Postmodern Paganism

A Recasting of Ancient Arguments

Ancient battles between paganism and monotheism may be seen today as a battle between postmodern thinking and Enlightenment values. While reading about the evolution of our culture through a religious lens, I could not help but to see the parallels. For political and spiritual reasons, the ancient battle was framed as the idea that if there is one god, then there is one truth, and that truth is universal. Any group of people that holds the keys to the one god and the one truth has carte blanche to impose that truth on those who refuse to see it. However, if there are many gods, then there are many different truths, and every person may choose their own focus of worship and way of life.

This primitive conflict looks to be recast today between Enlightenment values and postmodernism as the argument between objective truth and the varying “ways of knowing.” One binds us to the reality of objective truth and the other offers us freedom from a reality that can be stifling in its relentlessness.

Paganism, as I am using it here, is the paganism Christians in the Roman empire of the fourth century used to describe those who worshipped many gods. Or, in other words, they were polytheists. The multiple ethics of polytheism allowed people freedom to choose to what and to whom they would be accountable. It gave…