Recently Get Religion blogger and religion-beat journalist Mollie Hemingway, while discussing a major religion-based factual error in a piece by Slate.com, made this assertion concerning the media and the “pagan” roots of modern holidays.

You get a basic fact like what Candlemas commemorates wrong and it kind of casts doubt on the whole piece. Not to mention that Noah asserts the pagan connection without substantiating the claim elsewhere in the piece. There is literally no explanation — we are just to take him at his word. That’s my biggest beef with the “Christian holy days co-opt pagan festivals” meme that is so popular with the mainstream media. They just run with the story instead of investigating some tangled and complex histories that may not fit into the preferred narrative.

I think Mollie is being overly harsh here, puff holiday pieces are usually adverse to investigating “tangled and complex” matters, and most often settle for the “common wisdom” (whatever that may be at the time). Do we really expect Timothy Noah to read Ronald Hutton’s “Stations of the Sun” to learn that while Imbolc was almost certainly a pre-Christian festival, we have no real way of telling what, if any, traditions currently associated with the holiday actually date to pre-Christian times? That seems a bit much for a slight article about Punxsutawney Phil and his shadow. Further, there seems to be the implied notion that the “Christian cooptation of old Pagan holidays” meme stems solely from a secular journalistic bias or perhaps Wiccan wishful thinking rather than Christians themselves.

While most Catholics and Orthodox Christians seem rather untroubled with the notion of the (possible) integration of “sanctified” pagan elements into their faith, some protestant sects are genuinely and truly upset with the “pagan” foundations of modern Christian practice. Indeed, on the rightward fringe it’s something of an obsession.

A Tennessee historian and author best known for his searches for the Ark of the Covenant – the box containing the Ten Commandments – is now challenging much of modern Christianity, claiming the traditional version of the faith has more in common with ancient paganism than actual biblical content. “Today, it is amazing what is being presented as Christianity,” says Richard Rives of Lewisburg, Tenn., who has just released a book and DVD collection titled, “Time is the Ally of Deceit.” “First century believers would have never accepted [today's practices],” the 56-year-old ark hunter told WND. “We must earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the saints.” In his new book and videos, Rives goes on a history-packed journey beginning with the creation of the world and Satan’s deception in the Garden of Eden, examining how worship of the sun god among ancient cultures influenced the worship of the true God of the Bible.

But it isn’t just the WND-loving fringe-types (not to mention Jack Chick) who perpetuate the “modern Christianity is mostly pagan” meme. George Barna of The Barna Group also wrote a book about it called “Pagan Christianity”.

Pagan Christianity makes an unsettling proposal: Most of what present-day Christians do in church each Sunday is rooted not in the New Testament, but in pagan culture and rituals developed long after the death of the apostles.

Which makes you wonder, who has the most invested in Christianity’s “pagan” past? Certainly modern Pagans are big believers in such theories, but we hardly have a lot of influence over the press (and even if some of those theories are ultimately debunked, we have no problem integrating contemporary ideas into our practice). Yes, secular journalists seem to swallow assertions of pagan connections somewhat uncritically, but is it because they aren’t friendly to Christianity (or too friendly to Pagans and atheist debunkers)? I would offer a third possibility, that the “Pagan Christianity” meme is kept alive by Christians. Whether it is from a belief that Christian worship is “tainted” by it, or that Christianity “triumphed” over paganism and kept the best bits, both allow the “mainstream media” to maintain the common wisdom of pagan survivals in modern Christian practice.

I would further argue that some conservative Christians have far more invested in the idea of a pagan-haunted world than a lot of Pagans do. This includes Christian authors parroting debunked and discarded modern Pagan talking points to inflate our menace. You see, Christians don’t like tangled and murkey answers to questions any more than journalists do. The real answers to “how much pre-Christian stuff has gotten into modern Christian practice” aren’t simple, clear-cut, or easy to explain. It is little wonder why both grasp for an easy and simple answer. So if mainstream journalism is uncritically swallowing the “pagan origins” meme, who exactly is feeding it to them?

Tags: Christianity, Get Religion, holidays, journalism, Paganism, The Barna Group, WorldNetDaily