Paper short abstract:

This paper introduces my ongoing research amongst Pagans in Edinburgh. I seek to explore differences and potential tensions between contemporary Pagans’ online and offline identities, and how joining in person groups can change religious identity and practice

Paper long abstract:

Data from the 2021 Census in England and Wales shows ‘Pagan’ is now comfortably the largest response outside of ‘world religion’ options in response to the religious affiliation question (74,000) and has increased by 30% since the 2011 census (Office for National Statistics, 2021). There is therefore a need to study how and why people are coming to identify as ‘Pagan’ in contemporary Britain. There has been a good deal of literature written on ‘conversion’ (a term rarely used by contemporary Pagans themselves) to Paganism, such as Luhrmann’s (1989) fieldwork amongst British ceremonial magicians, Harvey’s (1999) work on the theme of ‘coming home’ among Pagans, and Harrington’s (2005) study of male ‘converts’ to Wicca.

However, one way the field has changed since these works were written is the growing importance of digital media and online activity to the religious lives of contemporary Pagans, particularly the large numbers who are ‘solitary practitioners’ (Berger 2019). At the same time, studies of online activity of contemporary Paganism have often had a focus on the online as the ‘location’ of research This is in contrast with the broader push for the study of digital religion to be focused on the ‘blending’ of online and offline activity (Campbell 2022).

My research then aims to bridge this gap, through a study of how contemporary Pagans in the Edinburgh locality came to identify as such, with a focus on what differences exist between their online and offline identities. Of particular interest is how a religious identity that may have been constructed primarily online changes once contact is made with an in-person group. This will be done through a narrative inquiry, based on ~ 20 semi-structured interviews, in discussion with an autoethnographic analysis.