Today The Terms Pagan And Neopagan Are Used Interchangeably.
The origins of the name Pagan are a fascinating topic. The phrases "pantheist," "polytheist," "non-Christian," "non-Jew," "non-Muslim," "nonreligious person," "nonbeliever," "atheist," "hedonist," and "heathen" are commonly used in modern English dictionaries to describe Pagan.
- Many of these descriptions portray a Pagan as someone who is either religiously illiterate or anti-religious (“nonreligious person,” “nonbeliever,” “atheist”).
- Two definitions imply different sorts of religion (“pantheist” or “polytheist”), however the term hedonist is defined as “a person who lacks morals or self-control.”
As a result, the majority of the definitions are negative and derogatory.
- Pagan is defined by the American Heritage Dictionary (2001) as "one who is neither a Christian, Muslim, or Jew," citing the word's origins in the Latin term paganus, which means "country inhabitant."
The following are four meanings from the Scribner-Bantam English Dictionary (1991):
1. pagan;
2. idolator or worshipper of numerous gods;
3. non-Christian, Jew, or Muslim;
4. non-believer in any religion.
On the one hand, the Pagan is portrayed as a nonreligious someone who is neither Christian, Muslim, nor Jew, or who has no religious views at all. The Pagan, on the other hand, is portrayed as someone who is not religious; a worshipper of other gods.
Obviously, the two senses are intertwined. People who do not worship the correct god, the deity of monotheistic religions, are regarded to be either nonreligious or religiously incorrectly and terribly.
Pagan is derived from “Latin paganus, rustic, peasant, citizen, civilian, non-Christian (in Christian literature), non-Jewish, from pagus (rural) district, the country, originally landmark fixed in the earth, from Indo-European *pagas in Latin pangere fix...” according to the Oxford Concise Dictionary of English Etymology (1996).
“The origin of the Latin paganus meaning ‘heathen' is unknown.”
The term "heathen" is derived from Christian interpretations of an older Gothic-Germanic phrase that meant "one who lives in open land and is a barbarian."
Many modern Pagans associated in revivals and re-creations of pre-Christian Germanic and Scandinavian religious traditions use the term Heathen because of its Germanic origins and despite its negative connotations (Harvey 2000; Blain 2001; Strmiska 2000).
Most current dictionaries make it difficult to get a favorable opinion of Pagans or Heathens, who appear to be strange, misguided, and potentially dangerous.
This exercise in negative classification has its origins in earlier periods of European history when the distinction between officially sanctioned belief and officially condemned heresy could mean the difference between life and death for those accused of religious crimes by state-backed religious authorities.
We must go back to the Bible to consider one of the labels typically used as a synonym for Pagan: idolator, for even older beginnings of this enmity toward unorthodox believers.
Those who worshipped deities other than Yahweh, the God of the monotheistic Hebrew tribes, were viewed as ignorant worshippers of empty idols in the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible, a behavior that was harshly punished.
- When Moses returned from Mount Sinai with the stone tablets holding the commandments reportedly handed to him by God, he saw some of his Hebrew brethren worshipping a Golden Calf, as did other Near Eastern peoples of the period, rather than the God of Abraham and Isaac.
- The Hebrews who refused to abandon their worship of this "idol" were put to death at Moses' instruction, with the text indicating that 3,000 idol worshippers were killed by Moses' followers (Exodus 32:28). Idolatry became linked with wickedness and perversion as a result of such scriptural origins.
The biblical prohibition against worshiping non-Hebrew gods was carried over into Christianity, with the exception of depictions of Jesus, Mary, and the saints.
The taboo on religious pictures was extended even further in Islam, with calligraphic illustrations of Qur'anic verses serving as an alternate form of nonfigurative religious art in mosques and elsewhere.
The world's attention was drawn to Islamic resistance to creative portrayals of the divine in the spring of 2002, when famed Buddhist sculptures in Bamiya, Afghanistan, were exploded by operatives of the hardline Islamic Taliban regime.
- When Christianity expanded through Europe and beyond, Christian authorities viewed non-Christian deities' worship as an evil that needed to be eradicated by any means necessary.
- Many individuals who came to Christianity continued to worship so-called idols symbolizing the spirits and gods of their local, pre-Christian faiths, which alarmed Christian authorities greatly.
- George Fedotov (1960, 10) used the term "dual faith" to characterize the simultaneous worship of Christian and non-Christian deities in Russian folk religion.
Consider the sermon of Maximus, the bishop of Turin in the early fifth century, in which he chastised his landowner parishioners for tolerating idolatry among their farmhands and workers:
- “You should remove all pollution of idols from your properties and cast out the whole error of paganism from your fields,” to give just one example (which could easily be multiplied).
- Because it is not acceptable for you, who have Christ in your hearts, to have Antichrist in your homes, and for your men to worship the devil in his shrines while you pray to God in his church” (quoted in Fletcher 1997, 39).
The derogatory definitions of Pagan and Heathen in current dictionaries are historically based on this innate aversion toward any non-Christian or non-biblical kind of divinity.
- The pessimism with which the dictionaries infuse these phrases is a true representation of many Christians' feelings toward non-Christians throughout European and American history, an antipathy that still exists in certain parts today.
- As previously stated, the English term Pagan is derived from the Latin pagus, which in ancient Rome originally indicated a rural territory. As a result, a "paganus" was just a person who lived in an area outside of the city—basically, a peasant (Chuvin 1990, 7–13; Fox 1986, 30–31).
- Scholars believe that Paganism did not begin as a religious designation in ancient Rome; it was only later, following the Christianization of the Roman Empire and the gradual ban of all other faiths, that it became one.
The bulk of Roman residents followed a traditional but ever-evolving polytheistic religion that incorporated ancestor and emperor worship.
- There was a large variety of religious groups, some local, others imported, such as the worship of the Egyptian deities Isis and Osiris, in addition to this shared religious heritage.
- It was precisely because of this theological variety that Christianity was able to gain a foothold in the Roman society and grow in popularity over time, despite periodic persecution (Drake 2000, 94).
Pagan only became a religious word in the fourth century, when Christianity had established itself as the dominant religion in the Roman Empire following Emperor Constantine's battlefield conversion in 312 CE and the imperial capital's move from Rome to Constantinople.
- With imperial backing for the establishment of churches and communities in Constantinople, Rome, and other major locations, the outlying provinces, or pagus districts, were linked with ongoing adherence to the Roman Empire's ancient polytheistic faith.
- As a result, the “Pagan” Romans of these regions were viewed as enemies of the newly ascendant religion of Christianity, and their religion, which had previously been the Roman Empire's common religious tradition, was reframed in negative terms in line with biblical hostility toward all nonbiblical faiths.
- In this way, an originally nonreligious term was transformed into a religious definition with negative and derogatory connotations, which Christian authorities would use to define and defame religious traditions that they wished to replace with their own religion, which they considered to be the One True Faith (Platinga 1999).
- Given the word's tumultuous past, it's somewhat surprising that current Pagans would pick this title for their religious beliefs, practices, and organizations.
Why would you wear as a badge of identification a phrase of abuse that your critics and opponents have long used as a rhetorical weapon of mass defamation?
Why not come up with a fresh moniker that is devoid of all bad connotations?
The persistence of the label Pagan—and its change from a term of hate to a title of respect—can be attributed to a variety of circumstances and causes.
Many people join or form modern Pagan organizations as a result of their dissatisfaction with Christianity—a dissatisfaction that causes them to abandon the religion of their childhood and family in search of a religious community with a spiritual viewpoint more in line with their particular beliefs (Salomonsen 2002, 5, 111).
Jews, Muslims, and others who choose to abandon Judaism, Islam, or other faiths in favor of a Pagan religion have a similar purpose.
- However, the bulk of Neopagans who have had a past religious connection have been former Christians up to this point.
- This was confirmed by J. G. Melton's (1991) study, which indicated that 78.5 percent of current Pagans in the United States were former Christians, with 25.8% being Catholic and 42.7 percent being Protestant.
- Loretta Orion (1995), four years later, discovered that 85 percent of modern Pagans in the United States were former Christians, with 26 percent once Catholic and 59 percent formerly Protestant.
- Because it denotes something so definitely non-Christian, something shunned and loathed by Christian authority, modern Pagans may find the name Pagan an attractive identifier of their shift in religious orientation.
Identifying as a Pagan allows a person to encapsulate his or her decisive rupture with Christianity or other mainstream religions in a single phrase.
The favorable picture of European Pagan religion and mythology propagated in nineteenth-century Romantic literature and the work of certain anthropologists, folklorists, and historians in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is a second reason for the term's popularity.
- As Ronald Hutton has eloquently described in relation to the development of modern forms of Paganism and Witchcraft in the British Isles, works like James Frazer's compendium of global folklore and ethnography, The Golden Bough, and Margaret Murray's purported history of European Witchcraft, The God of the Witches, drew a wide readership and sparked a positive curiosity about pre-Christian cultures.
- Similar volumes were published in different countries of Europe and North America, imbuing Pagan faiths with a sense of mystery and appeal and instilling patriotic pride in Pagan folklore, mythology, and religious traditions.
- Even when the facts and results of such scholarly and semi-scholarly writings were contested or dismissed by succeeding generations of researchers, as was the case with Frazer and Murray's works (Hutton 1999, 272–276, 381–383), their impact among the general people did not wane.
Popular, semi-scholarly publications like The Spiral Dance, authored by Starhawk (also known as Miriam Simos, a dedicated devotee of Judaism in her youth) and initially published in 1989 and reissued several times since, have sparked new interest in the Pagan past and the changing variety of current Paganism.
- Scholarly critique or rejection of these popular literature, like with previous works, does not damper public excitement, but rather stimulates it by igniting debate about Pagan history and current interpretations, as well as sparking occasional conversations in the media.
- Neopaganism has become a cultural commodity to some level, with huge American bookstore chains allocating a growing fraction of shelf space to books on Pagan themes, not to mention an ever-growing amount of material available via the Internet.
An increasing number of Christian authors are condemning contemporary Paganism's expanding popularity as an insidious danger to morals and civilization.
- Spirit Wars: Pagan Revival in Christian America, for example, written by Peter Jones and released in 1997, makes it plain from the title alone that certain Christian theologians regard modern Paganism as a type of religion that must be battled and overcome.
- Such works may inadvertently pique the interest of disillusioned or doubting Christians in modern Paganism.
- A sympathetic response among many readers of Pagan-related literature is sparked by knowledge of how Christian authorities suppressed Pagan religions and persecuted their adherents in the past—and how some contemporary Christians appear ready to do the same—leading to a third major reason for modern Pagans preferring the term Pagan to other possibly less contentious labels.
Today's Pagans aspire to commemorate those long-ago Pagans they consider as their forefathers by adopting a moniker derived from a word that has long served as a term of condemnation and hate.
- Present Pagans commit themselves to fighting historical and contemporary forces of religious intolerance by expressing and practicing publicly what was formerly outlawed and punished by learning, reinterpreting, and resurrecting old Pagan religious ideas and practices.
- As a result, claiming a Pagan identity is sometimes interpreted as a rejection of long-standing patterns of religious intolerance and injustice.
The adoption of the term Witch as a self-designation among adherents of the Wicca and Goddess Spirituality groups follows a similar rationale (Pearson 2002b; Salomonsen 2002).
- The use of the derogatory term by modern Pagans as a deliberate act of defiance is comparable to African Americans' use of the letter X as a simple but powerful reminder of the loss of surnames and family relationships suffered by Africans brought to America during the cruel centuries of slavery, particularly the 1960s Black Muslim leader Malcolm X.
- In a related case, some homosexuals in the United States and elsewhere have adopted queer, a term of approval directed at them by hostile heterosexuals, as their preferred self-designation in protest marches and other actions aimed at obtaining civil rights and legal protections comparable to those enjoyed by the "straight," heterosexual majority.
Pagans have found pride and power in the revaluation of a formerly derogatory name, and, in the same way that African Americans, homosexuals, and other members of repressed social minorities have worked to educate the general public about their respective groups' past achievements and contributions, modern Pagans have begun to assert the accomplishments of past Pagan peoples.
- This effort necessitates a radically different interpretation of Western history and culture than that often advocated by previous generations (Strmiska 2003), noting, for example, that the exquisite cultures and advanced civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome were the work of Pagans, not Christians.
- However, not everyone active in Pagan revival groups approaches the term Pagan with the same interpretation of the term, much alone the same purpose of reclaiming a derogatory label and turning it into a source of pride.
- Others prefer to use a specific name for their religious tradition and avoid any general identification with other Pagan associations.
Some reject the term Pagan and prefer alternate designations such as Heathen, Witch, or traditional, whereas others prefer to use a specific name for their religious tradition and avoid any general identification with other Pagan associations.
- The distinction between the labels Pagan and Neopagan (or Neo-pagan) that was previously mentioned is much more contentious.
- To emphasize their link with the Pagans of the past and avoid any separation between themselves and their forefathers, many modern Pagans reject the label Neopagan, defining themselves solely as Pagans, pure and simple.
The term "Neopaganism" is avoided here at the specific request of modern Pagans who do not want to be labeled as "Neo," which they consider pejorative and unneeded.
Several Pagan believers interviewed pointed out that modern Christians and Muslims are not referred to as Neo-Christians or Neo-Muslims, despite obvious differences between today's forms of Christianity and those of centuries past: why, they wondered, should Paganism be labeled as such?
A number of academics have seen the Pagan/Neopagan divide as a valuable tool for exposing a significant historical issue.
Modern Pagan religious traditions are inspired by or based on historic Pagan religions, although they are not always the same as these old faiths, and they may entail significant deviations from the previous faiths.
- Even if the word Neopaganism is avoided, this historical issue is crucial and will be a major focus of the pieces here.
- Because such language is a source of ongoing debate and controversy here I use whichever language—Pagan/ism, Neopagan/ism, or other—I believe is most appropriate to the themes.
- Such a wide range of vocabulary may irritate or confuse the reader, but it accurately reflects the unsettled, developing character of the public's perception of these religious groups, as well as the self-understanding of these religious groups.
Modern Pagans are recovering, recreating, and recreating religious traditions from the past that have been suppressed for a long time, sometimes to the point of extinction.
With a few exceptions, today's Pagans cannot claim to be carrying on religious traditions that have been passed down in an uninterrupted line from ancient times to the present.
- They are modern individuals who have a deep respect for the spirituality of the past, and they are creating a new religion—modern Paganism—out of the ruins of the past, which they interpret, adapt, and alter to fit current thinking.
- In this way, modern paganism is both old and new: an ancient/modern hybrid, like a tree with deep roots but branches that extend into the sky.
- Pagan religious traditions may have been practiced in areas of Europe from ancient times to the present day, particularly in Eastern European countries like Lithuania, where many pagan rites have survived in popular culture despite government Christianization efforts.
Even in such circumstances, however, it is undeniable that the arrival of Christianity wreaked havoc on the Pagan faith.
- It's also worth noting that Lithuania's current Pagan movement, Romuva, is a twentieth-century construct, not an old one, even if the myths, rites, and other traditions it practices and supports are from medieval or even earlier periods.
- As a result, although if the religion's substance is taken from extremely old Pagan traditions, it is correct to refer to Romuva's religious movement as a "new" religion, a "modern" Pagan religion.
As this discussion shows, the fundamental historical condition of these religious movements is that they are a return, rebuilding, and reimagining of religious traditions that were forcibly suppressed—and in many regions, all but erased—with Christianity's rise to supremacy in Europe between 500 and 1500 CE.
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