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Hard to argue with you when events back you up so convincingly. Except, I can't concede to Christianity the total victory you give it. My view on this comes directly from my own pagan Goddess (meant unironically), Camille Paglia, who contends Christianity never did defeat paganism. Paganism went underground and has since been at war with Christianity. This is the agitation that has led to such mighty achievements in art and all the rest. Paganism occasionally brazenly erupts, showing its immortality, at times like the Renaissance. I can't see any reason why our vital need for the spiritual should be so completely owned by Christianity. That's ceding too much to what is in reality a jumped-up, smarty-pants, Johnny-come-lately enterprise. The film Equus brilliantly shows how man is, at his deepest level, a pagan animal. Pagan worship gives man his profoundest spiritual understanding of self and Nature--of self in Nature. Christianity has always been trying to stop up the casements and keyholes, but paganism, "’twill fly with the smoke out at the chimney." It may have turned out like you say, and it may be too late, but I'll never believe it had to be so. |