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Modern paganism, also known as "contemporary" or "neopagan", encompasses a wide range of religious groups and individuals. These may include old occult groups, those that follow a New Age approach, those that try to reconstruct old ethnic religions , and followers of the pagan religion or Wicca .
Regarding European paganism, In Modern Paganism in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives Michael F. Strmiska writes that "in pagan magazines, websites, and Internet discussion venues, Christianity is frequently denounced as an antinatural, antifemale, sexually and culturally repressive, guilt-ridden, and authoritarian religion that has ...
Paganism has broadly connoted the "religion of the peasantry". [1] [5] During and after the Middle Ages, the term paganism was applied to any non-Christian religion, and the term presumed a belief in "false gods". [6] [7] The origin of the application of the term "pagan" to polytheism is debated. [8]
According to feminist pagan Starhawk "religious discrimination against Pagans and Wiccans and indigenous religions is omnipresent in the U.S." [26] Controversies mostly surround religious rights in US prisons and the US military. Prison inmates' right to practice minority religions was asserted in 2004 by the Supreme Court in Cutter v.
Pagan Theology: Paganism as a World Religion is a taxonomical study of various world religions which argues for a new definition of the word "paganism". It was written by American religious studies scholar Michael York of Bath Spa University and first published by New York University Press in 2003.
Using sociological classifications of world-affirming and world-rejecting religious movements, York says that modern paganism and New Age represent two rival theologies, [26] and that New Agers in particular tend to underestimate the "gnostic–pagan divide", where New Age teachings are part of a gnostic tradition that de-emphasises or negates ...
Pagan studies scholar Chas S. Clifton argued that the discipline had developed as a result of the increasing "academic acknowledgement" of contemporary Paganism's "movement into the public eye", referring to the emergence of pagan involvement with interfaith groups and the pagan use of archaeological monuments as "sacred sites", particularly in the United Kingdom. [7]
Modern paganism, also known as contemporary paganism, and neopaganism, is a group of contemporary religious movements influenced by or claiming to be derived from the various historical pagan beliefs of pre-modern Europe.