“Surrounded by Paganism”

Posted on June 8, 2009 by Andrew Stuttaford

Good Lord, Walter! Who knew? There are indeed a few pagans out there, dancing in groves, hanging out in New Age stores, worshiping trees and all the rest of it, but I don’t know quite where Mr. Gingrich gets the idea that we’re “surrounded” by paganism. He should explain. After all, as a patriot, he surely owes it to America to set out more precisely where this (potentially) all-enveloping menace can be located. Failing that, he should cheerily confess to a shamelessly cynical attempt to appease his audience, and we could all just agree that it’s politics as usual, laugh and move on.

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13 Responses to “Surrounded by Paganism”

  1. Caledonian says:
    June 8, 2009 at 9:55 am

    Perhaps he’s one of the people who insists that people upset about global climate change are really Gaia worshippers in disguise trying to seize power.

    If you presume that concern with ecological matters is a sign of pagan affliation, Gingrich’s comment starts to make sense – in the same way that tinfoil hats make sense once certain premises are granted.

  2. Susan says:
    June 8, 2009 at 10:38 am

    Yeah, but I think he’s a proponent of the theory of man-made global warming, isn’t he? So it’s not the Gaia worhsippers to whom he objects.

  3. Ivan Karamazov says:
    June 8, 2009 at 10:59 am

    I say give Newt a pass. He’s saying what he needs to say. He may even believe it. It worked for Obama. We need to get power back. I would fit Newt’s definition, and he still gets my vote.

  4. Susan says:
    June 8, 2009 at 11:10 am

    Well, possibly he believed what he said about paganism, etc. But the problem is that last week he made some comments about how the Republican party needed to “shrug off” ideological purists in order to attract a larger base. The Christian right, from what I read of their enraged reactions to these comments, seem to feel that he meant that they were the shruggees. If this roadshow with Huckabee is meant as a sort of suck-up to fundamentalist Protestants, I don’t know how successful it will be.

    Didn’t Gingrich just convert to Roman Catholicism?

  5. Pingback: Hot Air » Blog Archive » Gingrich to Christians: We’re surrounded by “paganism”

  6. Pingback: Newt’s gone nuts… « The Tiger in DC

  7. CBK says:
    June 8, 2009 at 2:23 pm

    It was an absurd thing to say – not only stupid, but ill-informed – I give him a pass and the benefit of the doubt, but goodness, how silly. I wrote about this yesterday…

    http://www.cbrookskurtz.com/articles/2009/6/7/gingrich-said-what.html

  8. Ploni says:
    June 8, 2009 at 6:33 pm

    Gingrich is a buffoon, but his assertion should be taken seriously. (For whatever it’s worth, I think America is more secularized Christian than pagan, though there are obviously strong pagan elements.)

    What would Camille Paglia say?

  9. Donna B. says:
    June 8, 2009 at 6:42 pm

    Newt’s not getting a pass from me. And Huckabee is only a social conservative.

  10. Walter Olson says:
    June 9, 2009 at 4:04 am

    You’re right, of course, Andrew, that at some level this is politics as usual, to which one understandable reaction would be to laugh and move on. I wonder, though, whether Gingrich in his 1990s heyday (during which many saw him as a modernizing and practical-minded force within the GOP) would have been found saying such a thing, and if so, whether it is only he who has changed since then or also the climate on the right.

  11. Chris says:
    June 9, 2009 at 12:12 pm

    last week he made some comments about how the Republican party needed to “shrug off” ideological purists in order to attract a larger base. The Christian right, from what I read of their enraged reactions to these comments, seem to feel that he meant that they were the shruggees.

    Which they are, and Gingrich is right as a matter of political pragmatism, but I don’t think the current structure of the party will tolerate his position.

    The paganism quote is just silly, of course.

  12. Susan says:
    June 9, 2009 at 2:13 pm

    The paganism remark was asinine. He probably figured his audience would interpret “pagan” as shorthand for “godless people who who aren’t obsessed with homosexuality and abortion.” I mean, surely he’s not advocating a ban on the study of Aristophanes or Catullus, right? Right?

    He should give it up. All the non-pagans are off worshipping their own pagan goddess, Sarah Palin.

  13. Derek Scruggs says:
    June 10, 2009 at 7:25 am

    @Walter Olson I believe the 1990s Gingrich would have said this. The night of the ’94 election victory he called for a vote on a Constitutional amendment for prayer in school. He said the vote should be held on July 4. I remember wondering what the heck that had to do with the Contract with America.

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