Pagan America – The Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come – Part 2

Part 2: Pagan America – America in the 21st Century and Beyond

The systematic removal of religion from all aspects of public life, most specifically education and politics, has been devastating to Christian values. 60 years after the secularization of schools, the impact of moral relativism and rejection of traditional Christian beliefs in two successive generations can hardly be overstated. Simultaneously, mainstream Protestant churches have shifted in the direction of the culture. Fifty-six percent of evangelicals deny the doctrine of original sin, 73% of them say they believe that Jesus was created by God, 56% believe that God accepts the worship of all religions, including Islam and 43% believe Jesus was a great teacher but not God. All these are forms of heresies that were long-dead after the first few centuries of the Christian church and the writings of Augustine, the Council of Nycea, Aquinas and others. In 1960, 50% of America identified as one of the mainline Protestant denominations. Today it is only 10%. On marriage, sexuality, abortion and social justice, many churches have “watered down their theology and … embraced liberal politics on activism, that one today can hardly consider them Christian in any meaningful or historical sense.”

Accompanying the decline in religious affiliation, is the onset of people identifying themselves as “spiritual, but not religious”. These carry many irrational and unscientific beliefs, but they are consistent with modern American society. The author says that these beliefs are best characterized as paganism, or neo-paganism. A great many are dedicated to climate change activism, which is the modern equivalent of earth religion or worship of Gaia. It resembles a religion in that it possesses a priest class (so-called experts and scientists), and one can perform penance (buying an electric car, recycling, veganism, carbon credits). Anyone who questions the climate cult is a heretic, a ‘denier’ that must be shamed, discredited and ridiculed.

The author points out that the absence of traditional religion does not leave a vacuum to be replaced by atheism, or secular libertarianism. People “need to belong to something larger and more important than themselves, to be part of an in-group distinguishable from an out-group, to feel morally justified …. and above all to worship something.” This they will find as far back into our pagan past as necessary and will integrate it with modernity.

During COVID, which greatly accelerated this process with the shut down of churches for an extended period, we were messaged to “trust the science” by the self-proclaimed high priest, Fauci, and a media onslaught. Those who refused to take the vaccine were ostracized and demonized. Therapeutic treatments were discouraged and compliance mandated with business and school shutdowns, mask-wearing, and social distancing.

The George Floyd protests, climate change-ism, and pandemic science worship were “outpourings of real religious impulses” and “manifestations of a … neo-pagan social system designed to manage and mitigate anxiety”, invoking science and reason while disfiguring and corrupting them. As the author puts it, “old gods and old pagan rites, disguised in the updated language … of modernity, but bent to the …. old pagan systems: the accumulation of power and the management of anxiety”, devoid of transcendence.

Simultaneously America has suffered the erosion of the “once solid foundation of American life, the family.” Since the middle of the 1970’s after the sexual revolution of the 1960’s, America now has an unprecedented high divorce rate, a decline in marriage and birth rates, and the staggering statistic that more than half of the country is unmarried. The idea and definition of marriage has eroded with the legalization of gay marriage, and now 25% of Americans thinks polygamy is acceptable. Pornography, abortion and single parent households have all taken their toll; 25-33% of all American children live in single parent households, the highest rate in the world. The rise of social media, smart phones combined with the absence of a traditional family upbringing has created a civilizational crisis. Suicide rate among 10-24 year olds  increased by 60% between 2007 and 2018.

The traditional family is wholly an inheritance of Christendom. Pagan practices of sex with slaves, prostitutes, male or female, adult or child, were swept away by the Catholic church in favor of the principles of “fidelity, childbearing and indissoluble unity.” This idea of marriage would transform the pagan societies of Europe with no acceptance of adultery, rape, sex slavery, or divorce. “Marriage became a sacrament and the family would become sacred.” The loss of family will result in the loss of the ideals of the Declaration, which will be replaced by pagan power structures and persecution.

New to America is the rise of freelance witchcraft and interest in the occult. Goth styles, vampire novels, Ouija boards, experiments with spells etc., appeal particularly to young people. The author delves into Satanism with his chapter on “the Materialist Magician”, where he cites the obsession with rationalism, materialism and “scientific understanding of the world”. Destroy transcendent reality, he says, and you destroy truth and beauty, which inevitably will be replaced by subjective madness, because the absence of objective truth makes “all motive and action driven by emotion or insensate impulse.” Cruelty and violence will be rampant in the pursuit of unbridled power.

Davidson identifies the exponential growth in the last 50 years of abortion (63 million killed) and the more recent societal expansion and acceptance of euthanasia as the new pagan cult’s practice of human sacrifice. Consistent with the expulsion of any notion of sanctity of life or transcendent value, the abortion movement has changed its narrative from “safe, legal and rare”, to a celebration of self-love and empowerment. “Shout your abortion” has become the new slogan. Accompanying this direction is the language of the “sacred abortion experience” and “where there is death there is life” rituals. Opposition to abortion, to its advocates, is now considered an immoral imposition on the rights of women.

Paganism finds its ultimate expression in the blunt admission that “once the Christian faith is discarded, then there is no basis for retaining Christian morality.” As GK Chesterton said the powerful are hoping “by working backwards against their own nature, and the nature of things to discover at last the secret of power”.

This process is further amplified by the movement to legitimize transgenderism, even going so far as to give children the right without parental consent, to take medications to block puberty and further to be exposed to adults in sexually explicit context such as drag queen story hour, and gay pride parades and events. This is all hidden in the context of diversity and tolerance.

Following closely behind is the attempt by some educators and sociologists to legitimize what they are now calling “minor attracted persons”, in other words, pedophilia. These attempts to normalize deviant behavior are becoming more candid, and in the opening salvos, they are using the same processes with regard to pedophilia, polyamory, and bestiality (zoophilia or sex with animals,) as they did with homosexuality. “Love is love.”

For these advocates, the issue is not morality, it is consent. This is not to say that the medical and psychological community is advocating decriminalization or normalization of sex between humans and animals or between adults and children. But what is happening is far more gradual and subtle. Discussions about dignity for the perpetrators, and avoiding diagnoses of mental illness, are the camel’s nose under the tent flap. The author makes the point that if “we cannot stop the normalization of “gender affirming care” for children, then we will not be able to stop the normalization of “love knows no age” pedophilia.”

As they did with LGBT, they will say that they are only asking to “live their truth as their most authentic selves.” The slogans will be identical to those used by the transgender movement, and…..(before that) the gay rights movement.” With no remaining Christian taboos, moral virtue or objective truth, there will be no effective answer. After all, “love is love”.

This is not a cultural phenomenon alone. Government authority is now in the mix. In the chapter “The Pagan State”, the author provided copious examples of how just in the past few years, America has a Supreme Court Justice that cannot define what a woman is. We have a transgender Assistant Secretary of Health and Human services. The President this past Easter declared March 30ths as Transgender Awareness Day. The FBI now routinely monitors pro-life organizations and recently opened an investigation into Catholic churches that celebrate the Latin Mass and then claimed that these “Radical-Traditionalist Catholics are increasingly fraternizing with “Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists” and need to be surveilled.”

This interest on the part of the Justice Department is solely based on citizens trying to uphold the old morality and what they think and believe “… and because they are traditionalist Christians.” The FBI actually stormed the home of a pro-life Catholic and his family with 20 armed agents, and conducted a raid with an overwhelming show of force simply because he prayed in front of an abortion clinic a block away. He was arrested and jailed. Later, he was exonerated by a jury who deliberated for just an hour. No matter, the object was intimidation.

Finally, there is a chapter called “AI and the Pagan Future”, in which the author describes AI as a potential substitute for God in the pagan mind. Silicon Valley developers have referenced some of AI Chatbots as “Gollem-Class AI’s”, referencing creatures from Jewish mythology made by man and magically brought to life. AI investor Ian Hogwarth in mid-2023 warned of the dangers of creating a “God-like AI” that learns autonomously and then can transform the world around it. The idea of a networked mind or consciousness more powerful than the human mind is the whole point of the AI project. The author points out that untethered from any concept of Christian belief or morality, AI will have power not tempered by concerns for “truth, beauty or goodness to say nothing of mercy and compassion, and will believe whatever the post Christian, pagan world that created it believes.” Their creed? “Nothing is true, everything is permitted.”

The author does not provide a recipe for how to turn things around, or a step by step process to take back the culture. He says our decline started many decades ago and is probably not reversible. All of us were born into a nation in a rapid state of “de-Christianization”. He calls this an admission of plain truth as opposed to a counsel of despair. In spite of this, Christians are duty bound to take action. Perhaps some time in the future we can be restored as a Christian nation. However, the reality of the near term is bleak, dark days are inevitable and we will likely not see a reversal in our lifetime. He reminds us that the early Church took hold in a pagan world. Persecution, torture, imprisonment, and martyrdom were part of the Christian experience. The temptation will be to retreat, not to boldly proclaim our faith.

He spends a good deal of time discussing Rod Dreher’s book the Benedict Option, in which Dreher profiled various Christian communities who ran their homes like Christian monasteries, controlling access to social media, the culture, and secularism, starting countercultural schools based on Christian values. He says Dreher is correct that we must work at restoring the family, and interacting in our communities as people living to love and serve God. Every decision about how to live, where, what vocation, how they spend their time should be made with that in mind. Everything will flow outward from there. His point is that for a Christian, all of life should be ordered around the call to love God. He points out that many Christians are doing this in the midst of a hostile secular and pagan culture. Dreher correctly says that electoral politics cannot solve our problems, and that the disorder in our lives is borne out of the disorders in our souls.

The final chapter of Pagan America is called the ‘Boniface Option’, in which Davidson, while agreeing with much of what Dreher points out in the Benedict Option, declares something more uncomfortable. Christians are also called to defend the faith, and to do that means sometimes we have to fight. And by “fight” he is not talking about politically, though that may be part of it. He refers us to an English Benedictine monk (Boniface) who not only converted vast numbers of Germanic pagans in the Frankish empire but rooted out paganism as well, even among wayward Christians.

Boniface cut down a “sacred oak” in the presence of many pagans, who were cursing him. When he struck the tree, it miraculously split into four equal parts. He used the timber to build a chapel dedicated to Saint Peter and established throughout the region over many years, a missionary effort that that gave him the title “Apostle to the Germans”.

Davidson says that similarly, we must take back the institutions that the left has taken over: school boards, libraries, city councils, etc. It might mean running for office, fundraising or going door to door. Christians should pray and vote when it comes to national politics, but the first battles are at the local level. The rule is to fight on ground you can win. He provides examples in Florida, Taylor, Texas, and boycotts of Bud Light and Target and urges Christians to opt out boldly from “pride month” and other pagan causes. He says Christians need to show the world why it needs faith. He says while this is the hopeful part, he warns that the more victories that are won, the greater the pushback will be from the state and the culture. We may attract converts, but we will also attract persecution. This will be new to America and examples of the Christian baker in Colorado, the pro-life Catholic in Indiana, and the nuns who refused to comply with abortion and birth control as “health directives” are only the beginning. There will be economic persecution, and we should expect the persecution to become violent.

Jesus said “if they persecute me, they will persecute you.” Davidson warns that we will be called to fight and perhaps die. Boniface was himself martyred, cut down by a pagan raider. He wrote: “Let us continue the fight on the day of the Lord. The days of anguish and of tribulation have overtaken us; if God so wills let us die for the holy laws of our fathers, so that we may deserve to obtain an eternal inheritance with them. Let us neither be dogs that do not bark, nor silent onlookers, nor paid servants who run away before the wolf. Instead let us be careful shepherds watching over Christ’s flock.”

The author concludes, “We need barking dogs and shepherds now more than ever. The wolves are coming.”