An Intersubjective Critique of A Critique of Pagan Scholarship
Michael York

 

This paper responds to Markus Davidsen's critique of contemporary
Pagan Studies published in Method and Theory in the Study of Religion,
issue 24 (2012). In contrast to Davidsen’s “classical” and critical-naturalist
emphasis, insider research that is methodologically sound is defended.


Markus Altena Davidsen seeks to demonstrate “that pagan [sic] studies is dominated by the methodological principles of essentialism, exclusivism, loyalism and supernaturalism, and [to show] how these principles promote normative constructions of ‘pure’ paganism, insider interpretations of the data, and theological speculations about gods, powers, and a special ‘magical consciousness.””[1] His contention is that these principles are made to pass for cutting-edge scholarship but that “almost every methodological and conceptual weakness in the old religionist approaches is reproduced and concentrated in the new field of pagan studies.”


Using the Handbook of Contemporary Paganism as an illustration of the field in general, Davidsen wishes to demonstrate that the contributions by those with an explicitly pagan and insider view are slightly more than double the number of those who operate from a critical-naturalist viewpoint. He groups the authors into two research programs: a religionist program with an insider perspective and supernaturalist ontology, and a scientific program with an outsider perspective and a naturalist ontology. The present proposer is placed in the first group which Davidsen labels as self-conscious and having “gone native in reverse” by becoming academics. The religionist program ranges, allegedly, from descriptive to theoretical. Hermeneutics and theology are theoretical and are described as “incommensurable with the critical-naturalist program.”

Despite Davidsen’s dichotomy between the critical-naturalist and descriptive-theoretical, he goes on to say that “Many scholars of religious traditions lack an identity as scholars of religion and hence an interest in method and theory as it is formulated on discipline level” (my italics). The statement “Clearly, these young scholars [in a recent PhD workshop on method and theory in the Netherlands] viewed method and theory as a field apart rather than as the shared foundation of the academic study of religion” appears not to recognize that methodology and theory are tools in the study of religion—not the study itself. Naming this a “foundational tool” would be perhaps more accurate than naming it the foundation itself. The nuance here, however, illustrates the problem of this kind of critique of religious studies and misses the baby for the bathwater. Discussion of methodology is important and vital, and with the sociology of religion at least is an ever ongoing project. A sociologist like William Swatos, an Episcopal minister, eschews any attempt to study his own tradition—focusing instead, for instance, on Paganism in Iceland as a subject of personal interest in which he had no personal interest that affords him the greater possibility of objective scrutiny. In an opposite camp of thought, the late Jeffrey Hadden (asked rhetorically, “Why shouldn't natives, compassionately committed to their culture, be trained to do sociological observation?”[2]

Hadden’s question is at the heart of the present critique. Last year, in the AAR’s Contemporary Pagan Studies session, Nikki Bado wished to eliminate the terms “emic” and “etic,” but the insider/outsider dance in participation/observation research remains, and each produces its own usefully significant insights and information. Nevertheless, Davidsen appears then to counter his own argument in the admission that critical theorists have come to suspect the very category of religion: “Critical theorists no longer study religion or religious activity as such, but aim to analyze how people talk about religion, which social constructions people label religion, and how the resulting discourses serve to legitimize power structures.” Admittedly, as Davidsen concedes, this is important but “also leaves much out of the question.” He concludes that “It is not surprising that religionists are unwilling to adopt an approach that requires them to give up both [sic] their methodology, object, and identity.”


But other than simply saying this, there is little in Davidsen’s critique of “religionists” (e.g., Susan Greenwood, Robert Puckett, Michael York, Jone Salomensen, Graham Harvey, Melissa Harrington, etc.) that supports his contention that they have abandoned methodological rigor. His declared focus was on the Handbook of Contemporary Paganism edited by James Lewis and Murphy Pizza but then critiqued Melissa Harrington—who did not contribute to the handbook— a selection that suggests a selectivity on Davidsen’s part to support a bias that itself is not objective or neutral. He nevertheless concludes that a positive program (e.g., that suggested by Martin Riesebrodt and Ivan Strenski) “provides the shared theoretical objects we need in order to build and sustain a discipline identity as scholars of religion,” and “by offering theoretical and conceptual models instead of deconstruction and criticism of the religionist position, the positive program puts us in a stronger position to demonstrate the relevance of method and theory also to religionists.”

It is important, certainly, to avoid what Michael Hill refers to as sociologie religieuse, an autonomous intellectual activity which remains beyond the scrutiny of other sociologists.[3] And to the extent that pagan academics veer toward religious sociology, Davidsen’s critique is valid and necessary. Classical sociology by contrast has been lauded for its value-neutrality, terminological precision and colleague consensus but increasingly more negatively appraised in terms of its reductionistic epiphenomenal positivism. As Eileen Barker put it, even “social scientists are useful only in so far as they communicate information which corresponds to the object of their study rather than colouring, distorting, confusing or over-simplifying an already messy and complicated reality with the addition of their personal beliefs and values.”[4] For the critical-naturalist approach where one’s personal biases and blindness may still be operative, the review through one’s peers is perhaps the best approximation to objectivity that our investigative approaches can achieve.


Today, in place of religious sociology and classical sociology, a more “middle way” appears to be the preference in both the United States and the United Kingdom as well as related areas. The suspension of judgment in the unbiased collection of data is still extremely important, but there is additionally the recognition that in any value-free, consensual study, some things remain beyond the scope or possibility of achievement. Sociology today more openly acknowledges its limited position.


But another aspect of classical sociology that “middle way” sociology has inherited and continues is precisely in the area of terminological precision. It is here where the theoretical religionist has a key role to play in the understanding of religion in general and paganism in particular. My argument is that to understand any particular religion or religious practice, a fundamentally helpful adjunct is to understand the underlying theological worldview or framework—whether this is articulated or not, and whether established or in the process of development. Whilst many today, and this applies to pagans as well, believe that theology is a Christian exercise alone, theological speculation precedes Christianity and occupied attention among the Greeks, Romans and Vedic peoples. It can also be discerned among others as well, and without including theology within religious studies and/or the study of religion(s), the critical-naturalistic approach is crippled from the start.


Without doubt, etics can pursue the uncovering of theology and its analysis as well, but emics have some receptive advantages in terms of being able to understand perhaps more fully the implications of certain beliefs or filtering lens to the practice itself. In contrast to Davidsen, theology is more than speculations simply about gods, powers, and a special “magical consciousness.” Theology concerns in addition the ideals of a religion in terms of the identity of and relationship between shared understandings of the world, humanity and the supernatural. Again recalling Hadden, Evans-Pritchard was convinced that the first condition for the anthropologist is to speak the native’s language or, in the case of Paganism as a relatively re-emergent spirituality, a Pagan “language.”[5] More directly in a religious studies context, Rodney Stark has argued that the most important factor for a truly scientific study of religion is entry into the field of ‘persons of faith.”[6] This notion is refined further by Nicholas Campion who insists, in his doctoral dissertation, that the emic-etic/insider-outsider relationship is “not a polarity but a constantly shifting set of ideas and experiences which may vary with time and location.”[7]


So in contrast to Davidsen’s allegations, insider interpretations of data are important for a more complete picture—especially when, as Kenneth Pike maintains, the interpretations of emic phenomena by two etics will always be in some ways different. Moreover, normative constructions of “pure” Paganism are impossible in an academic context since there is no such thing as “pure” Paganism.[8] Most if not all Pagan scholars are aware that there are many Paganisms, and Paganism as a religious orientation itself is still fully in an ongoing process of defining itself. In actuality, contemporary Paganism may be no more than an “etic” formulation that is useful primarily for outsiders—one which may prove additionally and hopefully to be advantageous for insiders.[9] In the study of religions and the study of paganism, it is eventually imperative to grasp that every pagan is both a participant of an emic group or practice but simultaneously a member of society and shares in its adoption of etic views concerning what paganism is, does and claims to be.

The supernaturalist agenda of contemporary Pagan scholars is another allegation of Davidsen’s. What this fails to recognize, as Davidsen also fails to recognize in Susan Greenwood’s study of magical or alternate states of consciousness, is the expansion of the field of religious studies to beyond the restrictions of empirical analysis to the phenomenologically concrete and readily available. From the Call for Papers for the 2013 Royal Geographic Society-Institute of British Geographers annual conference in London for a session on Occult Geographies: (Im)material Agents and the Geographical Imagination, for instance, we hear that because geography is now additionally turning “its attention to engaging with those elements of place that remain unseen and to exploring the relationality between materiality, agency and the invisible as affect or spectrality,” a focus has arisen that seeks to explore how physical affect “stirs, moves, disturbs, confuses and distorts our perception.” The particular focus here is on the occult, the occluded, the invisible and perceptually obscured but still knowable. If we translate this to Pagan supernaturalism (recognising simultaneously that contemporary Paganism is at least equally concerned with the ecological), we can fathom that a Pagan framework includes the uncanny “such as unseen agency, strange naturalisms, magic, ecologies of the spectral, and [their positioning] within esoteric practice.”[10] Referring to the geographical, the Call for Papers is concerned in particular with what has been often ignored and deliberately hidden practice. Because of the biases and limited focus that is possible with the etic position, emic subjectivity becomes an important and necessary complement to the critical-naturalist study of religion.


In defense of the current academic study of Paganism, it becomes legitimate to ask how much the sociology of religion is a theological position in itself. There may be no final answer to this, and the question remains an open one. Ernst Troeltsch’s contention that sociology is the history of the present is debatable since history is not a science but a descriptive art. Nevertheless, Troeltsch does recognise that sociology is a discipline that “pays attention to the structure and function of human society, to the conditions under which social changes occur, and to the interaction of the various social groupings which exert checks and pressures upon each other.”[11]


However, the statement that “religious beliefs  . . .  are so much a product of the social environment in which they are located that it is possible to give a comprehensive account of their meaning and significance which is composed entirely of socio-economic explanations” is both an oversimplification and an assumption of linear hierarchy.[12] The reductionisms characteristic of Comte, Tylor, Spencer, Frazer, Durkheim, Marx, Lenin and perhaps Weber invariably involve an evaluative judgment about religious phenomena. The religious explanation is considered to be in some sense unreal - especially as it is based on some non-empirical point of reference, that is, on an area beyond the means and legitimization of traditional science.


Consequently, the implicit assumption in the epiphenomenalist approach is also theological—whether rationalistic, naturalistic, or empirical, and in degree of bias it differs little from the sociologie religieuse position which remains convinced of the transcendent and revelatory character of religion. As with the Ritschlian tendency to identify religion in practice as the application and pursuit of social goals deriving from revelation or mystical insight, the epiphenomenalist reduces religious ideals and activities to empirical statements about the social world. Non-empirical goals are thereby eliminated, and a range of meaning which is significant to the religious adherent falls beyond the scope of this kind of sociology.

A journal devoted to methodology and its theory, such as Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, will retain an expected bias toward classical, epiphenomenal, or critical-naturist scientific positions. But to the degree that the contemporary sociologist operates more intermediately between the domains of both religious sociology and epiphenomenalism, judgment is not passed on such things as the validity of revelation or channeling or, more broadly, Davidsen’s supernaturalist ontology. Whilst belief itself is not considered to be beyond the scope of empirical scrutiny, this rationale and defense of observation is balanced by (1) recognizing that belief most often takes a social form and (2) assuming that a complete explanation is not possible in every case. The sociologist researcher makes no judgment over the “reality” or “unreality” of religious belief but keeps instead within a particular frame of reference which simply studies the meaningfulness of a set of religious beliefs to its adherents. But as Hill observes (1973:15), “the sociological approach to religion [is] one among a number of possible approaches, each of which is valid within its own sphere of reference and using its own techniques.”[13] Nevertheless, religious belief as an object of study requires that we know what the religious belief is. It is here precisely where the importance of the insider is to be recognized. Academic emics are in the position to facilitate an understanding of what the beliefs of a paganism or some other religion are and to bridge that understanding for an etic analysis. Though referring to whisky, Aeneas MacDonald makes a germane comment that would be equally applicable to the critical-naturalist critique of the insider-religionist program, namely, “hierarchies and authority go down before the sovereignty of a heightened and irresistible intuition.”[14]


Any handbook on religion or virtually on any subject is going to contain lacunae. Not everything can be covered or included. Davidsen finds that three omissions in the handbook are telling:

 “Firstly, no single chapter is devoted to a discussion of solitaire practitioners despite the fact that this group accounts for at least half the total number of pagans (Berger: 167). Secondly, pagan use of the Internet is not systematically discussed even though the Internet is identified as important for the membership explosion in the 1990s (Berger) and as increasingly important for Pagan community maintenance (Ezzy). Thirdly and related, it is regrettable that none of the articles treat the widespread Pagan use of fiction as inspirational texts.”[15]

But academic Pagan studies of these areas are to be found elsewhere in the field—e.g., Douglas Cowan’s Cyberhenge: Modern Pagans on the Internet;[16] as well as Douglas Ezzy and Helen Berger’s 2009 article “Witchcraft: Changing Patterns of Participation in the Early Twenty-first Century”[17] and other works; the Contemporary Pagan Studies Group’s 2009 session on “The Relationship between Literature and Contemporary Paganism” at the American Academy of Religion’s annual meeting; and Morgan Davis’ 2012 paper on “The Witch is Alone.” Concerning solitary practice, however, it is difficult to get an emic perspective since, with the exposure to fieldwork, such practice would no longer be solitary. Admittedly, survey research and other techniques will need to be forthcoming in this area to help close the gap that Davidsen perceives.


But apart from these three “‘omissions,” Davidsen focuses on seven people in particular. He finds essentialist fault with Robert Puckett’s assertion that “the ‘normal’ state of Wiccan charisma is democratic, magical, and non-routinized.”[18] Perhaps Puckett might have said that Wiccans report and feel that this is the “normal” state of affairs despite the all-too-human power corruption that can sometimes be witnessed as the “High Priest(ess) syndrome.”


In critiquing Melissa Harrington’s contrast between what she calls “authentic, communal and ethical paganism” and “commercial, commodified, and materialistic new age,” Davidsen claims that “the many self-identified pagans who are solitaires and work magic for materialistic ends” are excluded by Harrington’s exclusive division. What is curious here would be any fieldwork or reference on Davidsen’s part that confirms that solitaries are working magic for materialistic goals alone or even for the most part. But Harrington’s point is that Alexandrian and Gardnerian Wicca (as well as Ordo Templi Orientis initiates) do not “pick and mix” as is more characteristic of New Age practice but remain committed to “Wicca [or the OTO] as a sole religious path.” As for “fluffy witches,” she sees them as possibly the “the future of Paganism.” And concerning the assertion of an elite “real paganism” in contrast to the “commodified . . . [and] New Age witchcraft” that Ezzy appears to ”lump” together with the initiate versions, Harrington finds Davidsen’s allegations as “a very Pagan-sour-grapes term to use in such a targetted way”—“one of the oldest insults in Paganism.” She firmly denies that she is a biased or Wiccan religionist but describes herself instead as “a tolerant universalist.”[19] Rather than doing identity management and boundary-work to force less prestigious co-religionists out of an elite Wiccan/Pagan category and into the pejorative New Age category, Harrington would appear to be more engaged with the necessary identity location and boundary understandings of different Pagan and Wiccan practices.


Davidsen assumes carte blanche that Unitarian Universalists are necessarily liberal Christians, but in my own research, I have encountered Unitarian Universalists who are surprised to learn that they might be considered Protestants. The Christian affinities of Unitarian Universalism have been steadily waning, such that the denomination essentially divides now between humanists and Pagans. The notion that Pagans might also be Christians is highly debatable—as has been witnessed on Sam Webster’s “Beginning the Pagan Restoration” web page with his comment “And, no, you can't worship Jesus Christ and be a Pagan” and the numerous objections he received in the feedback comments.[20] Christo-Pagans, crypto-Pagans, even Mormons all attest the Pagan-Christian fusions, but Harrington’s comment was that “the biggest difference between Paganism and new age is that new ager can remain Christian whereas Pagans usually do not.”[21] And surely academics can expressly wonder how Pagans can “square [their Pagan orientations] with a true Christian faith when the bible is totally against it” while still remaining bona fide academics.


Davidsen’s position is that Jone Salomonsen, as an illustration of methodological loyalism to both subjects and subject—and to be serious as a researcher—feels obliged to believe what her informants believe. It would seem that, more accurately, Salomonsen is simply taking seriously that her informants believe what they say they believe rather than that she must also believe what they believe. What Davidsen appears to fail to recognize is that conversion to a denomination or cult is indeed different from that to a church or sect. The boundaries of the latter are more rigid and determined. Neither the denomination nor cult has provisions for making judgments of heresy; their borders are porous and fluid. To lump both sects and cults together as simply “new religious movements” betrays a terminological imprecision on Davidsen’s part that violates scientific methodology from the start. It is doubtless that abuses of power and intimidation could occur in an initiation into a group like Reclaiming, but Salomonsen did not find that to be the case and is simply reporting what she encountered in a specific instance. Despite Siân Reid and Manning (1996) statements in the Handbook that there are different kinds of conversion, let alone that initiation is something that follows ‘conversion’; they are not the same thing. A witch choses to be initiated because she has come already to believe in the principles of witchcraft.


Davidsen likewise finds that the “loyalism” exhibited by Murphy Pizza also supports ontological essentialism and exclusivism. In her study of children in Pagan communities, he argues that, like other Pagan scholars, she does “not question insider interpretations, but [presents] them as if they were bare facts.” There may in this case be indeed an example of “the pagan self-understanding as creative, innovative and distinctive no matter the facts,”[22] but it may also be simply a question of presenting what it is that Pizza’s respondents are saying. In this instance if not others as well, we may have a similar example of what Douglas Burnham and Ole Martin Skilleås explain concerning the aesthetic evaluation of whiskey from a phenomenological perspective. “Maybe the problem we are having is that we are seeing objectivity and subjectivity as the only two alternatives.” They suggest intersubjectivity as a preferred third alternative. “By ‘intersubjectivity’ we mean that funding [the kinds of knowledge and competencies the researcher brings to the challenge of judgment] and practices are achieved, directly or indirectly, through our interactions with other people—as guides, companions, reviewers, and so on.” In this context, judgments are “normative, defensible, and public.”[23] The framework upon which intersubjectivity depends consists of a mutually shared language as well as the conditions to make that language meaningful. The “coming home” and Goddess devotion metaphors of contemporary Western Paganism are part of Ppaganism’s language that scholars seek to share with their colleagues and the wider public.


When Davidsen turns to Pagan theology, the Pagan academics he is critiquing do not, only allegedly, report the supernatural assumptions of their informants “loyally,” but also use a supernaturalist ontology to theorize. He appears particularly dismissive of Graham Harvey’s “other-than-human-persons” animism. Whilst I myself may have some difficulty with Harvey’s theology, it is a legitimate form of personalism, in this case, polytheistic rather than monotheist, and is presented as a theological perspective that has resonance with many contemporary Pagans. Various conclusions are then drawn from this theology qua theology. Davidsen’s critique here appears not to be with methodology but with terminology. With Harvey, Salomonsen, and others, the more major error on Davidsen’s part, however, lies with his classical but rejected sociological position that continues to pass judgment on the “reality” or “unreality’ of religious belief rather than simply acknowledge and present its meaningfulness for its adherents.


Articulated and/or unarticulated theology must sooner or later come under scrutiny with any academic study of religions. It is part of the informing picture and shapes the values and meanings that make up the worldview of any particular religiosity. To understand a religion but not to understand its explicit or implicit theological perspective is to be handicapped in the overall project. Theology and religion “go together like a horse and carriage.”


It is also important to understand that theology is an on-going and open discussion. It is not a fixed and permanent compendium of thought and perspective. Perspectives shift and change; contemporary thought is conversational—continuing past dialogue but re-examining, discussing and extending it. A theology becomes moribund when it becomes rigidly codified into dogmas, doctrines and creeds. Unlike Christian theology for which Paganism represents an effort toward radical re-evaluation, Pagan theology is a present-day dynamic. This does not translate, however, as Davidsen contends for my own explorations of theology, as “dynamistic.” And nor am I seeking to construct Paganism as “root religion,” as Davidsen also contends. Paganism’s radical or original nature is an historical observation—unless, as Davidsen appears to wish, contemporary Paganism’s affinities with primal religiosities are to be discounted and denied.

If we are not restricting the research strictly to what we learn from respondents, theology is largely an analytical study that is beyond Davidsen’s critical-naturalistic remit. Nevertheless, he identifies four contributors to the Handbook for their presentations of Pagan theology. And in this discussion, he appears to feel that any discussion of the supernatural is automatically revealing of a supernaturalistic bias. This sounds yet again like the classical sociological approach that wants to deny the godhead, the magical and the non-empirical as factors in religious belief.


Whilst I do say that the gods may be understood as energies, I do also say that they might also have bodies as solidified states of energy. Davidsen, however, reduces this to “York’s main point is  . . .  [ultimately], all human conceptualizations of the divine are reducible to a single complex of immaterial energy.” He finds it “interesting to see how contemporary Pagan theologians refer to classics such as Tylor on animism, Marett on mana, Hubert and Mauss on magic etc.”[24] but will ignore or completely overlook my discussion of complexity theory because it does not fit his limited understanding of what is involved to make sense of pagan belief. For him, explanation becomes legitimation. 


Along with Harvey’s and my ontological speculations on the supernatural (rather than our “supernaturalist ontological speculations” [my italics]), Davidsen takes aim on Greenwood’s “supernaturalist epistemology.” Although he applauds Tanya Luhrmann’s work on interpretive drift[25](1989), he is not favorable when it comes to Greenwood. Both Greenwood and Luhrmann “entered” the magical otherworld, but unlike Luhrmann, Greenwood does not feel compelled to retreat from”interpretive drift.” She speaks indeed from the position of an insider, but she is nonetheless able to use academic language to explain the non-traditional and magical. Davidsen’s critique of her is based on his assumption that Greenwood maintains the romantic idea that the life of the cultural primitive is the most desirable and authentic. And without further explanation, he appears to contest that contemporary Paganism as a “nature religion” is compatible (for an inaccurate overkill, Davidsen uses the word ‘identical’) with indigenous religion. Davidsen then translates the similarity of an empathetic shared worldview into an alleged “privileged epistemological access.” Consequently—and apparently “sadly,” speculative metaphysical legitimation, essentialist ideas, and ideological projection supplant “a rational argument based on accurate ethnography.” [26]


Bearing in mind that Davdisen’s article has been designed for a journal on methodology for which presumably largess and creative/innovative imagination is not to be allowed, he nevertheless appears to have missed that the handbook is simply a handbook, and although scholars have contributed to it, it need not strictly serve the purpose of scientific ethnography but can instead provide speculations, opinions, information and understandings of various Pagan topics and issues for both the Pagan community and a wider lay community. In the present case, these contributions have been furnished by Pagan scholars working in the field, and they have partaken of a particular (in this case, Pagan) language of intersubjectivity.


In conclusion, let me say that much of what Davidsen says is worthy and necessary for consideration. Pagan scholarship, as does any scholarship, welcomes constructive critique that encourages self-reflection as well as deeper understandings of our subject. Davidsen himself appears to come full circle and, drawing on both Ivan Strenski and Riesebrodt,[27] calls for the recasting of religionist-insider research into a “positive program” that examines the logic of religious practice, its belief modalities and social functions to offer “theoretical and conceptual models instead of deconstruction and criticism of the religionist position.”[28] But at the same time, it is important to remember that the notions and practices of things like intersubjectivity and middle-way sociology that accepts subjects’ beliefs as valid for the subjects themselves are vital for expanding our fields of research beyond the limited and traditional confines that in themselves have often restricted the expansion of knowledge and understanding.

 

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Michael York has retired from Bath Spa University College, where he was professor of cultural astronomy.

[1] Markus Altena Davidsen, “What is Wrong with Pagan Studies? A Review Essay on the Handbook of Contemporary Paganism,” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 24, no. 2 (2012): 183.

[2]  John Macquarrie, Twentieth-Century Religious Thought, London: SCM Press Ltd., 1988 [1963]), 155.

[3] Michael Hill, A Sociology of Religion (London: Heinemann, 1973), 9–11.

[4] Eileen Barker, The Making of a Moonie: Brainwashing or Choice? (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984), 36.

[5] Edward Evans-Pritchard, “The Morphology and Function of Magic: A Comparative Study of Trobriand and Zande Ritual,” in Magic, Witchcraft, and Curing, ed. John Middleton (New York: National History Press, 1967 [1929]), 61, 79.

[6] Rodney Stark, “Atheism, Faith, and the Social Scientific Study of Religion,” Journal of Contemporary Religion 14, no 1 (1999): 54.

[7] Nicholas Campion, “Prophecy, Cosmology and the New Age Movement:
The Extent and Nature of Contemporary Belief in Astrology” (PhD thesis, Bath Spa
University, 2004), 10.

[8] Kenneth L. Pike, Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behaviour (The Hague: Mouton, 1971), 44–8.

[9] Steven Sutcliffe, Children of the New Age: A History of Spiritual Practices (London: Routledge, 2003), 16.

[10] RBG-IBG, Annual International Conference 2013, http://conference.rgs.org/AC2013/77.

[11] Quoted in Macquarrie Twentieth-Century Religious Thought, 155.

[12] Hill, Sociology of Religion, 12.

[13] Ibid., 15.

[14] Fritz Allhof and Marcus P. Adams, eds., Whiskey and Philosophy: A Small Batch of Spirited Ideas (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley, 2010) x.
. Jeffrey K. Hadden, ed. “Review Symposium: The New Religious Consciousness, edited by Charles Y. Glock and Robert N. Bellah.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 16, no. 3 (1977): 308

[15] Davidsen, “What Is Wrong with Pagan Studies,” 188.

[16] Douglas E. Cowan, Cyberhenge: Modern Pagans on the Internet (New York: Routledge, 2005).

[17] Douglas Ezzy and Helen Berger, “Witchcraft: Changing Patterns of Participation in the Early Twenty-first Century,” The Pomegranate 11, no. 2 (2009): 165–80.

[18] Davidsen, “What Is Wrong with Pagan Studies,” 188.

[19] Melissa Harrington, personal communication, 25 November 2012.

[20] Sam Webster, “Beginning the Pagan Restoration,” (http://www.patheos.com//Pagan/Beginning-Pagan-Restoration-Sam-Webster-01-16-2013.html)

[21] Melissa Harrington, personal communication, 25 November 2012.

[22] Davidsen, “What Is Wrong with Pagan Studies,” 192.

[23] Allhof and Adams, eds., Whiskey and Philosophy: A Small Batch of Spirited Ideas, 144, 147.

[24] Davidsen, “What Is Wrong with Pagan Studies,” 193.

[25 Tanya M. Luhrmann, Persuasions of the Witch's Craft: Ritual Magic in Contemporary England (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1989).

[26] Davidsen, “What Is Wrong with Pagan Studies,” 194.

[27] Ivan Strenski, The New Durkheim (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2006); Martin Riesebrodt, The Promise of Salvation: A Theory of Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).

[28] Davidsen, “What Is Wrong with Pagan Studies,” 197.