Ancient-Future Faith—Catholic and Pagan?!

By Robin G. Jordan

I repeatedly find myself questioning the motives of those who minimize and explain away the significant differences between Anglo-Catholics and evangelicals, not only on a plethora of secondary matters but also a number of key primary matters. They appear too willing to sacrifice the truth for the sake of a sham unity and to promote untruth.

I also find myself questioning whether God is behind such prevarication. Jesus himself claims to be the Truth. The Holy Spirit, he tells us, is the Spirit of Truth. This naturally leads one to ask, “Is such pretended unity really the work of the Holy Spirit?”

Conservative evangelicals like myself see the glaring differences between the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Anglican Church and ourselves. We admittedly do have some common ground—a number of shared beliefs. At the same time we have gross differences that cannot be ignored or played down, and these differences outweigh our shared beliefs.

We also hear the strident voices in the Anglican Church’s Anglo-Catholic wing, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Eastern Orthodox Church that criticize the Protestant Reformation, Protestantism, the Reformed Churches, Reformed theologies, and classical Anglican evangelicalism. They do not attempt to feign unity between themselves and us. They, in their own eyes, are the orthodox and we are the heretics. There can be no unity between themselves and us.

Those who are seeking to help forward this counterfeit unity are either oblivious to these voices or they chide us for not being more tolerant of our critics’ views, that is, not acquiescing to them. They censure us for being insensitive and unfeeling in drawing attention to information that may be useful in understanding the origin of such views and putting them into proper perspective.

For example, several posters in a thread on Stand Firm criticized my comments as “over the top” and “harsh” because I drew attention to the fact that critics of the doctrines of tactual succession and transubstantiation had noted similarities between these Catholic beliefs and certain pagan beliefs—the Polynesian belief in mana, supernatural power embodied in a person or object that may be transmitted by touch and the animistic belief that gods and spirits may inhabit objects such fetishes and even foods. Such comparisons are not new. Archeologists, anthropologists, and others have been making them since the nineteenth century, even earlier.

After Christianity became the dominant religion in Europe, the Mediterranean world, and the Mid East a pagan substrata persisted in the regional cultures of these areas. Christianity assimilated a number of pagan beliefs and practices. For example, the Celtic saint Bride or Bridget was originally a Celtic goddess, Bridgid. A large part of the ceremonial of the Church of Rome comes from the ceremonial of the imperial Roman court. This includes the use of incense and the recitation of chant “kyrie eleison,” which practices were used as honorifics in the cult of the Roman emperor who had been regarded as a god since the time of Octavian.

Pagan thinking would influence Christian thinking at a later stage as well as an early stage. For example, the pagan classical Greek philosophers would influence the Medieval theologians. The probability that pagan thinking has influenced the development of Catholic tradition and the Catholic reading of the Scriptures and consequently has affected the development of Catholic doctrine is high.

This is a longstanding criticism of Catholic theology, which has substantial merit. It is also one of the reasons that we must exercise great care in reading the writings of the early Church fathers, and subject their opinions to the Scriptures. They are not entirely free from pagan influence in their thinking. This certainly was the case of the New Testament Church as may be gathered from Paul’s epistles. The pagan influence upon Christianity and Catholicism in both its Eastern and Western forms cannot be dismissed.

We should not exaggerate this pagan influence, as do modern-day neo-pagans. At the same time we should not deny its influence.

The term “pagan” is derived from the Latin word pagus, which means “country district.” In its original sense it refers to the beliefs and practices of the country folk, also known as the rustica, the origin of the English word “rustic,” a country person or peasant. These beliefs and practices originated in the beliefs and practices of the pre-Christian religions that dominated Europe and the Mid-East before the Peace of Constantine. A number of them go as far back as Neolithic times. They incorporate animistic, magical, pantheistic, and shamanistic elements. The term “pagan” is now used to refer to non-Christian religions in general, and includes the neo-pagan reconstructions of ancient religions. Among these religions is Wicca.

Magic in various forms is an element in such religions. Magic may be defined as the art of influencing events by occult control of nature or spirits, witchcraft (i.e., black magic, white magic) with or without the invocation of devils, or demons. Natural magic refers to magic accomplished without recourse to personal spirits.

A Christian belief or practice can be viewed as magical when it reflects thinking like that associated with magic or it seeks to affect an outcome in the same way as the practice of magic, for example, by the use of a ceremony or formula or a combination of the two. Behind such a belief or practice is the idea that certain persons (e.g., priests, saints) can influence God by their performance of certain acts or their recitation of certain words. Once the act or acts are performed and the word or words recited, God is bound to respond in the desired fashion.

There is a strong magical element in Catholic theologies (Anglo-Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Independent Catholic, and Roman Catholic), which the adherents of these theologies generally refuse to acknowledge. Such thinking denies the sovereignty of God and is not consonant with the teaching of the Bible.

This kind of thinking may be found in the Bible where it is condemned and not condoned. It is traceable to the pagan religions of the ancient Mediterranean world and the ancient Mid-East. It also would infiltrate Catholicism from the pagan religions of pre-Christian Europe.

Some pagan elements in Christianity are harmless. For example, a number of the tunes to which Christmas carols are sung predate Christianity in their origins. They may have originated in Neolithic times. They originally were dance tunes. The dancing took two forms, both of which are found in European, Mediterranean, and Mid-Eastern folk dancing—the circle or round dance and the long dance. Carols were sung at other times beside Christmas—especially in the springtime. The practice of dancing while singing carols would persist into the Middle Ages when it was suppressed. It would continue to survive in some country districts.

When then do those who are promoting a feigned unity between disparate theologies react so negatively to observations that Catholic theology contains magical and pagan elements? First, it undermines their contention that the differences between Anglo-Catholics and evangelicals is one of emphasis. It also contradicts their assertion that Anglo-Catholics and evangelicals upon close examination are both “orthodox” in their beliefs and practices. On the contrary, such an examination reveals that they are seriously divided upon several key primary issues and they cannot agree upon a definition of Anglican orthodoxy.

The Jerusalem Declaration is the closest that they have come to such a definition and the Anglo-Catholics are not at all happy with that definition. Some of them like Canon Kevin Donlan have sought to change it; others like Bishop Jack Iker have assured Anglo-Catholics in the Anglican Church in North America that the more Anglo-Catholic friendly Common Cause Theological Statement, now incorporated in a revised form in the ACNA Constitution, will be binding upon the teaching and life of that organization, not the Jerusalem Declaration.

Conservative evangelicals like myself are a constant reminder that the present unity between Anglo-Catholics and evangelicals is illusionary. It comes at the expense of the truth and of classical Anglican evangelical beliefs and practices.

The papal offer of an “Anglican Ordinariate” has added a new factor to the equation. If the offer proves to be a very generous one with Anglo-Catholic clergy on a fast track to re-ordination in the Roman Catholic Church and an ordinariate that actually permits the retention of Anglo-Catholic liturgical texts and usages and has former Anglo-Catholics in charge of it, we may see an influx of Anglo-Catholics into the Roman Catholic Church. It may leave those who have been promoting this sham unity and bending over backwards to accommodate the Anglo-Catholics with egg on their face. They may find themselves with a church on their hands that was designed to oblige Catholic doctrine and practice that the Anglo-Catholics rejected as not Catholic enough. They may, in some cases, come to regret that they sacrificed their own Anglican evangelical patrimony to support the establishment of a church that bears no resemblance to their understanding of the Church of Jesus Christ and is indeed a repudiation of that understanding. Time will tell.

What then should conservative evangelicals in North America do? Should we sit around waiting to see what happens? Or should we start the work of building a “personal ordinariate” in the North American Anglican community for those who uphold the evangelical Protestant faith of the reformed Church of England and her formularies We will have no pope to offer us an “apostolic constitution.” We will have no one to open doors for us and to put us on a fast track. We will be required to depend upon God more than ever. But is not that what God wants us to do—to turn to him and not to men for help?

Some of us have looked outside of the United States for help only to suffer disappointment. Whatever their reasons evangelicals like ourselves are unwilling to come to our aid. I sense that it is God’s doing. God wants us to turn to him. The people of Israel trusted in foreign alliances instead of God. When the time came, these alliances failed. God will not fail us. The outcome may not be what we expected, what we hoped for, but God will not fail us.

As a church planter knows, one does not embark upon a new enterprise—a new church, a new ministry, or a new service—without bathing the entire venture in prayer. In praying we do not ask God to bless the venture. What we do ask is, “Is this what you want us to do in this time and in this place?”

For sometime now I have been entertaining the idea of giving the Heritage Anglican Network a more tangible form. I will be examining what form the organization might take in future articles and casting a vision for the network. As I share this vision with you, I am asking readers of Anglicans Ablaze to join me in bathing this venture in prayer as God leads them. I am asking them to join me in asking God, “Is this what you want us to do in this time and place?”

“Only if you, Lord God, build a house will it stand. If you are not in whatever we do, it will bear no fruit. So then, Lord, Is this what you want us to do in this time and place?”