Godless

PAGAN: n. one who is not a Christian, Muslim, or Jew; one who professes no religious belief

“Pagan” has undergone an interesting transformation. In ancient times, the Latin pagus referred to “country people, provincials, rural dwellers.” Around 1300, it referred to “a person of non-Christian or non-Jewish” faith, and by 1568, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, its adjectival form meant “not belonging to a nation or community that acknowledges the true God.” The current definition first appeared in 1908 and has since been chiefly applied to pantheists and nature worshipers.

Nineteenth-century philologists speculated that the religious sense arose from the fact that city dwellers adopted Christianity faster than rural dwellers, who persisted in worshiping the Greco-Roman pantheon. More recent scholars favor the suggestion that it derives from Roman military jargon, in which paganus referred to mere civilians, or what we might today call “country bumpkins.” Indeed, both Augustine and Tertullian used paganus in this manner.

Theological & Moral Relativism

Today, John Daniel Davidson observes that a broader range of meaning has come into play. In Pagan America: The Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come,he writes, “The term ‘pagan’ . . . refers rather to an entire system of belief, which holds that truth is relative and that we are therefore free to ascribe sacred or divine status to the here and now, to things or activities, even to human beings if they’re powerful enough.” A central pillar of this new paganism holds that, “since nothing is true, everything is permitted.”

For example, abortion advocates presuppose that a child’s right to life is not an inalienable moral absolute but is a relative matter on which the mother alone makes a choice based on her morality and desires. In other words, it is not the child’s God-given life that is sacred and inviolable but, as Howard Moody, ordained minister in the American Baptist Churches and the United Church of Christ, put it, “The right to choose is a God-given right with which persons are endowed.”¹

Against the rise of this lawless relativism, Davidson contends that it was the teachings of Christianity that led to the tenets of classical liberalism and the concept of rights to begin with. While our classically liberal founders believed that the survival of the new republic depended on the influence of Judeo-Christian religion and morality, the demands of the new paganism eschew this influence and insist instead that religion must be a private matter.

Christianity Vis-à-Vis the New Paganism

Through acts of love and compassion, Christianity supplanted the concept that might makes right, the sexual exploitation of both adults and children, and ultimately the institutions of slavery. Though rulers and individuals might defy Christian morality, its power shaped the intellectual and spiritual lives of those who embraced it, giving rise to our concept of human rights, along with our sense of the good and the true and the created beauty expressed in all the arts.

The word that started as a dismissive label for backwoods country bumpkins may best describe the aggressive progressivism that now amalgamates scientism (not science), a new sacrificial system (abortion), and a new salvation (transhumanism), along with a host of perversions such as transgenderism and pedophilia.

Post-Enlightenment thinkers sought to enjoy the temporal gifts of Christianity while rejecting their spiritual wellspring. It was an impossible endeavor, and it is failing before our eyes. Only Christianity can stand against the new paganism as it once stood against the old. To the new pagans who say, “resistance is futile,” the Christian can reply in Christ’s own words that even “the gates of hell shall not prevail.”

Note
1. Samira Kawash, “Holy Abortion,” First Things (December 2023).