A legal gambit in the battles over the separation of Church and State has been that the Christian cross is a “secular” symbol, removed from its original religious meaning by time and history. This has resulted in some rather insulting assumptions by cross-defenders and involves a good bit of historical revisionism. Now with the Supreme Court of the United States hearing arguments in the case of Salazar v. Buono, we may finally see if there can truly be a “secular cross”.

Mr. Eliasberg said many Jewish war veterans would not wish to be honored by “the predominant symbol of Christianity,” one that “signifies that Jesus is the son of God and died to redeem mankind for our sins.” Justice Scalia disagreed, saying, “The cross is the most common symbol of the resting place of the dead.” “What would you have them erect?” Justice Scalia asked. “Some conglomerate of a cross, a Star of David and, you know, a Muslim half moon and star?” Mr. Eliasberg said he had visited Jewish cemeteries. “There is never a cross on the tombstone of a Jew,” he said, to laughter in the courtroom. Justice Scalia grew visibly angry. “I don’t think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead that that cross honors are the Christian war dead,” he said. “I think that’s an outrageous conclusion.”

Now the case could be decided narrowly, simply on the legality of the land-transfer that Congress approved to keep the cross standing, or, if Scalia gets his way, the court could decided that Christian crosses can be defined as a “common symbol” of the dead, ending several potential lawsuits over the issue. However, while Christians may welcome a sweeping victory here, Beliefnet founder Steven Waldman warns of the spiritually unwise slippery-slope implications of a “win”.

“…the more you want Christian symbols in the public square, the more you have to prove they’re lacking religious meaning. A question for devout Christians: Do you really want the cross and the creche to become akin to the Christmas tree — or the Easter Bunny? The “secular purpose” trap isn’t the only reason the “pro-religion” position can end up hurting Christianity. Legal cases pressing Christian symbols tend to argue that these efforts are acceptable as long as the government isn’t excluding other faiths. That’s how we’ve ended up with town squares with Menorahs alongside the creches. But this is the ultimate slippery slope. The Courts cannot and should not say that pluralism is limited only to Jews. Over time, Islam, Buddhism, Paganism will inevitably end up having greater public displays, too. That means conservative Christians need to ponder a more subtle theological point. If you believe visible public displays convey important social messages, doesn’t a pluralistic scene convey a second message: that all faiths are equal?“

In other words, a secular cross would create more theological problems for the Christians who desire such a decision than they would care to currently admit. Remember the Green Bay nativity case? You could expect a lot more like that, because other religious groups in America, as they grow in size and prominence, are going to want full inclusion as well. The legal loopholes that Christian advocacy groups are trying to create will eventually, no doubt to their dismay, benefit the Wiccans, Buddhists, and Hindus who won’t be contented to simply stand by and be represented by “secular” symbols of Christianity. They should be careful about how “secularized” they want their cross.

If you’ve been paying attention to some the more prominent religion bloggers lately, you’ll have noticed quite a bit of thought given to the decline of professional reporters on the religion (or God) beat. As newspapers cut their budgets across the country, those who cover religion and faith-related issues are feeling the pinch.

“The numbers told the story at this year’s Religion Newswriters Association Conference. It was the 60th time religion reporters from secular news outlets gathered to discuss their craft, gather new story ideas, recognize the best religion stories from the previous year and generally recharge their batteries on a beat that is one of the most challenging and rewarding in journalism … Kevin Eckstrom, editor of the Religion News Service and president of the Religion Newswriters Association, said attendance was half that of last year’s conference in Washington … Last year,  40 exhibitors staffed booths outside the conference ballroom, hoping to attract the attention of journalists. This year, there are 15. Travel budgets are down, both inside newsrooms and among faith-related companies and non-profits. But the fact remains that there are simply fewer reporters covering religion.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Paulson called religion-beat reporters a “dwindling band” who have suffered a “serious reversal of fortune” compared to a decade ago. Meanwhile, veteran religion-reporter Gary Stern blogged about his paper eliminating the religion beat, and Mollie at Get Religion wondered how these shake-ups will change the way that blog analyzes religion reporting.

“It will be interesting to watch this change in print media and it will be interesting to see if and how that changes our role here at GetReligion. In the meantime, our best wishes to Stern and all of the other veteran Godbeat scribes who are adjusting to the new landscape.”

But what does this mean for modern Pagans? This is anecdotal, but in my daily scouring of various news sources concerning modern Pagans I see more and more entries from blog-sites like Examiner.com and far less from what we would call “mainstream” media sources. Further, an increasing number of stories that I blog here aren’t directly related to modern Pagans, but are instead of some related concern to our communities (Santeria legal cases, for example) . Could this be due to dwindling resources and fewer reporters exclusively covering religion? CUUPs official David Pollard recently pointed out something interesting to me about a graph from the Google News Archive search that I had recently posted.

A representation of how many times the word “Wicca” was used in news stories since 1970, it showed a huge spike in 1999 (when modern Paganism and religion journalism were both riding high) and a noticeable drop in the last few years. Now, I know that Wicca hasn’t shrunk in any discernable way lately, and indeed seems to remain popular among the teens that many said artificially inflated our numbers and would eventually abandon us back in the 1990s. Nor has Wicca, not to mention other modern Pagan faiths, failed to be involved in newsworthy events. Pollard wondered if that drop was instead related a decline in news coverage in general, and that seems to be the case. A look at Google Trends (which combines news mentions with search trends) shows declines not just for Wicca, Paganism, and Asatru, but for more mainstream faiths like Christianity and Judaism. Are these trends related to a diminishing of religion-beat reporting? Out of sight, out of mind?

What has become ever-clearer to me is that it may be years before the mainstream media reorganizes and stabilizes enough to start spending resources on religion reporting again. In those years the only religion stories that will be getting regular coverage are those that will involve millions of people or dollars (or votes). Religious leaders will have to be powerful (or scandalous) enough to demand attention from reporters on the “hard” news-beats. This will leave minority faiths with an ever-dwindling access to news that could have a direct effect on their lives. Religion coverage could increasingly become an editorial page instead of an investigation. It’s for this reason that I’m working to help build a Pagan-centric newswire, because if we can’t report on ourselves, we may find no one else willing or able to.

Back in 2001 the British census was rocked by a massive Internet campaign/practical joke, where, for a variety of reasons, 400,000 people listed “Jedi” as their religious affiliation. The Pagan community, though ranking as the seventh-largest faith in Britain with a combined number of nearly 40,000, paled in comparison (Pagan groups, who feel they could actually number in the hundreds of thousands, are organizing to ensure a more accurate count in 2011). While I don’t doubt that there are sincere adherents to some sort of constructed Jedi-faith, it seems more likely that it became a haven for people who don’t like the idea of telling the government their religious affiliation, or even having to decide on a religious affiliation. I bring all this up because the Washington Post is doing a spotlight on faith within the popular social networking site Facebook, and it looks like the return of the Jedi.

“Since then, Facebook’s beliefs box has generated a staggering number of entries. So exactly how many users put down “beer” as their religion? How many “Catholic”? What correlations exist between religion and number of friends? Company spokeswoman Meredith Chin declined to answer such questions, citing user privacy. But Chin agreed to compile a list of the most popular religious identities and offered some tantalizing hints at what a full readout might show. Not surprisingly, the most popular faith professed is “Christian” and the various denominations associated with it. The category is so dominant that for this list, Facebook’s statisticians insisted on combining such other designations as “Protestant,” “Catholic” and “Mormon” under the “Christian” label. As a result, the second most popular entry on the list is “Islam,” followed by “Atheist.” “Jedi,” interestingly enough, makes an appearance at No. 10.”

There are so many questions about Facebook’s religion data that aren’t asked or answered in William Wan’s breezy little article. For instance, Facebook statisticians “insisted” on combining all the Christian variations, but did they do the same for other religious groupings? Were all the various Pagan faiths combined as well? If not, why not? Is “spiritual” a catch-all category, or is it just people who listed themselves solely as “spiritual”, and why include a Washington DC top-ten but not one for the USA as a whole?  Why only ten? If it isn’t a violation of user privacy to give us a top-ten list, why not a top twenty or fifty? Further, why did Wan classify “Seguidor del Wiccanismo” (follower of Wicca in Spanish, of which there are 2000 on Facebook) as “offbeat”, did he not bother to run it through a translator? Does the fact that this listing was given as an example of “offbeat” answers to the religion question (along with “Heavy Metal” and “Amish”) in fact prove that Facebook statisticians didn’t bother to gather the modern Pagans into an easy-to-count single grouping?

Instead of doing a real investigation of religion on Facebook, Wan focuses instead on how “hard” it is to fill in that text box, when all you want to do is hook up with some friends.

“It’s Facebook. The whole point is to keep it light and playful, you know?” said Heim, 27, a college student from Dumfries. “But a question like that kind of makes you think.”

Indeed, it does make you think, I just wish the Washington Post were similarly inspired. It’s “interesting” that Jedi came in tenth, but not interesting enough to probe a bit deeper into why it’s the tenth-most-popular faith category on Facebook. If only the The Force could spur some more in-depth journalism on these questions.

ADDENDUM: Get Religion and I seem to be on the same wavelength today.

Yesterday the Gallup polling organization released a new set of analyses from 170,000 interviews over the last six months regarding religion in America. The focus was on religious identity in different states, showing where different religions were the most (and least) concentrated.

“The accompanying maps give a portrait of this remarkable pattern of religious dispersion in the U.S. for these religious groups, based on a new analysis of more than 170,000 Gallup interviews conducted between January and June of this year. A good deal of the religious dispersion across the states is explainable by historical immigration patterns — particularly the impact of the large waves of European Catholics and Jews who came through ports of entry in the Middle Atlantic states in the 19th and early 20th centuries.”

Their results are much what you’d expect, the Pacific Northwest has a lot of “nones”, Utah and surrounding states have a lot of Mormons, Protestantism dominates in the South, there are lots of Jewish people in New York and Florida, and Catholicism remains vital in New England. All fine and good, but when I looked at the breakdown of their numbers I noticed something odd.

Why were “other” non-Christians not included? No Muslims, no Buddhists, no Pagans. Nothing. They must have that data, so why not release it with the rest? It can’t be simple numerical preferences since the recent ARIS data puts “NRMs and Other Religions” on par with religiously observant Jews and just behind the Mormons, two groups that were included in the released data. Is it down to political influence? I’ve sent a request to Gallup to release the “others” data, but haven’t received a response yet. With such a large sample size we could get some interesting results as to where the “others” live, data that could be useful to Pagan organizations and advocacy groups as we continue to grow. Hopefully the rest of their data is forthcoming, but it couldn’t hurt to politely and respectfully request that Gallup release their state-by-state data on “Other non-Christian Religions”.

ADDENDUM: Folks in the comments are starting to get the following canned reply from Gallup on the matter of the “others”.

“As noted in our article, “Religious Identity: States Differ Widely,” the table “does not include Muslims or other non-Christian religions due to small sample sizes. Table also does not show “No opinion” responses.” Added together, all the “No opinion” responses and “other non-Christian” responses were about 5% of the total responses. Individually, each of the many religions included in the “other non-Christian” category received less than 1% of the responses – many were substantially less than 1%. The numbers were, in fact, so small that differences between states were not statistically significant, and could be misleading. That’s not to say there aren’t significant numbers of people associated with each of these religions, but they are relatively small percentages of the total population. Because the margin of error depends on sample size, a much larger (and more expensive) survey would be required to get reliable figures for the smaller groups.”

If there is a standard reply, we must not be the only ones wondering about Gallup’s omissions.

You have to wonder if Slate.com is getting somewhat hard-pressed to find subject matter and writers for their regular “Faith-Based” section. How else to explain them getting journalist Robert Wright, author of several game theory/evolutionary psychology-boosting books, including his recent “The Evolution of God”, to write about Neo-Shamanism? Wright, who seems to be a proponent of the outmoded and inaccurate idea that monotheism is a more evolved form of belief than polytheism (Publishers Weekly points out that he uses a “naive and antiquated approach to the sociology and anthropology of religion”), is so eager to debunk popular myths about shamans that he makes some rather sloppy assertions right out of the gate.

“The quotes come from Leo Rutherford, a leading advocate of neo-shamanism, which is a subset of neo-paganism, which is a subset of New Age spirituality. But the basic idea—that there was a golden age of spiritual purity which we fallen moderns need to recover—goes beyond New Age circles.”

While there is certainly some significant overlap between modern Paganism and Neo-Shamanism, the latter isn’t a “subset” of the former. Nor is modern Paganism a subset of New Age spirituality. These are all distinct religious/social movements with different starting points, ideologies, and goals. Wright is confusing the overlap of practitioners and subcultures (and the tendency of some academics to lump them together for the sake of convenience) with some sort of neat nesting-dolls order of New Religious Movements. Meanwhile, before Wright talks about all the indigenous shamans who were fakes and confidence men, he wants us to know that he isn’t trying to offend.

“But before I start, I want to stress two points: 1) I think it’s great for people to find spiritual peace and sound moral orientation wherever they can, including neo-paganism; 2) I don’t doubt that back before Western monotheism took shape there were earnest seekers of a “holistic vision” who selflessly sought to share that vision.”

So big of him, don’t you think? Despite admitting that some shamans may have indeed been honorable and wise, he still wants to point out that some were not. As if human nature hasn’t taught us that some people, no matter how exhaulted their status, can still take part in some very real moral failings and abuse their power. In fact, Wright pretty much admits that there may be some real value to various shamanic ideas and practices (he “praises” them by comparing their worldview to followers of early Abrahamic religions), he just wanted us to take off our rose-colored (shamanic) glasses.

“I’m for that! In fact, I once did a one-week Buddhist meditation retreat that gave me just that feeling. And there are traditions within Judaism, Christianity, and Islam that are big on oneness. I recommend trying one of them—or trying neo-shamanism. But if you try neo-shamanism, don’t be under the illusion that you’re helping to recover a lost age of authentic spirituality. Religion has always been a product of human beings, for better and worse.”

So to sum up, Neo-Shamanic adherents (who are a subset of Pagans, who are a subset of New Agers) need to remember that some indigenous shamans were fakers and frauds, but really, there is some  (early Abrahamic-esque) wisdom and good stuff to be found there. Heck, “ordinary consciousness could use some transcending”! So I guess now that the Neo-Shamans (not to mention the traditional indigenous shamans) have been taken down a peg by Wright, those crazy diamonds can all shine on. I have to wonder, was there really a point to this article? Did Slate.com actually pay him to just ramble on about animal bladders full of blood and how often shamans got lucky? Of all the topics he could cover, why was Robert Wright writing about Neo-Shamanism?

(guest post by Elysia Gallo)

I’m committed to becoming another brick in the wall – one that makes it stronger – rather than becoming another sucker who punches a hole in that wall. What wall am I talking about? The wall of separation between church and state.

The Establishment Clause provides that “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.” Jefferson later famously referred to this clause in a letter as having built “a wall of separation between church and state.” Like all walls (the Gaza wall, the US-Mexican border, the Great Firewall of China), this wall is not impermeable. It protects us from being forced by the government to join or financially support a church, but it does allow in streams of personal religious expression – the other right we hold so dear. The Constitution ensures that religious expression on a personal level is acceptable, as long as our government does not endorse one religion over another. However, there are many times when it does just that, whether purposely or simply because the majority thoughtlessly and naively sees itself as the default mode.

For example, when a crèche turns up in front of city hall, minority faiths who want equal representation in the public sphere often have to ask for inclusion after the fact. In many cases– in Wisconsin and Washington state, for example – the consequent opening of the door to all faiths is quickly followed by a swift slamming of it when too many requests flood in or the displays cause too much controversy. Baby Jesus and a menorah are one thing, but a Wiccan pentacle? The Flying Spaghetti Monster? The Festivus Pole? The mainstream can’t take it!

A poll last year found that “83% [of respondents] say a nativity scene on city property should be legal, but only 60% say a display honoring Islam during Ramadan should be legal. Overall, 58% of all Americans feel both should be legal, while 15% feel both should be illegal.” If the majority of Americans are for the nativity but only slightly more than half would open up that space to all faiths regardless of their personal religious views, you have the majority effectively suppressing the minority’s religious expression. We need to put a stop to this practice altogether, or else this stream could become a flood that washes away our Constitutional protection against such state-sanctioned oppression. The Constitution is supposed to protect the rights of minorities, not strengthen those of the majority – that’s what the Civil Rights movement was all about.

While not all Christians are trying to push their religion on us, not all non-mainstream religions are without ulterior motives of their own…

Should we support proselytizing by non-mainstream religious groups?

You may remember Jason blogging about the case of a fringe religious group called Summum trying to get its Seven Aphorisms erected in a city park in Pleasant Grove, UT, on equal standing with the Ten Commandments already displayed there.

However, Summum had challenged another city for the same reasons – the city of Duchesne, UT. While the Pleasant Grove case proceeded to the Supreme Court, Duchesne instead reluctantly moved its Ten Commandments piece to a cemetery to avoid further litigation. Surprisingly enough, this was not seen as a victory in Summum’s eyes; in an article published after the monument had been moved,

“We are saddened that the Ten Commandments monument has been removed from the city park in Duchesne,” Summum President Su Menu said.

“Summum has never requested that religious monuments be removed from government property. We have only asked that all religions be given equal access,” Menu said. “Just as the citizens of Duchesne have benefited from the display of the Decalogue, so, too, would they have benefited from the display of our Seven Aphorisms.”

So was Summum ultimately just trying to win converts, or did they believe that all beliefs could peacefully coexist if everyone had equal access to them? Would we ever want to erect a statue of the 42 Principles of Maat, or the Nine Noble Virtues, or the Wiccan Rede in a public park simply because others “may benefit” from its display? Proselytizing is not a central tenet of any Pagan faith I can think of, but does that mean we should bar others from doing so? If we are all for tolerance and acknowledging the validity of an infinite number of other paths, why would we be intolerant of a Ten Commandments statue in a park or courtroom?

And if we went to all the courthouses of the nation to dismantle any Christian-themed decorations, then what of Pagan decorations like Lady Liberty? Would you get rid of Moses yet keep Confucius? What of Mars in front of the US Capitol, or the Three Fates and the four elements in front of the Supreme Court building? Obviously we live in a society where religious expression is not easily extracted from the public sphere; indeed, in many cases it makes our lives richer.

Conversely, if tolerance is one of our core beliefs as Pagans, how can we tolerate intolerance and religious aggression? Wiccans say “An’ it harm none, do as ye will” – so the question then becomes whether Christians are actually doing harm by erecting the Ten Commandments in public places, placing nativities on City Halls, and so forth.

Pagans and Atheists – strange bedfellows?

Unfortunately what may have once been the simple, well-intentioned decorating of buildings and parks in the past is now being pushed as part of a malicious and divisive political agenda. That fits the definition of “harm” well enough for me. You can see this again and again as part of the “Culture Wars” that fundamentalist Christians believe they must wage to stop the secularization of America. In the words of Green Bay City Council President Chad Fradette, who placed the nativity on government property, “I’m trying to take this fight to the people who need to be fought. I’ll keep going on this until this group imposing Madison values crawls back into its hole and never crawls out.”

Because of people like Chad, I’m more inclined these days to crawl into bed with the atheists – to stop, or at least to impede, the progress of the Christian right juggernaut that is hell-bent on tying up taxpayer’s money in long, drawn-out court battles revolving around their supposed “persecution” by a secularized America. I realize that in not supporting religious displays on public land I’m in a small minority of Americans – but what else is new?

It’s not just Chad fighting to get us back in our hole – many Christians are organizing to be more proactive in thrusting their nativities into the public sphere, to deliberately inflame others. The response of setting up a Wiccan pentacle is just feeding into that – a retribution against having the nativity on government property. And then that pentacle gets trashed, which is just more revenge visited upon retribution. Does it make any sense? Can’t we just nip it in the bud by saying no to everyone before it gets ugly? Can’t religious displays be simply relegated to private homes, churches and temples? Why bring it to city property or schools in the first place?

A huge chorus of secularists saying “no” to these displays will probably be heard more loudly than one or two minority faiths’ disjointed efforts to fight these assaults or gain equal standing on their own.

One atheist organization, the Secular Coalition for America, has been lobbying Washington of late for initiatives that Pagans may also support, such as eliminating faith-based policies that impose mainstream religious tenets on the rest of us through discriminatory hiring, weakening science-based education and health services, and proselytizing through charity. They are also urging more atheists to come out of the closet; this article about their lobbying efforts reveals that of 23 privately self-proclaimed atheists in the House and Senate, only one was willing to go public with it! Ultimately they, too, fear PR damage on the basis of the mainstream American belief that only Christians can be moral or ethical and that atheists are necessarily evil, deluded, liberal or untrustworthy. (Sound familiar? Such labels are often applied to Pagans, too.)

As Herb Silverman, president of the Secular Coalition, wrote to me in an email,

“Our mission is twofold: to promote non-theism and work for the separation of religion and government. We are on your side on just about all cases. […] I think it is a good idea for all of our groups to work together on the main issues and also to work for the visibility and respectability of our constituencies. The more Atheists and Pagans come out of their closets, the better off we will all be.”

Besides the Secular Coalition and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, there are more inclusive groups fighting for the same ideals (because believers of any faith can be secularists, too), such as Americans United for Separation of Church and State – the very same organization that helped Roberta Stewart and Circle Sanctuary with the pentacle quest.

What do you think? Do you want to join the atheists and other secularists to ensure that minority rights don’t get trampled by keeping faith out of the public sphere, where we still can? Or will it be more effective to fight for better minority faith inclusion in the long run? How should we respond when “culture warriors” provoke us to action?

I suppose that it’s inevitable that with all the coverage of Druids, Stonehenge, and the Summer Solstice, some journalist, somewhere, would have to make a Spinal Tap “Stonehenge” reference. However, I wasn’t expecting it from the newest member of the Get Religion team’s first post.

“The AP reporter goes on to discuss the mystery surrounding Stonehenge. Is it an ancient burial ground or the temple of some sun-worshipping society? And how in the world did its creators ever relocate from up to 150 miles away those several-ton stones that dwarf the stage props in “This is Spinal Tap!” … All I know about Druids comes from Spaceballs, but I’m pretty sure the troubles of the Druish Princess Vespa has little to do with what went on at Stonehenge Sunday.”

I normally wouldn’t even mention such tired (attempted) funny-making, but it just didn’t seem to add up to what Brad Greenberg (a Christian with a culturally Jewish background) says he believes about what being on the “Godbeat” means.

“Once considered a backwater of journalism, the Godbeat feels to me quite chosen, home to immensely important and interesting news. Religion, after all, is the rubric through which each person uniquely sees the world. Science, education, politics, entertainment — it regularly serves as an undercurrent in these fields. (That was, in fact, part of my pitch at The Sun three years ago when they were looking for a reporter for the newly created position and I was eager to get out of Rialto.) The religion angle also is occasionally relevant when trying to understand peoples’ beliefs in God, their perspectives on the life hereafter and that which gives every day meaning. Think of the God beat as the Jerusalem of journalism. Seriously.”

If religion reporting is so important, you’d think a little reading about modern Druidry before posting wouldn’t be completely amiss. When you lead off with a picture from Spinal Tap, with references to that film and to Spaceballs, it gives me the impression that modern Pagan religions aren’t even worth the minimal time and effort to quickly visit Wikipedia. It leaves me with the notion that any future reporting on modern Paganism from that journalist will be unserious and under-researched. The irony of a site that critiques religion reporting committing the journalistic equivalant to an unforced error is somewhat heady. Then again, maybe he’ll quote Life of Brian when he next reports on Christianity for the sake of consistency.

Many religions through the ages have used certain substances to acquire altered states of awareness/consciousness. When used responsibly and under certain controlled circumstances, various entheogenic substances are purported to allow communion with divine beings, travel to different planes of awareness, and the removal of certain ego traits that hinder the building of a tribal group-mind experience. While many tribal/indigenous groups around the world still engage is such practices, the use of such substances for religious purposes long fell out of favor in European-descended nations for a variety of religious, economic, and social reasons. Flash forward to the 1960s, and thanks to “psychedelic” pioneers like Timothy Leary the recreational use of entheogens and related hallucinogenics experienced a huge boom, prompting strict government control over their usage. These controls did contain exemptions for “magical and religious rites”, but only for pre-approved “small” and “clearly determined” groups.

With America’s war on (some) drugs still raging (not to mention a long history of villianizing drug-use), religious groups that want to obtain an exemption for the use of certain entheogens during rituals have faced an uphill battle. In 2006 the Supreme Court ruled that members of O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal could legally import the herbs and plants needed to create the entheogenic brew ayahuasca for their rites. Now the syncretic practitioners of Santo Daime, who prepare a similar ayahuasca blend (what they call “Daime tea”) have won a court challenge in Oregon’s federal distric court to allow the importation of ingrediants necessary to make the brew. As commenter and expert witness Mark Kleiman points out, under the seemingly more tolerant Obama administration, this could lead to lower hurdles for religious groups to seek legal exemptions to use controlled substances during their rites.

“Now the new leadership at DoJ faces a question. The government can appeal the Oregon ruling and continue to fight the New Mexico case, and do the same with every religious body that comes forward to ask permission to used a controlled-substance sacrament. As a practical matter, that would mean that only well-financed churches had any chance of winning recognition; these are expensive cases, albeit the churches can recover their attorneys’ fees at the end of they win. Or the Attorney General could tell the DEA Administrator to draft, and publish in the Federal Register, a set of procedures and criteria to deal with such cases in the future. (The Supreme Court ruling makes it clear that RFRA provides ample statutory authority for issuing such regulations.) It’s an interesting test of Eric Holder’s skill, and I’ll be interested to see how he handles it.”

Kleiman seem particularly hopeful because Holder recently ordered the DEA to stop unwarranted raids on California’s medical marijuana dispensaries. Making many wonder if the slow decriminalization process for medical and recreational marijuana now under way in individual states will soon have approval (or at least non-interference) from the executive branch.

What does this all mean for modern Pagans? It means that we may soon see a time where individual Pagan faiths and traditions, if they so chose, could apply for an exemption to use a controlled substance (most likely an entheogen) during religious or magical rites. This will no doubt cause some amount of controversy if/when it emerges. While many Pagans have used controlled substances both recreationally and in a ritual context, many Pagan spokespersons since the early days have strived to present modern Pagans as law-abiding folk who absolutely reject illegal means to achieve altered states of consciousness. So expect this to be a big issue within our larger movement as laws become more permissive towards the religious use of controlled substances.

It looks like the micro-blogging service Twitter has finally hit the mainstream. NPR journalists participate and discuss it on the radio, mega-stars like Ellen Degeneres plug their accounts in an attempt to get a million followers, and politicians across the ideological spectrum are “tweeting” to their constituents in an attempt to stay relevant. So it would stand to reason that the Pagan community would also coalesce around this social networking phenomenon. It would be madness and folly to try and give any sort of definitive list of Pagans using the service (as there are probably thousands), but I can give some “highlights” for newcomers just starting to dip their toe into the service.

First, two of the largest Pagan/occult publishers Llewellyn and Weiser have Twitter feeds (and their follower lists are a fairly decent way to find other Pagans at the site) that are regularly updated. In addition to the publishers, several notable Pagan and esoteric authors, writers, and leaders are utilizing Twitter. This includes Corrine Kenner, Mama Donna Henes, Damh the Bard,Kerr Cuhulain,and the famous ancient Greek philosopher Bias of Priene. If that isn’t enough, you can also find a variety of Pagan vendors using Twitter, including Lodestone and Lady’s Mantle, Bell, Book, and Candle Supply, and Pagan Wholesale (just to name a few). You can also track Pagan conversations on Twitter through the PaganFeed, a gathering of Pagan-tagged tweets.

If you want to do some more general spiritual exploring,  Beliefnet has a feed, you can get a daily dose of Buddhism, the FON Spiritual Center tweets, and there is an enormous variety of “Twitter of Faith” posts. Finally, since Twitter is an engine for self-promotion I feel compelled to mention that you can follow The Wild Hunt on Twitter, and there is a Twitter feed for A Darker Shade of Pagan as well. I’m told that following both is an excellent way to become smarter and more attractive! So what Pagan or religious-themed Twitter feeds have you found useful or entertaining? Feel free to plug your own Twitter account if you’d like.

As news concerning Trinity College’s American Religious Identification Survey data from 2008 starts to seep into the blogosphere, we’re starting to get some initial reactions and meditations on what it all means. Beliefnet’s Pagan blogger Gus diZerega wonders if the religious right has poisoned the well, ultimately benefiting the Pagan community.

“Now the Religious’ Right has worked hard to push their ghastly conception of a deity down everyone’s throats, where all talk of love and charity has been drowned out by belches of bigotry and ignorance, hatred and greed.  Fortunately more people are repulsed by this business than are attracted … [Pagans] have no problem with science, are tolerant of spiritual differences, and address constructively many of the biggest political and cultural issues of our day. The numbers of nontraditional religious groups, including us, now number 2.8 million calling themselves Wiccan, Pagan, or Spiritualist, up to 1.4% from .8% since 1990, all without seeking converts.  Our biggest problem is a shortage of qualified teachers compared to the demand for them. I believe there will be more of us in the next survey.”

Another Pagan blogger, Lonnie at “Here In The Cave of Wonder…”, looks at the numbers on a state-by-state basis.

“That said, while specific numbers aren’t available for Virginia yet, “other” religions seemed to have grown at a rate of only 1%. So, it’s still likely that my own observations have been true, but just not true for Connecticut (+5%). Other areas, did indeed shrink in numbers of people practicing alternative religions including RI (-1), FL (-1), MA( -1), NY (-2%), NH (-2%), and WY (-8%). For around 15 states there was no change at all.”

Meanwhile, the Get Religion blog names the “mini-rise of the Wiccans” as a discernable subplot to the ARIS story. So you can expect a number of journalists will most likely be nosing around the “NRMs and Other Faiths” in the near future to figure out why we’re growing while others shrink. As for Christian pundits, there is some (prophetic?) doom-saying going on. Pastor Tony Beam at Crosswalk partially blames “aggressive atheism” and “new age nonsense” for the current declines in Christendom.

“The combination of traditional religious teaching with the new age concept of spirituality.  The “Oprahization” of the church is well under way with millions now tuning in (through TV and the web) and turning on to Oprah Winfrey’s brand of homogenized religion.  Being spiritual, as defined by Eckhart Tolle and others means simply believing in a nebulous force that might work well for Star Wars Jedi but in the real world, is nothing but new age nonsense.”

While Beam thinks Christians can turn things around if they buckle down, author Michael Spencer at the Christian Science Monitor believes a major evangelical collapse is right around the corner.

“Within two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants. (Between 25 and 35 percent of Americans today are Evangelicals.) In the “Protestant” 20th century, Evangelicals flourished. But they will soon be living in a very secular and religiously antagonistic 21st century. This collapse will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile toward evangelical Christianity, seeing it as the opponent of the common good. Millions of Evangelicals will quit. Thousands of ministries will end. Christian media will be reduced, if not eliminated. Many Christian schools will go into rapid decline.”

That’s some strong stuff, and it gets even stronger on his blog. This (alleged) fragility of the evangelical boom seems to born out by ARIS researcher Mark Silk who discusses the finding with the Telegraph.

Mark Silk, who oversaw the findings, said: “There is now this shift in the non-Catholic population – and maybe among American Christians in general – into a sort of generic, soft evangelicalism. “If people call themselves evangelical, it doesn’t tell you as much as you think it tells you about what kind of church they go to. It deepens the conundrum about who evangelicals are.”

And the media storm continues fast and furious. Steven Waldman notes that “No Religion” is now the fastest growing religion in America (sorry Wicca!), while Touchstone Magazine claims that Wiccans and “self-described pagans” are growing faster than we did in the 1990s, and Commonweal bemoans the “real-time effects” of  America’s “anti-religion” bias. And on, and on, and on. It looks like there is some serious re-evaluating going on and modern Pagans (being one of the few “winners” here) may end up getting a lot more attention from this story than we think. Expect lots and lots of essays and articles in the coming weeks and months to mention the ARIS data, and for some religious groups to be emboldened (or feel threatened, or both) by what that survey says.