Contributing Factors in the Resurgence of Paganism in Western Society

The “resurgence” of Paganism in Western society has occasioned a response to western Christianity that has presumably neglected the environment, exerted male dominance, demythologized the world and exalted reason above creativity. Neo-paganism has risen in a post-Christian context from old European traditions. Marc Spindler states that, “For a significant number of people, European neo-paganism is an ideology of resistance against global systems, drawing upon mythical elements in the pre-Christian tradition of European cultures.”1 Here, we will consider some of the factors that have contributed to the resurgence of Paganism. While any one of these factors might explain the religious nature of the West, when combined they offer a unique understanding to the growth of Paganism.

Worldwide estimates of the adherents of Paganism range from several hundred thousand to more than three million.2 Whatever the correct statistic, it is generally agreed that it is difficult to estimate the number of Pagans since there is no overarching structure or hierarchy. Nonetheless, Thomas Luckmann suggests that this “new” religious movement is one of the most successful purveyors of worldview in the religiously pluralistic marketplace of Europe.3

In 1996 the Pagan Hospice and Funeral Trust reported that,

There are at least 25,000 Pagans living, working and practising in Britain, but this is a conservative estimate, since there is no centralised body. Comparably, the Society of Friends, or Quakers, in Britain number only 20,000.4

In 1999 the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reported that an undocumented 1997 study indicated there were approximately 100,000 practicing Pagans in the United Kingdom, an increase of 95,000 since 1990. The same report stated that the Pagan Federation, an organization founded in 1971 to provide information about Paganism and to counter misconceptions regarding the religion, received 100 inquiries a month from potential adherents.5 The BBC reported that on 21 June 2001 ten thousand people gathered at Stonehenge to celebrate the summer solstice, an increase of 2,000 from the year before.6 The forthcoming census of the United Kingdom should shed more light on the actual statistics.7

Estimates for other European countries are not readily available. However, Pagans in Italy and Portugal are preparing for Pagan Pride Day in September 2002. The previous year saw 17,494 Pagans gather at 76 different events in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Italy, Portugal and Brazil. This represented an increase of over 8,000 compared to 2000’s attendance.8 The Order of Bards, Druids and Ovates reports the presence of affiliated groups in the Netherlands, Germany and the Czech Republic.9 Yet, the resurgence of Paganism is not limited to Europe.

Based on a ten-year study of covens of witches, Helen Berger estimates that there could be as many as 200,000 witches in the United States.10 An earlier study conducted in San Francisco by Aidan Kelly estimated the number of Wiccans at 300,000. However, the methodology employed by Kelly is questionable. Berger states,

This is probably an over-estimation, as in each of the three methods he uses, Kelly is gauging the number of covens in the U.S. and multiplying the number of covens by ten, which he believes is the average coven membership. Ten members is plausibly the typical size of a coven, but it is probably not the average size, since there are probably more covens with a membership of less than ten than a membership of more than ten.11

While Wicca does not encompass the entire Pagan community it does give an indication of the growth of Pagan religions in the West.

In 1999 the Pagan Education Network reported that,

Since it is not an organized movement, it is very difficult to determine the number of its practitioners, but it is estimated that there are between 100,000 and 600,000 in the U.S. alone. Some have termed Paganism the fastest-growing religion in the West.12

Barry Kosim and Egon Mayer conducted a more scientific study in 2001 entitled the American Religious Identification Survey. The survey generated more than a hundred different categories which were filtered down to sixty-five by the researchers. Compared with a previous study conducted in 1990, the National Survey of Religious Identification (NSRI), from which ARIS was modeled, Wicca grew from 8,000 to 134,000. While the categories of Druid and Pagan were not a part of the NSRI they comprised 33,000 and 140,000 respectively in 2001.13

In 1996, Australia and New Zealand included Pagan designations on their censuses. The Australian census on religion reported that five percent of the country’s population was self-identified as adherents to Paganism (4,353), Wicca/Witchcraft (1,849), Pantheism (835), Nature Religions (1,734), Druidism (554).14 The census in New Zealand reported that 792 people self identified with Wicca and 669 self identified with Nature Religion.15 Based on these somewhat ambiguous statistics, it seems apparent that Paganism is reviving in Western society and, in some cases, the growth rate seems to be nothing less than phenomenal.

There are at least five factors that have contributed to the growth of Paganism in Western society. Individually, these factors, while significant, cannot be thought of as definitive contributions. In other words, it seems apparent that these five factors have worked concomitantly and have opened the door to further exploration of religious identity. While there are identifiable organizational/structural components to the growth, they fall outside of the scope of this essay. The focus here will be on socio-historical factors.

Christianization of Western Europe

The first factor to consider is the superficial nature of Christianity after Constantine. Since his so-called conversion in AD 312, the Christian church enjoyed a position of privilege unprecedented in its brief history. The religious edicts of toleration (AD 314 and AD 324) provided a milieu of religious pluralism; however, it was not long before the church began to suppress the religious beliefs of Pagans. Almost as a foreshadowing of Enlightenment rationalism, Constantine’s heirs issued a law against superstitions and sacrifice (AD 341).16 In spite of the state and church’s efforts, from time to time Paganism enjoyed moments of revival that sought to reinstate the priesthood and restore Pagan shrines. It was not until the Visigoth Alaric’s sack of Rome (AD 410) that organized Paganism, to some extent, ceased. However, from the time of St. Augustine to the 19th century antiquarians, a remnant of Pagan beliefs and practices among common people is preserved in the literature.17

Eighty years after Constantine’s conversion, Augustine’s theological justification for the use of diverse means to convert Pagans and heretics set the agenda for the advancement of Christianity on the continent of Europe. Thomas Aquinas believed that Augustine’s rationale justified the use of force against those who opposed the Catholic Church. The result of this method of enticing Pagans to become Christian caused Paganism to go underground and some of their practices were integrated into the church. In one sense, it is incorrect to talk of a resurgence of Paganism since its practices were never completely extinguished.

While Christianity became the dominant belief system in the Middle Ages, it was not without having been profoundly influenced by its Pagan antagonists.18 W.H.C. Frend describes the context as “a world in which the Christian was slowly absorbing the Pagan classical past into a new imperial Christianity.”19 The Christianization of Pagan practices provided elements of continuity in the new religious lives of proselytes.20 Rituals and festivals were Christianized and infused with new meaning while saints and martyrs replaced local deities; all officially sanctioned by the church only to be liberated by the Pagan masses as expressions of identity.21 These ancient systems of varying beliefs survived in the subconscious of their adherents who called themselves Christians resulting in a folk Christianity.22 Christina Oakley notes,

Those special people who believed in their local spirits, who cultivated psychic or magic powers, who told and retold their ancient myths, who cast spells and performed divinations, who dressed in animal skins – almost all considered themselves Christian once Christianity had arrived and established itself, although in rural areas this may have amounted to no more than a nominal Christianity.23

For all practical purposes, Paganism was hiding in the church.

The Disenchantment and Re-enchantment of the World

The second factor is that of the re-enchantment of the Western world after the failure of modernity. Considering that 80 to 90 percent of early modern Europe was made up of the peasant class,24 it is not out of the question to suggest a remnant of Pagan belief; especially in light of the church’s early struggle with Paganism. It was not until the Reformers confronted the church and ultimately posited personal salvation without the need of ritual that Christianity in its Protestant form was to some degree free from Pagan influence. Jones and Pennick write,

The reform movements within Catholicism which crystallised into the Protestant Reformation in the early sixteenth century brought about a desire for simplicity of ritual and belief which rejected many of the compromises which the Church had made with Pagan practice.25

According to Peter Burke, Christians of early modern Europe recognized the need for missions in their own land as much as in foreign lands. They objected to the many and varied popular customs as Pagan survivals and recognized how many official Christian practices were of pre-Christian origin.26 Barry Raey describes popular religion in early modern England as, “A coherent popular Catholicism, popular Puritanism, religious apathy, radical sectarianism, a vast amorphous world of syncretistic or folkorised Christianity, a corpus of magical beliefs which helped ordinary people to cope with the vagaries of a harsh and uncertain environment.”27 Jones and Pennick illustrate this when they wrote,

The use of holy water and incense, solemn processions (the old lustrations), religious rites of passage marking the turning-points of human life, the veneration of local saints, and the great feast of the dead, the annual Christian Parentalia on All Souls’ Day, can all be seen as direct imitations of Pagan traditions.28

Summarily, Protestant Christianity promoted a disenchantment with the world and, combined with the rationalism of modernity, relied on human ability to solve the problems of the supernatural. Consequently, modern science replaced faith and questions of ultimate meaning were resolved by reason. Concomitantly, the Enlightenment project postulated that knowledge was the key to unlocking the secrets of the universe. Knowledge, to the modern mind, was objective and certain. The ability of the individual to obtain knowledge was limitless and once obtained the individual could master nature for the benefit of humanity and thus secure a better world.29 Lesslie Newbigin asserted that,

While the Catholic Church had attempted to erect barriers against the Enlightenment, the Protestant churches had, in effect, surrendered the public field – politics, education, industry, economics – to the ideology of the Enlightenment and sought refuge in the private world of the home and the soul.30

Many believed that the disenchantment of the Western world would usher in an era of secularization. Modernization would eventually eliminate the need for religion altogether.31 Nevertheless, the one-time attraction of modernity has resulted in what Thomas Oden sees as a moral tailspin of “sexual, interpersonal and familial wreckage.”32 The expected decline of the influence of religion on society as a result of modernity has not come to fruition. In fact, the world, and in the case at hand, western society, is becoming increasingly more religious or re-enchanted.33

The re-enchantment of the world is a characteristic feature of postmodernity. Oden defines the postmodern ideology as a “hunger for means of social maintenance, continuity, intergenerational traditioning, historical awareness, freedom from the repressions of modernity.”34 Postmodernity is in search of what modernity failed to find and while modernity was searching it left a tremendous wake of wreckage in its path. From the vantage point, then, of the re-enchantment of the world it is easy to understand the resurgence of Paganism. Loren Wilkinson observes,

It is not so surprising, then, that in the contemporary longing for an escape from the modern (which is manifested most dramatically in the cities), many are turning to the ancient religions of the countryside, and arguing that Christianity has little to offer those concerned with the cycle of nature.35

The postmodern identity can be seen, for example, in the construction of contemporary identity based on the mass media. Douglas Kellner argued that, “TV myth resolved social contradictions in the way that Levi-Strauss described the function of traditional myth and provide mythologies of the sort described by Barthes which idealize contemporary values and institutions and thus exalt the established way of life.”36 Thus, with the popularity of television programs such as Sabrina, the teenaged witch, Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, Charmed, Smallville, W.I.T.C.H., Medium and others, popular culture is getting a heavy dose of a pre-Christian created reality.

Postmodernism as expressed in re-enchantment, then, can be understood in one of Laurence Cahoone’s instructive taxonomies: positive postmodernism. Positive postmodernism attempts a positive reinterpretation of fundamental issues regarding humanity, society, art, politics, the self or God in light of postmodernist values. York, retired professor of sociology at Bath Spa University College and a self-identified shaman, expresses this idea in relationship to new religions,

The postmodernity of New Age, Human Potential, goddess Spirituality and Neo-Paganism does not deny the utility and validity of legitimate scientific inquiry, but it asserts the spiritual reality encoded within the metaphorical world of myth and religion. It has moved beyond the limits of logical positivism and scientific empiricism to explore what it perceives as a magical-mystical reality only fragmentedly retained or perceived in any given traditional religious belief-system.37

While attempting to avoid the inconsistencies of relativism, positive postmodernism stresses the plurality of quests for certainty in knowledge. Cahoone states, “This category refers to writing that applies general postmodern themes to particular subject matters in order to offer a new vision or understanding of them.”38 This “new vision” is looking back to antiquity for meaning and is articulated by a number of Druid insiders. For example, one insider states, “My feelings about Druidry is that it offers one of the most direct ways of connecting with those God/Goddess manifestations and through its reverence to Nature offers mankind a stabilizing reconnection with who we really are. This is something that Western civilization is desperately in need of.”39 However, it was not simply a re-enchantment of the world that has occasioned the reconstruction of Pagan religions in Western society.

Globalization

Globalization is a third factor in the growth of Paganism in Western society. John Tomlinson defines globalization as the “rapidly developing and ever-densening network of interconnections and interdependences that characterize modern social life.”40 While to some degree there is a homogenization of the world inherent in globalization, the term is better understood in the context of an interaction between traditional ways of life and the worldwide impact of modernization. Harold Netland states that globalization has its roots in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Citing Malcolm Waters, globalization is “the direct consequence of the expansion of European culture across the planet via settlement, colonization and cultural mimesis.”41 In this sense, globalization seems to be a euphemism for colonialization. However, Anthony Giddens suggests, “Although still dominated by Western power, globalization today can no longer be spoken of only as a matter of one-way imperialism.”42 Just as the West influenced other parts of the world so now other parts of the world are influencing the West.

One result of globalization has been a legitimization of multiple worldviews. Peter Beyer suggests that this legitimization constitutes a worldwide culture of pluralism.43 For example, Eastern philosophies have legitimized mysteries that were once thought of as superstitious and this has precipitated an exploration of pre-Christian religions. The rise of Pagan religion simply testifies to “the critique and confirmation of contemporary social normality.”44 Beyer states, “What makes the rise of contemporary nature religion genuinely intriguing is not simply its counter-structural or even counter-cultural symbolic strategy, but the intricate links between the latter and the values and dominant structures of global society.”45 The values Beyer refers to as representative of global society include particularity and exclusivity as well as anti-institutionalism.

The Inadequacy of Western Christianity

The fourth factor is the inadequacy of Western Christianity. Western Christianity is increasingly considered as unable to answer the questions of the post-Christian West. Pagans look at the Christian era as one of destruction and futility. To them, Christianity has been an oppressive force that has stifled the position of women and disregarded the environment. Pagans have characterized Western Christianity as having an emphasis on the primacy of the male as normative for humanity, not to mention its disregard for nature in the name of progress.46 Similarly, it is characterized by its emphasis on reason at the expense of the imagination. Its reliance on rationalism resulted in the demythologization of the universe. The spiritual and intellectual link in Christianity has not permitted the mysteries tolerated by other religions.47

Carr-Gomm suggests that the resurgence of Paganism is due to the failing of “established” religions to meet the spiritual needs of people as well as the environmental crisis brought on by the dualism and authoritarianism of these religions.48 It critiques monotheism as unfavorable to pluralism since it posits one God who imposes one truth on the entire human race.49

Thus, Jones and Pennick assert that the impetus for the resurgence of Paganism has been a response to the desire to put humanity back in a particular context. That context is one that is physical and chronological: physical in the sense that the natural world is an indispensable part of life and chronological in the sense of continuity with ancient philosophies.50 It offers a “possible religious philosophy for a pluralistic, multicultural society.”51

Congruency of Western Religious Belief and Paganism

Alongside of this inadequacy, finally, congruency between Western religious belief and Paganism provides a fifth factor. According to Rodney Stark, a new religious movement’s (NRM)52 success is, to a certain degree, based on the extent to which it retains cultural continuity or what he calls “cultural capital.” Cultural capital, according to Stark, results from an individual’s socialization and education (capital) in a particular culture.53 Stark states, “religious movements will spread more readily to the extent that they build upon the familiar.”54 In other words, they grow to the extent that they utilize acceptable cultural boundaries thus preventing a complete discontinuity between the culture of the movement and that of the potential adherent.

Stark suggests an environment that is religiously unregulated, comprised of weakened conventional faiths and gives the perception of success to the first generation adherents are important factors in a favorable ecology in which a NRM can grow.55 He suggests that individuals who are no longer active in a religious body will fill the ranks of NRMs more so than those who are active. Thus, where participation by members and attendees of religious groups is low there will be a high incidence of NRMs.56

The 1998 International Social Survey Programme on religion (ISSP Religion II)58 interviewed 1284 people in the United States and 974 in Canada. Eighty percent of US participants indicated that they were members of a Christian church. However, only thirty percent actually attend services weekly or more. The data is similar in Canada (see above). Data like this leads Stark to conclude that NRMs will grow at a faster rate due to the lack of participations of adherents. This does not necessarily suggest that Paganism will be successful in the Western spiritual landscape. However, it does point to the potential for success. There are a significant percentage of Christian adherents who are available to be recruited to other religions. The American Religious Identification Survey confirms the finding of Religion II. The ARIS suggests that those who self-identify as Christian has declined from 86.5 percent in 1990 to 76.5 percent in 2001. At the same time, other religious groups have modestly grown from 3.3 percent in 1990 to 3.7 percent in 2001 while non-religious groups have grown from 8.2 to 14.1 percent.59

Western beliefs, however, give further indication to the potential for growth in Pagan religions. Particularly in the United States, beliefs that have been traditionally thought of as foundational to Christian belief are in decline (Table 3). The belief that astrology expresses scientific truth as well as the belief in horoscopes, fortunetellers and good luck charms are congruent with the beliefs of contemporary Paganism (Tables 4 and 5). With this in mind, the growing numbers of those that would be considered “nature worshippers” should not surprise us. A number of individuals in both the United States (26%) and Canada (33%) view nature as sacred in and of itself. In general, the data demonstrate that traditional Christian beliefs have declined while non-traditional beliefs have risen. These nontraditional beliefs are congruent with contemporary Paganism and provide a bridge for potential movement of Christian adherents to Paganism. As William Sims Bainbridge recognized, “In some ways, traditional religion may have prepared the ground for novel para-religion, even though they will compete with each other.”61

While this data might explain congruency with New Age, Andrew Greeley agrees that they could equally indicate congruency with Paganism. Considering that fewer people are self-identifying with New Age in spite of a growth in beliefs associated with it suggests that these beliefs are in fact indicative of Paganism. While Greeley provisionally agrees that the belief in magic as exemplified in the ISSP variables dealing with fortunetellers, astrology and good luck charms measures New Age attitudes, it is more likely that this continued fascination with what was once considered superstition is a result of the tenacity of pre-Christian popular religion.63

Most certainly there are competing explanations for the data. Nevertheless, the North American religious environment is one in which, given the decline of church attendance, traditional beliefs and self-identification as Christian, Paganism can fill the continued spiritual interests of religious seekers.

For centuries Christianity offered Western society an identity, but in recent years the rejection of Christianity has suggested that it continues to search. With the void that has been left by Christianity’s inability to relate to the issues confronting people, Westerners are increasingly looking for ways to fill it. This paper suggests that Paganism will be a viable competitor in the religious marketplace only to the degree in which it is congruent with the culture. Current data suggests that Pagan beliefs are consistent with the beliefs of a number of Western society. This leads us to suggest that Paganism will grow. However, this data did not arise in a vacuum. There are significant factors that have contributed to the state of Western society’s religious belief. While these factors are suggestive not only for the growth of other non-Christian religions, the combination of them leads the author to suggest a unique opportunity for Paganism.