Smokey and the Sacred

My paper "Smokey and the Sacred: Nature Religion, Civil Religion, and American Paganism" has been accepted for a special issue of the journal Ecotheology, edited by Graham Harvey.

The publishing agreement, however, forbids me from publishing more than the abstract online. (But maybe if you ask nicely.) I will supply a complete bibliographic citation to the printed copy as soon as it is available.

Maybe it's the first Pagan Studies paper to invoke Smokey Bear as a godform, following the footsteps of Gary Snyder's "Smokey the Bear Sutra."

OK, so he is somewhat discredited as a forester in these "prescribed burn" days. Sometimes demigods have a come-down.