The Rising Threat of the New Paganism, By James Reed
For some time, at least since the cultural revolution in the West in the 1960s, paganism and anti-Christian ideologies have been on the rise. An article by Liel Leibovitz, "The Return of Paganism": https://commentary.org/articles/liel-leibovitz/paganism-afflicts-america/, states coldly that the "barbarians are at the gates." No, they are inside and running the show now. In America there are now around 1.5 million people practicing some sort of pagan belief system, suchwitchcraft, new Ageism or Nordic Odinism. The U.S. Army has recognised a pagan faith group among soldiers of Norse paganism, seen with many soldiers having Odinic tattoos. There is also underlying paganism that runs through the environmentalist movement based around Gaia, "Mother Earth" ideology, which being subtle, is even more widespread than more organised positions such as say witchcraft and "magic" practices. With radical climate change protests, we see the same sort of crazed fanaticism that belonged to the ritual sacrifices of the past; for example, the eco-protester at Roger Federer's tennis match who set his own arms on fire (creating carbon dioxide!) to protest climate change.
What is really wrong with the new paganism, like with the old, is that their "gods" are terrifying, and oppressive and that's not what we want from a religion, as there is misery and oppression enough in the world as it is:
"The gods themselves are amoral and do not demand morality from humans. Instead, they are unpleasant, self-centered beings, both arbitrary and capricious. They interfere in human affairs only to satisfy their lust, anger, jealousy, and boredom, with occasional flashes of goodwill.
The other striking thing is how corporeal the pagan gods were, as opposed to abstract and spiritual. Their bodies were infinitely malleable, but they were still real bodies. They could take different forms, including sharing their shapes with animals or the opposite--and they were gods who were obsessed with sex. It was one of their driving motivators.
These same traits seem to apply to all pagan gods, whether in the ancient Fertile Crescent, pre-Columbian Americas, Africa, or the Celtic and Nordic worlds. They're corporeal and amoral and woe betide humans who offend them or, through beauty or talent, catch their eyes.
However, while the pagan gods saw humans as subordinate sidenotes, their power over the earth made them centrally important to humans. People constantly tried to placate these volatile beings, including using the sexual rituals the Bible decries and the human sacrifice that the Bible stopped with the Binding of Isaac.
The Bible changed everything. The Biblical God is a non-corporeal entity who doesn't need human sex or death to satisfying Him and make Him treat humans better. He is also an all-encompassing God who created everything, ending all those little tales to explain this phenomenon or that one.
Most significantly, the Bible's God asks for only one thing from humans: Morality. He gave us Big Rules that didn't require endless second-guessing. You can find these rules in the seven Noahide laws that God laid down after the Flood and the Ten Commandments that followed the Israelites' Exodus from bondage in Egypt.
Rather than explaining where spiders come from or demanding human blood sacrifices, God's big rules define man's relationship to God, to family, and to society.
The religious worship that developed from the Bible reminds us that there is only one God—and it's not us. Whether you're in a Church or synagogue—provided that it's a traditional one—the liturgy is the same: God is up there, and we gratitude-filled humans are down here.
This was the template for Western culture through the French Revolution. Humans slowly shed their violent past through an increasingly sophisticated allegiance to the Biblical ethos, a process speeded by the Enlightenment's dawning awareness that we are all children of God, who deserve humane treatment and have inherent rights."
It is no coincidence that the rise of paganism once more corresponds to the globalist attack upon Christianity and the movement to create a One world government, the New World Order. That requires the "abolition of man," as C. S. Lewis observed, and God as well, as the new rulers proclaim that they are "gods." That too is the kernel of transhumanism, aiming to escape the human condition and make the elites, "gods."
But we know that this will end, badly for the globalist elites, as the Bible well shows.
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