paganism,Christian term used to designate those religions that do not worship the God ofAbraham, the figure central to bothChristianity and to other Abrahamic religions likeJudaism andIslam. Christians have used the termspaganism andpagan, which typically carrypejorativeconnotations, to draw clear distinctions between themselves and those who they believe are worshiping false gods.

Throughout most of the history of Christianity, few if any of those labeledpagan have adopted this label for themselves. However, since at least the first half of the 20th century, the term has been reappropriated as a self-designation by a family of related new religions. Often called modern Pagan orNeo-Pagan groups, they are inspired by the religions ofEurope,North Africa, andWest Asia that were rendered extinct by the spread of Christianity and the other Abrahamic traditions.

History of paganism

Christianity emerged in theRoman Empire during the first centuryce. Amonotheisticreligion, it maintained that there was only one true God, whom it identified as the God of Abraham, adeity alsovenerated in Judaism. Most other traditions in the empire werepolytheistic, believing in a range of gods and goddesses. For Christians these polytheistic traditions wereidolatrous, devoted to deities who were in factdemons. This outlook made it difficult for many Christians to seek peaceful coexistence with these non-Abrahamic religions.

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Surviving sources indicate that Christians were referring to those not worshiping the God of Abraham with the Latin termpagani by at least the 4th century, although it is likely that this usage had arisen earlier. InLatin usage, apaganus was an individual who lived in a rural district, orpagus, rather than in a town. The exact reasons for how this came to designate someone who was neither a Christian nor a Jew are unclear, although historians and classicists have made several proposals. One possibility is that the termpagani, meaning “people of the place,” came to denote those who maintained the worship of the traditional deities of their locality, while Christians came to be referred to asalieni, meaning “people from elsewhere.” A second possibility arises from analternative meaning of the termpaganus, that of “civilian,” which was apparent by the late 2nd or 3rd century. This alternative meaning of the term was probably coined by soldiers of the Roman army, who were often stationed in rural areas distant from Rome itself. Early Christians conceived of themselves asmiles Christi, or “soldiers ofChrist,” and thus may have adopted thedesignation of “civilian” for those who had not joined their religious movement.

Beyond Latin, there were other terms used by Christians in a largely synonymous fashion.Greek was widely spoken in eastern parts of the empire, and there the termsethnē andethnikoi, “foreigners,” served a similar function, being replaced largely by the termHellēnes, “Greeks,” by the early 4th century. In translating theGospel of Mark from Greek intoGothic during the 4th century, the Christian bishopUlfilas (c. 311–82) developed the termhaiþno as a counterpart forHellēnis, “gentile woman.” Variants ofhaiþno subsequently came to be widely used in otherGermanic languages, notably including theOld Englishhǣþen, from whichderives theModern English termheathen. An often repeated argument is that this term pertains to things being “of the heath”—it is possible that Ulfilas was deliberately evoking the sense of rurality that he believed was embodied in the Latin termpagan. The Latin termgentilis (Modern English: “gentile”) also appeared in Christian sources to characterize those who did not worship the God of Abraham, a usage distinct from the term’s currently accepted definition of “non-Jewish.”

Terms likepagan served to create a clear binary division between the Christians, who saw themselves as possessing theological truth, and all those whom they thought lived in error. Nevertheless, while the termpaganism was primarily leveled against those notworshiping the God of Abraham, its use could be flexible. The term was, for instance, used amid sectarian conflict between different Christians themselves. Emerging from theReformation of the 16th century, manyProtestants accused theRoman Catholic Church of beingpagan because of its veneration ofsaints and elaborate rituals.

The 15th to 19th centuries saw Christian Europeans expand into new areas across the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Australasia. In these lands they encountered a huge variety of religious traditions not devoted to the God of Abraham and which again they often labeledpagan orheathen. The varied traditions of theIndian subcontinent, today typically calledHinduism, were for instance labeled “Hindoo paganism” by 19th-century British writers. Across the world Christian missionary efforts were often launched to convert these non-Abrahamic peoples, with varying degrees of success.

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Changes were evident by the latter half of the 20th century. Growing concerns about Eurocentrism and racialprejudice, coupled with the promotion ofecumenism and the interfaith movement, contributed to a declining use of the termspaganism andpagan among many Christians. It has nevertheless not disappeared altogether from the Christian lexicon. These terms can still be found in use among certain Christian groups that have little desire for cordial relationships with non-Abrahamic religions.

Modern Paganisms

In Europe the idea that there was some worth to the largelypolytheistic religions that Christianity had supplanted gained traction due to the influence ofRenaissancehumanism. Emerging in 14th-century Italy, the Renaissance humanists were in awe of theClassical societies of Greece and Rome and encouraged the incorporation of Classicaldeities into the artwork of the period. The positive reassessment of pre-Christian religions from elsewhere in Europe followed as a result of theRomantic movement and growing culturalnationalism during the 18th and 19th centuries. From Ireland to Russia pre-Christian mythologies were increasingly embraced in art, poetry, and literature. By the end of the 19th century, some writers were even adopting the termpagan to describe themselves and their work, or were labeled pagans or neo-pagans by their critics.

New religions venerating deities drawn from these extinct pre-Christian traditions first appeared in Europe during the opening decades of the 20th century, gaining greater visibility in the 1960s. The most popular of these wasWicca, which emerged in England before spreading to theUnited States. Others include Druidry, which took its identity from theIron Age ritual specialists of Western Europe, and Heathenry, which was modeled on the pre-Christian religions ofcommunities that spoke Germanic languages likeOld Norse. Collectively, these groups came to be called Neo-Pagan or modern Pagan, a deliberate reappropriation of the Christian term. Not all of these new religions were altogether happy with this term given its pejorative origins; in Central and Eastern Europe in particular, many modern Pagan groups chose to call their traditions “Native Faith” rather than “Paganism.” These new religions eventually attracted scholarly attention, and by the 21st century a common scholarly convention was to distinguish modern Pagan groups with acapital letter,differentiating them from the Christian concept that usually lacks capitalization.