“a purely intellectualized pantheism … invites its adherents to commune with a universe that offers suffering and misery in abundance, which means that it has a strong appeal to the privileged but a much weaker appeal to people who need not only a sense of wonder from their spiritual lives but also, well, help.”
–Ross Douthat, “The Return of Paganism”, New York Times (Dec. 12, 2018)
Ever since I stopped calling myself “Christian”, I have wondered at the fact that the story of a Jewish rabbi in first century Palestine should capture the imagination of people around the world for the successive two millennia, and that the religion which developed around his story should become the most popular religion on the planet–with over 2 billion in the world and over 200 million in the United States.
Continue reading “Pagan Thoughts on the Christian Story”