Christianity at Odds with Christ: The Christian Church a Pagan Cult?
”You will realise that the doctrines are inventions of the human mind as it tries to penetrate the mystery of God. You will realise that scripture itself is the work of human minds recording the example and teachings of Jesus. Thus, it is not what you believe that matters, it is how you respond with your heart and your actions. It is not believing in Christ that matters, it is becoming like him.”
— Pelagius, 5th Century monk
The Pall Descends as Christianity Suffocates the Diversity of Belief
The Roman Empire, for all its faults, had fostered an environment of religious tolerance and cultural pluralism under pagan rule. Temples to Isis and Mithras coexisted alongside those devoted to Jupiter and Mars. Statues of Minerva, Apollo, and Venus graced public squares and homes alike. Philosophers of all stripes could engage in open debate as religion and state remained largely separate spheres. The pantheon had room for all beliefs.
But this rich blend did not align with the absolutist claims of the fledgling religion known as Christianity. As its influence grew within the Empire, driven by opportunistic missionary zeal, the new faith demanded sole claim to truth. Bishops circled the corrupt and weakened institutions of Rome like jackals to an aging lion, sensing an opportunity to establish their own authority. By the fall of the Empire in the 5th century AD, Christianity had eclipsed all rivals to become the dominant creed from Britain to North Africa.
In place of open-minded inquiry guided by logic and evidence, Church doctrine and edicts of popes and early ecumenical councils were the new arbiters of truth. Gone were the days when philosophical rivals could engage in reasoned debate in the forums and academies of major cities. Ecclesiastical authority now dictated right belief and right action. Christianity’s ascent spelled the death knell for Europe’s vibrant mosaic of pagan religions, traditions, and cults. The lights in the ancient temples were extinguished, the singing of their choirs faded.
Entire ways of life that had endured for centuries were driven to extinction, dismissed as heretical superstitions by the ascendant faith. The old gods watched in silence as their followers dwindled and disappeared. Temples that had once hummed with activity were torn down or converted into churches. The marble pillars, stone walls and sacred statuary of pagan shrines were callously ransacked to provide raw materials for building Christian basilicas and monasteries. Ancient knowledge and artifacts were either destroyed or claimed as the Church’s own. Nothing was spared from the scouring tide of Christianity’s triumphant rise.
Adherents to the Old Ways were forced to profess Christianity or face exile, imprisonment, or execution. Some fled into the wilderness, giving up their homes and livelihoods to keep their beliefs alive in remote enclaves. Others outwardly converted while secretly retaining their pagan practices in the privacy of their homes, ever wary of informants and accusations. Many dissenters were betrayed by jealous neighbors or aggrieved family members, handed over to fanatical clerics eager to make examples of heresy. To publicly doubt the Church was to risk one’s life and property.
”We Christians are a peaceful race.”
— Clement of Alexandria
In the eyes of the Church, the survival of their bodiless gods mattered little compared to the battle for the human soul. And the priests had no qualms about using fear as their most persuasive weapon. Eternal damnation was the fate of those who clung to the Old Ways. Only conformity and obedience to Holy Writ offered salvation. Parents threatened disobedient children that demons would carry them off in the night. Sunday sermons depicting the agonies of Hell kept the faithful in line. Even minor breaches of Christian law were punished severely to keep the flock pure.
The pall cast by the Church’s dogma was far-reaching, impacting all facets of culture, philosophy, science, and the arts. Whereas pagan philosophers had esteemed the power of the rational mind to ascertain truth, Christianity emphasized blind faith and mystery. Obedience to scripture and clerical authority replaced logic and free inquiry as the paths to knowledge. Investigating the natural world through observation and experiment became suspect activities, threatening to undermine the absolute Biblical truth decreed by Rome. Even incorporating abstract geometric designs, plant motifs and other pagan elements into religious art was forbidden, stifling creativity.
As the Roman Empire crumbled, the Church worked to fill the void, insinuating itself into positions of political power and exerting control over rulers. Kings and emperors might wear the crowns and insignia of office, but the bishops held the strings. By aligning itself with local political elites, Christianity obtained the means to erase all resistance, wielding secular weapons of war against enemies of the faith. Soon not just pagans and heretics, but Eastern Orthodox Christians and rival Catholic sects would feel the sharp edge of the sword.
”When the fox preaches, look to your geese.”
— Traditional proverb
This appropriation of state power enabled the bishops to remake Europe’s people in the Church’s image through force. Dissident voices were efficiently silenced. Art and literature underwent streamlining so that their messages fell in line with approved thinking. Pagan learning that did not serve ecclesiastical purposes was discarded as dangerous sophistry. Classical works were destroyed, lost or rewritten to conform to Christian values, robbing Europe of much of its intellectual heritage. Only Christian scribes had the means to produce and preserve manuscripts, further solidifying the Church’s control of knowledge.
In this atmosphere of sanctioned indoctrination, generations grew up knowing only one way, one truth, one life — that as defined by the Holy See. Childhoods once enriched by listening to Homeric epics were now spent memorizing catechisms and the lives of saints. The empire-wide network of Roman schools and academies that had trained male citizens in rhetoric, philosophy and public service was replaced by Church-run schools teaching theology and scripture. Where pagan ceremonies had celebrated the cycles of nature with song and dance, now all festivals were anchored to events in Christ’s life. Under the watchful eyes of monks and priests, Europe’s cultural roots to antiquity withered and died.
The Massacre of Verden and Its Bloody Aftermath
In 782 CE, the Frankish king Charlemagne brutally suppressed a Saxon revolt against his rule by massacring thousands of prisoners near the town of Verden. These pagan Saxons had refused to abandon the Old Ways and convert to Christianity, so Charlemagne declared them guilty of treason against God. At the behest of the Pope, up to 4,500 Saxon men, women and children were ritually slaughtered en masse, beheaded by Charlemagne’s troops as punishment for adhering to their ancestral indigenous faith.
This act of genocidal savagery made martyrs out of its victims, intensifying anti-Christian sentiment among the Saxon allies in Scandinavia. Outrage over the massacre reached its peak among the Norse in 793 CE, when they retaliated by raiding the monastery at Lindisfarne off the coast of Northumbria. The defenseless Christian monks were viewed as representatives of the foreign religion trying to erase native traditions. In the Norse mindset, blood had to be repaid with blood.
Thus what Christian chroniclers portrayed as mindless violence by heathen marauders could also be seen as vengeance for Charlemagne’s atrocity against Saxon practitioners of the Old Ways. For centuries, the Norse would preserve their indigenous religious practices against intense pressure to convert, making risky seaborne raids against Christian centers of power. While later generations mostly did assimilate to Christianity, their long reluctance sprang from a profound desire to maintain ancestral ways in the face of alien conquest.
The Twilight of the Old Ways
This stalwart defense of tradition was captured in the apocryphal last testament of the controversial, but never debunked “Oera Linda Book” written around 1200–1300 CE as the Old Ways in regions entered their twilight. The following words are written:
”Okke my son, you must preserve these books with body and soul. They contain the history of all our people, as well as of our forefathers.”
These words resonate with the tragic realization dawning on the last practitioners of the Old Ways that their ancient knowledge and beliefs would soon be erased, subsumed by the inexorable tide of Christianity. An entire way of life that linked them to ancestors stretching back into time immemorial now teetered on the brink of oblivion.
Imagine the sorrow of those final believers, desperately clinging to their traditions, rituals and sacred texts even as the shadow of convents and churches engulfed their sacred sites. They had stood as the last bastion defending indigenous tradition against an alien creed spreading on the winds of political power. But that lonely vigil could only delay, not prevent, the final surrender.
The Irony of Christianity’s Persecution
There is a profound irony in how a religion whose founder preached unconditional love and nonviolence became an institution associated with cruelty and oppression. The horrors of the Medieval Inquisition, aimed at rooting out heresy and sorcery, stand as Christianity’s most chilling legacy from this period. The tally of those tortured into false confessions or burnt at the stake is incalculable. The majority were women, easy targets for accusations of witchcraft by suspicious locals and inquisitors. Behind the pious justifications, the witch hunts were motivated by ignorance, fear, and misogyny. Christianity, in its ascendant zealotry, had fostered an epidemic of superstition that swept like a contagion across Europe.
”I would have no compassion on these witches; I would burn them all.” — Martin Luther, Table Talk 1530s to 1540s (recorded by his students)
Rather than embodying Christ’s example through works of mercy, the Church spent centuries entrenched in bloody crusades against infidels abroad and in the persecution of marginalized groups at home. Indigenous pagan faiths still clinging to life in remote strongholds were extinguished by the sword under the banner of the Cross. For generations, spreading the faith took precedence over living its values. The architects of the Inquisition, Dominican friars fueled by religious fervor, presided over Kafkaesque witch trials and executions. The Christian vision of man’s path to salvation had devolved into conformism enforced by terror.
”Those who are commonly accused of witchcraft are women which are commonly old, lame, blear-eyed, pale, foul, and full of wrinkles; poor”
— Johann Weyer, “De Praestigiis Daemonum” (1563)
Suspicion and fear swirled through villages and cities like some unseen pestilence. Denouncements came pouring in, often inspired by petty personal feuds or an accused woman’s rejection of a suitor. Once a whispered accusation was levied, the fate of the condemned was sealed. Confessions extracted under bodily torment were proof of guilt. And guilt merited the cleansing power of flame. Bound and gagged suspects were paraded through jeering crowds to be tied to stakes with bundles of kindling at their feet. The names of the condemned survive only in crumbling archives. Their voices echo only in our collective memory.
”A fire was lit inside me that will never go out. Their flames merely set my spirit free.” — Last words of an accused witch
The worst cruelties were justified as holy work. To cynical inquisitors, inflicting pain became routine. Each cry for mercy only hardened their hearts, for the offenders had sinned against God Himself. No defilement could be tolerated in Christ’s sacred kingdom on Earth. Better that these heretics should die by fire in this world than face eternal flames of Hell in the next. Such twisted logic makes a mockery of the Beatitudes. Did these dutiful inquisitors forget that their Messiah healed the sick and dined with society’s outcasts? Would He have recognized their methods?
Of course, the Church could not destroy pagan culture in all its manifestations. In the far-flung countryside, peasants tenaciously clung to ancient folk rites and nature rituals simply adapted to a Christian finish. Blessings and charms invoked a blend of saints and sprites. Solstice fires continued to burn, now honoring St. John rather than Lugh. Customs once celebrated in honor of Cerridwen and Cybele were transferred to the Virgin Mary. The eternal renewal of the seasons does not heed earthly edicts from on high.
The False Glorification of Martyrdom
Centuries later, stories circulated of the bravery shown by Christian martyrs who chose death rather than renounce their faith in Roman times. These tales celebrated their fortitude in facing prolonged torture and agony before expiration. Such veneration of martyrdom only bred intolerance. It hardened hearts against those branded heretics and blasphemers. If the righteous could embrace suffering, the punishment of sinners became that much easier to justify. Sanctifying pain created cruelties in the name of salvation.
The Church desperately needed inspiring narratives to legitimize its authority. But framing principled dissent as a sin deserving of horrific punishment established a precedent that would persist for centuries. Of course, the martyr stories conveniently left out how Christians had also judiciously used violence when advantageous after gaining state power. Clearly, meekness and turning the other cheek were not always expeditious. The history penned by the victors is inevitably slanted and incomplete.
Questioning Christianity’s Role in Impeding Progress
Although apologists tout Christianity’s positive contributions to European law, philosophy, and arts, cracks emerge in this narrative upon closer inspection. Did Christianity truly expand intellectual horizons, or did it merely appropriate existing knowledge into narrowly Christian contexts while suppressing alternative perspectives? Skeptics argue that the Church’s hostile stance toward scientific theories deemed heretical or pagan delayed advancement. If not for Christianity’s stranglehold on thought and education during the Middle Ages, would Europe have secured an earlier foothold in the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution?
One need only examine the Catholic Church’s violent backlash against Copernicus and Galileo for positing heliocentrism. Men of learning were coerced by threats of torture and burning to recant their theories and pledge fealty to Church orthodoxy. The case of Galileo denotes not an exception, but a pattern of coercion repeated against scientists, natural philosophers, midwives, and any whose ideas challenged a literal reading of scripture. Centuries of censorship, thought control, and dogmatic education left European societies struggling to keep pace as the values of the Enlightenment took hold.
Perhaps if classical openness of mind had survived, the darkest chapters of Western history could have been averted. The reasonable doubt persists. How many innovators fell silent, their visions unchanged? How many suppressed works could have advanced human knowledge and freedom? The full accounting may never be known.
”All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as self-evident.” — Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher
Beyond its obstruction of scientific progress, Christianity’s rigid morality and suspicion of the pleasures of the flesh worked to marginalize sexuality and degrade the status of women. The cult of virginity cast carnal relations as sinful, while exclusively male clergy ruled over family life. By monopolizing the social and spiritual spheres, the Church forcibly narrowed the roles available to women. Either maiden, wife or nun — all bound by vows of obedience to God and men. But what of those who embraced their sovereignty of will and body in defiance of Christian strictures? They were swiftly labeled harlots and temptresses in league with dark powers. Is it mere coincidence so many accused witches were midwives, single mothers and the unmarried? In its zeal for purity, the Church poisoned society’s perception of women.
The demonization of sexuality left deep scars. Guilt and shame around bodies and pleasure linger even in secular modernity. Under the Church’s strict policing of sex for procreation only, intimacy was transactional and perfunctory, stripped of passion. Natural erotic impulses were to be suppressed at all costs to maintain spiritual purity. How many suffered under these strictures? How many had their vitality diminished for fear of committing imaginary sins invented by celibate priests?
Tragic Consequences of Sexual Repression
Consider the plight of young women anxiously guarding their virginity, taught that it defined their virtue in the eyes of God and men. Those who strayed from the chaste ideal paid dearly, shunned as unholy and unmarriageable. Many were discarded by their families and left destitute, with prostitution the sole refuge. Others endured loveless unions for the sake of societal propriety. And some fled into the arms of the Church itself to escape worldly expectations, doubling down on denial.
How terribly must the natural human needs for intimacy and affection have been thwarted under Christianity’s narrow worldview? No realm was given over solely for the Enjoyment and celebration of the senses. The sacred was cleaved apart from the sensual, impoverishing both.
These strictures also engendered a destructive relationship with sexuality and shame in boys and men. Religious ideology magnified the baser aspects of masculine identity — aggression, entitlement, dominance — while providing a convenient scapegoat for disavowed carnal impulses in the tempting flesh of women. The Church’s patriarchal structure reinforced male authority in all spheres, divine right wielded for ill purposes. When combined with sexual repression, the consequences were toxic.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the pyre on which the Church sacrificed its women as heretics, witches, and temptresses. The firestorms of the Inquisition incinerated an organic, woman-affirming spirituality centered on the cycles of the natural world. The Vatican’s phallocentric paradigm brooked no feminine challenge to its earthly dominion and heavenly ascent. Woman’s sovereign sexuality had to be tamed at all costs. And so the Church purified itself with blood and flames.
Reassessing the Lasting Impact of Christianity’s Dominion
If European thought is to flower again, the heavy mantle of Christian influence must be laid aside so that history can be reexamined with fresh eyes. Modern societies still wrestle with biases and contradictions inherited from centuries of religious doctrine being enshrined into law and social norms. Only by critically evaluating Christianity’s enduring cultural legacy can its narrow, destructive facets be filtered out to reveal the essence of its positive message.
The vestiges of pagan religion in Christian symbology are undeniable. Egyptian sun disks became the halos … The pre-Christian God Mithras … had his birthday celebrated on December 25 … Even Christianity’s weekly holy day was stolen from the pagans … Christianity honored the Jewish Sabbath of Saturday, but Constantine shifted it to coincide with the pagans’ veneration of the day of the sun … To this day, most churchgoers attend services on Sunday morning with no idea that they are there on account of the pagan sun god’s weekly tribute- Sunday.
-Dan Brown
The way forward lies perhaps in disavowing the faith entirely, in resurrecting the spirit of free inquiry that prevailed centuries ago in pagan Greece and Rome. All individuals must be empowered to search for truth guided by their conscience, unimpeded by orthodoxies imposed through fear. As inheritors of Europe’s collective past, it is our responsibility to heal these historical scars by writing a new chapter, one illuminated by the light of reason, diversity, and compassion.
In Iceland, there’s a notable resurgence of interest in the Norse deities, with Nordic paganism emerging as the country’s most rapidly expanding religion. They’ve finished the first temple dedicated to Thor and Odin that the island has seen in more than a millennium. Similarly, Denmark celebrated the completion of a temple devoted to Odin in 2016, marking the first such structure to be built in a thousand years.
Perhaps a modern philosopher inhabiting a more enlightened age can succeed where Pelagius failed 1500 years ago. Though deemed a heretic, Pelagius dared to envision a version of Christianity that rejected original sin and celebrated human choice, not obedience. One imagines him released from the chains of condemnations and anathemas by the Council of Carthage, ready to engage in open dialogue and see his ideas judged on merit rather than suppressed through institutional force. Perhaps minds undulled by centuries of dogma might perceive new wisdom in his gentle heterodoxy. Pelagius awaits vindication.
Beyond the suppression of free thought and persecution of marginalized groups, the methods employed by the Church to erase pagan influences raise troubling moral questions. Ancient Roman temples and shrines were plundered without scruple to provide raw materials for churches and monasteries, forever obliterating those sacred sites. Marble columns, reliefs and statuary were ripped from their settings, the old gods chiseled away to make room for crosses and images of saints. How does such cultural cannibalism align with Christian charity and stewardship? Should not these complex historical layers have been preserved for their own sake instead of demolished in triumphalist zeal? One is left to mourn the enormity of what has been lost.
The Ravaging of Cultural Memory
Imagine the Roman philosopher Cicero resurrected from antiquity. How would he react to witness the toppling of the Pantheon’s statue of Wisdom to be replaced with a giant cross? Would he smile benignly, or would he decry this willful ravaging of cultural memory? What would be lost to future generations if classical temples were spared to stand proudly alongside medieval cathedrals? Is there not room enough for both to coexist and inspire?
Other ancient faiths showed greater adaptability in absorbing new influences while still retaining reverence for what came before. Hinduism and Buddhism demonstrated that profound truths have myriad manifestations, not just one. By embracing the multiplicity of the divine, they avoided the danger of dogmatism that breeds repression and persecution. Perhaps evolving Christianity could have similarly incorporated elements of existing European spiritual traditions, finding common ground instead of demanding absolute dominion. The overlaying of one rigid orthodoxy upon diverse indigenous cultures inevitably requires force.
Personal Reflections From a Reincarnated Philosopher of the Old Way
As a thought experiment, I shall adopt the persona of a pagan philosopher reincarnated in medieval times to witness my life’s work denigrated and suppressed by rising Church power:
In my past life as a respected scholar of antiquity, I sought wisdom and enlightenment through rational inquiry and open debate, following in the tradition of my mentor Plato. The natural world filled me with awe and wonder; I saw evidence of divine craftsmanship in every tree, mountain and starry night. Wisdom was best gained through patient observation and questioning rather than received wisdom.
But now in this new era, my philosophical school stands accused of blasphemy against the one true God. My lineage faces extinction as this new cult elbows aside all rivals with little regard for what is lost. They claim their messiah fulfilled prophecies and rendered all previous knowledge null. Their vision allows no compromise with competing doctrines.
I watch helplessly as centuries of cultural heritage go up in flame or get whitewashed into propaganda for church doctrine. So much subtle profundity accrued across aeons is being shattered in mere decades. My library of scrolls and tablets turns to ash as this new creed sweeps away everything existing power structures oppose.
The bishop argues that my people’s conversion will save us from damnation. But his offer of salvation requires relinquishing our identity and autonomy. I see the undue suffering inflicted upon innocents to glorify God and punish sin. Is this truly the road to redemption?
I foresee the coming centuries under this rigid new order defined by censorship, persecution, superstition and fear mongering. What fresh horrors will be committed in the name of religious purification? Reason, creativity and basic humanity all must be sacrificed upon altars of blind faith and obedience.
My last hope is that future generations may rediscover the wisdom of antiquity and forge new syntheses between faith and reason, spirituality and science. May they heal these scars and lift the shadows of dogma to let a thousand diverse blooms flourish again in the gardens of the soul. The light of truth cannot be extinguished forever.
The roots of the Old Ways run deep and will nourish new growth when conditions allow. As with all conquered cultures, their cherished beliefs survived encoded in folk practices and oral histories, awaiting respectful rediscovery. For cultural memory endures, despite the rewriting of history by those who hold power.
There is something pagan in me that I cannot shake off. In short, I deny nothing, but doubt everything.
— Lord Byron (1788–1824)
An Appeal to Open-minded Re-evaluation
Through this speculative monologue, I aimed to evoke the sense of loss and ideological rupture experienced by pagan philosophers witnessing the Church transform Europe’s spiritual landscape. However, railing against historical forces beyond our control is fruitless. The way forward is not regressive anti-Christian sentiment, but open-minded re-evaluation of this complex legacy to glean positive humanistic values from Christianity while being honest about its repressive excesses.
Genuine spirituality does not demand faith in only one doctrine. Nor does criticism of past institutional overreach equate to attacking private beliefs. By bravely examining the full panorama of history from multiple angles, not just the viewpoint of authority, we can gain a richer understanding of where we came from and where we want to go.
Rather than battle over the past, we can work to shape a society true to both Christian charity and pagan wisdom — one that uplifts human dignity, creativity and justice while preserving reverence for the sacredness of the Earth which sustains us all. This broader ecumenical vision offers hope for the future.
