{"id":608,"date":"2011-05-13T17:57:47","date_gmt":"2011-05-13T21:57:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/neopagan.net\/blog\/?p=608"},"modified":"2011-05-13T17:57:47","modified_gmt":"2011-05-13T21:57:47","slug":"forwarding-the-pagan-agenda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/neopagan.net\/blog\/2011\/05\/13\/forwarding-the-pagan-agenda\/","title":{"rendered":"Forwarding the Pagan Agenda"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you’re not a follower of The Wild Hunt<\/a> (what!! you should be!) you might not have heard of a guy named David Barton<\/a>. I’ve been talking about him on Facebook<\/a>, and Twitter<\/a>, but not yet here. This is a character who needs to have a harsh, harsh spotlight shown upon him.<\/p>\n

David Barton is the most visible of a group of religious conservatives who are trying to spread the meme that the Founding Fathers * meant religious freedom to mean merely the freedom to pick your version of Christianity<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This is patently false<\/a>. But Barton is getting a lot of national attention right now as the Conservative Republicans’ pet historian<\/a> ** (attention such as a front page story in the New York Times<\/a>, followed by a Daily Show<\/a> appearance) so this particular meme is gonna get credibility creep. In other words, if Joe Schmo said it, the media would ignore it, but Barton is getting accepted in the media world as Someone to Pay Attention to. (Someone To Whom They Should Pay Attention? Grammar is your friend … but I digress.) <\/p>\n

At this point, the “Christians only” meme has not surfaced in too many places. Which is good news and bad news. The good news is, we don’t want it out there. The bad news is, he’s not being challenged for this belief when he gets media face time with people such as Jon Stewart ***<\/p>\n

Star Foster, over on Patheos, put forth the idea<\/a> that we need an articulate, media savvy Pagan spokesman go on the Daily Show to talk about the questions that no one, including Stewart, has been asking Barton. Jason Pitzl-Waters, who has been relentlessly covering Barton on the Wild Hunt<\/a>, was the one she thought of. This idea has turned into a real campaign, and is getting legs with a Facebook page<\/a>, a stream of posts on the Daily Show forum<\/a> and a letter-writing campaign to Comedy Central<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Back in 2004, Jon Stewart joked, “Dude, Pagans don\u2019t have an agenda. They\u2019re Pagans. Organizational skills, eh, not their strong suit.<\/a>”<\/p>\n

To which we could answer, maybe yes, maybe no<\/a>. We don’t have a conversion agenda, but we do have a religious liberty agenda. \"Aquarian<\/a>Isaac’s Aquarian Anti-Defamation Defense League<\/a>, organized in 1973, was perhaps the first Neopagan rights group. Circle Sanctuary’s Lady Liberty League<\/a> recently celebrated its 25th year. The Hindu American Federation (HAF) gave Patrick McCullom the Mahatma Gandhi Award for Religious Pluralism<\/a> last year for his work in the California prisons, because he exemplifies what so many of us Neopagans understand: freedom of religion means freedom for all religions.<\/p>\n

Isaac was clearly committed to this ideal for his entire career. David Barton clearly is not. I know Barton would have made Isaac’s blood boil<\/a>. <\/p>\n

When I had my occult shop, Explorations, in Peoria oh-so-many years ago, I had a regular customer who would bring her lady friends by to get supplies such as John the Conqueror floor wash or Block-Buster mojo candles. She’d tell me, “I keep tellin’ ’em, you can’t just pray about it, you gotta do<\/em> something!” <\/p>\n

It’s our future as stake. So let’s get out there and do<\/em> something. <\/p>\n

_______________________________________
\n* I have no evidence of mothers being quoted in this fight.<\/p>\n

** He is an amateur historian, with a BA in Christian Education from Oral Roberts University<\/a>. As an amateur scholar myself I throw stones reluctantly; however, I am very aware that amateur scholars seldom experience peer review, and I’m not presenting my conclusions as the basis for public policy. <\/p>\n

*** Some folks have asked why we should care about a “fake news” show (though it is actually a satirical news analysis show) on Comedy Central. We should because mainstream media pays attention to it. And because more people between the ages of 18-35 get their news from Comedy Central than from CNN.<\/p>\n

**** Frankly, I don’t think a FB page ever accomplishes anything except–and this is a big except–the page brings an issue to people’s attention. If all you do is “like” a page, you have done nothing. I will repeat that. If all you do is “like” a page, you have done nothing but make yourself feel better. Let that page give you ideas of what you can actually do. Such as write a letter to Comedy Central<\/a> suggesting Jason as a guest. Or blog about it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you’re not a follower of The Wild Hunt (what!! you should be!) you might not have heard of a guy named David Barton. I’ve been talking about him on Facebook, and Twitter, but not yet here. This is a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":617,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,25,12],"tags":[269,270,149,262,265,129,264,263,268,316,267,266,261],"class_list":["post-608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-current-events","category-politicalcultural","category-politics","tag-aadl","tag-aquarian-anti-defamation-league","tag-civil-rights","tag-comedy-central","tag-david-barton","tag-facebook","tag-jason-pitzl-waters","tag-jon-stewart","tag-lady-liberty-league","tag-politics","tag-religious-freedom","tag-religious-reich","tag-the-wild-hunt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neopagan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/neopagan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/neopagan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neopagan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neopagan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=608"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/neopagan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":621,"href":"https:\/\/neopagan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608\/revisions\/621"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neopagan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neopagan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neopagan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neopagan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}