The Pagan Revival

Our post-Enlightenment age, for all its devotion to a purely mechanistic worldview that dismisses spiritual reality as superstition, has been unable to check the rebirth of ancient faith and ritual that never completely died out. Although suppressed for hundreds of years in Western civilization, ancient paganism is enjoying a resurgence among many hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people who are rejecting their nominal and ineffectual attachments to Christendom. The development of an entirely pagan culture in our postchristian world now spans the globe and encompasses an innumerable variety of primitive and contemporary alternative spiritualities found represented in many ancient civilizations. Our secular society views these developments with a relativistic indiffference while the Christian Church now finds itself once again confronted by the same type of alien gods and goddesses that challenged it in the first three centuries.  

The forms these pagan spiritualities take are many. Perhaps the most well known in  the U.S. are the advances of the Wiccan and the Pagan movements, drawn from a variety of traditions ranging from the Celtic to the Egyptian. Other kinds of ethnic paganism such as Voodoo, Santeria  and Palo Malombe have always been in existence among devotees who are members of the Afro-Carribean cultures that flourish in largely urban settings

nationwide. Another well known ethnic form of paganism, Native American spirituality (such as the ritual of the Cherokee, Navajo and Aztec Indians) enjoys an increasing amount of unprecedented attention by many people who seek "connection" to "Mother Earth". There has also been a potent rebirth of study of ancient Greek, African, and Far Eastern spirituality and "mystery religions" for the sake of personal empowerment through a personal appreciation of the "metaphor" and "archetypal" significance they are said to hold. And spiritual seekers now are actively adopting totemism or fetish-based belief systems that are little more than a renewal of idolatrous belief systems drawn from antiquity. It is nothing less than a literal revival of paganism that grows more and more influential as time goes by.

Paganism's spiritual and philosophical influence cannot be ignored by the Church. In the Tennessee Valley, the pagan revival has found a niche that has enjoyed slow, yet steady growth. Beyond the Southeast, the revival regularly sweeps university communities, Generation X'ers and Baby boomers with great success. As we have said again and again in various articles on this web site, this revival is driven by the gradual decline of Judeo-Christian morality and influence in an increasingly pluralistic society that has been directly impacted by the aggressive rise of postmodernism. The social relevance of the Church is slowly but surely eroding and in the moral vacuum it leaves behind, thousands of people still seek answers and  meaning that the pagan revival seems to offer. The Body of Christ seems utterly unaware of its need to present a relevant communication of Christ's Light  to these same individuals.

If we were to accept the comforting mantra of nominalism that assures us that the proper reaction to the pagan revival should be that of "tolerance", then we will have also reckoned that the Christian Faith is no more unique than the appeasement of spirits or the invocation of goddess possession. A Christian, to be true to the teaching of Christ, cannot accept this as true. While we would defend the right of  Wiccans, Santeros and shamans to embrace  their beliefs, we cannot agree that the Christian faith is just "one of many flowers in the garden." We contend that Christianity most adequately and consistently provides the answers to the needs of both aging Baby Boomer "evocateurs" and 16-year old Wiccan wannabes, from the aged Mexican brujo in Los Angeles to the Corn-dancing Jewish socialite of Manhattan. For all its sincerity and fascination, the pagan revival ultimately revives only more dead ends,  however creatively and engagingly it all may be.

In this section of the SpiritWatch, we hope to bring balanced and Biblical examinations of this pagan revival through our articles and show how the Good News of Jesus Christ responds to the challenges that their spiritual claims make upon many hundreds, even thousands in our region and beyond.

Source : www.spiritwatch.org