Return of the Ancient Gods: How Revival of Paganism Challenges the Foundations of Western Civilization

• Western civilization claims heritage from Greece and Rome but stripped them of their deeply spiritual, polytheistic foundations during Christianization.
• The rise of Christianity led to the destruction of temples, persecution of philosophers, and banning of sacred traditions like the Olympics.
• The Renaissance selectively revived Greco-Roman ideas, filtering them through Christian lenses while erasing their polytheistic essence.
• A global resurgence of native, polytheistic traditions — from Greece to India — is challenging the West’s historical erasure and spiritual monopoly.
• The reopening of the Arcadian temple symbolizes a broader spiritual awakening, confronting centuries of religious suppression and reclaiming lost identities.

We are taught that Western civilization is the proud heir of Greece and Rome — their culture, architecture, democracy, philosophy, and science form the cornerstone of modern identity. But rarely is it acknowledged that these so-called “secular” and “rational” achievements were born from spiritual soil. Greek and Roman identity was inseparable from their gods.

For instance, democracy in Athens wasn’t a cold exercise in policymaking. It was spiritual — conducted under the gaze of Pallas Athena, the goddess of wisdom and war. Laws in Rome were not merely civic but steeped in priestly rituals and divine sanction. Art, athletics, and science were acts of devotion to the pantheon. For instance, the ancient Olympic Games were “a religious festival held in a religious sanctuary.”[1]

However, this foundation was violently uprooted when the Roman Empire adopted Christianity in the 4th century CE. Pagan temples were destroyed or converted. Priests were persecuted. Philosophers were exiled or killed. The Christian emperor Theodosius I banned the Olympics Games, where the Greeks and later the Romans met for 1,000 years to honor Zeus. The spiritual lifeblood that had animated Greco-Roman civilization was drained, and only its “secular” skeleton was allowed to remain.

The West, in essence, had to annihilate Greek and Roman civilizations before declaring them as cultural ancestors —stripping them of their spiritual core and locking them away like relics in museums so they could no longer challenge Christian hegemony. Today, the West heaps praise on the glories of Greek and Roman civilizations, but only after ensuring they lie safely in the grave. They’ve been attempting the same with Hindu civilization—severing its soul to make it easier to tame—but without success. So far.

Attack on Arcadia: Christianity’s Ongoing War on Pagan Cultures

Christianity’s relentless ethnocide – the deliberate and systematic destruction of the culture of an ethnic group – continues to this day. In March 2025, history was made as the first ancient Greek temple in 1,700 years opened for worship in Arcadia, Peloponnese.[2] A grand inauguration ceremony, attended by hundreds of people, marked the return of a sacred space that once stood at the heart of Greek religious life. The temple, dedicated to Zeus, Dionysus, and Pan, is not designed as a museum but as a functional space for worship, much like it was in its heyday.

However, the reopening of the temple has sparked a wave of controversy. Evangelos Bexis, the site manager and organizer of the event, said that despite the temple’s completion, the Greek Ministry of Education swiftly issued a circular prohibiting the operation of the temple. A special team of authorities sealed the entrance, even though the Urban Planning Department had granted the necessary permits. This decision came as a shock to many who had hoped to see a revival of ancient traditions in the land that Westerners claim as the birthplace of their civilization.

Reviving Polytheism

What’s truly fascinating about this story is not just the temple’s reopening but its deeper implications on the global stage. The revival of polytheism, and specifically the rise of pagan traditions, is making a significant comeback in Greece and across Europe despite modern-day resistance from entrenched churches. Against this backdrop, the consecration of the Greek temple in Arcadia is not merely about preserving history; it’s about reclaiming a culture that was once cast aside by the forces of Christianization centuries ago.

Sanitized Antiquity

“The Greeks were aggressively polytheistic,” says Paul Christesen, professor of Ancient Greek History at Dartmouth College, USA.[3] Athenian democracy, often hailed as a precursor to modern political systems, was deeply rooted in religious practices, with the gods — seen as the source of wisdom — playing a central role in shaping political decisions and actions. The Athenians believed that their democratic system was not just a human invention but was guided and legitimized by the will of the gods. Rituals honoring Goddess Athena, the city’s patroness, were intertwined with civic life. The assembly (ekklesia) operated in a context where divine guidance was considered essential for governance.[4]

Public festivals, such as the Panathenaic Games[5], also linked religion with civic pride and participation, reinforcing the idea that the city-state’s well-being depended on political engagement and divine favor. Essentially, Athenian democracy was not just a political system but a sacred endeavor, with the gods playing an integral role in the prosperity and success of the community.

The Roman legal system, the underlay of European jurisprudence, was heavily influenced by religious rituals and priestly interpretations. Legal decisions often invoked divine authority, blending law with spirituality.[6]

What did the West do to these ancient connections? It abstracted these achievements from their spiritual origins, allowing them to be celebrated as universal ideals to align with Christian orthodoxy.

Erasure of Pagan Foundations

A pivotal moment in the history of Western civilization came with the Roman Empire’s adoption of Christianity under Emperor Constantine in 313 CE. This shift marked the beginning of a systematic effort to marginalize and suppress pagan practices. Early Christians, in their quest to establish doctrinal supremacy, viewed paganism as a direct challenge to the truth of Christianity. Temples that once stood as monuments to polytheism were repurposed or destroyed, festivals were banned, and pagan philosophers were ostracized. The gods of ancient civilizations were relegated to the status of myths and relics, and their power was marginalized. In their place, the Christian faith — with its singular, monotheistic, and genocidal god[7] — became the dominant narrative.

For centuries, this narrative reigned unquestioned, especially as Western society built its identity on the accomplishments of those ancient pagan cultures.

Greek author Evaggelos G. Vallianatos explains in his iconic book, ‘The Passion of the Greeks,’ how Christianity changed Greece. “The Christians made the whole country a cemetery, which quite unintentionally preserved the aftermath of their plunder and genocide of the Greeks and Hellenic civilization.” He adds: “The products of Christian culture — the bible, the liturgy, the miracles of Jesus and the saints, the dogmas of sin, paradise, and hell, the icons of the religious hierarchy — come from a world that has nothing to do with the Parthenon and the philosophy and piety of the Greeks…”[8]

New York-based historian Angelo Nasios trashes the prevailing notion that paganism died a natural death, after which the Roman and Greek civilizations seamlessly segued into the West. He says it was “Christian terrorism” that destroyed Greece and Rome. “What happened to the pagans, the people who followed their ancestral religions, was nothing short of an ethnocide/genocide. With state support, Christianity sought to eliminate its opposition through any means necessary. Christian leaders hated Greeks and believed the empire had to be purged clean of their false religion and culture.”[9]

By the 1400s, public ethnic Greek identity was gone, thanks to centuries of persecution and cultural destruction. Says Nasios: “What the people had become were Roman Christians. The so-called Byzantine Empire, which is characterized as ‘Greek,’ was far from Greek; the people called themselves Romaioi. Greek was not a viable self-identity. The ‘triumph’ was secured thanks to the intentional destruction of the Greek people.”

Renaissance: A Curated Revival

The Renaissance (1450 to 1650) heralded a revival of Greco-Roman antiquity, but with a catch. Philosophers like Plato and Aristotle were embraced, yet their teachings were bent and filtered through Christian lenses. This process shows the selective appropriation of classical thought, where the philosophical ideals were retained, but the pagan religious beliefs were relegated to the margins – or, more often, completely censored.[10]

The Renaissance also romanticized classical art and literature while ignoring the cultural diversity of ancient Greece and Rome. Classical connections beyond Europe — to regions like Sudan and India — were conveniently forgotten, perpetuating a Eurocentric myth that tightly bound the “West” to an idealized, sanitized version of antiquity.

As American anthropologist Eric Wolf commented, “Many of us even grew up believing that this West has a genealogy, according to which ancient Greece begat Rome, Rome begat Christian Europe, Christian Europe begat the Renaissance, the Renaissance the Enlightenment, the Enlightenment political democracy and the industrial revolution. Industry, crossed with democracy, yielded the United States, embodying the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”[11]

Greece and Rome Are Not the West

Scholars have challenged the tidy narrative of “Western Civilization” as a direct inheritance from ancient Greece and Rome. Naoise Mac Sweeney, professor of classical archaeology at the University of Vienna, says the idea that the modern West is the culmination of a unique, unbroken cultural tradition stretching from classical antiquity to the present is factually incorrect. “The ancient Greeks and Romans were much more diverse than we might think. They were neither predominantly white nor predominantly European, and indeed did not conceive of racial and geographical categories in the same way we now do.”[12]

The notion of a coherent “West” emerged much later, particularly during the Renaissance, and was solidified in the 17th century during European imperial expansion. “Western Civilization is therefore not just a myth in the sense that it is a fiction that we tell ourselves, despite knowing that it is factually false. It is a myth that was invented to justify slavery, imperialism, and oppression. As such, it served the ideological needs of the time of its invention, reflecting the core values of the society that produced it,” says Mac Sweeney.

Polytheistic Revival: Threat to Christian Hegemony

But the ancient gods, it seems, were only sleeping.

Today, a quiet but determined resurgence of paganism is taking place — not just in Greece but across Europe and the world. Norse Asatru thrives in Iceland. Druidry is practiced in Britain. Descendants of the Prusi (once thought extinct) are rebuilding their temples and reviving pre-Christian Prussian rituals as far afield as Russia.[13]

In the United States, there’s an explosion of interest in Druidry, Hinduism, Wicca, Buddhism, and other native or polytheistic traditions.[14] Even mainstream surveys reflect this shift: In 20 US states, the religiously unaffiliated now outnumber any other religious group.[15][16]

The drift away from Christianity is causing a dramatic transformation in how Americans perceive the world. For instance, the proportion of Americans who think religion “can answer all or most of today’s problems” is now at a historic low of 48 percent.[17] Plus, around 29 percent of Americans do not expect a religious funeral at their death.[18]

And this shift is making the Church nervous. It continues to view paganism not just as a rival movement but as a threat to the ideological monopoly it has held over the Western worldview for centuries. Backed by the state, the Church has launched aggressive campaigns against neo-paganism, while conservative Christian voices warn of “moral decay” as a result of these resurgences.[19]

Consider the aggressive backlash faced by Indian spiritual teacher Osho in 1980s Europe. Feeling threatened by Osho’s influence, the Greek Orthodox clergy launched a fierce campaign against him. They warned the government that “blood would flow” unless Osho were thrown out of the country. In an ironic twist, the archbishop, who preached Christian values of love and tolerance, threatened Osho with being “burned alive” unless he was removed from Greece. In Italy, Osho faced similar resistance. The Vatican reportedly pressured the Italian government to deny him entry, with the Pope’s influence being cited as a key factor in the delays and eventual refusal of his visa.[20] Or, take the attempts by Russian prosecutors to ban the Bhagavad Gita as extremist literature.[21] Or the rising number of attacks on Hindu temples in America.[22]

The Church sees the writing on the wall: the monopoly is breaking.

Arcadia Temple: A Beginning, Not an End

The consecration of the Arcadian temple was more than a ceremonial gesture. It was an act of cultural reclamation, a signal to the world that the ancient gods still mattered—not as dusty myths but as living forces of identity, reverence, and belonging.

That the temple was shut down only reinforces the point: There’s still a war being fought over the soul of humanity. The impunity with which Christians attempt to destroy the very society that allows them to grow is aptly illustrated by Pope John Paul II’s call to the Church in 1999 to redouble its efforts to convert Hindus. “Just as the first millennium saw the cross firmly planted in the soil of Europe, and the second in that of America and Africa, so may the third Christian millennium witness a great harvest of faith on this vast and vital continent,” he told a crowd in India’s capital, New Delhi.[23]

Pagan movements can take heart from the existence of more than a billion Hindus who have preserved their ancient dharma – despite 1,400 years of foreign invasions, alien rule, and genocide. India is home to a civilization where gods are still worshiped in temples, rituals are performed daily, and festivals connect communities to cycles of nature and the cosmos. Revivalist pagans can look to India for ritual continuity, sacred geography, calendar-based practices, and a model of non-exclusive theism where many gods can coexist.

Conclusion: A Cultural Reckoning

The West has long celebrated the minds of Socrates, Cicero, and Sophocles while scorning the gods they worshipped. It has inherited the form of the past while discarding its spirit.

But that spirit is returning.

As more people seek meaning outside rigid monotheism — embracing polytheism, native traditions, and diverse spiritual paths — they’re also confronting the uncomfortable truth: Western civilization was built on erasure.

What rises now from Arcadia, the forests of Iceland, the temples of India, and beyond is not just a religious revival. It is a cultural reckoning—and perhaps a chance to finally heal the ancient wounds that birthed the modern world.

The ancient gods were never dead, just waiting.

And maybe, just maybe — they’re ready to be revered again.

Citations

[1] The history of the ancient Olympic games (International Olympic Committee website); https://www.olympics.com/ioc/ancient-olympic-games/history

[2] First Ancient Greek Temple in 1,700 Years Opens in Arcadia (Greek Reporter, 2025); https://greekreporter.com/2025/03/10/first-ancient-greek-temple-after-1700-years-opens-arcadia/

[3] The history of the ancient Olympic games (International Olympic Committee website); https://www.olympics.com/ioc/ancient-olympic-games/history

[4] The Panathenaic games (Ancient Olympics);  http://ancientolympics.arts.kuleuven.be/eng/TB014EN.html

[5] Western Cultural Dichotomy: Greaco-Roman Heritage Challenges To Modern Western Values (Global Research Journal, 2024); https://globalresearchjournal.co.uk/western-cultural-dichotomy-greaco-roman-heritage-challenges-to-modern-western-values/

[6] The Roman Republic (Louis Press Books); https://louis.pressbooks.pub/westernciv/chapter/chapter8/

[7] Christopher Hitchens interview on “God is Not Great” (YouTube, 2007); https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRe0M6_O6E4

[8] The Passion of the Greeks: Christianity and the Rape of the Hellenes (Book by Evaggelos G. Vallianatos; available on Amazon.com); https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/1593860390?ref_=mr_referred_us_au_nz

[9] Hearth of Hellenism: Genocide and the “Triumph” of Christianity (The Agora; 2018); https://www.patheos.com/blogs/agora/2018/06/hearth-of-hellenism-genocide-and-the-triumph-of-christianity/

[10]Why the Idea of Western Civilization is More Myth Than History (LitHub, 2023); https://lithub.com/why-the-idea-of-western-civilization-is-more-myth-than-history/

[11] Uma Krishnaswami blog; https://www.umakrishnaswami.com/blog/we-have-been-taught

[12] Why the Idea of Western Civilization is More Myth Than History (LitHub, 2023); https://lithub.com/why-the-idea-of-western-civilization-is-more-myth-than-history/

[13] Prusi (Wikibin); http://wikibin.org/articles/prusi-3.html

[14] The Pagan Revival (Tomorrow’s World, 2006); https://www.tomorrowsworld.org/magazines/2006/november-december/the-pagan-revival

[15] This Christmas, 78% of Americans Identify as Christian (Gallup, 2009); https://news.gallup.com/poll/124793/this-christmas-78-americans-identify-christian.aspx

[16] America’s Changing Religious Identity (PRRI, 2017); https://www.prri.org/research/american-religious-landscape-christian-religiously-unaffiliated/

[17] Meacham: The End of Christian America (Newsweek, 2009); https://www.newsweek.com/meacham-end-christian-america-77125

[18] What does dying — and mourning — look like in a secular age? (Vox, 2018); https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/12/4/18078714/death-secular-age-funeral-end-of-life-reimagine

[19] Interview – Randall Balmer (PBS); https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/godinamerica/interviews/randall-balmer.html

[20] World Tour and Bombay (Osho Source Book); https://oshosourcebook.com/part-six/

[21] Russia court rejects ban of Hindu text (Al Jazeera, 2011); https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2011/12/28/russia-court-rejects-ban-of-hindu-text

[22] Tensions Rise in Sugar Land as Church Group Protests Against Temple’s 90-Foot Hanuman Statue (Hoodline Houston, 2024); https://hoodline.com/2024/09/tensions-rise-in-sugar-land-as-church-group-protests-against-temple-s-90-foot-hanuman-statue/

[23] Pope heralds mission to convert Asia (The Guardian, 1999); https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/nov/08/millennium.uk