paganism

paganism, Christian term used to designate those religions that do not worship the God of Abraham, the figure central to both Christianity and to other Abrahamic religions like Judaism and Islam. Christians have used the terms paganism and pagan, which typically carry pejorative connotations, to draw clear distinctions between themselves and those who they believe are worshiping false gods.

Throughout most of the history of Christianity, few if any of those labeled pagan have adopted this label for themselves. However, since at least the first half of the 20th century, the term has been reappropriated as a self-designation by a family of related new religions. Often called modern Pagan or Neo-Pagan groups, they are inspired by the religions of Europe, North Africa, and West Asia that were rendered extinct by the spread of Christianity and the other Abrahamic traditions.

History of paganism

Christianity emerged in the Roman Empire during the first century ce. A monotheistic religion, it maintained that there was only one true God, whom it identified as the God of Abraham, a deity also venerated in Judaism. Most other traditions in the empire were polytheistic, believing in a range of gods and goddesses. For Christians these polytheistic traditions were idolatrous, devoted to deities who were in fact demons. This outlook made it difficult for many Christians to seek peaceful coexistence with these non-Abrahamic religions.

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celibacy: Pagan religions of the ancient Mediterranean

Surviving sources indicate that Christians were referring to those not worshiping the God of Abraham with the Latin term pagani by at least the 4th century, although it is likely that this usage had arisen earlier. In Latin usage, a paganus was an individual who lived in a rural district, or pagus, rather than in a town. The exact reasons for how this came to designate someone who was neither a Christian nor a Jew are unclear, although historians and classicists have made several proposals. One possibility is that the term pagani, meaning “people of the place,” came to denote those who maintained the worship of the traditional deities of their locality, while Christians came to be referred to as alieni, meaning “people from elsewhere.” A second possibility arises from an alternative meaning of the term paganus, that of “civilian,” which was apparent by the late 2nd or 3rd century. This alternative meaning of the term was probably coined by soldiers of the Roman army, who were often stationed in rural areas distant from Rome itself. Early Christians conceived of themselves as miles Christi, or “soldiers of Christ,” and thus may have adopted the designation of “civilian” for those who had not joined their religious movement.

Beyond Latin, there were other terms used by Christians in a largely synonymous fashion. Greek was widely spoken in eastern parts of the empire, and there the terms ethnē and ethnikoi, “foreigners,” served a similar function, being replaced largely by the term Hellēnes, “Greeks,” by the early 4th century. In translating the Gospel of Mark from Greek into Gothic during the 4th century, the Christian bishop Ulfilas (c. 311–82) developed the term haiþno as a counterpart for Hellēnis, “gentile woman.” Variants of haiþno subsequently came to be widely used in other Germanic languages, notably including the Old English hǣþen, from which derives the Modern English term heathen. An often repeated argument is that this term pertains to things being “of the heath”—it is possible that Ulfilas was deliberately evoking the sense of rurality that he believed was embodied in the Latin term pagan. The Latin term gentilis (Modern English: “gentile”) also appeared in Christian sources to characterize those who did not worship the God of Abraham, a usage distinct from the term’s currently accepted definition of “non-Jewish.”

Terms like pagan served to create a clear binary division between the Christians, who saw themselves as possessing theological truth, and all those whom they thought lived in error. Nevertheless, while the term paganism was primarily leveled against those not worshiping the God of Abraham, its use could be flexible. The term was, for instance, used amid sectarian conflict between different Christians themselves. Emerging from the Reformation of the 16th century, many Protestants accused the Roman Catholic Church of being pagan because of its veneration of saints and elaborate rituals.

The 15th to 19th centuries saw Christian Europeans expand into new areas across the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Australasia. In these lands they encountered a huge variety of religious traditions not devoted to the God of Abraham and which again they often labeled pagan or heathen. The varied traditions of the Indian subcontinent, today typically called Hinduism, were for instance labeled “Hindoo paganism” by 19th-century British writers. Across the world Christian missionary efforts were often launched to convert these non-Abrahamic peoples, with varying degrees of success.

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Changes were evident by the latter half of the 20th century. Growing concerns about Eurocentrism and racial prejudice, coupled with the promotion of ecumenism and the interfaith movement, contributed to a declining use of the terms paganism and pagan among many Christians. It has nevertheless not disappeared altogether from the Christian lexicon. These terms can still be found in use among certain Christian groups that have little desire for cordial relationships with non-Abrahamic religions.

Modern Paganisms

In Europe the idea that there was some worth to the largely polytheistic religions that Christianity had supplanted gained traction due to the influence of Renaissance humanism. Emerging in 14th-century Italy, the Renaissance humanists were in awe of the Classical societies of Greece and Rome and encouraged the incorporation of Classical deities into the artwork of the period. The positive reassessment of pre-Christian religions from elsewhere in Europe followed as a result of the Romantic movement and growing cultural nationalism during the 18th and 19th centuries. From Ireland to Russia pre-Christian mythologies were increasingly embraced in art, poetry, and literature. By the end of the 19th century, some writers were even adopting the term pagan to describe themselves and their work, or were labeled pagans or neo-pagans by their critics.

New religions venerating deities drawn from these extinct pre-Christian traditions first appeared in Europe during the opening decades of the 20th century, gaining greater visibility in the 1960s. The most popular of these was Wicca, which emerged in England before spreading to the United States. Others include Druidry, which took its identity from the Iron Age ritual specialists of Western Europe, and Heathenry, which was modeled on the pre-Christian religions of communities that spoke Germanic languages like Old Norse. Collectively, these groups came to be called Neo-Pagan or modern Pagan, a deliberate reappropriation of the Christian term. Not all of these new religions were altogether happy with this term given its pejorative origins; in Central and Eastern Europe in particular, many modern Pagan groups chose to call their traditions “Native Faith” rather than “Paganism.” These new religions eventually attracted scholarly attention, and by the 21st century a common scholarly convention was to distinguish modern Pagan groups with a capital letter, differentiating them from the Christian concept that usually lacks capitalization.