from mine, of course) just look to my blogroll, or the in-depth Blog Elysium for a cornucopia of choices, approaches, and points of view.

Yesterday the noted Pagan author, activist, and teacher T. Thorn Coyle, in a three part series on her blog, tackles the issue of teachers and leaders with “feet of clay”. Specifically, she discusses the controversy-loving Frosts (that would be Gavin and Yvonne Frost of The Church and School of Wicca), their ongoing defence of largely indefensible sexual politics, and processing a recent panel she ran where she allowed them to participate.

“I am struggling with the Frosts. Struggling because it would be too easy to do as others have which is to demonize them or relegate them to the “sweet old couple.” They are something far more varied than either of these. Some people want to sweep them under a rug, but I do not think they should be ignored. Why? We need to figure out our theolog(ies). We need to know where we stand on sex. Many of us would still rather just suppress it like the overculture teaches us, because abuse may happen otherwise, or we may need to deal with our own demons. I say that abuse happens because of the suppression. Our demons grow stronger the more we constrict around our fears. Abuse happens when we don’t deal with our own sexuality, and we don’t teach our children about their own. And abuse sometimes just happens … If sex is sacred, we need to figure out how that translates and is reflected in our own lives, and in how we pass on that teaching.  And this is why, Gavin and Yvonne, as two people who have taught many others, I wish you would explain. Or I wish you would retract. Or I wish you would apologize. We could use discerning words from you instead of simply a shut down or blustering defense, or the insistence that those who disagree with you are “plastic”.”

She closes with some questions for the Frosts to answer:

“What do you really think, today, about the sexual education of children? Is sex between adolescents with adults really the best way they should learn these mysteries? How did you teach your own daughter to appreciate the powers of sex, love, and Nature?”

And some questions for her readers:

“What do you think about your own relationship to sex? To magic? To life force? To our process? To mistakes? To feet of clay? To your own regrets? To the sacred? To teaching our children?”

The sexual politics, and controversies, of the Frosts is a topic I’ve covered more than once here on this blog. I applaud Thorn for bravely stepping forward to process her own participation and feelings regarding these issues. I agree with the sentiment that we need to have an ongoing and constructive dialog concerning sex in our wider community, to actively engage with tough issues instead of ignoring them or allowing certain individuals to frame the entire moral question. I urge my readers to go through all three of her essays, and to answer her questions at her blog. Then, if you’d like, feel free to answer them, and continue the conversation, here, too. You should also keep an eye on Thorn’s podcast page, where audio and video from the panel in question will soon be posted.

The past couple years haven’t been particularly good ones for the mainstream “old” media. Magazines have been folding left and right, and newspapers haven’t been doing much better. The slow and gradual transition from “old” to “new” media has been unnaturally hastened by the massive economic downturn and bad business decisions by the big media conglomerates. In the wake of their failure to make the web pay (enough), newspapers have asked for antitrust exemptions while old-media defenders have called news aggregators (like Google) “parasites” that will usher in an age of political corruption. As for the world of religion-based reporting it truly is the best of times and the worst of times. There is more religion content availble to the consumer than ever before, but many professional journalists bemoan the death of religion sections, and the lack of trained religion-beat reporters who “get” religion (and are avidly critical of the new-media up-and-comers).

Certainly the Pagan community hasn’t been immune to this rough transition. Several anecdotes seem to point to strains and belt-tightening, and the recent merger of Pagan magazines PanGaia and NewWitch mirrors the troubles faced by the larger less-niche publications. As Pagan commentary and journalism has (seemingly) contracted in the print world, it has exploded on the Internet. Thousands upon thousands of Pagans hit the Pagan blogosphere’s “A-List” (Gus diZerega, Chas Clifton,  Patti Wigington,Thorn Coyle, and myself, among several others) on a regular basis for news and opinion, while the ever-timely (and unafraid) Pagan Centered Podcast has racked up over 150,000 downloads of its show. However, the question remains of how journalism aimed at the Pagan community will ever “pay” in the same manner that the once-dominant publications do. Some, like Thorn Magazine, have attempted to create a print-online hybrid, but it’s too early to tell if that project will continue to thrive in the longer-term.

So what is the future of journalism, and what does it mean for “professional amateurs” like myself who service niche information markets like the modern Pagan community? Two recent essays really give some clarity as to the extent of what’s coming, why it will almost certainly get worse before it gets better, and why we have reasons to hope for a brighter media tomorrow. The first is from author Steven B. Johnson who reminds us what informaiton gathering, especially niche informaiton gathering was like before the Interent, and why the tech and political news worlds are showing that the future isn’t a barren news desert but a rich news rainforest ecosystem.

“The metaphors we use to think about changes in media have a lot to tell us about the particular moment we’re in … today’s media is in fact much closer to a real-world ecosystem in the way it circulates information than it is like the old industrial, top-down models of mass media. It’s a much more diverse and interconnected world, a system of flows and feeds – completely different from an assembly line. That complexity is what makes it so interesting, of course, but also what makes it so hard to predict what it’s going to look like in five or ten years. So instead of starting with the future, I propose that we look to the past. To use that ecosystem metaphor: the state of Mac news in 1987 was a barren desert. Today, it is a thriving rain forest. By almost every important standard, the state of Mac news has vastly improved since 1987: there is more volume, diversity, timeliness, and depth. I think that steady transformation from desert to jungle may be the single most important trend we should be looking at when we talk about the future of news. Not the future of the news industry, or the print newspaper business: the future of news itself.”

Johnson sees a future in which the “old media” establishment become massive filtering organizations, using their editorial skills to provide clear and accurate narratives on important news. Becoming part of a “bottom-up” news distribution system and economy, that advertisers and news agencies will eventually find a way to make the new media economy work for them (though not without further casualties in this unnatually hastened transition). While Johnson talks about a hopeful media future that includes all players at the table, New Media consultant and teacher Clay Shirky bluntly reminds us that when you’re in the middle of  revolution all bets are off.

“That is what real revolutions are like. The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in its place. The importance of any given experiment isn’t apparent at the moment it appears; big changes stall, small changes spread. Even the revolutionaries can’t predict what will happen. Agreements on all sides that core institutions must be protected are rendered meaningless by the very people doing the agreeing. (Luther and the Church both insisted, for years, that whatever else happened, no one was talking about a schism.) Ancient social bargains, once disrupted, can neither be mended nor quickly replaced, since any such bargain takes decades to solidify. And so it is today. When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to. There are fewer and fewer people who can convincingly tell such a lie.”

One thing I rarely see mentioned by defenders of “old media” is that proponents of  new media rarely want newspapers or magazines to fail, or for journalists to lose their jobs, they merely understand that the current upheaval is going to play out no matter what we do. You can’t unring a bell, and you can’t stuff the genie of digital media back into its bottle. As Shirky says, we are in the midst of a revolution, and we have no idea what exactly the future will look like. I hope for Johnson’s lush ecosystem, but we can’t be sure.

What will the “pro” model of Pagan journalism look like in the future? Will it be the slick and academic-minded site Patheos? The corporate-backed blogs of Beliefnet? The massive “everyone gets a say” editorial page of the Newsweek-backed On Faith? Maybe even a renassaince of Pagan periodicals? Perhaps it will be something none of us ever saw coming. Looking at the last few years, I can’t say what the future of media and journalism will truly be, but I do know that Pagan journalism has grown in a variety of ways. Our community is more personally empowered than ever to inform, communicate, and ignore ineffecient gatekeepers. In the “old” mainstream media Paganism was treated as a fad, or a joke, or a “human interest” story stuffed into the “lifestyle” section. We had to wait for months for any news from our own periodicals, and those were often (due to the nature of scheduling) more interested in “evergreen” material than in what is happening in the here and now. Thanks to the citizen journalists and determined aggregators we have more “news” for Pagans than ever before, and if we’re lucky, a successful business model will emerge in that will allow for timely Pagan reporting that actually pays.

Several folks have written in to alert me that Pagan scholar Murphy Pizza has become the official Minneapolis Paganism Examiner for Examiner.com (the ultra-conservative funded pay-for-pageviews blogging site). This is exciting news because Murphy Pizza’s dissertation is about the history and formation of the Pagan community in the Twin Cities (aka “Paganistan”), so you could not ask for a better local commentator. In her first entry Pizza explains the unique character and long history of the Pagan community in Minnesota’s Twin Cities.

“A number of years ago, one of the Pagan priests in the Twin Cities coined the name “Paganistan” for the long-lived and feisty Pagan community here. It was tongue-in-cheek, but the name has stuck; it’s a name that the Twin Cities Metro Area Pagans have proudly taken on as a moniker. Many people are surprised to hear that the Twin Cities boasts the second largest contemporary Pagan community in the US (only San Francisco’s Bay Area is larger). Often, they are equally surprised to discover that it has its formative roots as far back as 1972, when the Gnostica Bookstore was holding spiritual seeker classes on topics like magic, contemporary Witchcraft, and other occult traditions down on Hennepin Avenue … It isn’t only the size that makes Paganistan a unique and vibrant community. It also has been a religiously innovative community both in terms of the creation of traditions and practices, and in the way it expresses a diversity of paths and organizations.”

I wish Ms. Pizza a long and healthy blogging career. The Pagan blogosphere needs more local community-oriented coverage, so hopefully this will start something of a trend (I anxiously await Salem and Bay Area-centric blogs). So be sure to add her to your blogrolls and rss-readers ASAP!

I’ll be on the road today and unable to effectively blog, so in the meantime why not check out the latest episode of my podcast A Darker Shade of Pagan, and take a peek at the recent blog posts by fellow Pagan bloggers Chas Clifton, Gus diZerega, and the ever-vigilant Wren Walker of Wren’s Nest (you should also feel free to share links to articles, podcasts, and blog posts that you felt were particularly inspiring or thought-provoking this week in the comments). Cheers!