# Paganism is a religion. Wait, what?! **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 19, 2004, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paganism-is-a-religion-wait-what/225240 "2004-01-19T22:35:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Speaker\_for\_the\_Dead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@Speaker\_for\_the\_Dead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Speaker_for_the_Dead)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2004, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paganism-is-a-religion-wait-what/225240/1 "2004-01-19T22:35:40Z")
Alright, I’ve been recently informed by my friends that I am wrong in thinking that “pagan” is an adjective for a number of different religions. According one, it is a religion that stretches its roots back to (presumably pre-Christian) Ireland, and is a relation of the Celtic religion(s?). Now, this is a two part question. Firstly, is Wiccan “pagan”? I think it is – it fits both the derogatory (non Judeo-Christo-Islamic) and the Encyclopedic (a nature oriented religion that believes in either many gods, that existence is divine, _or_ that natural features are divine. Secondly, when did this religion called Paganism develop? I’ve never heard of it, and I guess I’m just woefully misinformed. What’s happened? ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2004, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paganism-is-a-religion-wait-what/225240/2 "2004-01-19T22:42:07Z")
There is no religion called paganism. Paganism is a blanket term used to describe anyone who is not either Christian, Jewish, or of the Islamic faith. So it applies equally to wiccans, druids, hindus, buddhists, taoists, and most Unitarians I know. To name merely a few. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2004, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paganism-is-a-religion-wait-what/225240/3 "2004-01-19T22:48:34Z")
Let me amend my earlier statement to say that in the past, there was no religion called paganism. Today we have neopagans and people who call their declared religion paganism, but this is a modern construct on past faiths which did not refer to themselves as pagans. The term “Pagan” derives from the Latin “rural dweller”. ---
**Author:** ![Kinthalis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kinthalis/32/16084_2.png) [@Kinthalis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kinthalis)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2004, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paganism-is-a-religion-wait-what/225240/4 "2004-01-19T23:05:54Z")
An additional, there is currently NO religions that can trace their beleifs back to the Celtic druids. Modern religions that claims this are based on (mis)conceptions of how these people worshipped. We don’t actually have much information on their beleifs, and neither do we have decendants that carried on the religion to modern days, so today’s ‘druidic’ religions (such as wicca) are not druidic at all, except perhaps in spirit. ---
**Author:** ![Hamish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a5b964/32.png) [@Hamish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hamish)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2004, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paganism-is-a-religion-wait-what/225240/5 "2004-01-19T23:24:19Z")
FWIW, I’m Wiccan and tend to use “neo-pagan” to avoid confusion, especially in mixed company 🙂 “Pagan” usually refers to any religion that didn’t start with Abraham, but sometimes, particularly in older books, it refers exclusively to Greco-Roman paganism (Zeus/Jupiter, Aphrodite/Venus, etc), though whether even those beliefs can be classified to as _one_ religion is debatable. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2004, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paganism-is-a-religion-wait-what/225240/6 "2004-01-19T23:25:20Z")
Seems to me that referring to Paganism as an actual faith would be like saying someone is a Monotheist without being any more specific. ---
**Author:** ![Speaker\_for\_the\_Dead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@Speaker\_for\_the\_Dead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Speaker_for_the_Dead)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2004, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paganism-is-a-religion-wait-what/225240/7 "2004-01-20T00:19:03Z")
> [@Cervaise](#): > > Seems to me that referring to Paganism as an actual faith would be like saying someone is a Monotheist without being any more specific. :eek: That’s the exact example I used! ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2004, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paganism-is-a-religion-wait-what/225240/8 "2004-01-20T00:51:59Z")
Well, great minds think alike. And then there’s you and me. 😛