The Decline of Christianity & The Rise of Paganism

Historian Tom Holland’s book, "Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World", advances the proposition that Christ’s influence on society has so permeated the world (and especially the West) that as we enjoy the fruits of His influence, we are like fish enjoying water yet unaware we are swimming in it. Our culture assumes the truth and superiority of values derived from Christianity to the point we almost assume these principles are self-evident. They are not, and a study of the ancient world destroys such notions. The ancient Roman world, into which Jesus was born, didn’t value human life, compassion for the weak, or educating the masses as we do today. Most modern people are ignorant of the civilizing effects of Christianity. 

Holland illustrates this point in the book’s introduction. Rome operated as if violence brought peace. The people of the empire could enjoy peace only because of its brutality towards others as well as towards the slaves whose labor supported their lifestyles. Crucifixion was one of the tools for keeping order. Several hundred years before Jesus’s death, it was a common to see a hundred or more crosses on the road outside of Rome occupied with naked, tortured bodies. Vultures circled overhead and feasted on corpses left on crosses, plucking eyeballs and eating open human flesh. Such sights were commonplace. Once the bodies were removed from the crosses, they were often dragged by hooks and thrown into a mass grave near the road. The stench of decay lingered for decades after the site was no longer in use.i 

Today, in the United States, numerous states have paused or banned the death penalty because lethal injection or the electric chair is considered “cruel and unusual punishment.” The Romans and the societies who predated them cared nothing for such ideas. While modern culture struggles to justify executing murderers and rapists, the Romans had no problem brutally executing personal slaves who simply crossed them one too many times. Modern disdain for such brutality would not exist apart from the spread of Christianity. The world is a much more civilized place because of Jesus Christ and the influence of His followers, yet few understand this. 

Ancient cultures like the Romans were pagan societies. John Daniel Davidson argues that Paganism is defined by its disbelief in Absolute Truth.ii In other words, if you deceive yourself into believing that you can’t know with confidence THAT the LORD is the only true God then you also can’t know with confidence WHAT is morally right for all people. Pilate’s response, “What is truth?” to Jesus’ claim that He was born to “bear witness to the truth” illustrates the absence of truth that undergirds paganism. 

Most people think of Paganism as religion characterized by the worship of multiple gods or a worship of nature—and that’s true. The Romans and Greeks worshipped a pantheon of gods, but so too did the Norse and every other ethnic group or culture. All arrived at these points by rejecting the one and only creator God, suppressing the truth of His existence (Romans 1:18-21), and walking away from the truth of His ways (Romans 1:22-25). A willful ignorance was sought by man; and a willful ignorance was granted by God. 

Yet, Paul in Romans 1:28ff. describes the brutal effects of such willful ignorance. 

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.iii 

These words not only detail the sin that results from rejecting the Lord and His ways, but also the moral landscape in Pagan cultures. Strife, violence, the devaluing of human life, the absence of mercy, and the like characterized life in the ancient world. Despite efforts by some to romanticize ancient times, the Pagan world was brutal and barbaric. Too few understand the great degree to which the values of ancient world are foreign to us today. 

Tom Holland explains how, after his journey away from the Christian faith, his fascination with studying ancient cultures eventually led to a renewed respect for Christ’s civilizing effects on modern culture: 

"The more years I spent immersed in the study of classical antiquity, so the more alien I increasingly found it. The values of (the Spartan king) Leonidas, whose people had practiced a particularly murderous form of eugenics and trained their young to kill uppity Übermenschen by night, were nothing that I recognized as my own; nor were those of Caesar, who was reported to have killed a million Gauls, and enslaved a million more. It was not just the extremes of callousness that unsettled me, but the complete lack of any sense that the poor or weak might have the slightest intrinsic value. Why did I find this disturbing? Because, in my morals and ethics, I was not a Spartan or a Roman at all. That my belief in God had faded over the course of my teenage years did not mean I had ceased to be Christian. For a millennium and more, the civilization into which I had been born was Christendom. Assumptions that I had grown up with—about how a society should properly be organized, and the principles that it should uphold—were not bred of classical antiquity, still less of ‘human nature,’ but very distinctly of that civilization’s Christian past. So profound has been the impact of Christianity on the development of Western civilization that it has come to be hidden from view."

Holland’s point is modern culture has been shaped so thoroughly by Christ and Christianity’s ideas that, by-and-large, we take them for granted as being self-evidently true. They have become as leaven mixed through the dough indistinguishable from culture itself. Still, could we treat cultures like two retail products and examine them side-by-side on a shelf, the differences would become easily visible. Among other things, Christianity has provided the world the basis for human rights, charity, hospital systems, orphanages, universities, modern science, capitalism, and more. Modern man enjoys the benefits of Christian thought even though he is often ignorant as to why the modern world is the way it is. 

Modern Western Pagans 

Many modern people might be aptly described as unwitting Pagans. Their worldview meets all the broad qualities to be characterized as pagan even if they don’t realize it. 

Paganism starts with the willful loss of truth about the existence and identity of God (Romans 1:18-20). It denies absolute truth claims about religion so that it allows for the worship of nature and a multitude of gods (Romans 1:21-23). It includes a rejection of the Lord’s created order, substituting alternative creation narratives and alternate stories of humanity’s purpose, especially as it relates to the purpose of human sexuality. Not only does Paganism reject objective moral truth, but humanity is corrupted in the process (Romans 1:24-32). 

While all Paganism shares certain qualities in common, differences exist at the surface of each. Roman Paganism looked different than South American Paganism, and South American Paganism looked different than ancient Chinese Paganism. In the same way twenty-first-century Western Paganism looks different than the paganism of the past. 

Because of scientific and technological advances spanning centuries, modern man no longer feels the need to offer sacrifices to gods to intervene on man’s behalf. To the modern mind, humanity has demystified nature through science and technology. Blinded by affluence that people of the past couldn’t fathom, modern man has impressed himself to the point that he’s elevated himself to the place of most high god. As the saying goes, “Man is the measure of all things.” Instead of sacrificing unblemished animals and even humans as the ancients did, modern secular pagans turn to experts to protect them from environmental disaster. Rather than offer up ancient possessions of value (the best of the herd, etc.), modern secular pagans sacrifice freedom and money for protection against disaster. When all else failed in the ancient world and their typical sacrifices weren’t effective to end calamities, ancient pagans turned to foreign gods to appease them. Modern secular pagans do the same thing—in the worst of times he turns to the universe, or mother nature, or traditional religious gods. 

Like ancient Pagans rejected the Lord’s purpose for creation and humanity, modern western pagans do likewise. In the place of Genesis and the Bible, evolution is substituted as a godless explanation of origins allowing sex to become something amoral and permissive, and (as the reasoning goes) if the Lord hasn’t determined the created order of things, modern man gains that privilege. Each person defines for himself his own purpose for existence. 

In such a world, categories like male and female are no longer hard coded into reality. Each person defines their own reality. If the God of the Bible is rejected, then He doesn’t get to tell us WHY we were created or FOR WHAT purpose. Just like the ancient pagans placed few limits on sex, modern pagans do the same. Like ancient pagans became calloused to their Creator and His ways, thus slipping into the inevitable lust for sensual pleasure (Ephesians 4:19), modern pagans have done the same. 

Make no mistake about it, Christ’s ethic and ideas derived from Christian doctrine ended many barbaric societal attitudes and practices. Yet, the recent trend in Western culture to dissociate from Christian values and replace them with something else (lately, Neo-Marxist Woke DEI ideology), ultimately works to reverse those civilizing gains—the degree to which is yet to be seen. The further we, as a society, push Christ and Christianity’s influence away from us, the more barbaric and uncivilized our culture will become. Christ’s values and Christianity have civilized the Western world in such a way that we value human life, compassion, and freedom in ways that ancient people didn’t. However, just as Joseph was forgotten in Egypt after a time, the loss of the Christian foundation undergirding these civilizing advances will mean a return to more barbaric ways. 

No one in their right mind would want to return to ancient culture if they understood the progress borne from two thousand years of Christian influence—but that’s exactly the danger that’s possible as we progress through the twenty-first century. 

Examples of Decline 

In the same way that Reagan said, “Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction,” moral decline is always a viable threat. Two effects of the encroachment of paganism on Western values bear mention: the value of human life as it relates to the enshrinement of abortion rights in state constitutions of traditionally conservative states and the Western move towards more totalitarian governmental structures. 

Regarding the value of human life, Western culture’s high value of life originates from Christianity’s teaching that humans are created in the image of God. Yet as Christianity’s influence wanes, and as greater percentages of the population consider it a “human right” to abort unborn children even to the moment of natural birth, we see both the vestiges of Christianity’s influence and the rejection of such values. Word games are employed to ease our collective cultural conscience because Christ’s influence has impressed the notion that innocent human life must be protected. That was not the case in ancient pagan lands. Modern people rationalize abortion by refusing to classify the unborn as human life or persons. Instead, the issue is framed as one of “women’s rights” and “health care,” even “reproductive justice.” However, the need for such maneuvering testifies to the Christian influence on Western culture. 

In 2022, voters in two historically politically conservative states (Kentucky and Kansas) refused to pass constitutional amendments that would essentially ban abortion in these states. On the other hand, a majority of voters in Ohio recently enshrined the right to an abortion in its state constitution. What’s more, polling suggests that abortion rights drove a higher voter turnout than expected in 2022. Our nation’s valuation of human life is progressively becoming more pagan. 

Christianity’s values serve as a preservative that protects the culture against the worst effects of human depravity. As those values are pushed aside, the Self is given permission to act in selfish ways. In the pagan past, societies had no problem exposing unwanted newborns to the elements or sacrificing them to the gods. The modern Western world has forgotten the depths of humanity’s depravity as well as the evil that such depravity makes possible. Don’t be mistaken, the return of pagan values leads to a return to a more barbaric way of life. The degree of which is yet to be seen. 

Regarding Paganism’s influence and the move towards more totalitarian forms of government, Christianity’s influence on governmental structures has been profound. Because our nation’s founding fathers were heavily influenced by Christian doctrine, they distrusted human nature. The Bible teaches that mankind is depraved—corrupted by sin and not inherently good by nature. 

The Christian understanding of human depravity influenced the founding fathers to institute a government with separation of powers because they understood that absolute power corrupts absolutely. As pagan ideas of the goodness of humanity have gained ground and become the dominant belief in our culture, there is a move towards more totalitarian styles of government. People crave a benevolent ruler who will value love and justice above all, but only Jesus Christ is qualified to be the benevolent ruler. Yet the Pagan notion of the goodness of humanity has our culture chasing political messiah-types who will user in utopian times, and modern Pagans are willing to sacrifice freedom to charismatic leaders who arrogantly act as if they are cut from a different cloth than the leaders of the past. 

The move to stack the courts and end the filibusters is a move towards one party style of rule. Such is the reality in communist countries that reject Christian values. The further that pagan values erode the Christian influence on our founding, the further totalitarianism advances. 

What Shall We Do? 

First, we can learn from the early church who lived among the ancient pagans. Paganism wasn’t merely a subject of study for them; it was life around them every day. Because we live in a culture that has been influenced by both Christianity and the return of pagan values, we must be able to distinguish between the two. To do that, we must become students of Christian doctrine as well as popular cultural beliefs. 

When the Apostle Paul traveled to Athens and preached to the Greek pagans, he knew Greek beliefs well enough to contrast them with the gospel by quoting their poets (Acts 17:28). Francis Schaeffer won modern people to Christ by interacting with modern culture and contrasting it with Christianity. We need to be able to do the same. 

We can compare the themes of modern movies, popular social media content, and music with the gospel to show the superiority of Christ’s ways. Churches can tackle these topics in Bible studies and the Sunday sermon. Of course, to do this we must first have a strong foundation of faith so that we don’t succumb to temptation ourselves. To do this we must discipline ourselves to spend time with God in prayer, Bible study, and with God’s people. 

Second, we can take an example from the early church and rely upon prayer to boldly proclaim God’s truth without fear (Acts 4:24-31). Apart from God’s strength, we may give in to fear and be intimidated by the culture. The early church understood this danger and prayed for boldness and strength. We can’t neglect prayer and must discipline ourselves to pray consistently for courage as well as the drive to interact with the people of our culture. 

Thirdly, there may come a time when barbaric ways have returned to the point that we are physically persecuted because of Christ. God told Jeremiah to preach even though no one would listen (Jeremiah 7:27). Similarly, Paul in 2 Timothy 4:3–5 says, “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.” There may come a time when culture will not listen to reasoning and is completely hardened to the voice of God. When that day comes, Paul continues and exhorts us to, “always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.” 

What should we do? Minister the word of Christ regardless and endure suffering knowing that Jesus’s reward comes with Him soon (Hebrews 9:28).