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The Triumph of Christianity over Paganism, a painting by Gustave Doré (1899). Paganism is commonly used to refer to various religions that existed during Antiquity and the Middle Ages, such as the Greco-Roman religions of the Roman Empire, including the Roman imperial cult, the various mystery religions, religious philosophies such as Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, and more localized ethnic ...
Modern paganism in the United States is represented by widely different movements and organizations. The largest modern pagan (also known as neo-pagan) religious movement is Wicca, followed by Neodruidism. Both of these religions or spiritual paths were introduced during the 1950s and 1960s from Great Britain. Germanic Neopaganism (also known as Heathenry) and Kemetism appeared in the US in ...
Ritual sacrifice was an integral part of ancient Greco-Roman religion [4] and was regarded as an indication of whether a person was pagan or Christian. [4] Paganism has broadly connoted the "religion of the peasantry". [1] [5] During and after the Middle Ages, the term paganism was applied to any non-Christian religion, and the term presumed a ...
Pagan studies scholar Chas S. Clifton argued that the discipline had developed as a result of the increasing "academic acknowledgement" of contemporary Paganism's "movement into the public eye", referring to the emergence of pagan involvement with interfaith groups and the pagan use of archaeological monuments as "sacred sites", particularly in the United Kingdom. [7]
According to Gerald Gardner, who popularised Wicca in the twentieth century, the religion is a survival of a European witch-cult that was persecuted during the witch trials (sometimes called the Burning Times), and the strong element of secrecy that traditionally surrounds the religion was adopted as a reaction to that persecution.
The publications of studies into European folk customs and culture by scholars like Johann Gottfried Herder and Jacob Grimm resulted in a wider interest in these subjects and a growth in cultural self-consciousness. [94] At the time, it was commonly believed that almost all such folk customs were survivals from the pre-Christian period. [95]
Historian and archaeologist Timothy E. Gregory has written in "The Survival of Paganism in Christian Greece: A Critical Essay" that J. M. Speiser successfully argued this was the situation throughout the country, and "rarely was there any significant contact, hostile or otherwise" between Christians and pagans in Greece.
In Pagan Theology, York presents his controversial theory that the term "paganism", originally a pejorative term to refer to non-Christian religions, should instead be used by scholars to refer specifically to those religious movements who share the common characteristics of polytheism, animism and life-affirming beliefs.