"Pagan" redirects here. For other uses, see Pagan (disambiguation).
Depiction from 1887 showing two Roman women offering a sacrifice to the goddess Vesta
Paganism (from classical Latin pāgānus "rural", "rustic", later "civilian") is a term first used in the fourth century by early Christians for people in the Roman Empire who practiced polytheism,[1] or ethnic religions other than Judaism. In the time of the Roman Empire, individuals fell into the pagan class either because they were increasingly rural and provincial relative to the Christian population, or because they were not milites Christi (soldiers of Christ).[2][3] Alternative terms used in Christian texts were hellene, gentile, and heathen.[1] Ritual sacrifice was an integral part of ancient Graeco-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 belief in "false gods".[6][7] The origin of the application of the term "pagan" to polytheism is debated.[8] In the 19th century, paganism was adopted as a self-descriptor by members of various artistic groups inspired by the ancient world. In the 20th century, it came to be applied as a self-descriptor by practitioners of modern paganism, modern pagan movements and Polytheistic reconstructionists. Modern pagan traditions often incorporate beliefs or practices, such as nature worship, that are different from those of the largest world religions.[9][10]
Contemporary knowledge of old pagan religions and beliefs comes from several sources, including anthropological field research records, the evidence of archaeological artifacts, and the historical accounts of ancient writers regarding cultures known to Classical antiquity. Most modern pagan religions existing today express a worldview that is pantheistic, panentheistic, polytheistic, or animistic, but some are monotheistic.[11][12][13]
^ abcPeter Brown (1999). "Pagan". In Glen Warren Bowersock; Peter Brown; Oleg Grabar (eds.). Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World. Harvard University Press. pp. 625–26. ISBN 978-0-674-51173-6.
^J. J. O'Donnell (1977), Paganus: Evolution and Use Archived 29 March 2019 at the Wayback Machine, Classical Folia, 31: 163–69.
^Augustine, Divers. Quaest. 83.
^ abJones, Christopher P. (2014). Between Pagan and Christian. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-72520-1.
^Owen Davies (2011). Paganism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. pp. 1–2. ISBN 978-0-19-162001-0.
^Kaarina Aitamurto (2016). Paganism, Traditionalism, Nationalism: Narratives of Russian Rodnoverie. Routledge. pp. 12–15. ISBN 978-1-317-08443-3.
^Owen Davies (2011). Paganism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. pp. 1–6, 70–83. ISBN 978-0-19-162001-0.
^Davies, Owen (2011). Paganism: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0191620010.
^Paganism, Oxford Dictionary (2014)
^Paganism Archived 25 June 2018 at the Wayback Machine, The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, Bron Taylor (2010), Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0199754670
^Lewis, James R. (2004). The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements. Oxford University Press. p. 13. ISBN 0-19-514986-6.
^Hanegraff, Wouter J. (1006). New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought. Brill Academic Publishers. p. 84. ISBN 90-04-10696-0.
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