Christianity and Neopaganism

An invitation to dialogue for modern-day heathens

There are many factions within the dissident right. Despite our common enemy, many disagreements fracture this movement, often leading to petty in-fighting. One such division is centered on the question of Christianity. Should Christianity be the core of the movement or is it a detriment, a distraction at best, and a form of crypto-leftism at worst?

While I do not doubt that there are many good people on both sides of the issue, there are also many bad actors on both sides too. Too often, tempers get flared and more heat than light is created. Internet trolls populate forums and work to demoralize people by dissuading them of their faith. I find this disappointing. Religion is a rich intellectual that is often brushed aside in both mainstream politics and academia. A right-wing that learns to move past rhetoric and towards honest dialogue is a right-wing that’s in a much better place than the mainstream. This essay aims at being an antidote to the rhetoric that toxifies pagan-Christian discussions, a palate-cleanser if you will.

What do pagans believe?

A true pagan believes that there exists a plurality of gods who influence human affairs and we ought to obey and worship these deities. To my mind, those who believe the gods are mere archetypes or are otherwise mere creations of the human mind are not pagans but atheists, and this essay isn’t about convincing anyone of God’s existence (for those interested in that topic, I recommend reading Edward Feser’s Five Proofs for the Existence of God). Similarly, I’m unconcerned with those who became pagan for shallow reasons, such as a desire for status or the thrill of being a contrarian. Dialogue with these people wouldn’t be productive in the first place. This essay is meant to draw true pagans into more productive conversations with Christians and move beyond mere rhetoric.

Furthermore, this essay deals primarily with the modern revival of Germanic heathenry or other Indo-Aryan-inspired pagan revivals. The Neoplatonic or monist pagans are deserving of an essay of their own and are not, to my knowledge, as common among online right-wing circles. The following is an outline of the doctrine found in what I take to be the genuine believers of paganism based on how they describe their beliefs and argue their points. Whatever their faults, these people seem to walk the walk and talk the talk. They offer sacrifices to Odin, Thor, and the rest of them. They talk about their beliefs in videos and podcasts and write about them in articles and published books. This makes them about as real as real gets on the Internet.

In my experience, pagans have little interest in proving the existence of a plurality of gods and often take offense at anyone asking for proof of such deities. While a few of them have reported being visited by their gods in visions or dreams, the justification for their beliefs is largely rooted in Traditionalist epistemology. Traditionalists believe that the fundamental truths of metaphysics, morality, and religion are first known through faith in some tradition – in this case, the tradition depicted in the texts and customs of the pre-Christian Europeans. To them, tradition is the measure of all things, and reason is a pale derivative of this faith.

Another pagan belief is in the existence of a national “folk spirit.” According to them, each biological racial category also has a spiritual dimension. This spiritual dimension comes with beliefs prepackaged for the people of that tribe, including their particular faith tradition. What follows is that it is natural for a given race to worship the same gods their ancestors did, e.g., Germans naturally worship Frigga and Thor, Indians naturally worship Krishna and Shiva, and so on. These pagans justify paganism in terms of filial piety (i.e., we honor the gods as the ancestors of our people) or Darwinism (i.e., we evolved to worship a particular set of gods in a particular way). Combining this argument with a kind of natural law ethic gives paganism a normative dimension it’d otherwise lack. From here, European Christians can be criticized for their unnatural “spiritual Semitism.” To paraphrase Joe Biden, if you choose Jesus over Odin, you ain’t white.

Pagan apologetics focuses on aesthetics, on the beauty of European pagan culture. They emphasize the glory, strength, and wholesomeness of the “old ways.” However, things like glory, strength, and wholesomeness are not lacking in traditional Christian practice either, so pagan apologists spend most of their time attacking Christianity. Friedrich Nietzsche’s depiction of Christianity as “slave morality” in contrast to the “master morality” of the pagans makes him a rhetorical ally to their cause despite his atheism.

All of these arguments are worthy of discussion, and I think that there is some truth to each of them. However, in order for dialogue to be possible, there are a lot of misconceptions that need to be cleared up. Like many modern critics of Christianity, pagans are prone interpreting the Bible in ways that resemble neither traditional Christian doctrine nor the everyday beliefs of modern Christians. None of the above arguments for paganism depend on the misconceptions, yet they are very popular and color Christian-pagan interactions. On the contrary, they weaken the credibility of paganism in the minds of learned Christians. For these reasons, any intellectually honest pagan would want them dispelled.

The Pagan Misconceptions of Christianity

The first and most common misconception I see among right-wing neopagans is the idea that Christianity is inherently liberal or leftist. It’s unsurprising that they have this view. “Jesus was a brown immigrant hippie socialist” might as well be the Left’s rallying cry, at least when they’re not ridiculing the faith themselves. Much of it is based on out-of-context Bible quotes, an ahistorical fantasy of a toothless Jesus fostered by liberal Protestantism, and, in general, ignorance of the Christian tradition as it was historically practiced.

As my friend Elliot pointed out on his channel, Christianity has historically called its followers to be saints, men of heroic virtue. As a matter of history, the Christian saints have embodied archetypes of heroism identified by Julius Evola, the spirit of the warrior and the ascetic. There is no small number of Christian warriors, men who were called to heroic action by God and circumstance. Many ascetic monks pushed their bodies and wills to the limit to demonstrate the depths of their devotions. Many genius scholars articulated doctrine with such profundity that they were able to anticipate many modern moral, metaphysical, and theological questions. All this and more can be found in their hagiographies.

However, the easiest way to show Christianity’s heroism is to point to the life of Jesus. Our Lord is not a “nice guy” who only wanted everyone to be live peacefully and give to the poor. He is the Son of God, a divine ruler who has a rightful claim over the whole world. He told people to love God with all their hearts, soul, strength, and mind (Matthew 22:37 and Mark 12:30). He preached forgiveness, yes, but also taught His followers a moral code stricter than the Mosaic Law (see the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5). Salvation could be obtained through Jesus by anyone, but only if they followed His commands (John 15:14) and were more righteous than the Pharisees (Matthew 5:20). He was also quite the fire and brimstone preacher, warning people repeatedly that eternal damnation awaited those who did not follow Him (see Matthew 25:45-46). Jesus lived a heroic life, and He wanted all His followers to do the same. Moderation in following Him is not an option either (see Matthew 10:34 and Revelations 3:16).

Those that claim that Christianity is all about economic equality and giving to the poor fail to read the episode when Jesus was anointed at Bethany, an episode that features in Matthew 26:6-13, Mark 14:3-9, and John 12:1-8. In the story, a woman (identified as Mary Magdalene in John) poured an expensive ointment on Jesus’ body. Judas Iscariot, upon seeing this, chastises the woman. “Why this waste?” Judas questions. “For this ointment might have been sold for a large sum, and given to the poor.” In this, Judas echoes the arguments of modern-day socialists who criticize non-socialist Christians. Jesus replies reminding us that “You always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me.” The scene not only foreshadows Jesus’s eventual death but also contains the lesson that, however important serving the poor is, serving God is much, much more important. Though Jesus did recommend certain individuals give all they had to the poor, and His disciples did share their wealth among one another like a family, all this giving was a means to an end – the end of glorifying God. Surprisingly, so many who claim that Christianity is socialist overlook this passage. Or maybe not, considering the only person defending the socialist position is a notorious traitor and thief.

Christianity was not in any sense liberal. When the Church became politically prominent, she did not enact reforms to liberalize or democratize. Rather, she baptized kings and lords, chastising them when they disobeyed God but otherwise recognizing their legitimacy as rulers. Even in its early days, when it was persecuted minority sect, Christianity taught in no uncertain terms that sedition against the worldly government was a rebellion against God’s law (see Romans 13:1-7), and the Church followed that teaching to the letter. And this isn’t getting into how illiberal the Orthodox, Catholics, and pre-Enlightenment Protestants were. Conservative Christians have historically seen liberalism as an innovation introduced to Christian societies by occultists, Jews, and oddball heretics. To claim that liberal Christianity was the true teaching of Christ all along and that the Christians of the previous 2,000 years all got it wrong is ridiculous on its face.

Part of the confusion comes from the overwhelming liberalism of modern Christian churches. A lot of modern church leaders run their churches like liberal NGOs and see the whole “salvation of souls” thing as a secondary concern, and the laity is little better. However, this does not in itself mean that Christianity is liberal. Christians recognize that people in the Church, including church leaders, can be fallible. These liberal Christians read into Scripture what conveniently aligns with the zeitgeist, even if it contradicts the church’s traditional doctrine. The truth of Christianity is not based on the opinions of any theologian, priest, or pastor, but on the teachings of Jesus Christ and the traditions and texts that elaborate on them. As St. Paul says, Christians ought to hold fast to the traditions passed onto them (2 Thessalonians 2:15). Those who use Mark 7:8 (which was more a refutation of the Pharisaical interpretations of the Old Testament than anything else) as an excuse to neglect Christian tradition are disobeying God.

The second misconception concerning Christianity that pagans have is that it’s anti-white. This accusation rests on one of two claims: either that Christianity privileges Jews over Gentiles or that it is intolerant of all particular differences between ethnic cultures because of its “universalism.”

The idea that Christianity privileges the Jewish ethnicity over all others is rooted in God making the Jews His chosen people. In the eyes of critics, this shows that God was a mere tribal deity that cared exclusively for the Jews. However, a careful reading of the Old Testament tells a different story. The Books of Job and Jonah both show that God is concerned with the lives of Gentiles. The Book of Jonah in particular depicts God calling the prophet Jonah to preach to the Assyrian city of Nineveh and being so moved by their repentance that He spares them against the wishes of His prophet. The Old Testament also depicts God punishing the Hebrews by allowing their lands to be conquered by foreigners whenever they strayed from God’s teachings.

In the New Testament, Galatians 3:28 and Ephesians 3:6 treat Gentiles and Jews as having an equal opportunity to be saved by Jesus. Some cite verses like John 4:22 or Romans 11:17-24 as proof that Christianity privileges Jews. Such an interpretation is a stretch. In the passage from John, when Jesus claims that salvation comes from the Jews, He is referring to Himself, the Son of God who became a Jewish man in Galilee. That Jesus chose to incarnate as a Jew is not a sign that God’s chosen people are somehow inherently salvific, only that they played an indispensable role in bringing about His Incarnation. It is not the Jews who save us, but Jesus Christ.

Meanwhile, the passage from Romans 11:17-24 is not a reduction of the Gentiles to second-class citizen status, but Paul’s prohibition against his Gentile converts boasting of their new status as believers. Paul is warning his Gentile converts not to make the same mistake that the Jews did. Back in Luke 3:8, Jesus gave a similar warning to the Pharisees, who proudly boasted of their status as sons of Abraham. In response to their ethno-narcissism, Jesus instructs them to “Bear fruits that befit repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.” The message throughout the New Testament is that righteousness comes not from following Jewish Law but from faith in God. Romans 3, for example, establishes that one’s faith is the foundation of their salvation. Paul goes so far as to say that Jews are only chosen because of the faith of their patriarch Abraham. Any Jew who has faith will be returned to their status as heirs to Abraham’s promise – right next to the Gentiles, who became inheritors of the same promise through their faith in Christ.

The pagans who argue from this “Christianity supports Jewish privilege” perspective do not understand that the Christian God is not a tribal deity – that He is the God of the gentiles no less than He is the God of the Jews (Romans 3:29). He played the part of a tribal deity to appeal to the Old Testament Israelites, but this was a concession that God made to them as part of His covenant with them. The purpose of the old covenant was the Incarnation, Atonement, and Resurrection of the God-Man Jesus and the creation of a new covenant that would save the entire human race.

When pagan critics fail to prove that Christianity privileges Jews, they claim that Christianity is “universalizing,” and that it fails to tolerate the particular differences that naturally emerge between groups. The accusation that Christianity is “intolerant” is not a new charge. Popular culture has been reiterating the same set of charges for centuries now – Galileo, the Inquisition, etc. Because these same weapons have been brandished time and again, they’ve grown a bit dull – you can find many sources debunking these oft-made charges, showing that the cases in question are overblown.

Is Christianity dogmatic or doctrinally intolerant? Yes, but this is not a fault but a virtue. For what is doctrinal tolerance but a refusal to stand up for truth and morality? Tolerance of this sort amounts to religious indifference, the refusal to acknowledge any religion as true. If this is the tolerance neopagans desire, then their problem is not with Christianity but with the law of non-contradiction. All truth excludes what is contrary to it. Neopagans might get up in arms over this, but I’ve never seen them argue that Darwinian science or “2 + 2 = 4” is “intolerant.”

When it comes to political intolerance, Christians have traditionally been milder compared to their pagan or secular counterparts. Often, I see people declare that the medieval Church was “totalitarian,” an absurd notion if only because the technology for a centralized surveillance state did not exist back then. Neopagans might appeal to a victim narrative, pointing to the violence of Christian leaders like Charlemagne while excusing the treatment Christians received under pagan or secular rule. Undoubtedly, there have been Christian rulers who, because of their excessive zealotry, resorted to violence to force non-Christians to convert. However, they did this out of their own inspiration and not under the rules of the Church. Christianity has long taught that forced baptisms are invalid. Rodney Stark notes that the Christian Church, once it gained power in Rome, enacted a broad policy of toleration for the pagans, both out of necessity and out of principle. Even after the reign of Julian the Apostate and the subsequent fear Christians had, they were never as harsh as their pagan counterparts as a matter of policy (see chapter 3 of Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History). As the Catholic theologian Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange once put it, “The Church is intolerant in principle because she believes; she is tolerant in practice because she loves. The enemies of the Church are tolerant in principle because they do not believe; they are intolerant in practice because they do not love.”

Some pagans claim that this Christian “universalism” erases national borders and ethnic divisions. This is based on the idea that, since Christianity preaches that there is no distinction between races when it comes to God’s gift of grace, there can be no such distinctions period. However, this is contrary to the long-standing teachings of the Church. Christians have long taught that patriotism, a particular love for one’s people and home, is good and honorable. Many of the early church fathers prayed for the prospering of their particular countries, for God to give his blessing to its leaders and armies. Tertullian argued in his Apology that Christians were useful citizens (chapter 42) who prayed for their kings and emperors to be blessed “with length of days and a quiet reign, a well-established family, a stout army, a faithful senate, an honest people, and a peaceful world, and whatever else either prince or people can wish for” (chapter 30). Likewise, Origen compared the prayers he gave for the Roman Empire to the prayers offered up for the same cause by pagan priests in Contra Celsum. And keep in mind, these were Ante-Nicene Fathers, ones who lived before Emperor Constantine legalized the faith.

This tradition is continued in medieval and modern Christianity. The great medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas argued that ordered charity requires us to love more those connected with us by ties of blood (Summa Theologiae II-II.26.8), that ordered beneficence required us to do good to those who live nearest to us (ST II-II.36.3), and that our country deserves our love and reverence just as much as our parents do (ST II-II.101.1). Here we have a man known far and wide as “the Angelic Doctor” giving his approval to the veneration of blood and soil. One can even find a critique of globalism within the pages of St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae and his political work On Kingship. For example, he defends ancient Israel’s policy of not allowing immigrants to gain citizenship until after two to three generations (ST I-II.105.3). In another instance, he argues against relying on foreign trade on the basis that “intercourse with foreigners… is particularly harmful to civic customs” (On Kingship, Book II, Chapter 3).

Unsurprisingly, such talk continues in modern Christianity. Pope Pius XII’s encyclical Summi pontificatus, the same encyclical that defends the unity of the human race, says:

“43. And the nations, despite a difference of development due to diverse conditions of life and of culture, are not destined to break the unity of the human race, but rather to enrich and embellish it by the sharing of their own peculiar gifts and by that reciprocal interchange of goods which can be possible and efficacious only when a mutual love and a lively sense of charity unite all the sons of the same Father and all those redeemed by the same Divine Blood.

44. The Church of Christ, the faithful depository of the teaching of Divine Wisdom, cannot and does not think of deprecating or disdaining the particular characteristics which each people, with jealous and intelligible pride, cherishes and retains as a precious heritage. Her aim is a supernatural union in all-embracing love, deeply felt and practiced, and not the unity which is exclusively external and superficial and by that very fact weak.

45. The Church hails with joy and follows with her maternal blessing every method of guidance and care which aims at a wise and orderly evolution of particular forces and tendencies having their origin in the individual character of each race, provided that they are not opposed to the duties incumbent on men from their unity of origin and common destiny.”

The Catholic Church continues this pro-nation stance through the teachings of Pope John Paul II. He argued that nations possess a kind of “subjectivity,” a distinct identity and inner life, that deserves respect and that underwrote a claim to autonomy in political, economic, and cultural life (Socillicitudo Rei Socialis, 15). Similar nationalistic ideas can be found throughout his other work, such as in his 1995 address to the United Nations or in Memory and Identity. And today, the Catechism of the Catholic Church contains a line that says: “Political authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible, may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions, especially concerning the immigrants' duties toward their country of adoption. Immigrants are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws, and to assist in carrying civic burdens.” This is a far cry from the globalist project of erasing ethnic and cultural differences using mass migration.

Protestants also see the love of homeland and kin as a virtue. In his commentary on Romans 9:3, the seventeenth-century Nonconformist minister Matthew Henry once wrote “We ought to be in a special manner concerned for the spiritual good of our relations, our brethren and kinsmen. To them we lie under special engagements, and we have more opportunity of doing good to them; and concerning them, and our usefulness to them, we must in a special manner give account” (from Vol. 6 of Matthew Henry Commentary on the Whole Bible, in the section talking about Romans 9:1-5).

If anything, Protestants are even more race-conscious than Catholics. The Protestant Reformation was, in large part, an attempt by burgeoning nation-states to assert their national sovereignty against what they saw as Papal overreach. Protestants have traditionally taken a segregationist approach to racial issues, as seen in the works of John Knox, John Calvin, Myles Coverdale, and other leaders of the Reformation. The Westminster Confession, perhaps the most elaborate creed of Protestant church history, not only takes for granted the differences between the races of the world, it positively endorses it as part of God’s divine plan.

The Protestants who were on the side of racial egalitarianism were always theologically liberal – that is, they were always seeking to change what had traditionally been the case. The best example of this is Martin Luther King Jr., who is oft-cited as an example of a great anti-racist “Christian” even though he denied the divinity, virgin birth, and resurrection of Christ and believed that Christianity was a mere outgrowth of paganism (irony of ironies there!).

Of course, the Orthodox Church has a long history of identifying the good of the Church with the good of the nation. Because their Churches were autocephalous (that is, lacking a centralized hierarchy), the Orthodox often organized themselves around certain nationalities like Greek or Russian. Looking at the Russian Orthodox Church, I can think of two stand-out examples. First was St. Sergius of Radonezh, who blessed Prince Dmitry of Moscow’s struggle against the Golden Horde, even going so far as to delegate two monk-warriors to help him. Then, in the sixteenth century, St. Hermogenes of Moscow commemorated those who had fought for the Faith and the nation against the Tartars. Later on, as the Patriarch of Russia, he fought for explicitly patriotic reasons to liberate the Russian nation from traitors and Poles who wished to take it over. He died in an enemy prison praying for God to bless the Russian army in their fight against the invaders. Each of the Orthodox Churches is tied to a particular nation and does its best to embody the soul of that people and represent them before God and Christendom.

The common reply from pagans is that Christianity requires its adherents to view their pagan ancestors as being evil and without merit. They claim that Christianity’s rejection of idolatry necessitates rejecting their ancestors as backward demon-worshippers and cite verses like Psalm 95:5 and 1 Corinthians 10:20. Some would even go so far as to claim that “Christianity is built on the worldview that our ancestors are stupid, barbarians, primitive and that we don't need to pay much attention to them.” However, such beliefs are built on a selective reading of history. Was it not the Christians who preserved the writings of Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero and cited them as sources in their philosophical works? If they hated the ancient myths so much, why did they preserve the Homeric epics and the Eddas that inspire modern-day neopagans? Why were they so willing to appropriate pagan imagery to use for their ends?

The attitude of the Christians towards pagans was always “love the sinner, hate the sin.” Just as Christians treat individuals with the respect owed to them, so too do they treat nations. When Christians aim to baptize individuals and have them be born again, they seek to purify the person of their sin while raising their natural goodness to supernatural heights. The pagan believes that by correcting their spiritual and moral errors, the Christian is erasing the nation’s identity. But this is only true if one defines a nation by its vices rather than its virtues. Just as baptism forgives the sins of individuals without erasing their identity, so too does it forgive the sins of entire nations without destroying them. In both cases, what is evil is forgiven and what is good is perfected.

When all these caricatures fail, pagan critics of Christianity will resort to this final critique: that traditional Christianity is dead or at least in irrecoverable decline. Coming from modern pagans, I’m tempted to call it projection: any critique based on Christianity’s purported death would more readily apply to any of the European pagan traditions. However dead you might claim Christianity to be, paganism is way deader. The pagan revival is an aping of what academic scholars speculate were the beliefs and practices of the ancient Indo-European peoples.

Furthermore, the death of Christianity is greatly exaggerated. Christianity is not only the world’s biggest religion but one experiencing explosive growth in the third world. Of course, a European pagan might claim that such people do not count, but considering these third-worlders are set to replace us in our home countries should the Western nationalist movement fail in their political goal, I’d say that they do indeed “count.” One could foresee a future wherein African and Asian peoples preach the gospels to godless westerners living among the ruins of their collapsed global empire. Mind you, this is not a future anyone should want, but it is a strong possibility given current demographic trends.

The second problem with the “Christianity is dying” narrative is that it is greatly exaggerated. Conservative Christians have the highest birth rates of any demographic group in the west. This is attested to by the scholarly work of Eric Kaufmann, Edward Dutton, and J. O. A. Rayner-Hilles. If we’re going only by birth rates, we can expect white conservative Christians to become the majority of all white people. The only thing that keeps the white liberal population afloat is apostasy.

Interfaith Dialogue

Once these shallow misconceptions are cleared up, pagans will find that they have a great deal in common with Christians. For one thing, both Christians and right-wing neopagans believe in distinct gender roles and natalism and abhor sexual perversion. Piety toward one’s ancestors is also common among them. Both exist at the forefront of nationalist movements.

Besides these socially conservative beliefs, Christians and neopagans have much in common theologically. Unlike modern liberals, both pagans and Christians recognize that divinity is worthy of worship. Émile Durkheim once pointed out that it was the primitive animistic religions that first carved out a distinction between the sacred and the profane, a distinction that was carried forward by Christianity but discarded by modern ideologies like liberalism. Divine or godlike things had to be set aside and given their own space apart from everyday life. Within sacred spaces, one could perform rituals and sacrifices. Pagans historically sacrificed live animals, and many modern pagans still do so to this day. Sacrifice plays a similarly central role in Christianity in the form of the Atonement and the Eucharist, which is the Christian’s participation in the Atonement.

The liberal bourgeois worldview, by contrast, has evacuated the world of all spiritual meanings. To the modern liberal, religion is something you do once a week at church, if at all, before going out and focusing on more ‘practical’ things like money, status, and personal satisfaction. By contrast, the religiously inclined recognize that these things, though important, are ultimately profane goods that must be sacrificed for the sake of sacred goods. Thus, a religious individual is one whose hierarchy of values is the bourgeois liberal’s values turned upside-down.

Part of reversing the bourgeois desacralization of the world is recognizing that the world is filled with the presence of the divine. This is rather obvious in more animistic religions, where nature spirits are deified, but Christians recognize that the pagans were not wrong in seeing something divine in these natural things. Christians see the natural world as a manifestation of God’s goodness. God created all the things of the Earth, and all things participate in God’s providence insofar as they follow their natural inclinations. By worshipping God as the creator of the natural world and everything in it, humans have the opportunity to participate in providence especially.

This idea of divine participation and nature might sound unusual even to modern Christians. Aren’t we supposed to be anti-pagan? These people forget that, while Christians have a long history of smashing pagan idols, they also have an equally venerable tradition of adopting pagan symbols and titles and appropriating them for God.

Some might say that this was a cynical tactic adopted by Christians to sway pagans into becoming Christian, but such a dismissal ignores the theological justification for this assimilation. In chapter 8 of his “Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine,” St. John Henry Newman spoke of how God’s grace was so powerful that it could incorporate even what was formerly under the devil’s control.

“Confiding then in the power of Christianity to resist the infection of evil, and to transmute the very instruments {372} and appendages of demon-worship to an evangelical use, and feeling also that these usages had originally come from primitive revelations and from the instinct of nature, though they had been corrupted; and that they must invent what they needed, if they did not use what they found; and that they were moreover possessed of the very archetypes, of which paganism attempted the shadows; the rulers of the Church from early times were prepared, should the occasion arise, to adopt, or imitate, or sanction the existing rites and customs of the populace, as well as the philosophy of the educated class.”

Christians believe that the world, while tainted by Original Sin and usurped by the Devil, is still ultimately good. This includes pagan worship, which was rooted in their instinct to worship what was divine. Because the root of paganism is good, its errors can be corrected by divine revelation, and it can be redeemed by God’s grace. The whole of paganism, with all its practices, symbols, and titles, finds its fulfillment in Christianity.

That is why the Columbian Catholic traditionalist Nicolás Gómez Dávila once said that “A Catholic thought does not rest until it puts the chorus of the heroes and the gods in order around Christ.” Though he was neither a polytheist nor a pantheist, Dávila recognized that the metaphysics and theology of Christianity had as their origins certain pagan concepts. More than other Christian sects, it seems as though Roman Catholics are more keenly aware of this aspect of Christianity. Pope Benedict XVI went as far as to argue in his Regensburg Address that the whole project of modernity could be summed up as an attempt to purge Christianity of its connection to paganism – first by using sola scriptura, then by using Enlightenment philosophy, and finally through present-day multiculturalism. It is modernity, not Christianity, which sees paganism as something fundamentally non-scientific, irrational, superstitious, and primitive.

All this is to say that, if we’re going to divide humanity into opposing camps, the Christians and the pagans would be on one team and the liberals would be on the other. Liberalism treats traditional sexual ethics, distinct gender roles, and ritual worship and prayer as arbitrary, which makes it the enemy of mankind despite its claims to the contrary. When the Pope speaks in favor of traditional Christianity, he speaks for modern pagans all over the world who happen to share those things that they have in common with Christianity. When the UN speaks in favor of anti-natalism and homosexuality, they speak only for a class of rich, college-educated perverts.

All that being said, I by no means want to downplay the differences between pagans and Christians. Even if there is much we can agree on, there do exist some major differences between us. Still, our shared characteristics give us much room for fruitful interfaith dialogue. Now, contrary to how the world may be used in modern pastoral circles, dialogue requires free and frank discussion with the aim of mutual understanding and truth. True proponents of dialogue dare to discuss important issues nobody else does. Now that we’ve gotten the misconceptions out of the way, I’d like to pose the following questions to my neopagan brothers and sisters.

·       Can theological claims have objective truth value? If so, is it not a fair question to ask whether the pagan deities exist?

·       Suppose the old gods were real. Why ought we believe that they care about us?

·       Which pantheon has a claim over which people? Should the people of Europe worship the Æsir? The Olympians?

·       Supposing that the pagan myths are real, how can all the different cosmologies and pantheons be simultaneously true?

·       How do you know that the Christian version of history – whereby mankind rejected God’s divine plan and began worshipping the creature – is false? I ask this because most of the critiques about Christianity being a revolutionary rejection of the past presuppose the falseness of its historical narrative, yet pagans rarely engage Christians on this front.

I hope that my essay helps contribute to many fruitful discussions both on this blog and on this website. I hope that such conversations will lead to the truth and to the God that embodies that truth. Because the differences between Christians and neopagans, we both find ourselves struck by modernity – about amnesia over our respective faith traditions. We shouldn’t pretend we agree on everything, but we should recognize each other as trying to recover what has been lost.