If you want to overcome a powerful adversary, one possible tactic is first to make a caricature of your enemy into a bogey to frighten your children, and then reduce that bogey to an absurd oversimplification of your enemy.

This is exactly what the Christian church did to ancient paganism.

In his magnum opus, The Triumph of the Moon, Ronald Hutton identified four languages or discourses about Paganism which were prevalent in earlier centuries.

The first is that of evangelists and missionaries, who called anything that wasn’t Christianity “pagan” (including Indigenous religions and Hinduism). They regarded other religions as primitive and erroneous, sometimes even inspired by their devil. We might call this discourse the “primitive” discourse.

The second discourse is that of the enlightenment scholars who defended ancient paganisms as having paved the way for Christianity, though they still believed that they lacked morality. We might call this discourse the “precursor” discourse.

The third discourse is that of the Theosophists who regarded ancient paganisms as alternative belief systems. It tended towards the perennial philosophy, viewing all religions as variations on a single theme. We might call this discourse the “perennial” discourse.

And the fourth discourse is the one that regarded ancient paganisms as Nature religions, and expressed a longing for an ancient past when people were closer to Nature. We might call this discourse the “Nature Religion” discourse.

Various commentators on contemporary morality (or lack of it) like to use “paganism” as a bogey to label whatever behaviour they regard as immoral. The pope frequently does this (the last time he did it was in a rant about people who worship money, if I recall correctly). When they do this, they are using either the first (the “primitive”) discourse or the second (the “precursor”) discourse, with the variation that all sorts of immoral attitudes and behaviours are attributed to ancient pagans (who, in the view of these commentators, cannot possibly have been as morally superior as they are).

It’s not clear whether the people who like to use “paganism” as a rhetorical device in this way are even aware of the existence of contemporary Paganisms. They certainly haven’t bothered to do any research on contemporary Pagans and our beliefs and values.

They also judge their caricatures of Paganism by a Christian yardstick, clearly unaware that viewing other faiths through the lens of your particular variety of monotheism is going to create a distorted image of the other faiths. And clearly unaware of one of the most important principles of interfaith dialogue: that you should always compare the best examples of each faith that’s being discussed (not the best of one and the worst of the other).

The latest such screed has been penned by a right-wing Harvard professor, in The Atlantic, of all places, since it’s usually reasonable and left-leaning. Here’s a link to the syndicated version on MSN—we are not giving advertising revenue to The Atlantic by linking to the original.

Wolpe, the author of this screed, makes some sweeping and completely unfounded generalizations about ancient paganisms. One of these is that it is either the deification of nature or the deification of force.

In his excellent rebuttal of Wolpe’s rant, Jason Mankey makes the point that ancient pagans did value compassion and hospitality, giving the example of the story of Philemon and Baucis. In addition to this, I’d offer the story of Nausicaa giving hospitality to Odysseus.

Jason also points out that ancient paganisms were much more complex than Wolpe’s caricature of them as worshipping either nature or the use of force and magic, and points out that celebrating the winter solstice is not about force, and that one Roman emperor outlawed the use of magic.

In The Wild Hunt, Manny Moreno takes a different approach, asking why The Atlantic has featured several such anti-pagan rants over the years, but has never featured any articles by Pagan intellectuals. He also points out that this sort of clickbait opinion piece is probably a money spinner for The Atlantic (hence why we aren’t giving the link to the article on their site) and that it is harmful to contemporary Pagans because it stereotypes our religions as harmful and compares them to Trump and Elon Musk (both of whom worship money — but worshipping money is not Pagan). Once again we need to ask, who benefits from this type of article?

Another excellent rebuttal of Wolpe’s rant is by Alythia of the Ash on Substack. Her rebuttal also points out that Wolpe’s description of Paganism bears very little resemblance to either ancient paganisms or contemporary Paganisms. And that the arrogant assumption that monotheistic religions are the only correct worldview is a more likely culprit for the worship of power and money.

I’m honestly not sure if Wolpe is actually taking aim at contemporary Paganisms, or just using a lazy caricature of ancient pagan religions to make a point about contemporary bad behaviour — but it is certainly harmful to contemporary Pagans to use “paganism” as a lazy catch-all trope to criticize the “deification of force” and the desire for “wealth, political power, and tribal solidarity” —which are nothing to do with Pagan religions.

People use the crappy arguments that are put forward in this type of article as sticks to beat Pagans with. One of the tropes repeated by Wolpe is that Paganism worships the created and not the creator. This is a massive oversimplification of Pagan theology and it is viewing Pagan theology through a Christian lens. Most Pagans don’t believe in a creator deity, so the statement makes no sense within the Pagan paradigm.

I’ve even seen the ideas about ancient paganisms being inherently tribal and violent in Wolpe’s article repeated by Unitarian Universalists (some years ago, a UU leader wrote an article putting forward similar claims). If even adherents of liberal religions repeat these tropes, they must be fairly widespread.

I guess we can also chalk up the fact that this nonsense was published to the general ignorance about religion that’s typical of many journalists and editors.