THE ATLANTIC ARTICLE: THE RETURN OF THE PAGANS

[HondurasKeiser]

Technically "paganism" does mean anything that is not Jewish, Christian, Islamic, or some derivative thereof; but with such a working definintion, an article about "the return of the pagans" really should just be called "the rise of non-Judeo-Christian-Islamic religiosity".

Exactly. Paganism is a label that Christians apply to other non-Christian religions. There hasn't ever been a separate stand-alone self-identified Pagan religion. Although it seems that in modern times certain new age-ish religions seem to want to appropriate the term.

Apparently the term "pagan" or "paganism" was first coined by early Christians to refer to the Greek and Roman polytheism (Jupiter, Janus, Mars, Mercury, Venus, etc,).

But in later centuries after Constantine, when the Roman Empire and later "Christendom" encountered any non-Christian religion from the Celtic druids to the Norse and Germanic polytheism to every form of religion in the new world and Africa, Christians just labeled all of it pagan by default.

So it is kind of a meaningless term and could be applied to anything from Celtic and Norse Gods to the religions of the Hopi, Navajo and Northwest tribes to the animist beliefs of various sub-Saharan African tribal groups. Belief systems that differ as much from each other as they do from Christianity.

Except of course that it’s not entirely meaningless as it can’t be applied Willy-Nilly and equally to everything from Baal to a toaster oven.

The term Paganism describes the commonalities that run through the various and sundry non-monotheistic religions; the part that Boot quoted describes those commonalities well. Furthermore, it’s those attributes they share that are the errors from Truth. Do you think Christians are/were wrong to make a categorical distinction between their beliefs and everyone else’s?

[Ken]

Technically "paganism" does mean anything that is not Jewish, Christian, Islamic, or some derivative thereof; but with such a working definintion, an article about "the return of the pagans" really should just be called "the rise of non-Judeo-Christian-Islamic religiosity".

Exactly. Paganism is a label that Christians apply to other non-Christian religions. There hasn't ever been a separate stand-alone self-identified Pagan religion. Although it seems that in modern times certain new age-ish religions seem to want to appropriate the term.

Apparently the term "pagan" or "paganism" was first coined by early Christians to refer to the Greek and Roman polytheism (Jupiter, Janus, Mars, Mercury, Venus, etc,).

But in later centuries after Constantine, when the Roman Empire and later "Christendom" encountered any non-Christian religion from the Celtic druids to the Norse and Germanic polytheism to every form of religion in the new world and Africa, Christians just labeled all of it pagan by default.

So it is kind of a meaningless term and could be applied to anything from Celtic and Norse Gods to the religions of the Hopi, Navajo and Northwest tribes to the animist beliefs of various sub-Saharan African tribal groups. Belief systems that differ as much from each other as they do from Christianity.

Except of course that it’s not entirely meaningless as it can’t be applied Willy-Nilly and equally to everything from Baal to a toaster oven.

The term Paganism describes the commonalities that run through the various and sundry non-monotheistic religions; the part that Boot quoted describes those commonalities well. Furthermore, it’s those attributes they share that are the errors from Truth. Do you think Christians are/were wrong to make a categorical distinction between their beliefs and everyone else’s?

It's not a question of right or wrong from the point of view of Christians.

It just means that articles like the one linked to above are sort of pointless in that they use "paganism" as an invented strawman to then tilt against. For example, the author at one point defines paganism as worship of wealth, power, and beauty, which is a particularly ancient Roman sort of paganism that would not be remotely reflected in say Navajo culture. He then later defines paganism as presenting moral equivalence between humans and animals which would not be remotely Roman but is more of a new age-ish animal rights sort of thing.

In other words, this particular author is just using "paganism" as a catchall category for whatever particular societal trend he wants to criticize as not conservative Judeo-Christian. And he isn't using the term in any remotely consistent way even within a single article.

[HondurasKeiser]

Exactly. Paganism is a label that Christians apply to other non-Christian religions. There hasn't ever been a separate stand-alone self-identified Pagan religion. Although it seems that in modern times certain new age-ish religions seem to want to appropriate the term.

Apparently the term "pagan" or "paganism" was first coined by early Christians to refer to the Greek and Roman polytheism (Jupiter, Janus, Mars, Mercury, Venus, etc,).

But in later centuries after Constantine, when the Roman Empire and later "Christendom" encountered any non-Christian religion from the Celtic druids to the Norse and Germanic polytheism to every form of religion in the new world and Africa, Christians just labeled all of it pagan by default.

So it is kind of a meaningless term and could be applied to anything from Celtic and Norse Gods to the religions of the Hopi, Navajo and Northwest tribes to the animist beliefs of various sub-Saharan African tribal groups. Belief systems that differ as much from each other as they do from Christianity.

Except of course that it’s not entirely meaningless as it can’t be applied Willy-Nilly and equally to everything from Baal to a toaster oven.

The term Paganism describes the commonalities that run through the various and sundry non-monotheistic religions; the part that Boot quoted describes those commonalities well. Furthermore, it’s those attributes they share that are the errors from Truth. Do you think Christians are/were wrong to make a categorical distinction between their beliefs and everyone else’s?

It's not a question of right or wrong from the point of view of Christians.

It just means that articles like the one linked to above are sort of pointless in that they use "paganism" as an invented strawman to then tilt against. For example, the author at one point defines paganism as worship of wealth, power, and beauty, which is a particularly ancient Roman sort of paganism that would not be remotely reflected in say Navajo culture. He then later defines paganism as presenting moral equivalence between humans and animals which would not be remotely Roman but is more of a new age-ish animal rights sort of thing.

In other words, this particular author is just using "paganism" as a catchall category for whatever particular societal trend he wants to criticize as not conservative Judeo-Christian. And he isn't using the term in any remotely consistent way even within a single article.

What about the essay leads you to write that he simply wants to criticize any trend that isn’t conservative Judeo-Christian? The author doesn’t strike me as a particularly conservative fellow.

[HondurasKeiser]

Exactly. Paganism is a label that Christians apply to other non-Christian religions. There hasn't ever been a separate stand-alone self-identified Pagan religion. Although it seems that in modern times certain new age-ish religions seem to want to appropriate the term.

Apparently the term "pagan" or "paganism" was first coined by early Christians to refer to the Greek and Roman polytheism (Jupiter, Janus, Mars, Mercury, Venus, etc,).

But in later centuries after Constantine, when the Roman Empire and later "Christendom" encountered any non-Christian religion from the Celtic druids to the Norse and Germanic polytheism to every form of religion in the new world and Africa, Christians just labeled all of it pagan by default.

So it is kind of a meaningless term and could be applied to anything from Celtic and Norse Gods to the religions of the Hopi, Navajo and Northwest tribes to the animist beliefs of various sub-Saharan African tribal groups. Belief systems that differ as much from each other as they do from Christianity.

Except of course that it’s not entirely meaningless as it can’t be applied Willy-Nilly and equally to everything from Baal to a toaster oven.

The term Paganism describes the commonalities that run through the various and sundry non-monotheistic religions; the part that Boot quoted describes those commonalities well. Furthermore, it’s those attributes they share that are the errors from Truth. Do you think Christians are/were wrong to make a categorical distinction between their beliefs and everyone else’s?

It's not a question of right or wrong from the point of view of Christians.

It just means that articles like the one linked to above are sort of pointless in that they use "paganism" as an invented strawman to then tilt against. For example, the author at one point defines paganism as worship of wealth, power, and beauty, which is a particularly ancient Roman sort of paganism that would not be remotely reflected in say Navajo culture. He then later defines paganism as presenting moral equivalence between humans and animals which would not be remotely Roman but is more of a new age-ish animal rights sort of thing.

In other words, this particular author is just using "paganism" as a catchall category for whatever particular societal trend he wants to criticize as not conservative Judeo-Christian. And he isn't using the term in any remotely consistent way even within a single article.

The Romans treated whole swathes of the population worse than animals….seems like some moral equivalence to me.

[Ken]

Except of course that it’s not entirely meaningless as it can’t be applied Willy-Nilly and equally to everything from Baal to a toaster oven.

The term Paganism describes the commonalities that run through the various and sundry non-monotheistic religions; the part that Boot quoted describes those commonalities well. Furthermore, it’s those attributes they share that are the errors from Truth. Do you think Christians are/were wrong to make a categorical distinction between their beliefs and everyone else’s?

It's not a question of right or wrong from the point of view of Christians.

It just means that articles like the one linked to above are sort of pointless in that they use "paganism" as an invented strawman to then tilt against. For example, the author at one point defines paganism as worship of wealth, power, and beauty, which is a particularly ancient Roman sort of paganism that would not be remotely reflected in say Navajo culture. He then later defines paganism as presenting moral equivalence between humans and animals which would not be remotely Roman but is more of a new age-ish animal rights sort of thing.

In other words, this particular author is just using "paganism" as a catchall category for whatever particular societal trend he wants to criticize as not conservative Judeo-Christian. And he isn't using the term in any remotely consistent way even within a single article.

What about the essay leads you to write that he simply wants to criticize any trend that isn’t conservative Judeo-Christian? The author doesn’t strike me as a particularly conservative fellow.

Can you define who, specifically, he is talking about when he criticizes pagans?

Note: I'm not any sort of defender of paganism. But this particular author just seems to bounce around and criticize whatever trends he wants to criticize in society and labels them pagan. Which I don't find particularly useful.

[Bootstrap]

Can you define who, specifically, he is talking about when he criticizes pagans?

Note: I'm not any sort of defender of paganism. But this particular author just seems to bounce around and criticize whatever trends he wants to criticize in society and labels them pagan. Which I don't find particularly useful.

I disagree. It clearly states that paganism is a wide spectrum, but it identifies two clear themes:

Although paganism is one of those catchall words applied to widely disparate views, the worship of natural forces generally takes two forms: the deification of nature, and the deification of force. In the modern world, each ideological wing has claimed a piece of paganism as its own. On the left, there are the world-worshippers, who elevate nature to the summit of sanctity. On the right, you see the worship of force in the forms of wealth, political power, and tribal solidarity. In other words, the paganism of the left is a kind of pantheism, and the paganism of the right is a kind of idolatry.

And it contrasts paganism with this:

Most ancient pagan belief systems were built around ritual and magic, coercive practices intended to achieve a beneficial result. They centered the self. The revolutionary contribution of monotheism was its insistence that the principal concern of God is, instead, how people treat one another.

I think that's accurate for a lot of pagan religions I am familiar with.