Decline of religion

[The Grand Nudger]

-just continuing to ramble because it basically my favorite thing and has been my entire life, lol.....neo-paganism is, in short, exactly the kind of religion people come up with when their traditional religions are fading or dead. Christianity was once like neo-paganism, in it's own time, and also snatched up the space cleared by the failure of traditional beliefs and societies structured on them. It's also at least somewhat interesting to note that this stuff came from nowhere in 1950 to where it is in 2022 in about as much time as it took for christianity (we're told, at least) to go from a bakers dozen or so nutbars to a major religion with millions of adherents. Contemporary neo paganism is, like cargo cults, an impromptu live experiment in the process of religious construction.

I'd even say that contemporary paganism is the best evidence for the idea that a religion can go through periods of explosive but disorganized and possibly difficult to see growth in a short time. But that's not where the potential relationships stop. A survey that christian shaman put out of their own adherents and by their own metrics identified that the overwhelming majority of self professed christians had already incorporated neo pagan or new age beliefs that were directly antithetical to their nominal doctrinal faiths. The number of actual neopagans in this country may include a very healthy share of self identifying christians - hence the market for christian wicca and other equivalent syncretism.