Tucker Carlson and John Daniel Davidson, senior editor of The Federalist, recently had an enlightening discussion on what the decline of Christianity and the return of paganism to the States and the rest of the West would mean for politics and the wider culture.  One of the main conclusions was that with paganism comes actions justified solely by who is physically more powerful in a situation.  The acceptance of abortion and euthanasia by more and more people they see as a consequence of this.

It is instructive to look at what the new pagans themselves think about such things.  As abortion looms large in the US presently, we’ll focus on it for a moment.  One blogger quoted on that subject wrote, “[T]here is no reasonable argument that (at least at most stages) [a fetus] enjoys anything approaching equality with a human being. Given this simple fact, it seems to me that over most of the process leading towards birth, it should be entirely the woman’s choice whether or not to carry a fetus to term.”  While a wicca FAQ elsewhere reveals,

Feminist spirituality promotes a belief that women are goddesses. Within feminist spirituality a woman is taught that she is the goddess incarnate. A goddess is both creatress and destroyer. And, since women are seen as the goddess incarnate, women believe that they wield the power over creation and destruction. A woman that thinks she (not God) is capable of creating life has little, if any, qualms bringing that life to an end. Consequently, abortion is considered a logical and appropriate option for pregnant women.

Thus we have confirmation that a new pagan age will involve the replacement of Christ’s example of self-sacrifice (replicated in every age in the lives of a multitude of Christians and especially in the lives of the saints) with the diabolically inspired will to power.  One of those saints in the Orthodox Church, St. Sophrony of Essex, England (+1993), describes the good sort of revolution Christ brought to the world vis-à-vis human relationships:

Whereas in normal human interactions there is a negotiation rooted in power and self-assertion, Christ calls his followers to the opposite. Rather than vie for authority, which is a desire to ascend upward through the secular hierarchical ranks, Christians are called to descend downward, imitating the self-emptying love of the Messiah who died for the sake of others. Here the worldly pyramidal structure of society is turned upside down. Summarizing St Sophrony’s explanation of this new reality, Fr Zacharias (Zacharou) writes, “Christ, in order to heal all mankind, to break the deadlock of human injustice and to raise up high all those who are of ‘low degree’ upon the earth, overturns this pyramid of human existence, placing the apex at the base, and thus establishes the ultimate perfection” (Christ, Our Way and Our Life, South Canaan: STS Press, 2003: 54-5). Christ places himself at the very “bottom” of this inverted pyramid, and hence calls humanity to follow after him by descending into the depths of selfless love for others.

To quote the Lord Himself:

But Jesus called them to himself and said to them, “You know that those who are considered rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant. And whoever of you desires to be first shall be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (St. Mark’s Gospel 10:42-5).

The last will be first, and the first last (St. Matthew’s Gospel 20:16).

It is precisely this spirit of love and humility that has led to so much generosity to the weak and powerless in Christendom, the founding of so many hospitals and orphanages, the appearance of Holy Unmercenary Physicians (i.e., doctors who heal without asking for payment), a politics of restraint rather than force and violence, and so forth.  It is this spirit that inspired so many Christian kings, like St. Alfred the Great of England (+899), to dedicate so much time and effort to providing justice for the downtrodden within their realms:

105. Alfred judges the Poor with Equity.285—When all these things were properly arranged, the king, eager to hold to the half of his daily service, as he had vowed to God, and more also, if his ability on the one hand, and his malady on the other, would allow him, showed himself a minute investigator of the truth in all his judgments, and this especially for the sake of the poor, to whose interest, day and night, among other duties of this life, he was ever wonderfully attentive. For in the whole kingdom the poor, besides him, had few or no helpers; for almost all the powerful and noble of that country had turned their thoughts rather to secular than to divine things: each was more bent on worldly business, to his own profit, than on the common weal (Bishop Asser, Life of King Alfred).

The desire in the US for impartial justice is the fruit of practices like this one of St.-King Alfred from the Christian politics of earlier ages.  But these trees and their fruit will wither and die if their Christian root is severed by apostasy from the Church and the re-acceptance of paganism.

We therefore have two incompatible worldviews (amongst others), Christianity and neo-paganism, clashing in the West.  Conservatives/Revivalists must take this into account when considering government and policies for it to enact.  The Enlightenment’s classical liberal ideal of a society of religiously neutral individuals rationally discussing political proposals is an utterly unreal fantasy.  Powerful spiritual forces are at work in the world (God and satan, angels and demons, saints and sinners, prayers and magic spells), including the sphere of politics, and human beings, including politicians, whether knowingly or unknowingly, are influenced by them when they make decisions.  There is no religious neutrality in government or outside of it.

Because of that, conservatives should not believe they can have constructive dialogue with neo-pagans, woke Leftists, et al., whose beliefs allow the strong to crush their opponents without a twinge of conscience (J6 and the Trump trials are merely the beginning of the birth pangs if the latter sort of folks continue to expand their power across the US).  The survival of a Christian culture will require revivalist conservatives to do more than promote a suicidal policy of religious neutrality/plurality.  They must use all the means at their disposal to promote Christianity to their neighbors, wherever they are, whether in deep red States in the South or in more questionable areas:  movies, documentaries, books, works of charity, etc.  They must build up havens for themselves:  counties, towns, and States.  Politicians must make sure students are reading defenses of Christianity like Tom Holland’s Dominion or Fr. John Strickland’s Paradise and Utopia series and not simply being soaked with secular STEM facts and atheistic Darwinian evolution.

If they don’t, Minnesota will no longer be an outlier as a State celebrating her burgeoning pagan population, and survival of the fittest will be much more than just a line in a musty school textbook.