Saturday, June 11, 2011

More about Cimminnee Holt and the definition of "Satanism"

Earlier today, I posted Cimminnee Holt and the definition of "Satanism", about a religion scholar who has accepted the Church of Satan's sectarian definition of the word "Satanism." My post earlier today was my preliminary response to a news story about Cimminnee Holt, written before I found a copy of her paper itself.

Later, I read the "Methodology" section of her paper and found that she had discussed the terminology issue. I responded in a post on another blog of mine, More about Cimminnee Holt and the definition of “Satanism”. After commenting on her reasons, I concluded:
.... It is likely that Holt's acceptance of the Church of Satan's definition of "Satanism" will continue to be an anomaly among religion scholars. After all, as Per Faxneld told me during one of his visits to New York City, theistic forms of Satanism are likely to be more interesting to religion scholars than the CoS worldview.

But we theistic Satanists shouldn't take this for granted. We need to prove to the academic world that we exist in sufficiently large numbers to be worth studying. So, if you are a theistic Satanist who does not want the CoS to succeed in their attempts to monopolize the definition of "Satanism," please respond ASAP to James Lewis's current survey.

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