Christianity, Paganism and the Alt-right

There’s been some discussion recently on various alt-right sites about the future of religion in western society. It seems to boil down to four questions.

Can western civilisation survive without religion?

If not, can secular religions take the place of real religion?

If the answer to both these questions is no, can Christianity be revived?

And lastly, can some kind of paganism fill the void?

There have been attempts to create purely atheistic societies but in most cases (such as the Soviet Union) religion was repressed rather than destroyed. The territories encompassed by the Soviet Union remained fundamentally religious. 

The most determined attempt to create an atheistic society has been our own, over the past half century or so. So far the results have not been inspiring. In fact if it appears to have been a partial success that is only because a large of the population has been pumped full of Prozac and similar drugs, this being the only way people can cope with the emptiness of modern life.

Substituting secular religions for actual religions has been tried, with dismal results. In our own case environmentalism and liberalism have been the most popular substitutes and they seem to make people less happy than outright atheism. These secular religions offer none of the comforts of real religion but you do get guilt. Lots and lots of guilt. This is the irony – secular religions are much more guilt-ridden than real religions. Even worse, the guilt seems to escalate remorselessly as we find more and more things to feel guilty about and so the general level of unhappiness also increases remorselessly. 

And the guilt leads people to be more and more irrational and to support more and more societally destructive policies. If we choose this option the chances of survival for our civilisation are so slim as to be almost nonexistent.

So can Christianity be revived? It’s possible but I personally think there is absolutely no chance that such a revival could come from the established mainstream churches. They are so hopelessly corrupted by the social justice agenda that nothing can be hoped for from that quarter. The Canadian United Church for instance is so “inclusive” it has openly atheist pastors. The established mainstream churches would have to be swept away. They are enemies of Christianity.

Is it possible that a genuine Christian revival could take place outside the established mainstream churches? I think the answer is yes but I’m not particularly optimistic that it will happen. Any form of Christian church will attract SJW entryists. And Christianity seems to be peculiarly vulnerable in this respect. My fear is that a new revived Christianity would be overrun by SJWs within a generation.

So what about paganism? At first glance it seems a very remote possibility. Modern neo-paganism is hopeless feminised and warm and fuzzy and filled with somewhat unstable personalities (to put it mildly). Neo-paganism is also all too often merely a front for hedonism and libertinism. Of course the alt-righters who cherish the pagan option are not really thinking about neo-paganism. Or even the Graeco-Roman paganism. They’re thinking of resuscitating the Old Religions. The Norse and German pagan religions. The worship of Wotan (or Odin as the Norse called him). The attraction of this (to some alt-righters) is the blood and soil element. They see this kind of paganism as an ideal vehicle for nationalism.

I can understand (up to a point) the attraction. And the worship of Odin does seem superficially masculine and likely to repel SJWs (which is a bonus). On the other hand there’s something fundamentally artificial about trying to revive a dead religion. It’s perhaps an appealing fantasy but I’m sceptical as to whether it would ever amount to much. For social conservatives like myself it doesn’t have much appeal.

Options three and four seem like the only viable choices. Option three, the revival of Christianity, is the most attractive but in some ways the most dangerous. Christianity was conquered once by liberalism and it would require constant vigilance to prevent the same thing from happening again. Option four seems terribly unlikely and it carries with it its own dangers.

If we can’t make either option three or four work we may by default find ourselves left with option five – Islam as the only viable bulwark against liberalism. Not a very happy thought.