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Pagan studies
Pagan studies is the multidisciplinary academic field devoted to the study of modern paganism, a broad assortment of modern religious movements, which are typically influenced by or claiming to be derived from the various pagan beliefs of premodern Europe. Pagan studies embrace a variety of different scholarly approaches to studying such religions, drawing from history, sociology, anthropology, archaeology, folkloristics, theology and other religious studies.
The earliest academic studies of contemporary paganism were published between 1970 and 1980 by scholars like Margot Adler, Marcello Truzzi and Tanya Luhrmann, although it would not be until the 1990s that the actual pagan studies discipline properly developed, pioneered by academics such as Graham Harvey and Chas S. Clifton. Increasing academic interest in Paganism has been attributed to the new religious movement's increasing public visibility, as it began interacting with the interfaith movement and holding large public celebrations at sites such as Stonehenge.
The first academic conference on the subject was held at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, North-East England in 1993, followed three years later by a larger conference organised by the University of Lancaster in North-West England. Annual gatherings of the Conference on Current Pagan Studies and the Contemporary Pagan Studies Unit of the American Academy of Religion continue to develop scholarship in this field. In 2004, a peer-reviewed academic journal devoted to the discipline, The Pomegranate, began publication. Many books on the subject have been published by a variety of different academic publishing companies, while AltaMira Press began publication of the Pagan Studies Series.
The relationship between pagan studies scholars and the contemporary pagan community which it studies has at times been strained, with some practitioners rejecting academic interpretations of their faiths. At the same time, many academics involved in Pagan studies are practicing pagans themselves, bringing an insider's perspective to their approaches.
"Pagan studies, as a subdivision of the larger study of religions, exists, I have no doubt, because scholars of contemporary Paganism (many of them practitioners themselves) found and continue to find themselves not completely at home in such categories as "new religious movements" or "feminist religion." "
Pagan studies scholar Chas S. Clifton argued that the discipline had developed as a result of the increasing "academic acknowledgement" of contemporary Paganism's "movement into the public eye", referring to the emergence of pagan involvement with interfaith groups and the pagan use of archaeological monuments as "sacred sites", particularly in the United Kingdom. Clifton also argued that the development of Pagan studies was necessary to "set forth an audacious redefinition of the term "pagan" as Michael York has done", something which Clifton felt "gives us room to reexamine from fresh perspectives all manifestation of ancient Pagan religions".
The first international academic conference on the subject of Pagan studies was held at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, North-East England in 1993. It had been organised by two British religious studies scholars, Harvey and Charlotte Hardman. In April 1996 a larger conference dealing with contemporary Paganism took place at Ambleside in the Lake District, organised by the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Lancaster, North-West England. Titled "Nature Religion Today: Western Paganism, Shamanism and Esotericism in the 1990s", it led to the publication of an academic anthology, Nature Religion Today: Paganism in the Modern World. In that anthology, some of the conference's organisers described its original intentions, remarking that through it they "sought to explore the innovations in practice and belief which constitute contemporary Paganism, and which appear to be a part of a widespread cultural response to the decay of main-line religions and to a widely felt awareness of ecological crisis."
That same year saw the beginnings of The Pomegranate, which would later be transformed into a peer-reviewed academic journal, which first appeared in 2004.
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Pagan studies
Pagan studies is the multidisciplinary academic field devoted to the study of modern paganism, a broad assortment of modern religious movements, which are typically influenced by or claiming to be derived from the various pagan beliefs of premodern Europe. Pagan studies embrace a variety of different scholarly approaches to studying such religions, drawing from history, sociology, anthropology, archaeology, folkloristics, theology and other religious studies.
The earliest academic studies of contemporary paganism were published between 1970 and 1980 by scholars like Margot Adler, Marcello Truzzi and Tanya Luhrmann, although it would not be until the 1990s that the actual pagan studies discipline properly developed, pioneered by academics such as Graham Harvey and Chas S. Clifton. Increasing academic interest in Paganism has been attributed to the new religious movement's increasing public visibility, as it began interacting with the interfaith movement and holding large public celebrations at sites such as Stonehenge.
The first academic conference on the subject was held at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, North-East England in 1993, followed three years later by a larger conference organised by the University of Lancaster in North-West England. Annual gatherings of the Conference on Current Pagan Studies and the Contemporary Pagan Studies Unit of the American Academy of Religion continue to develop scholarship in this field. In 2004, a peer-reviewed academic journal devoted to the discipline, The Pomegranate, began publication. Many books on the subject have been published by a variety of different academic publishing companies, while AltaMira Press began publication of the Pagan Studies Series.
The relationship between pagan studies scholars and the contemporary pagan community which it studies has at times been strained, with some practitioners rejecting academic interpretations of their faiths. At the same time, many academics involved in Pagan studies are practicing pagans themselves, bringing an insider's perspective to their approaches.
"Pagan studies, as a subdivision of the larger study of religions, exists, I have no doubt, because scholars of contemporary Paganism (many of them practitioners themselves) found and continue to find themselves not completely at home in such categories as "new religious movements" or "feminist religion." "
Pagan studies scholar Chas S. Clifton argued that the discipline had developed as a result of the increasing "academic acknowledgement" of contemporary Paganism's "movement into the public eye", referring to the emergence of pagan involvement with interfaith groups and the pagan use of archaeological monuments as "sacred sites", particularly in the United Kingdom. Clifton also argued that the development of Pagan studies was necessary to "set forth an audacious redefinition of the term "pagan" as Michael York has done", something which Clifton felt "gives us room to reexamine from fresh perspectives all manifestation of ancient Pagan religions".
The first international academic conference on the subject of Pagan studies was held at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, North-East England in 1993. It had been organised by two British religious studies scholars, Harvey and Charlotte Hardman. In April 1996 a larger conference dealing with contemporary Paganism took place at Ambleside in the Lake District, organised by the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Lancaster, North-West England. Titled "Nature Religion Today: Western Paganism, Shamanism and Esotericism in the 1990s", it led to the publication of an academic anthology, Nature Religion Today: Paganism in the Modern World. In that anthology, some of the conference's organisers described its original intentions, remarking that through it they "sought to explore the innovations in practice and belief which constitute contemporary Paganism, and which appear to be a part of a widespread cultural response to the decay of main-line religions and to a widely felt awareness of ecological crisis."
That same year saw the beginnings of The Pomegranate, which would later be transformed into a peer-reviewed academic journal, which first appeared in 2004.