Paganism (unlike Christianity) can be personal, individual

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Since paganism is the spontaneous religion of humanity, and therefore requires no specific or divine revelation - therefore it requires no Church, no book, nor any institutions.

Paganism can be personal, individual - you can be a real pagan all by yourself.

Many people (probably) are.

And it may be better - much better - to be pagan than nothing.

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There are very few pagans visible in modern societies - but who knows how many there be in the privacy of their own minds?

I have, at times, throughout my (pre-Christian) life been a real pagan in this sense - I don't suppose anybody knew about it; nor would they have been interested if I had talked of it.

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By real pagan - I mean not neo-pagan: which I have also been (in a loose kind of way) at various points in my life, notably in the period from about 1998-2007.

Real pagans believe in the reality of gods, who are powerful - and must be propitiated. They believe in the reality of the soul, and that (in some way) it survives death. And they have an awe and reverence for the power and beauty of the natural world. (This list is not exhaustive.)

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Neo-pagans are modern.

They have emerged since the romantic era (around the start of the 18th century) as an aesthetic movement, later a therapeutic movement - and have become visible since the early 20th century as Wicca, witches of many times, Druids, magic practices, shamanism and other 'native' spiritualities, and a general interest in and practice of past paganism.

But neo-paganism is most visible in the mass media, in the form of books, images, dramas: as a theme.

(This history has been superbly documented by the Bristol University historian Ronald Hutton - whose work I recommend highly.)

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But neo-pagans have an aesthetic, an ethic, and an attitude to truth which is modern - often indeed post-modern.

The practices of neo-paganism are typically therefore aesthetic or therapeutic rather than religious.

In a nutshell - neo-paganism is about real paganism; draws from it, but does not live by it.
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It is clear from observation that neo-pagans believe in the modern Western way - they believe asif - at most with suspended disbelief; and do not believe in the way everybody believed before about 1700, or the way most of the rest of the world still believes) do not believe in the reality of gods, spirits.

Neo-paganism has therefore integrated easily with modern capitalism, with political correctness, with New Age spirituality.

Indeed, neo-paganism is essentially a part of these: neither an antidote, nor oppositional to the mainstream.

Neo-paganism is an expression of nihilism - maybe emotionally pleasing, maybe able to relieve suffering - but nihilistic nonetheless.

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Real paganism could - and indeed very likely will - come back again as being the spontaneous expression of human religiousness.

When it does it will be seen by its contrast with modernity, because real pagans are not PC but instead have a 'tribal' morality of courage, and a loyalty to family and chief.

They will have gods whom they fear to offend.

And pagans believe in the souls and its survival in some form after death - maybe reincarnation, sometimes a similar kind of continued life elsewhere; but often an horrible survival, or one leading inevitably to doom.
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Humility and love are distinctively Christian virtues - these paganism lacks.

Existential hope is a distinctively Christian emotion - this paganism lacks.

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Paganism can do great harm to the soul - especially be means of untrammelled pride seeking power.

Also, there were many noble pagans whose minds seem to adhered to Natural Law, and to have practiced love and humility, or seemed to have tenuous existential hope even despite having no reason for it.

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So, from an ultimate and spiritual perspective, I am sympathetic towards real paganism.

For an atheist or agnostic to become - albeit in the privacy of their own minds - a pagan is probably progress; unless this is driven by pride and desire for power: desire to master the world and other minds.

Paganism is, for moderns, probably qualitative progress for the soul.

Paganism may keep the soul alive in a culture dedicated to its destruction.

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(Of course it is not the same for a Christian. Paganism is a partial truth - crudely, Christianity minus revelation. For someone who has been or is a real Christian then to become a real pagan would be not merely be a decline but something monstrous, indeed a kind of impossibility - being in fact a turn away from good to its opposition. To abandon the higher in favour of the lower is not the same as to advance from nihilism to a partial truth. But we live in very dark times of the denial of The Good, of mainstream active opposition to The Good. Partial truth is *almost* infinitely preferable to self-reinforcing nihilism - despite its very real dangers.)

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Could politically correct atheists only become Christian via paganism?

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I have said that the modern secular intellectual elite are only kept going - in the face of their nihilism - by continual distraction.

And that, due to habituation (the biological process by which repeated identical stimuli lose their effect), these distractions must be continually novel, and/or continually increasing in strength.

This means that the PC secular elite are continually in danger of existential collapse due to a failure of distraction leading to them being confronted by their own nihilism.

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What happens then?

The best thing would be to repent and turn to Christianity; but it seems to be a huge step.

Such a huge step that not many people seem to make it.

Another thing that might happen is a reversion to the default state: paganism.

There are numerous paganisms in the world today: Hinduism probably being the biggest, followed by Buddhism (non-Zen variety) and innumerable others.

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What are the pros and cons of paganism?

One advantage is that it restores normal common sense human nature, as applied to worldly things.

It restores depth and seriousness to life: The soul is acknowledged, so is a super-natural world.

And, looking further ahead, pagans are readily converted to Christianity (as history demonstrates).

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The reason that pagans were so readily converted to Christianity relates to the bleakness of the pagan world view, on reflection.

Once the feasting and festivals are over; the thoughtful pagan recognizes life as (at its best) merely 'a sparrow's flight' through a brightly lit mead hall: coming from darkness then after a moment plunging back into darkness.

Pagan life does not really have any meaning.

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Pagans find implanted within them a natural law, and the best pagans will follow that law; they will be brave and loyal, will support and protect their family and clan, will love and create beauty, will be truthful - but they do not really know why they do so, nor do they expect this to make any difference to themselves or the world in the long term.

The world is headed either for annihilation (Ragnarok) or equally meaningless cycles of repetition (Hinduism).

So paganism is meaningless in the big picture, and purposeless.

And this is why pagans are so readily converted to Christianity: as Pascal saw so clearly, Christianity is much preferable to paganism, we would much prefer it to be true; and since (for pagans) there is very good evidence of the truth of Christianity - many or most pagans will become Christian - given the chance.

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The main problem with paganism is that it does not share the Christian conception of pride as the worst sin - therefore paganism (like materialist secularism) tends to encourage pride.

Pagan religious experience therefore tends to cause a lot more harm than good: to be a source of reinforcing pride rather than virtue. 

The great virtue of paganism is not humility but stoicism, or uncomplaining suffering.

The 'good pagan' practices proper behaviour without cause or reason or hope: and, while noble, is therefore a dry, sad and futile figure:

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Still, on the whole, resurgent paganism might be a 'step in the right direction' for secular modernity. And paganism may indeed be a necessary step - a transitional stage on the road to truth.

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What happened when the pagan Roman-Britons converted to Christianity?

A favourite theme of the late, great Geoffrey Ashe was that the transition between paganism and Christianity went smoothly and peacefully in Britain. 

Unlike on the European continent; the British pagans (whether Druidic or Roman in their religion) did not seem to persecute the new Christian religion; and later-on the Christians did not persecute the pagans when they got the upper hand. 

What seems to have happened is that the Christians took-over the sacred pagan sites, and 'repurposed' or rebuilt them as churches; while the pagan Gods were replaced with Jesus, Mary, and the Saints on the basis of analogous religious functions.

(Most famously; the pagan British goddess Brigid, was replaced by the Irish Saint Brigid.) 

As well as its socio-political significance; this is theologically interesting; because it suggests that there is no fundamental conflict between paganism and Christianity; that - somehow or another - people could move from pagan to Christian without major spiritual or societal upheaval. 

I think this gives us a clue to the essence of Christianity; or, more exactly, what distinguishes it from paganism. 

What the smooth-transition tells us on the one side, is that (despite what so many people have said, and what is still asserted) there was not much to distinguish paganism and Christianity in terms of morality and lifestyle. 

The everyday and societal practice of paganism and Christianity don't seem to have been very different. 

What is very different between paganism and Christianity, is what happens after death! 

It seems to me that the Big Message of Christian missionaries; the "unique selling point' that Christians had to offer over and above anything the pagans said; was the prospect of resurrected eternal life in Heaven. 

Whereas the pagan religions could point at either some kind of afterlife life as depersonalized spirits - in an underworld or maybe as ghosts lurking in this world; or else some kind of reincarnation into the same kind of life all-over-again but as a different person...

Christians came along with their account of Jesus Christ who died and rose again and ascended to Heaven; and who offered the same possibility to those who would follow him. 

And this prospect apparently appealed greatly as a possibility superior to anything in paganism. 

I think it would have been obvious to ancient Britons, as it was later to the Anglo-Saxons and Norsemen; that what Christians offered was superior if it was true. 

But how could people know it was true - above and beyond trusting the historical stories of the missionaries?

One form of validation was miracles: when the missionaries were Saints who could perform miracles, then this validated their claims, because it proved they had a link to the divine.

But a second, and probably more widespread, form of experiential proof was by participation in the Mass, the Eucharist, Holy Communion.  

Following-up an insight from Philip K Dick; I think we can imagine that Men, at that earlier stage in the development of consciousness, would spontaneously, passively, overwhelmingly experience participation in the Mass as a literal re-living of Jesus's death and resurrection. 

In the Mass; Jesus died and came to life, and was actually-present here-and-now to those participating. 

This (or something spiritually analogous) would surely have been a compelling validation of the actuality of what Jesus offered. 

In sum; I think the conversion from Paganism to Christianity as it was actually experienced by people in the early centuries AD (people, it should be noted, whose consciousness was significantly different from you and me) was essentially very simple, which was why it could be very quick - and why mass-conversions, and even mandatory conversion, made sense at the time. 

It was an expression of the desire for resurrection after death, as preferable-to/ better-than anything paganism could offer. 

And the method of achieving this desired goal, was to be admitted to the community who ritually re-enacted Jesus's death and resurrection, such that he became actually present to the believer.

 

Note added: This post comes after a whole bunch of earlier posts in which - as a result of reading the Fourth Gospel as the primary and most authoritative source about Jesus's teaching - I became increasingly convinced that the core message of Christianity (i.e. the offer of resurrected eternal life in Heaven) had become de-emphasized and somewhat buried throughout the history of the Christian churches. In my opinion; the advent of Mormonism from 1830 was, to a significant extent, made possible by Joseph Smith's "re-discovery" of resurrection as the core promise of Christianity. Mormonism also brought a completely new and fundamentally different set of fundamental metaphysical theological assumptions concerning reality as pluralistic, developmental etc. But I believe that the main appeal of the new type of Christianity in its early decades was its clarity-about, and focus-upon, post-mortal life - treated very 'realistically' and as something that could (with certain conditions) confidently be anticipated - and with potential for continuation of loving mortal relationships.  

Christianity and paganism

Over the past couple of hundred years, supposed-'parallels' between Christianity and paganism (or other religions) have often been pointed-out -- usually in an anti-Christian context such as trying to prove Christianity is not true; or not different from other religions (merely a derivative copy), or that Christianity is different but an inferior corruption of earlier patterns.

I mean such aspects (beloved of comparative religionists) as the birth to a virgin of the divine hero, the sacrifice of the divine hero (perhaps by something-like crucifixion), death and rebirth of a god... that kind of thing. In other words; similarities between Gospel accounts of the Jesus story on the one hand; and folklore, myth and other-religions on the other hand - parallels that are sometimes reasonably - but sometimes much less! - plausible. 

Nowadays it strikes me that these alleged parallels and similarities to paganism etc. are always to those aspects of Christianity that I regard as either not being core Christian; or indeed tending to be anti-Christian and contradictory accretions to Christianity. 

In other words, I feel that these may well be pagan survivals into Christianity. More exactly (I strongly suspect) the simple truth of Christianity was paganized from very early by those who 'inserted' the Christian message into a variety pre-existing pagan beliefs (just as an analogous process "Judaized" Christianty). These pagan framings ranged from the abstract and intellectually-complex 'omni-God' of the philosophers, to the 'primitive' and pagan idea of God as a tyrant-king who demands sacrifices as propitiation. (Sacrifice and propitiation were also a part of the Ancient Hebrew idea of God, as depicted in the Old Testament.)  

Very unfortunately; mainstream Christianity was never cleansed of these alien and contradictory accretions - quite the opposite! They were often made into mandatory dogmas! 

But the simple truth of Christianity - that those who follow Jesus may be resurrected to eternal life in Heaven - is absolutely unique to Christianity. 

'Rebirth' is not resurrection! To attain eternal life via mortal-death is not the same as never-dying. To be resurrected into embodied form, and with our-selves preserved, is not the same as becoming eternal spirits, nor the same as living in an inert, unthinking and self-less bliss. 

And the timeline of Christianity, with a start and end-point - beginning with Jesus, and achieving its objective with our post-mortal resurrection - is different from the timelessness and unchanging/ undifferentiated nature of abstract paganism; and from the cyclically repeating worlds of other religions. 

And whether Jesus was born to a virgin, or died painfully by crucifixion, are not of the essence...

Maybe the lesson that modern Christians ought to have drawn from the attacks by comparative religionists and "anything but Christianity" neo-pagans, eclectics, and perennialists; should-have-been to set our house in order...

Christians can candidly acknowledged that mainstream Christianity, as well as various unorthodox and 'heretical' versions, have over the centuries included many pagan and Jewish elements, and these elements have, at times, dominated. 

But Christians here-and-now can and should clarify, and expound, and make focal the simple essence of Christianity; and push to the edges (ignore, or make personal and voluntary) inessentials and the contradictory elements...

Because the supposedly-pagan aspects of Christianity are exactly the ones that - whatever the original reasons behind their association with Christianity, and whatever the reasons for their continued presence - don't fundamentally matter to the reality of Christianity: i.e. to what Jesus Christ offers us, personally, now.  

Note added: I regard paganism as the spontaneous spirituality (not necessarily a religion) of ancient people and children. We (probably) all go through a phase of spontaneous paganism in our early life, whether or not that is overwritten by some other religion. But modern Man moves beyond spontaneous paganism; and while he may advocate neo-paganism and identify as a pagan - it cannot be a strong motivator, as evidence by the mainstream, or globalist-totalitarian, or merely self-gratifying, socio-political views of neo-pagans. This happens because the neo-pagan negative rejection of God's creation, is far more powerful than any positive spirituality - so de facto alliance with the dominant, worldwide, value-inverted Satanic leadership is highly likely. 

What's wrong with (real) paganism? Three (main) things

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Paganism is much better than nothing, as we are beginning to recognize, but requires completion by Christianity.

From a Christian perspective, I venture to suggest three main things wrong with paganism: pride, cruelty and meaninglessness.

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1. Pride

Pride is the worst of sins for Christians, it is to prefer oneself to God. But for pagans, pride is a virtue - it is, indeed, the only thing holding life together and providing some kind of motivation.

2. Cruelty

Cruelty is not a virtue for paganism, but it is an endemic feature because there is no prohibition of cruelty - therefore when cruelty is expedient or pleasurable there is no compelling reason to refrain.

(Christians are also cruel, obviously - but this is against the core imperative of Love: so by being cruel they are not being Christian; whereas cruelty is compatible with paganism.)

3. Meaninglessness

Paganism offers no meaning for life - or more exactly no human meaning for human life - or the human soul.

Paganism offers only a spark of life in an infinite universe of darkness, or the 'hope' of being extinguished or absorbed into nature, or recycled - at any rate there is no human meaning, no preservation of the essential self.

The pagan soul may be eternal but is not individual.

Pagan immortality is merely an indefinite extension of human life, perhaps more focused on pleasurable things.

(The Christian hope for salvation and eternal life is of the human life made God-like - individuality preserved but enhanced, eternity made not merely bearable but wonderful. Indeed, I am convinced by Pascal that properly-considered *only* Christianity offers a meaningful life - and that no other religion or philosophy does so.)

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Christian polytheism - from William Wildblood

William Wildblood's latest post analyses and expresses well something I have felt for as long as I have been a Christian. 

Edited excerpt:

Paganism died out for a reason. It was superseded by the advent of Christ who really did make all things new. 

And yet some things were lost in the process, in particular a real connection to creation and a contact with the inner workings of nature as well as a proper relationship with the spirit of place. 

This is why the contemporary Christian needs to re-engage with paganism and even add a pagan element to his Christianity. This element should be seen in the light of Christ, in other words it must be baptised, but it provides a form of spiritual nourishment that Christianity lost as it lost touch with nature, with the earth and the land. 

This is what I mean by Christian polytheism. Such a polytheism does not mean believing in many gods rather than one God. It means that under God there are many what we can justifiably call gods who carry out his work in creation. 

This is not too great a leap from where Christians already are, characterising them as angels, but angels are often regarded as somewhat abstract or, worse, sentimentalised. By seeing them as gods our minds can enter more deeply into the spiritual universe and the inside of creation. 

You could call them the inner energies of creation though with the understanding that behind these energies are beings not mere impersonal forces.

This could be envisaged as a way of understanding the two concepts included in the term "Romantic Christianity" - with "paganism" doing the work of "romantic". 

My understanding of Christianity being essentially about choosing to accept Jesus's offer of post-mortal resurrected eternal life in Heaven; is of course easily compatible with many aspects of paganism. 

I assume this is why it was so easy and straightforward for pagans to become Christian - they regarded Christianity as an addition, a bonus: paganism-plus. 

The main (and only essential) difference between what they already had from paganism, and what they would get with conversion to Christianity; was that Christianity offered the possibility of a Happy Ending beyond death. 

Christians reclaiming magic, occult and animism from the New Age

It will be easy for readers to misunderstand (or misrepresent) the following; so please read it carefully before jumping to conclusions about what I am advocating - it is somewhat different from what most others who have written on this theme have been advocating.


I came to Christianity late in life and via a decade or so of being a New Agey kind of person (but only in my reading, in my mind and private life - I have never been in any group) - and this grew from a lifelong feeling for myth, folklore, and the like.

From my Christian perspective, and from inside knowledge, it is crystal clear to me now that modern world of 'paganism' is set-up in on anti-Christian predicates, and most of its main writers and advocates are seedy, exploitative, devious and untrustworthy characters - with not many exceptions.

This was made clear yet again by reading The Book of English Magic by Philip Carr-Gomm and Richard Heygate, the text of which gave me a constant impression of camouflaged dishonesty and sordidness: the discernment of the heart warns me that the material described is emanating from an essentially (albeit not wholly) untrustworthy and ill-motivated subculture.


The New Age set-up has claimed for itself a vast swathe of paganistic stuff, and the New Age is mostly a mixture of airy fairy nonsense and nastyness of one sort or another (generally, the usual modern sex, alcohol and drugs stuff) - united only in its explicit and implict 'anything but Christianity is good' orientation; and it is therefore understandable that most Christians regard the whole subject with abhorrence as either fundamentally evil, or just too risky to be worth considering.

But I do not think this attitude is a viable option for modern Western Christians - I think that modern Western Christianity needs to reconnect with its animistic and pagan roots - and therefore the risk must be taken, and the good aspects of (for example) Shaminism, Witchcraft, Druidry, Magic, The Occult, Divinisation, Mediumship, Clairvoyance and so forth must be reclaimed from the New Age into a Christian context.

In this I follow CS Lewis who believed that Christianity was Paganism-plus - crudely put: real Christianity takes paganism and adds to it and completes it. The reason that this is not explicit from scripture is simply that it was so obvious to the people of the time that it did not need to be said.

The error of too many Christians has been and is to try and build a religion on what is distinctive to Christianity, deleting everything which is shared with paganism. This leads to a cold, detached, alienated, rationalistic Christianity that leaves the heart unsatisfied - and enables the New Age to monopolize many natural and spontaneous and good human aspirations.


My view is that it is simply not-an-option for Christians to dissociate from New Age preoccupations - and although it is risky to engage with them, Christians must recognize that there is no such thing as a safe path through life - risk cannot be avoided; and the attempt to avoid risk, is itself one of the deadliest of snares - often leading to a cold, heartless and covertly hate-driven species of pseudo-Christian zeal, which is all-too-common among self-identified Christians of past and present.

What I think would be best is for Christians to engage with this realm of 'paganism' insofar as each is drawn to it for good motivations; and insofar as their powers of discernment of the heart tell them that it is good, sweet and wholesome.

It is this discernment which must be cultivated, used and respected - it is the divinity within us that serves as a compass of good, and it will warn us if we are approaching wickedness or if we have taken a step into wickedness: then we must repent and turn-round to retrace our steps.


This is hazardous, but mortal life is hazardous. Men cannot avoid making mistakes; Men are not built to avoid making mistakes, nor is the world; but we can and should recognize when we have made mistakes; repent, and learn from that experience. We ought not to be afraid of life - and we ought not to be afraid of making a fool of ourselves - and then admitting that we have been fools!

This is not a matter of deliberately putting ourselves into the path of temptation! - a very stupid thing to do; but a matter of following our heart and being guided by our deepest discernment, meditations and prayers. Yes, we can deceive ourselves; yes we need help and guidance from informed others whom we can trust (if we happen to know of any such, but most people do not, and such people are seldom found in mainstream Christian churches) - but self-deception applies in every direction, and temptations into pride are just as strong on the path of strict and narrow 'Christian orthodoxy' as they are in exploration.


I fully recognize that some of the above arguments have been co-opted by Liberal Christians and actually-apostate but self-identified Christians to justify their conformity with the world of mainstream secular Leftism; but that path is taking Christianity into a world of politics and sexual revolution; as if such social and hedonic gratifications were our deepest contemporary need, rather than intrinsic with the very problem which needs addressing.

I am talking about a very different direction - the direction of personal contact with and participation-in the living universe.


Mainstream Christianity is, in general, an incomplete and unsatisfying thing; paralysed by the futile attempt to make life risk-free - and what we need is seldom to be found in any modern Western institutions - therefore of necessity we must explore, as responsible individuals, to find what we need to be alive and engaged with this world.


Note: The above was stimulated by a valuable conversation with the well-known reactosphere/ orthosphere pseudonymous blog commenter 'Thursday'; with whom I met for lunch last week while he was visiting my neck of the woods. 

Christianity in relation to paganism and monotheism

We can analyse paganism, monotheism and Christianity from the perspective of the implied relationship between Man and the divine (and an understanding of the nature of divine). 

Paganism is hugely varied, each tribe and locality having its own version, and most are fluid and loosely defined - with no real attempt to hold it constant. The gods (the many little 'g'-gods) are more powerful than, but not qualitatively different from, Men. The gods are subject to the same virtues and sins as Men; have the same kind of strengths and weaknesses - therefore the religion is one of divination and propitiation - of Men discerning the will of the gods, and attempting to influence the gods by flattery, sacrifice etc
 
Monotheistic religions (such as Judaism and Islam) have a creator deity - a capital-G God; and the practice is underpinned by obedience to that God (obedience to laws/ rules/ rituals as revealed by prophets who are merely mouthpieces of the divine). The relationship between Man and God is one of the infinitely-lesser submitting to the incomprehensibly-greater - and how people feel about this is pretty irrelevant. The religion is therefore one of practice, not belief; and the ethic one of strict adherence to the rules of practice.

(There is no divination or sacrifice in monotheism, as such - since God is so infinitely removed and great; that it would be impossible to understand, predict or influence such a God.)

What of Christianity? Well, although self-identified Christianity is often corrupted by Monotheistic or Pagan elements - the intrinsic nature of Christianity is different from either.

Christianity focuses on Jesus - and on the one hand Jesus was not 'a god' (as he might be in paganism - e.g. a god in human form) - because, for Christians, Jesus lived in a reality where there was a unified creator deity - a prime God who was not Jesus.

But Jesus was divine, and brought the teaching that all Men could (by following him) also become divine (via death and resurrection).

In what sense was Jesus, the Man, also divine? Because by some means - such as the divine spirit impregnating Jesus's Mother, or the divine spirit descending upon Jesus at baptism - Jesus the Man was made god. But not just made-into 'a' god; but made a god-creator who could, and does, work-with God the prime creator.

Therefore Jesus became 'fully divine'; that is, he eventually joined-with the divine creator in the work of creation, while remaining a Man; and Jesus made it possible for other Men to do the same.

So, Christianity takes the understanding of God as the single, original prime creator from monotheism; and takes the continuity between gods and Man (the possibility of a man becoming a god) from paganism, and made a new category of god-creator - the two being brought-together in and by the centrality of Jesus Christ.

(Of course, I am assuming here that Christianity is Obviously Not a type of monotheism; which many theologians have always asserted it is - fudging the issue by Trinitarian incoherence. Evidence for the wrongness of the idea of Christian monotheism is that when Christianity has been so regarded, it takes on the qualities of monotheism - becomes essentially like Judaism and/ or Islam; that is a religion of obedience, law, ritual, submission - as contrasted with being distinctively 'Christian', as Jesus was and taught.)

Was the British Celtic Church actually "Paganism with a veneer of Christianity" - or the opposite?

Edited from New light on the ancient mystery of Glastonbury, by John Michell, 1990 

Celtic Christianity has been called a mere reformation of Druidry. 

A unique and remarkable feature of the early Church in Britain in Ireland is that it claimed no martyrs through persecution by the religion it supplanted... 

The Druids had no difficulty in accepting the new religion, because it scarcely interfered with the existing religious and social order. 

The system of the early Church "was really Paganism with a veneer of Christianity". 

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I have often seen this written; however, I think it more likely that the opposite was true*. 

And the reason for such opposite interpretations is due to very different concepts of what Christianity actually is. 

If Christianity is essentially The Church, and Christendom (a Church dominated and permeated society) - then clearly the newly converted pagans must have only a superficial smattering - a veneer - of the new faith over an substructure that can only be Pagan. 

The newly converted Celtic British Christians did not have a trained and ordained hierarchy of priests - these must have been few, and far between. The Britons did not have a comprehensive coverage by churches offering the sacraments. Nor had they experienced Christian teaching, nor did they live under a system of societal laws in conformity with the Church's understanding.

Instead; there inevitably must have been (for many years) mostly the residue of whatever actually was the system of Druidic religion - its sacred places, its Druids, its practices, and the effects of generations of its teaching. 

Furthermore; Christians seem to have had a deliberate policy of taking-over and re-purposing Pagan shrines or gathering-places. This strategy extended to making Pagan gods into Christian Saints - the best evidenced of which is the Irish god Brigit becoming the famous and beloved Saint of the same name. 

Surely (so this argument goes) all this means that for many years the British were still essentially Pagan - surely, their Christianity was, at first, merely a veneer of Christianized language and symbolism (such as a cross inscribed or erected-upon a megalithic standing stone) on-top-of what long-remained a Pagan religion? 

But if Christianity is accepting Jesus as Saviour, desiring resurrection to eternal Heavenly life, and embracing the intent of living by Love... then none of the substructure of Paganism really matters. 

By this argument; what makes someone a Christian is the choice to "follow Jesus Christ" (with what that entails in a "cosmic", eternal, post-mortal sense) - and the rest of religion is, at best, an optional extra. 

 

Of course, there would have been many aspects of Druidic Paganism that conflicted-with and contradicted the basic of Christianity in Love. 

But that applied to the Christian Church as well - much of its actuality contradicts the essence of Christianity, and always has. 

So long as the newly-converted Christian sought resurrection into Heaven by following Jesus Christ; instead of seeking whatever it was that Druidic Paganism had previously promised (generally regarded as having been some kind of reincarnation, perhaps involving metempsychosis) - then I would argue that the new Celtic convert was fully Christian. 

I think there are lessons for Christians here-and-now. 

Any Christian needs to navigate a world - a world including whatever Church he belongs to, and whichever religion or ideology rules his society - that is substantially hostile to his deepest convictions. 

Yet none of this prevents him from being fully a Christian - if that is what he most desires to be.

As Jesus himself said: Christianity is for sinners, not perfect Men; and for this actual sinful world, not some ideal society. 

Society cannot prevent anyone from becoming and being Christian...

Because ultimately Christianity is "not of this world" - and because resurrection and Heaven cones from Jesus, not from this world. 

What we absolutely need to do, and must do, is to want it.

*Note: Certainly, the Celtic Christian era in the British Isles led - over the following centuries - to a greater number and (even more so) concentration of Saints (and great Saints, still remembered as patron Saints, in church and city foundations, and festivals) - like Cuthbert, Patrick, David, Kentigern/ Mungo, and Brigit) than at any other time in the history of these parts. 

A future for pagan religion? Laeth insights

 As a complement to William Wildblood's reflections on the potential value for Christians in what might be termed pagan-ism; Laeth makes an interesting point about the possibility of a future pagan religion in The West (edited): 

Jupiter stopped answering the Romans, and Jesus stopped answering the Christians. This is obvious. 

There is no power or magic left in the churches... 

Lots of people may say: "but my church is wonderful, we do this and do that, and so on". But that doesn’t change the fact that the spirit going through your local, or even home, church is not infecting and affecting the world the way Christianity as a whole thing did...

The fact is, no religion moves the West (and beyond) anymore. 

But it obviously did, as any look into history will show. 

Look around: the remnants of that incredibly strong motivation are still here. We like to visit such places. But we don’t do there what our ancestors did; and even when we do, we don’t feel like they did doing it.

C. S. Lewis, I think, once said that this was doubly true for paganism; that if we are removed from Christianity, we are even more so from paganism. 

But now I think it’s pretty much the same. That "gap" has been closed. 

The more a body decomposes, the more it looks like the one next to it.

That point about the "gap" between Christianity and pagan religions having closed strikes me as a genuine insight from Laeth. 

It is probably what underpins such pagan revivalism as has been evident over the past half century or so: Wiccan witchcraft; Druidism; Shamanism; and revivals of neo-Celtic, -Norse, or -Anglo-Saxon polytheistic rituals and symbolism - and the like.

This has been possible because - experientially - such invented neo-paganism is overall, pretty much, just as motivating and powerful as Christianity... 

The trouble is that this level power and motivation is Not Enough - in either case.

So that Christianity and the varieties of paganism are way too feeble to overcome pre-existing political beliefs.

So that both Christianity and paganisms now operate at the level of lifestyle, hobbies, fandoms - and do not do what religion historically "obviously did". 

From such a recognition we may look back into history and recognize that - in terms of theosis (i.e. learning and developing spiritually during mortal life) and salvation (resurrection into Heaven after death) - None Of This Matters. 

Christianity was essentially not/ never supposed-to-be a socio-economic state programme. 

And it was supposed to be possible for all individuals who wanted what Jesus offered; regardless of their time, place, or personal circumstances. 

Pagan missionaries?

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I sometimes think we need pagan missionaries, almost as much as we need Christian missionaries. Indeed they could be the same people - adjusting their strategy.

Christian missionaries are very good at converting pagans, but nobody seems able to convert modern secular hedonists.

The jump between secular hedonism is too great - between believing whatever you like to believing a complex set of interlocking propositions (which perhaps don't make any better sense than secular hedonism unless they are all present and correct).

But maybe, simple paganism could be restored - and later on the person might be amenable to Christianity?

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Simple paganism is the natural, spontaneous understanding of the world we had when children; and then there is also the complex philosophical paganism of the Ancient Greeks.

Intellectuals ought to be able to follow the logic of Plato or Aristotle to discover that there must be a god (or gods) for the universe to cohere at a very basic explanatory level.

This god/s is not, of course, the Christian God (although Christians might consider  them to be angels). It is not a personal God, and it is not a loving God - indeed it is not even a creator God (it is a mistake to try and prove the necessity of a creator God to an atheist - this necessity was not apparent to Plato or Aristotle so why should modern butterfly intellectuals be compelled by the argument?).

What I am suggesting is that missionaries stop - for a while - at the necessity of god/s - and refrain from pushing straight on to God.

At any rate, if modern intellectuals can be got as far as the intelligent pagans of the Greek and Roman era, that would be an enormous advance in Truth.

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And if the mass of ordinary people could be got as far as paganism (even if they denied Christian revelation) - then there is something-to-work on, and a perspective from which Christian conversion might happen in the blink of an eye.

But so long as the modern Western populations are distracted 24/7 by media and gossip and drugs and busyness and the deliberate derangements imposed by the Left... well, for so long no reasoning at all is possible, apparently, no illogic too extreme; and from this unrepentant state where even the need for repentance and the fact that there is anything even in principle to repent seems unclear - Christianity seems almost impossibly remote.

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Six problems for modern Christian apologists - and a solution?

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Historical Christianity came into an already religious world and won converts from Jews and then pagans - the modern situation of converting secular, materialist, utilitarian hedonists is very different:

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1. Paganism absent

Christianity is a much bigger jump from secular modernity than from paganism. Christianity seemed like a completion of paganism - a step or two further in the same direction and building on what was already there: souls and their survival beyond death, the intrinsic nature of sin, the activities of invisible powers and so on. With moderns there is nothing to build on (except perhaps childhood memories or alternative realities glimpsed through art and literature).

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2.  Incomplete

Modern Christianity as experienced by converts tends to be incomplete - precisely because modern Christianity has nothing to build on. This means that modern incomplete Christianity lacks explanatory power, seems to have little or nothing to say about what seem to be the main problems of living. For example, modern Christianity seems to have nothing to do with politics, law, art, philosophy or science; to inhabit a tiny, shrinking realm cut-off from daily concerns. Modern Christianity often deletes miracles; original sin; the virgin birth, the incarnation and dual nature of Christ; Christ's death, resurrection and atonement; the Holy Trinity; angels, demons and unseen spiritual warfare and so on - yet without these and other elements, Christianity does not really hang-together nor does it satisfy human yearning.

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3. Shallowness.

Modern Christianity often feels shallow - it seems to rely on diktat of scripture and the Church - this is because moderns lack a basis in the spontaneous perceptions of Natural Law, animism, the sense of active supernatural power in everyday life. Modern Christianity (after the first flush of the conversion experience) thus feels dry, abstract, legalistic, prohibitive, uninvolving, lacking in purpose. 

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4. Judaism absent.

Modern Christianity has to do without the centuries of Jewish tradition developing an understanding of the nature of God, the prophets and their prophecies, the devotional life of the Psalms etc; but modern Christians have to discover all this from scratch and for themselves, and often do not.

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5. Confusion.

Modern life is hedonic, distracted - often drugged. Consequently people are often unclear about the nature of life. On top of this, in recent decades the prevalent ruling culture has been actively against the Good. Modern art is anti-beauty, modern philosophies are anti-truth, modern morality is an inversion of Natural Law. Propaganda (implicit and explicit) inculcates that the spontaneous ideals of humans (native religion, sex differentials, family, nation, loyalty, courage) are wrong. In sum moderns are deeply (deliberately) confused about deep matters. Therefore, modern Christian apologists have to explain the human condition, the basic nature of life; before explaining how Christianity is the answer.

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6. Anti-Christian inoculation

The ruling culture now inoculates specifically against Christianity and the prerequisites of Christianity. It supplies ready-made arguments grounded in modern materialist hedonism to be used against all evidence or steps in argument that might lead to Christianity if rigorously followed. Christian apologetics cannot advance one step without eliciting these slogans, and modern impatience, distractability and a short attention span does the rest. That these hedonic materialist arguments are circular, incoherent and ungrounded is irrelevant in practice; because they effectively block the development of an alternative metaphysics from which their invalidity would be apparent.

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In sum - modern Christianity lacks both pull and push - it lacks the pull which comes from people being grounded in Paganism and Judaism; and it lacks the push of being a complex and complete explanation of the human condition, relations, meanings and purposes.  If apologists both know and also attempt to supply all of this, to supply the depth and completeness of Christianity, they find they cannot do so all at once. If they try to be exact and comprehensive, the apologist comes-up against the modern inability to follow a long and complex line of argument; yet if he tries to present Christianity all at once then what can be communicated is inevitably a gross simplification: incomplete and shallow.

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So what is the answer? If the fullness is too complex and the essence is incomplete?

And since people cannot become like pagans or ancient Jews - from where could they start?

Perhaps as children again, children re-awoken and reborn in us; since children have spontaneously the prerequisites which our culture fails to provide and has suppressed:

Mark 10.13-16

And they brought young children to him, that he should touch them: and his disciples rebuked those that brought them.
 
But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.

Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.


*


How strange that children should be our repositories of ancient wisdom - and childhood memories the basis of salvation; but there it is, explicitly - Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein....


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Neo-pagans (and modern pagans) are guilty of extreme double-standards with respect to "Christianity"

I have read a great deal of modern pagan and/or neo-pagan writings; and have some acquaintance with such people. Indeed at one time, for several years and some twenty years ago-plus, that is what I might well have called myself. 

This movement is, unfortunately, permeated and motivated by a resentment against Christianity that ranges from cold contempt to burning indignation - a phenomenon that leads to the deep and perception-structuring bias I have termed "anything but Christianity".  

I have recently been exploring some different and new (to me) avenues and individuals within the neo/ pagan world; and was again struck by this structuring bias. 

This anti-Christianity is expressed so strongly that one would suppose that the writers and speakers had been brought-up in either a medieval theocracy or the Puritan Geneva of Calvin - or (often) some unholy combination of the two... Instead of actually having been raised in one of the overwhelmingly atheist-materialist nations of the West; during the 1940s, 50s, or 60s! 

Furthermore, this is combined with depictions of the pagan past so fantastically wishful that they seem to have derived from Pollyanna wearing rose-tinted spectacles in Disneyland!

Anything and everything bad in reports of the pagan past is ascribed to spiteful Christian misrepresentation; anything and everything good about past Christian societies is attributed to residual paganism!  

What seems to be happening is that these folk are approaching "paganism" from within themselves: in a creative spirit directed at individual participation...

While simultaneously regarding and representing Christianity in the most literal, institutional, external terms; focusing on sometimes-real but "worst case" scenarios of tyranny, cruelty and atrocity; and making their definitions and descriptions of "Christianity" citing the most childish and/or obviously-manipulative time, places, and sources.   

They subjectively engage-with "paganism" in highly positively-selective, personal and optimistic fashion; while adopting a detached, cynical and condemnatory attitude to negatively-selective, cut-and-dried, "Christianity". 

While this is very, very obvious to me (especially given my history); almost by definition there is no persuading against such attitudes - which are common to much of modern life; and which pagans share with the mainstream of atheist materialists. 

Yet is is atheist materialists who run this world and have done so for many decades; and atheist materialists therefore are, or ought to be, the real spiritual enemies of sincere pagans...

In other words, by their revealed preferences and their ludicrous insistence on fighting dead battles and wars that Christianity lost long ago; pagans (despite any counter protestations) are actually of-the-Left and of-the-mainstream. 

Pagans indeed share the characteristically and definitively Left fundamental concern with this-worldly hedonism and therapy - i.e. seeking personal pleasures and happiness here-and-now, alleviating personal miseries and suffering; justified by a utilitarian altruistic ideology of "making this world a better place". 

What I eventually did, and would suggest to others; is that they instead approach Christianity in something of the same positive, subjective and engaged spirit with which they approach paganism; which ought to be a spirit of discovery and creativity. 

Why are we not pagans?

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I agree with C.S. Lewis that paganism is the default spiritual state for thoughtful humans.

Reason plus human nature = paganism

But clearly modern Western man is not pagan. Why?

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The answer (very briefly) is that intellectuals are deficient in human nature.

Probably for evolutionary reasons - to do with the rapid evolution of higher general intelligence in high latitude large scale agricultural societies -

the most intelligent people...

(especially - perhaps - the most intelligent women -
http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.com/2010/02/why-are-women-so-intelligent.html )

...had the greatest reproductive success in these societies.

Ref: http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/a_farewell_to_alms.html

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This created an intellectual elite which is deficient in 'common sense' and with an over-strong tendency to favour abstraction.

For intellectuals 'human nature' is much weaker; and there is a strong tendency towards denial of the soul, denial of transcendental goods; towards materialism, this-worldism, agnosticism and atheism. 

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When this intellectual class became the ruling class ('meritocracy'), they progressively imposed their atheism on the rest of the population via the mass media - initially via newspapers, magazines, books and lectures and later by the modern mass media.

That is why we are not pagans.

Remove the mass media, or remove the intellectual ruling class - and we revert to paganism.

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At least for a while - but (all else being equal), monotheism will sooner or later overcome paganism (by its potentially superior social organization, perhaps; by its higher chosen fertility more certainly).

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Is following Christ truly a case of "Myth made fact" - Is Christianity, indeed, "a myth" at all?

CS Lewis's conversion, as is pretty well known, had much to do with an idea he got (mostly) from JRR Tolkien that in Christianity Myth became Fact. In other words; that various of the myths of the ancient world came true in the incarnation, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

This is one reason why Lewis regarded Christianity as the completion of paganism (as well as of Judaism) - because in essence it took much of paganism and transformed it by the addition of specifically Christian values - in particular "Faith, Hope, and Charity".

I was greatly influenced by this idea in my own conversion to Christianity; but have now come to regard the "Christian myth" as a misleading distortion of what Jesus actually did and taught. 

My interpretation nowadays is that Christianity is in its essence about the possibility of following Jesus to resurrected eternal life in Heaven - and that this was something new under the sun: an unique possibility; that was (at its core) neither foreshadowed nor foreseen among the ancient religions: neither among Jews nor among Pagans.  

I agree with Lewis that Christianity can be and actually was (especially in the earliest years of Jesus's ministry and the early period after his ascension) an add-on, easily adopted by Jews and Roman or Greek pagans alike...

But I think the reason for this was not because Christianity was aligned with Jewish expectations of the Messiah, nor that it was a completion of Greco-Roman Paganism - but simply because Christianity was a new idea about what happened after death. 

At least initially, therefore, a new Christian convert could (and apparently did) continue to practise his previous this-worldly religion; but with the additional expectation of resurrected eternal life after death...

Instead of (for instance) dying in expectation of the underworld ghost-life of Sheol or Hades, or returning by some version of reincarnation. 

Of course, Christianity as it became, developed and accreted very large and complex mythic elements - for example about Jesus's miraculous conception and early life, and expectation of his second coming. 

So Christianity-as-is has mythical aspects with all sorts of derivations and similarities to other mythic religions. 

But I believe that this was not the case originally, as Jesus lived and taught. 

And presumably this was a major reason why people found it so very difficult to understand what Jesus was actually telling then - i.e. they could not (or would not) discard their existing myths, such as The Messiah. 

And either rejected Jesus for failing to embody the prior myth, or adapted the prior myth to fit Jesus - or else adapted what Jesus did to fit the prior myth (as with the Second Coming, notion) 

I don't know if others agree; but in the IV Gospel I see Jesus trying to tell people something very simple and clear - which they repeatedly fail to comprehend; and this, in part, because they are caught-up in already-existing religious assumptions including myths. 

After Jesus's ascension, things could have (should have, perhaps) gone in the direction of the Christian after-death expectation being added-onto various existing religions - and then modifying their content in a kind of retrospective way (as the expectation of resurrected Heavenly life worked upon the pre-existing religion).

However, this did not happen; and instead Christianity became so elaborated by mythic elements that its clear and simple essence was swamped; but also the confident expectation of being able to choose resurrection was inverted - into the necessity to submit to the judgment of God/Christ-as-King to be-fearfully-hoping to be chosen as worthy of inclusion in Heaven. 

Only in recent generations has it become conceptually and consciously possible to understand that Christianity does not need to be regarded as a true myth; but instead Jesus's work can be recognized as a cosmic transformation, a new post-mortal possibility: a Second Creation -- accessible to those who commit to following Jesus, into and beyond the transformation of resurrection.

For the modern West en route to Christ, Imagination is the middle term

It is absolutely necessary that we in The West become a Christian society again; which means nothing less and nothing more than many, many people making that personal choice.

On the one hand, nothing could stop them - it might happen now, this very moment!... But on the other hand the realistic possibility seems ever more remote - the trends of decline certainly seem to be inexorable.

It ought to be (one would suppose) an easy thing to swap meaninglessness, purposelessness and existential isolation for a transformed and deepened life, and swap despair for hope - but it doesn't happen. People feel trapped into their situation by what seems to them realism, honesty and reason.  

Modern society is characterized by secular, alienated nihilism - that is what most people are, this is solid, and it is what the public sphere is and enforces - especially the mass media but also the systems of law, education and employment. Secular - meaning we don't believe in divinity; alienated in that we are existentially alone in an indifferent universe; nihilistic in that reality seems unreal - and truth, beauty and virtue merely temporary and malleable matters of opinion.

This complex of beliefs, or dis-beliefs, work together to ensure that anything so complex as Christianity never reaches the point of being comprehended sufficiently that people are in a position to make a choice about it. Every attempt towards making an argument, or towards experiencing an insight, is shot-down, piecemeal, a little bit at a time; using secularism, alienation or nihilism in rotation.

(The length of time it takes to state the argument for Christianity is longer than the attention span which individuals will either permit, or of which they are capable.)

So, people are mostly stuck in a state of profound demotivation. Nothing good seems true; truth itself seems insecure - the only thing they are sure about is that they are unsure. The only thing they are certain about is the impossibility of certainty. Their only dogmatic rationality is that the whole subject of Christianity is irrational - aside from that, their irrationality is dogmatic and celebrated.


My point is that people cannot go from where they are directly to Christianity - there has to be a middle term.

To go from modern secular culture to Christianity is experienced as a negative step - from freedom to constraint, from possibility to narrowness, from universal and unbounded compassion to a difficult balance - from fluidity, clarity and simplicity to hardness, difficulty, complications...

So I suggest Imagination as the middle term - Christians perhaps need to be aware of this, and not be impatient to push straight on to Christianity, but to take Imagination itself seriously - have faith that from where we are now Imagination is progress.

Here =>  Imagination =>  Where we want to be (Christianity)

The thing is that imagination is as simple as is effective for that person, and a complex as they find rewarding. All we need to do is make clear that Imagination is Real.

We do not need to say how it is real, or in what specifics it is real, because typically we do not know. But we need to say that Imagination is real, and should be taken seriously.


When people engage in Imagination, they are in fact doing one of the most valuable things that they could possibly be doing. Imagination is, in fact - and especially in our society, and especially now - more important than almost anything else a person could be doing.

In fact - as a general rule, for most people most of the time - Imagination is more important than doing.

Most people ought to do a lot less, and Imagine a lot more.


The thing is, once Imagination is taken seriously and regarded as real, it is highly motivating; and the motivation it generates comes from within - a person absorbed by, seized by, Imagination is a person who has a thing that has become precious and rare - he has inside him, like a glowing coal, a sense of meaningfulness and direct contact with the world.

As Christians we know that Imagination - in this sense - is incomplete; for a start it lacks purpose; and ultimately it lacks Christ. But the necessity of Christ and an understanding of purpose is something that can only be known by a person who has gone so far as to acknowledge the reality of Imagination.

The early Christians had paganism to build upon; and the benefits of Christianity were added onto existing paganism. We have lost even paganism and are trying to build on the quicksands of secular, alienated nihilism. We cannot do it - but we can build on the foundations of a man who regards Imagination as real and true - or rather, that man can build on his own foundations.


Objective Imagination is obviously superior to mainstream modernity; and Christianity is obviously superior to Imagination once you have reached the point of acknowledging the reality of Imagination: Imagination is a middle term which renders the path to Christianity a progress of win now-win later.

In becoming a devotee of the Imagination we win, and in then moving on to understand and become Christian (that it, to understand the nature of reality and purpose) we win again. But that second step first needs a solid basis in Imagination - not to be fiddling and quibbling about Imagination, but to have faith in it.

That will happen, but it is a long way ahead, and a long way off. In the meantime, let us do what we can to sustain a realistic and serious attitude to Imagination - let us value and support Imagination in its many aspects and activities and inactivities - let us build faith in Imagination.

Robin Redbreast (1971) - notice and context

I don't suppose any readers will have seen, or even heard about, Robin Redbreast - a BBC television play from 1971; which has been re-released on DVD by the British Film Institute, and which I watched on Amazon Prime.

My interest in this obscure corner of the media was that Robin Redbreast seems to have been the first example of a genre that had a fairly big impact on me as a teenager - which is the idea that in remote rural communities, paganism has either been sustained or sometimes revived by a local leader.

This re-imagined ('neo') paganism is portrayed in a way that is both attractive - because of its naturalness and the intensity it evokes (also, its transgressive sexuality is regarded positively); yet also sinister or even horrific, because of its ruthlessness, manipulativeness, and use of scapegoating and human sacrifice - there is considerable ambiguity.

In RR the spiritual leader is called Mr Fisher (presumably a reference to the Fisher King) - a superb, understated acting performance by Bernard Hepton which lifts the whole drama - but we are not told whether he has revived the old traditions or whether they never died out, and he merely sustains them.

Throughout the play, the female protagonist gradually discovers that there is a surface facade of modern normality, but beneath that the villagers have archetypal roles; and are replaying what they regard to be an ancient and necessary ritual. I'll say no more about what happens in case readers wish to see for themselves.

The most famous example of the genre established by Robin Redbreast, although I didn't know about it at the time (because it was adult rated), was The Wicker Man movie of 1973.

But for me, examples would be The Owl Service and Red Shift by Alan Garner; and The Children of the Stones on TV. There were non-fiction books too: Robert Graves's White Goddess and the oral histories of George Ewart Evans (e.g. The Pattern under the Plough), and Colin Wilson's 'occult' series. 

(A website listing and describing this cultural phenomenon can be found linked from this post.)  

Perhaps most important to me was a Reader's Digest encyclopaedia called Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain - published in 1973. The idea was that many examples of traditional folklore, myths, legends, children's songs, dances, the 'ritual year' etc - were pagan survivals; and therefore a living link to our ancient past.

For example, the author Terry Pratchett grew up in this environment and this is one basis of his discworld - in its rural aspects, anyway. Pratchett describes Morris Dancers as having a vital role in sustaining the cycle of seasons, and describes uncanny things going-on during The Morris. This was mainstream in the 1970s, and referenced on record sleeves and notes to the Morris Dance music (from which I learned by ear many tunes that I still play on my squeezebox).

Forty-something years on, and the pendulum has swung to the opposite end; and the folklorists now assume that nothing is ancient; and everything is a recent and self-conscious revival. If there is not a written historical account of something, then it is assumed to have been absent.

This view arose because it was discovered that 'traditions' that had been invented at known times by specific known individuals, can very quickly have their origins forgotten and become regarded as having 'always' existed.

However, this specific situation has rapidly become a general assumption - and Folklore is nowadays mostly a cynical exercise is debunking and disenchantment. For instance, Morris Dancing is now supposedly 'nothing but' an ignorant and crude peasant's copy or parody of the sophisticated, urban, courtly dancing of the Tudor period, or thereabouts.

Consequently modern Folklore has ceased to be an artistic inspiration; has ceased to be of any but professional interest...

This is why the seventies remains interesting; especially in Britain - as the time of the last vestige of mainstream media (and population) 'spirituality' - albeit of a debased kind. And why Robin Redbreast remains worth watching.

Characteristics of an anti-PC, populist, common sense political party

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With the profound weakness of orthodox types of Christianity in the West (due to their long term corruption by Liberalism) - the main opposition to Political Correctness currently comes from populist, reactionary, common sense, secular groups (of which the best known is the Tea Party in the US; but perhaps there are also somewhat analogous groups in Western Europe).

From my Christian perspective I regard any such grouping as seriously sub-optimal - indeed at best a temporary expedient.

Nonetheless, supposing that common sense secularism was actually to become powerful - what then? Could it, would it provide a better alternative future than PC? What would that future be?

This can be predicted by considering the probable characteristics of such a grouping - and weighing-up the pros and cons.

*

Since so much of Western society is now corrupted by Liberalism and implicated in PC, such a group would have to come from outside this - and in rejecting the psychotic delusionality of PC it would need to offer a common sense alternative which would be obvious to plain, middling, productive people outwith the intelligentsia and their underclass of state-dependents.

And since it would be reactive, we can infer its main features.

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Here is a non-exhaustive list (in no particular order) of characteristics of a possible Common Sense (CS) party contrasted with the PC party:

Reality is real and fixed v reality is relative and plastic
Direct force v indirect propaganda
Face to face v mass media
Concrete v abstract
Immediate v ultimate
Instinctive v educated
Popular culture v High art
Practical v theoretical
Can-do technology v professional science
White v Non-white
Hereditary versus cultural
Native v immigrant
Apprenticeship v formal education
Men v women
Recognition v certification
Selfish v altruistic
Personal authority v bureaucratic procedure
Het v homo
Heart v head
Gut v intellect
National v international
Tribal v favouring the 'other'
Familial and nepotistic v universalist
Real v ideal
Rough justice v procedural law
Spontaneous morality v moral inversion
Courage v tolerance
Loyalty v subversion
Useful to others/ mundane v  self-developmental/ useless
Productive/ money-grubbing v ideologically-sound/ parasitic
Duties v rights
Charity v needs
Accepting hierarchy v working-towards equality

&c.

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In place of the PC ideal of impersonal procedural bureaucracy, a CS party would probably favor personal authority - and since the personal authority is based on an ethic of tribal selfishness it would inevitably lead to corruption and nepotism - since these emerge spontaneously.

*

So which is the best of this unappealing choice?

Well, it depends on what will happen, and what we would regard as the likely outcome.

The worst future political outcome I can forsee is probably not 'mere' chaos - which would allow the emergence of a better-organized and transcendentally-motivated Christian society;  but the imposition of a powerful, totalitarian, autocratic, theocratic rule by 'others' which might be hard/ impossible to shift once established.

And this is precisely the prospect which PC not only fails to prevent but actively facilitates.

*

So, if this calculation is correct, a secular commonsense party would be preferable to PC - partly for fear of something much worse, and partly on the basis that it would not last; but would soon (spontaneously) become pagan (because paganism is the default of humans left to their own devices); and paganism could then plausibly be converted to Christianity.

This contains the unpalatable suggestion - especially unpalatable for religious conservative intellectuals such as myself, who value highly the best in history, philosophy, literature, music, the arts and sciences etc -of supporting a kind of 'know nothing' party, for whom anti-intellectuality would be a core value.

Of having to choose to go along with something profoundly disliked, for fear of something intolerable.

This is, of course, what happens when a nation has chosen short-termist expediency again and again and again for decade after decade - shirking and avoiding tough choices.

*

The above bleak analysis is based on the assumption (which I hope is false, but suspect is not) that we cannot (in practice, given the scale of modern corruption) go directly from PC to the kind of sustainable society based on truth that I would prefer - but only indirectly.

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Christmas considerations - Pagan and Christian

Not my picture; but winter 1962-3, snowball fight in Torbay, Devon - the first Christmas I'm sure I remember

There is much of the meaning of Christmas that is Pagan* - in the sense of being a celebration of this-worldly and mortal life. The decorations, feasting, presents, family, light-in-darkness, warmth-in-cold - all of these can make Christmas a truly joyous time for a child who is unaware of Christianity in any meaningful way. 

Christmas could, thus far, be considered a celebration of the positive aspects of our life on earth. 

Yet, Christmas also leads to much nostalgia, and considerable regret. 

As the years roll-by, and Christmas becomes clouded by experience of many losses - not least, memories of the loss of the unalloyed happiness possible only to young children. 

With age and experience; the happier has been the Christmas, the sadder its passing. 

We celebrate this life and world, but with a growing awareness that all is temporary, and all will be destroyed sooner or later. 

Intoxication (of one sort or another) can push this awareness under for a while, but it will always return. 

If not before or during; post-Christmas comes the blues. A recognition of the other side of this mortal life; of entropy (degeneration, disease, death) - and of evil. 

That is when the Christian aspect of Christmas can do its work. The celebrations of Pagan Christmas are real and valuable, but the sorrow will win in the end; unless there is more and better to come. 

Then Christmas can be enjoyed whole-heartedly - by grown-ups, as well as young children. 

*Note: There is much of value in paganism - but only in the context of being-a-Christian. It is bizarre, therefore, for Christians (of all people!) to be afraid/ dismissive/ rejecting of paganism! 

Utopian religion (and the Christian utopia defined)

Religions that successfully seek volunteer converts may do so by offering a 'utopia' - or at least a better situation than the convert currently has - this seems like the right thing to do, as a first step (of course it is not the only thing to do).

So for Christians seeking converts, it is worth establishing very early whether a person realizes that they should be expecting eternal life (that is what will happen to them) - specifically eternal life as them-selves potentially perfected, in a perfected resurrected body; and then to establish whether they want that life to be as a Son or Daughter of God (that is, as a substantially divine personage)?

And that this 'God' under discussion is a God of Love, primarily and always. And love means relationships.

Mormons need to make clear that they are 'offering' an eternal family life.


If a potential convert does not want to live as a Son or Daughter to a Loving God - if they have some other hope or preference (e.g. for solitude, or to have their self-consciousness dissolved into bliss) then they probably don't want to be Christian.

So, perhaps Christians need to start by sketching out their Utopia, stating clearly This Is What We Offer.

So first the religious utopia, and only then the decision; first know and understand the claims of religion, and only then, proceed to the evaluation of those claims.


1. First understand the advantages - the Pros

2. Then understand the disadvantages - the Cons (the requirements of a convert, the limitations etc).

3. Only then, if the potential convert likes the sound of it, only if the religion offers to provide something that he or she wants, the potential convert should investigate the truth and validity of these claims.

After all, what is the point of evaluating something you do not want; how can you know if you want it when you do not know what it is; how can you evaluate something you neither know about nor understand?


My point is that there is no point in discussing the truth of Christianity or evidence for or against the validity of Christianity until after Christianity has been understood. It is a waste of time and opportunity. And Christianity ought to be understood in terms of what Christianity offers, not in terms of anything else.

In particular it is an error to try and prove that Christianity is true, before a person has decided whether they want it to be true, or understand what it is.

And what Christianity is, has not much to do with theology and a great deal to do with what happens after you die.


This is nothing new, but was probably the usual way that Christian converts were won from paganism in the early centuries of the church. The missionary or evangelist would start by demonstrating that Christianity offered more, far more, than paganism.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/life-sparrows-flight-converting-pagan.html

They started by making clear the fact that (as Blaise Pascal stated so clearly in his Pensees), if they understand it, most people would want Christianity to be true.


And if people have not realized that fact - i.e. that if Christianity was true, then they would want it - then they probably don't understand Christianity - although, as I say above a minority people do not want what Christianity offers because they do not want to remain persons or do not want to become divinized or live with God or their families - In sum, there are people who do not want to continue having relationships after death.

But Christianity is mostly about loving relationships continued after death - that is the Christian utopia; and if people do not want loving relationships at the heart of their eternal lives. then Christianity is not for them.