Cherry Hill Seminary News

Why take classes with Cherry Hill Seminary?  As Mari Elm, current student in the Pagan Pastoral Counseling department, says, “What I’ve learned in my brief vocation as clergy is that I am not anywhere near adequately prepared to counsel people for such emotional/psychological disorders.  This is why I’m back in school, earning a Master of Divinity degree with a focus on pastoral care and counseling.  I need to be a safe resource for my ministry patrons, and part of that safety involves knowing where the line is between when I can help and when it is time to refer that person to a properly trained, competent professional.”

Cherry Hill Seminary is offering the following courses this fall:

• Media Outreach for Pagan Groups and Organizations
• Research & Writing in Pagan Studies
• Effective Web Development for Pagan Organizations
• Erotic Ethics
• A Saunter With Muir & Whitman
• Call of the Dark Mother
• Paganism and the Body
• Starting a Spiritually-Centered Business
• Personality Theories
• Human Development in a Pagan Context

The following courses need more students to register:

• Western Initiation - needs at least one more student to run
• American Spiritualities - needs at least two more students to run
• Global Paganisms - needs at least two more students to run
• A Saunter With Muir and Whitman - will be running, but more students are welcome to join
• Starting a Spiritually-Centered Business - still has room for students to join

The following courses have been canceled:

• Rites of Passage
• Warrior in Shadow
• Religion & the Law
• Spirit of Economics

For more information about these courses and to register, visit our main website.

Tags: course offerings, dark mother, fall semester, media, Pagan studies, Western Initiation

Are you creative, reliable and tech-savvy?  CHS is looking for a webmaster.  This is a volunteer position with specific responsibilities and the expectation of roughly ten hours per week work.  If you are a CHS student, you are entitled to a modest discount on your tuition.  Applicants should submit a resume, three references, and provide copies of or links to samples of web design work you have done.

Tags: webmaster

Building Community is the theme for next year’s 7th Conference for Current Pagan Studies in Claremont, CA.

Papers are now being accepted for the conference. It’s open to many areas of research in the field Pagan Studies, but they are particularly looking for papers that explore Pagan theo/alogies, outlooks, artistic values, etc. and whether or not they can be helpful in building community. Abstracts should be no more than 200 words and should be submitted by November 10. For more information, please visit the Pagan Conference website.

Tags: call for papers, Conference for Current Pagan Studies, Pagan Conference, William Blumberg

The Reverend Michael Walker is an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister, with a 25-year history in the Pagan community.  His academic vita includes a Master of Divinity from Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley and a Master of Arts in Humanities and Leadership from New College of California, formerly in San Francisco.  He is currently a distance doctoral student at Saybrook University, based in San Francisco.

He serves as an officer on the national Board of Trustees of the Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans.  He has served on boards and steering committees for various groups within the Pagan community since 1989; he has also served on various committees and boards associated with the GLBT community, for HIV services (Michael was formerly a nurse), and in academia and UU churches.

Today, he is a Resident Minister and the Administrative Manager at the UU Rowe Camp and Conference Center in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts.  He lives in the intentional community that operates Rowe Center.  In the past, he was an Adjunct Professor at Starr King School for the Ministry (teaching about Paganism to Pagan, UU and Christian graduate students), and in August 2010, he joined the faculty of Cherry Hill Seminary.  An alumnus of Pacific School of Religion and ordained by the First Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco, he became one of a handful of Pagan UU ministers who are getting very good at rocking the boat.

Believing in the right of all Pagans to live as they choose, and to be accepted by mainstream society, he has been involved with the International Pagan Pride Project and other Pagan advocacy organizations.  During 2004-05, he served as a Co-Chair for the San Diego (CA) Pagan Pride Day event, and is very proud of how they have continued to grow and flourish after he moved away.  ‘Pagan ministry’ – two words that are not often heard spoken in the same sentence – it is one of Michael’s lifelong goals to help change that.  For him, ministry includes (among other things) providing social services (chaplaincy, elder care, and other special assistance) to members of the community during their times of greatest need.  Since he finally came to the conclusion that the Pagan community was not growing up fast enough to provide the types of ministry that he wished to be part of, he branched out and developed a relationship with Unitarian Universalism.  It is his goal to provide ministry in both spiritual communities, together and (if necessary) separately.

In his personal life, he is a single gay man, living in rural Massachusetts with his beloved black cat, Kali.  He loves Celtic and world music, reads science fiction and fantasy, and believes that his artistic pursuits are a spiritual practice.  He formerly owned an art gallery in San Diego, and is a weaver, sculptor and lapidary/jewelry-maker, although he doesn’t currently offer his artwork commercially.  He is a veteran of the US Navy, having served in the U.S. and Japan.

Tags: CUUPS, Michael Walker, Unitarian Universalist

Michelle Mueller will lead a Pagan Book Discussion Group at the UU church where she works. The group will read and discuss Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches, The Metamorphoses of Apuleius, and their influence on modern Wicca and Paganism. Meetings are the first Tuesday of every month, starting on Sept. 7, at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Cherry Hill, NJ. Meetings are free and open to anyone in the area, but there will be a charge to cover the cost of printing. Michelle may develop a literature/theology course for CHS with these sources in the future.

Tags: Aradia, Gospel of Witches, Michelle Mueller, Pagan books, UU

Media Outreach For Pagan Groups & Organizations: A Foundations Course by Jason Pitzl-Waters

In an age of ubiquitous social media, conveying your organization’s goals and values in an effective manner is more important than ever. Pagan groups and organizations used to have to deal with exploitative, uneducated, or even hostile mainstream media outlets in order to get the word out, but now we’re lucky if the local paper or television station even has time for any religion-oriented story. The last decade has seen some major upheavals and cutbacks in the areas of traditional media, with religion beats being cut back or eliminated across the United States. However, while traditional media outlets have been cutting back, there’s been an expansion on the Internet. As a result, its never been easier for small groups to create and disseminate information to the wider world.

Join us for the 4-week Foundations course Media Outreach For Pagan Groups & Organizations at Cherry Hill Seminary, starting on September 14. Instructor Jason Pitzl-Waters, creator of The Wild Hunt and co-founder of the Pagan Newswire Collective, will help you develop an outreach strategy that utilizes new media solutions, targets the audience you want to reach, prepares you for mainstream media attention, and gives you the tools to find your organization’s voice in a veritable digital cacophony. We’ll be using a simple and easy-to-remember system based on the traditional “Witches’ Pyramid” (aka Four Powers of the Magus or Four Powers of the Sphinx) to walk you through the process. This is a must for any public relations person, public information officer, or press liaison that is unsure how to fully utilize the new media landscape.

Week 1: To Know
The first week we’ll look at why understanding the importance of new/social media is vital to furthering your organization’s message, and explore who you are actually trying to reach.

Week 2: To Will
We’ll discuss why having a dedicated media/press liaison is important, why organizational support is vital, and how to stay committed to outreach for the long haul.

Week 3: To Dare
We’ll explore trying new methods of outreach, why being bold is an asset on the Internet, and why you shouldn’t be afraid to change things that aren’t working.

Week 4: To Keep Silent
Issues of transparency, secrecy, dirty laundry, drama, and flame wars will be touched on.

Each week will include special exercises and assignments that will prepare you and your group for the future. This is a hands-on course that will familiarize you with the latest tools, and talk about how you can get the attention you want without compromising your values.

Register today!

Tags: classes, Foundations, Jason Pitzl-Water, media outreach, the Wild Hunt blog

We in America live in a country founded by Europeans seeking a place to practice their religions. From Puritans in New England to Quakers in Pennsylvania to Catholics in Maryland, people came to this continent from places where their views were not tolerated in order to be free of religious persecution. Further, they erected their churches and meeting houses upon land sacred to the peoples who already inhabited it. In fact, massacres occurred on or near some of the sites now occupied by buildings erected for religious gatherings and worship.

Since the early days of the founding our our republic, this country has grown in diversity until now a cultural and religious tapestry woven of wondrous threads from many parts of the world spreads across the land. Those indigenous to this land practice their own religions, religions and spiritual perspectives have been brought here from other places, and this land has engendered new religions.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees all Americans the right to assemble peaceably. As practitioners of the “ancient-future” Pagan religions, we at Cherry Hill Seminary support the right of all Americans to express their spirituality, and to honor their cultures of origin, wherever they choose.

Tags: diversity, First Amendment, religious freedom

As the battle rages on as to whether an Islamic community center should open its doors two blocks from the New York site where the Twin Towers once stood, Americans are being tested on their level of tolerance and just how important the First Amendment really is. ABC News has a story examining these issues and while some say Americans aren’t as tolerant as we think we are, Cherry Hill Seminary’s Patrick McCollum says the struggle is a sign of growth.

I think that the intolerance that we’re experiencing right now is that for the first time in a long period of time, since almost the founding of our country, we’ve actually begun to ALLOW pluralism to surface in our country.  So we’ve started to uphold the ideals that our country was founded on … and the people who’ve been in the dominant position begin to feel like they’re under attack.

You can read the rest of the ABC article here.

Tags: news, NYC mosque, Patrick McCollum, religious freedom

Recently, many of you were kind enough to take our online student information survey. The “official” report is not finished yet, but we can share a few things with you.

You want more flexibility in class meeting times, and some courses with no class meetings, particularly for those of you in other countries, or otherwise far away from the Eastern Time Zone. We hear you and this fall we are offering more such options. You want more workshops in other parts of the country. We are working on a Pagan Basic Ministry Skills two-day workshop that will be open to the public. Total cost will probably be about $2,000 for a group of up to 35. If you are interested in bring us to your region, let us hear from you. You seem to feel that our tuition rates are reasonable, even if you don’t have the money to attend at the moment. That’s good to hear! We know that we are among the lowest rates nationwide for seminary graduate courses, and our PCE and Foundations courses have artificially low rates in order to make them as widely available as possible. Please keep talking to us! When you share your ideas it helps us improve and grow.

Cherry Hill Seminary is getting ready to create a video for YouTube and we need your help! Please send us a short video clip of yourself talking about your experience at CHS so that we can compile them into a video for Cherry Hill Seminary to put on YouTube. CHS wouldn’t exist without you, and we want to celebrate that. Let us know about your accomplishments so that we can make an announcement and celebrate along with you!

CHS is currently in the process of creating an updated student handbook. Look for it in early fall this year!

The pagan lay leader at Camp Phoenix in Kabul has gone home, and they do not have anyone to lead the circle that had been going there. No one has stepped up yet- either because they don’t know how or for other reasons. Colonel (Ret) Paul Wharton has said that anyone who wants to know more or get the process started can either go to the chapel, speak with the chaplain and request the paperwork or come see him and he’ll walk him/her through it. Hopefully we can find someone at Phoenix to support these men and women! Any questions can be directed to Tracy Wharton.

Green Egg magazine online is now completely free. Be sure to visit. And stop by the Broomstick Chronicles, the blog of Cherry Hill Seminary’s Board Director Aline O’Brien, to see what she’s been up to and discover some more exciting news about Cherry Hill Seminary.

Tags: Aline O'Brien, Broomstick Chronicles, Camp Phoenix, fall courses, Green Egg magazine, M. Macha NightMare, pagan ministry, student survey

Here’s a small sample of some of the great courses Cherry Hill Seminary is offering this fall semester.

Erotic Ethics (PCE) and Paganism and the Body (master’s level) will meet together on Monday evenings with instructor Christine Hoff Kraemer, Ph.D. Declaring that all acts of love and pleasure are the rituals of the Goddess, contemporary Pagans widely affirm the sacredness of the body and of sexuality.

Students will engage with theological and ethical writings around gender, sexuality, and the body from Pagan and allied perspectives, such as Christian and post-Christian feminist and queer theologies. Special attention will be given to Pagan understandings of same-sex relationships, BDSM, polyamory, transgender, and other expressions of gender and sexuality that are marginalized by mainstream society. The role of gender polarity and sex magic in the Western esoteric tradition and its influences on religious witchcraft will also be considered.

Students will examine their conceptions of gender and sexuality and develop their own the-logies of the body in a context that takes both personal liberation and social justice into account. Students will also consider the challenges and joys of ministering to a sexually diverse Pagan community and emerge better equipped to counsel their communities in ethical responsibilities around eroticism and touch. Class meets with Paganism and the Body. Texts will be Ellison’s Erotic Justice: A Liberating Ethic of Sexuality, and Hunter’s Rites of Pleasure: Sexuality in Wicca and NeoPaganism.

Pagan Advocacy and Leadership Department have several outstanding courses. One is Spirit of Economics, taught by Catherine Levitt, DMB. The objective of economics is to provide the foundations for understanding of how an economy operates. All economic choices are ultimately made by individuals such as consumers, workers, investors, and managers.

This course examines the decision making process of these economic agents and their interactions in individual markets. The functions of private property, entrepreneurship, and government regulation are also discussed. Production and pricing under various market structures, labor markets, and international trade as well as market failure are covered. This graduate level economics course provides an understanding of basic economic principles and forces, which govern the production, and distribution of goods and services in the context of spiritual reality.

Topics include: philosophical and historical approaches to economic choices, forms of business organizations, the role of government and policy-making in the economic system, value and price in a free enterprise system, labor/management relations and contemporary economic developments. Meets on Monday evenings.

Religion and the Law, taught by James Bianchi, J.D., has for years given CHS students vital training for real-world Pagan life and ministry. In ‘Religion and the Law’ you will receive an overview of our legal structure and learn how find the law you need online. You will learn how the First Amended protects us from government assault and interference. You will understand what freedom of speech and assembly means. You will know how to confront discrimination in housing, employment and in child custody conflicts.

Students will be trained to counsel Conscientious Objectors. Our free ‘public access’ right to television will be explored. With this knowledge, you can become a sword and a shield for our community. Meets Tuesday evenings.

Register today!

Tags: Catherine Levitt, Christine Hoff Kraemer, Erotic Ethics and Paganism and the Body, James Bianchi, Pagan advocacy, Pagan higher education, pagan ministry, Pagan studies, Religion and the Law