Is the West Returning to Paganism?

          My friends have often chided me for using the word pagan in describing modern Americans but it’s an old and well-defined word. And it is on the rise. Theology is everything. What you believe about God determines everything of importance in your life. We see this as clearly as possible in the rise of paganism.

A little more than a month ago a person claiming to be transgendered shot up a school in Tennessee killing three children and three of the school’s staff. In the aftermath what was the press wringing it’s hands over? Whether or not they had misgendered the shooter in their reporting.

What kind of madness is this? Liel Leibovitz, writing in Commentary, says the only answer is “the barbarians are at out gates….I mean this almost literally. Everywhere you turn these days, pagans are afoot, busily hacking away at the Christian and Jewish foundations of American life and replacing them with a cosmology that would have been absolutely coherent to followers of, say, Voltumna, the Etruscan earth god, or to those who worshipped the Celt tribal protector Toutatis.”

The number of people in the U.S. who claim to follow some sort of pagan religion has risen from 8,000 in 1990 to 1.5 million today.  And there are millions more who are de facto pagans. In Leibovitz’ words these people have a worldview that is: “consistently, coherently, and crushingly pagan.”

What do pagans believe?

The first principle of paganism is that “nothing is true.” An article in the left-wing publication, The Guardian, describes paganism as “a religion in which deities don’t make rules for humans or monitor their behaviour – humans are encouraged to develop their full potential.” So there are no theological restraints. There is no God, or at least not one who is much different from us. In Leibovitz’ words there is no fixed system of belief or set of solid convictions to constrain us as we stumble our way through life. Atheism, even agnosticism, quickly and easily morphs its way into paganism.

The second principle is, “everything is permitted.”

In the days of old a pagan deity was known for doing whatever he or she wanted. They were not constrained by any sort of religious doctrine or belief system. They could, without restraint, be themselves. So the modern pagan can live any way he wants. In my classrooms I have often defined paganism as making yourself feel good physically and emotionally, then ceasing to exist when you die. The ancient Greeks and Romans had entire cults built around the pursuit of pleasure. It’s the same today.

A third characteristic is tribalism. You have to figure out what tribe you are in and once you do you then hate the other tribes and war against them. How perfectly this fits with modern Marxist theory, wherein all of life is constant warfare between classes and groups. In Marxism your identity is determined by your economic class or your social group or your gender, etc. As Leibovitz observes, “For a pagan, tribal identity isn’t the beginning of the conversation; it’s the end, an affiliation beyond which lies nothing but battle for dominance.”

The fourth characteristic is the worship of nature. This is an easy move to understand. If one denies the existence of God and man’s spiritual nature it is logical to connect yourself downward—to the material world. For some time America’s school children have been taught that they are nothing but a bag of molecules assembled by mere chance. This is a basic tenet of pagan religion and it’s not hard to understand why people would drift toward it. Look at any of the radical environmental groups and what you see is a modern expression of paganism. Again Leibovitz: “Many of today’s green activists seem much more intent on appeasing an angry god than solving a scientific conundrum.”

Fifth characteristic: you appease the gods by sacrificing your children. Abortion on demand is the clearest example; an unborn child should never be allowed to interfere with an adult’s pursuit of pleasure. But there are many others. Currently the insane policies dealing with gender dysphoria is an example of adults sacrificing their children to the gods of virtue. It is not children who are passing laws allowing and even promoting the mutilation and chemical destruction of children; it is adults who believe it is religiously virtuous to harm one’s offspring. Good grief, it’s the federal government that seeks to come down with a large hammer on parents who resist this destruction of children. The state of Minnesota recently passed a law allowing the state’s social services to remove a child from a home that resists sexual transitioning. It was adults who have diagnosed gender dysphoria in 50,000 children. In the last four years the number of hormone blockers and puberty blockers prescribed to teens and sold by adults has doubled. The rise of depression rates in children has skyrocketed in the last decade thanks to the ideological insanity of adult pagans who are foisting on our children one destructive idea after another.

How does the Christian respond to all this?

First, recognize paganism as clear and present danger, a coherent modern belief system that is being promoted by our modern culture. 

I need to mention here that pagans, while claiming to reject traditional Christianity, retain much from the Christian heritage: Christianity’s commitment to the infinite and intrinsic value of women looms large in all pagan gatherings. I doubt we are going to reinstitute the pagan practice of female human sacrifice which Christianity abolished. Modern paganism is female dominated which seems strange considering historic paganism’s brutal treatment of women.

Second, we need to remember that the Christian faith has faced this enemy before. And we defeated and destroyed it. Jesus Christ was born into a pagan world; the apostles traveled, wrote, and organized congregations in a pagan world. Endless pagan practices—like gladiatorial contests and the exposure of infants, were routine pagan practices. And our Christian forefathers drove them from society. Let me offer a prophetic utterance: We will do it again. 

The third step is the most obvious: “Save your children by shielding them from an ideology that perpetually seeks ways to harm them; root them instead in traditions that nurture them and give them dignity, hope, and a future.”

Christians, protect your kids. Monitor your local schools, demand accountability. Better yet, send them to alternatives—charter schools, religious schools, and homeschool coops.

Children must come to know the great God of Scripture and Creation; they must be offered the vastly superior truths of the Bible over and against pagan nonsense.

And we will be victorious. Why? Because we have the power of the Holy Spirit and vastly superior ideas. Paganism comes and goes, rises and falls. The Christian faith remains and grows stronger and stronger spreading throughout the earth continuing God’s march in building His Kingdom. Isaac Watts got it right 300 years ago: “Jesus shall reign where’er the sun, doth its successive journeys run; His kingdom stretch from shore to shore, till moons shall wax and wane no more.”

Thank you for listening. May the true God, who revealed Himself in the Bible, bless you this day in a mighty way.

More: What’s Behind the Mental Health Crisis of Young Liberal Women? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hW-KnVQPdDs

Be sure and see my video: Why the Left Hates Children: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vuu7m9YRFX8

Liel Leibovitz asks if Western culture is “repaganizing.”

https://www.commentary.org/articles/liel-leibovitz/paganism-afflicts-america/

Emma Beddington, in the Left-wing publication, The Guardian, writes sympathetically about the growth of paganism in the West: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/27/dawn-of-the-new-pagans-everybodys-welcome-as-long-as-you-keep-your-clothes-on