Race MoChridhe (MRS, Nations University) is an independent scholar of religion writing from a Traditionalist perspective. His primary research interests lie outside Pagan studies but, like Mr. White, he frequently finds himself popping over the border for a cup of tea. Hence, he is not infrequently found in the pages of Druidic magazines, adjunct teaching for Cherry Hill Seminary [http://cherryhillseminary.org/], or organizing roundtables at Pagan Pride events. He will be presenting next month at the online conference of the Pagan/Academic European Associates Network [http://www.paean-network.org/] on “Fiction Writing as a Form of Pilgrimage in an Invented Religion.”
[I]t is notable how infrequently religion appears as a major theme in the personal lives of famous science fiction authors and how many, including those for whom religion is a major theme in their work, are themselves either atheists or practitioners of idiosyncratic or unorganized alternative spiritualities...
I have lived in the American Southwest much of my life, and so Dr. Crockford’s description of Sedona and its inhabitants was very familiar to me (although I have never visited that particular corner of Arizona). I was somewhat startled, though, by the idea of connecting the kind of hyperemotionalized and largely disembodied approach to spirituality and the environment that she found there to gendered discourses. On a personal level, as a former inhabitant of the region, I see much closer connections between the kind of American New Age spirituality she described and the transhumanist millenarianism that pervades much of the culture of Silicon Valley.
The RSP interview with Doctors Theodora Wild croft and Stephen Jacobs about the adoption (and/or appropriation) of kirtan in British culture interested me tremendously, as my own work focuses on Filianism—a New Religious Movement in Britain that, although not arising directly out of Hinduism, has frequently employed Sanskrit terms and elements of Hindu iconography to present itself to the public.
Angels don’t just make esotericism accessible to Christians; they make the legacy of Christian thought and active dialogue with the Christian world accessible to people who have often left both on bad terms, and would not otherwise be willing or able to engage with them.
Every discipline has both power and responsibility to contribute to the dismantling of the Patriarchy by declaring its valorization of avarice, egotism, and violence to be wrong. The particular duty and power of religious studies and theology, is to point out that that valorization is hypocritical—that the culture of Patriarchy is itself inimical to the values of the sacred social order from which it claims its authority and for which it claims to offer protection
For all our talk of religion being a human endeavor, we are unaccountably unaccustomed to thinking of it as one; we treat it as an abstract phenomenon that can be subjected to a passably “objective” study, like thermodynamics or photosynthesis.Ethan Doyle White’s interview with the RSP is a fascinating follow-on to While Taira seeks a new paradigm of religious studies that does not require definition of “religion,” ...
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