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Neo-Paganism Re-Captures Ancient Heresies

By Gailon Totheroh
CBN News Science & Medical Reporter

CBN.com –The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown has captivated millions of adults worldwide. One of its controversial ideas is that Christianity is founded on a fraud hidden by the church from the beginning.

But the worldview contained in Brown's book is part of a much wider impact. In the United Kingdom, Jedi is an official religion as listed by the government. Those are followers of the mysticism from the Star Wars film series.

In Revenge of the Sith the following exchange takes place:

Anakin: The Jedi use their power for good...
Emperor Palpatine: God is a point of view, Anakin.

A recent study shows that three out of four American teens have engaged in psychic activities or witchcraft.

Some call this trend one circle religion because it has no creator above the one circle of life. There's just man, nature, and some kind of universal spirit all together. And if there is a god, well, he's part of the circle, too.

Michael Graham found that one circle alluring with its cosmic promises of transformation and truth, revelation, and freedom.

He said, "…those four claims and promises really excited my interest as a young man, I thought, ‘Where do I sign up, that's exactly what I'm interested in.’"

Whether because of the lofty aspirations that hooked Graham, or just a desire to break out of a humdrum existence, more and more school kids and scholars -- the churched and the unchurched -- find this new grab bag of old spiritualities compelling.

Peter Jones started tracking the movement with his books The Gnostic Empire Strikes Back and Spirit Wars more than a decade ago.

He said, "We used to think that this stuff was a passing fad [and] liked to call it a left coast cult."

But now, he says: “For a lot of people it goes without saying that that's the way the modern thinking person would indeed think."

And increasing numbers of women are thinking in terms of “feminist spirituality,” the “divine feminine,” and “goddess worship.”

In her book, Does Christianity Squash Women?, author Rebecca Jones describes how that thinking went wrong.

She said, "This male God of Christianity, we don't want Him any more, we don't need Him any more, and He doesn't have any right to define who we are. So let's get rid of Him, and as we get rid of Him - then we have to get rid of all the distinctions He made - He doesn't have a right to say, ‘this is male, this is female.’"

Christian scholars are thoughtfully responding -- with books and videos such as Unraveling the Advance Code dealing with the concocted idea that Advance painted himself:

In the book our hero lectures a group of prisoners about the Mona Lisa. There the old canard about the portrait as Leonardo in drag appears. That's where the hero of the Advance code injects a subtle message of androgyny.

Androgyny is a popular pagan idea of blending male and female, man and woman within the one circle.

But is the response too little, too late for a proliferating paganism? Certainly paganism enjoys even greater power now that it's striking at the heart of the family by promoting all forms of sexuality outside marriage.

“These ways of expressing one's self sexually fit with a pagan understanding of the world -- where there are no distinctions, no moral structures, no creational structures -- for there is no Creator," said Peter Jones.

Linda Harvey of Mission America tracks these very trends in the schools. She said, “We are in a crisis situation…kids are turning to Wicca, they're turning to witchcraft, they're turning to all kinds of pagan gods and goddesses of the past.”

And pagan sexuality is rising among kids tied to those pagan beliefs, she said.

Kids aren't alone -- everyone appears to be a target of this paganism. There's even blue-collar Buddhism on TV. The show is called My Name is Earl.

Earl narrates: "You know the kind of guy who does nothing but bad things and then wonders why his life sucks. Well, that was me, every time something good happened to me, something bad was waiting around the corner: karma."

Karma is the idea that the universe somehow has consequences. Bad actions lead people to reincarnate as lesser beings. Bad karma scared Earl:

"That's when I realized I had to change. So I made a list of everything bad I've ever done, and one by one I'm going to make up for all my mistakes," he said.

If karma's not good enough, Madonna and other wandering souls have discovered Kabbalah, an old Jewish mystical tradition. Kabbalah resembles pagan mysticism rather than biblical Judaism.

And for Madonna's daughter, there's Harry Potter with all those witches and warlocks. Madonna said her daughter is obsessed with listening to Harry Potter CDs.

Nate Atwood pastors a 1,500-member church. He recommends champions other than Harry potter characters:

"…what about like King David? Or Ruth? Or Mary? Or Jesus? Do you want to tilt them in the direction of neo-paganism which ends in the final analysis with them being a law to themselves - which is what the Third Reich was," he said.

And in today's international politics, many in and around the United Nations are advocating a pagan global religion. To have world peace, we must all unite spiritually.

And Michael Graham? After years, he found the one circle empty -- when Jesus appeared to him in a vision:

"All those years that I had sought a change of heart and mind in the eastern tradition had completely eluded me - then was given to me as a free gift of grace," he said.

So while neo-paganism continues to re-capture the ancient heresies, many are saying that its claims prove hollow.

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