Archaic and postmodern, today’s pagans challenge ideas about ‘religion’
Several people chuckled when they walked past Room 513B during 2009 annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion, held in Montréal. The title of the session within was simply “Idolatry,” held by the AAR’s Contemporary Pagan Studies Group Papers such as “Materiality and Spirituality Aren’t Opposites (Necessarily): Paganism and Objects” were presented. The nervous laughter at the session’s title shows that even among scholars of religion, topics of polytheism and idolatry seem quaint, antique, and even trivial.