What is paganism?

Defining the opportunity.

I recently published an essay asking whether it was best to understand the culture of the global west as “pre-pagan or post-Christian?” Some have suggested it might be a bit of both.

But one of the most common questions I received from readers of that article was a very simple one: What is paganism? (Or, what is neo-paganism?)

Admittedly, even contemporary scholars of paganism struggle with providing a one size fits all definition. I have found it most helpful to look for shared features that seem to be present in the bulk of “pagan” expressions.

When we look for common features, I believe that we find four:

• An extreme view of divine immanence: The idea that the divine is present all around in the things of this world.

• A sacralized view of creation: Creation is divine.

• A belief in the connectedness of all things: Philosophically we would say that paganism trends towards monism - the idea that all things are really just made up of one substance. More practically, the idea here is that pagans belief that the whole world is cosmically connected, but without any intrinsic purpose.

• A belief in the power of ritual: The idea that religion is more about spiritual practice than theological belief.

Neo-paganism might feel like a bowl of spaghetti, but identifying these shared features make it more accessible to engage for Christians. While it would be too much to say that there is a singular coherent worldview that all neo-pagans share, there are enough commonalities among the majority of those who make up the neo-pagan communities to begin to sketch an approach to engagement. The neo-pagan generally, and the Wiccan practitioner specifically, has embraced a radically immanent view of the divine. Locating the sacred inside of the self or in some facet of the material world they inhabit.

Ever since Charles Taylor’s publication of A Secular Age, there has been a growing interest in the question of enchantment in the west. Summarizing Taylor’s argument in that book exceeds the scope of this present essay, but Taylor believes, “In general, the more alienated from the modern age, the more fiercely one condemns it, the more likely one is to adopt and pine for a really Christian order.” Essentially, Taylor agrees with C.S. Lewis’ there are three kinds of people here at the crumbling of modernity: those who are sick and don’t know it: the post Christians; those who are sick and know it: the pagans; and those who have found the cure.

Because of the clear supernatural character of the Christian worldview, many Christians thinkers have greeted the possibility of re-enchantment in the west as an uncomplicated good; but the growth of neo-pagan practice is an indication that the crumbling of modernity might send people scattering to hang their hopes on false and wicked solutions. As Peter Leithart has warned,

After all, there’s enchantment, and then there’s enchantment. Not every mystery should be plumbed. Tales aren’t true just because they poke scientific naturalism in the eye…Christianity [was] the original force of disenchantment: That’s a powerful reason to think twice about re-enchantment.

An enchanted worldview, one that holds open the possibility or the preference of the existence of immaterial forces or beings, presents new opportunities for Christian mission in the global west. Much of the missiological conversation of this century has been focused on preparing the church to engage a post-Christian culture, but it’s more than possible that a better way of understanding our cultural moment is pre-pagan.

If the growth of neo-pagan belief and practice continues, the Christian church should look to the desire for a proximate divine as an effective point of contact. The pagans around us may go looking for spirits in candlelit circles or at the knotted roots of old trees, but the church is the living witness to the God who “became flesh and dwelt among us.” (John 1:14) Could it be that the joy of every longing pagan heart, the true fulfillment of the neo-pagan aspiration of an immanent divine that transforms humans into supernatural glory, is Jesus Christ?