AHC: A universalist polytheistic religion

Although there are small neo-pagan revival movements today, they're generally limited in growth to a single country or culture.

Would a more syncretic and global faith that sees all pagan traditions as interpretations of the same good be possible? I'm thinking of a religion that says you can worship Neptune if you're in Italy or Poseidon if you're in Greece, because they're both local interpretations of the same ocean god/spirit.

This could potentially group together Japanese Kami, Aztec Gods, and European paganism into a coherent theology that can theoretically be adopted by all of humanity the way Christianity and Islam spread. The closest otl analogue would be the way that the Baha'i faith interprets Jesus, Mohammed, and Buddha as different prophets of the same monotheistic deity.
 
I doubt that it can do any way with 1900 POD. Christianity and Islam are too strong that any faith can rival with them. You would need POD during Constantine the Great POD achieve this, at least.
 
Some nazi occultist while high on... something discovers the atomic bombs are the way to bring ragnarok. It takes several years, but Munich ends with British and French surrenders. By 1945, German soldiers have done triumphal marches in Tokyo, Moscow and Washington.

Berlin is the world capital and the religion of the ruling elite is nordicized paganism for the Aryan Volk and nordicized hinduism for the slave races. The genocides peter out after the first billion or two for labor reasons, but still a billion killed off.
 
Some nazi occultist while high on... something discovers the atomic bombs are the way to bring ragnarok. It takes several years, but Munich ends with British and French surrenders. By 1945, German soldiers have done triumphal marches in Tokyo, Moscow and Washington.

Berlin is the world capital and the religion of the ruling elite is nordicized paganism for the Aryan Volk and nordicized hinduism for the slave races. The genocides peter out after the first billion or two for labor reasons, but still a billion killed off.
That’s pretty terrifying. I didn’t mean a scenario where some polytheistic movement becomes the worlds ONLY religion, just a scenario where it exists as at least a small fringe group with at least a couple hundred thousand believers. The major Abrahamic faiths will probably be the religious beliefs of most people on Earth for the foreseeable future due to their sheer numbers.

It seems surprising that the world can go from a mostly polytheistic place with more diversity of local beliefs for most of history to today where only a few monotheistic faiths predominate in so many different cultures. It’s the cultural equivalent of a TL where oak trees, maple trees and palm trees become the only plants in most biomes. For some reason polytheistic religions have been less apt to sell themselves as a culturally transmissible “package” of beliefs for everyone on Earth.

In theory, every person on Earth could convert to Christianity, Buddhism, or Islam tomorrow if a particularly zealous missionary ASB managed to convince them. I don’t know why polytheism generally lacks the same tendency to proselytize.

The Indian subcontinent is the only place where polytheism still predominates the way it did everywhere else until a few thousand years ago. However, Hinduism seems pretty content not trying to convince non-Hindus that everyone should join Hinduism.

This would definitely require a pre-1900 pod to become more than a small minority religion on an international scale.
 
Some nazi occultist while high on... something discovers the atomic bombs are the way to bring ragnarok. It takes several years, but Munich ends with British and French surrenders. By 1945, German soldiers have done triumphal marches in Tokyo, Moscow and Washington.

Berlin is the world capital and the religion of the ruling elite is nordicized paganism for the Aryan Volk and nordicized hinduism for the slave races. The genocides peter out after the first billion or two for labor reasons, but still a billion killed off.

So to update Sinclair Lewis, "When fascism comes to America, it will carry Thor's Hammer".

Seriously, even in the event of a Nazi victory, I still think Christianity would be too strong for anyone to impose unadulterated paganism in most western countries. OTL, the Nazis preferred allying with clerical authoritarians(eg. Franco and Petain) rather than self-announced pagans.

Though I guess Stalin did manage to do a pretty serious number on Christianity in the USSR. On the other hand, one of the main selling-points of fascism was that they were good allies for all the people that Communism was trying to harm. Undertaking the kind of psychopathic social engineering neccessary to wipe out Christianity and enthrone paganism would be a little off-message, to say the least.
 
For a less dystoian solution, and taking into account jerseyguy's clarification that it need not be a LARGE religion, just global...

There is a sizable(well, relative to the denomination) contingent of pagans in Unitarian Universalism(full disclosure: my faith, but I'm not pagan). Maybe find a way to get even more pagans, preferably the overwhelming majority, into UUism, and have the Christians, Buddhists, humanists, athesits etc eventually drop out(even if UUism continues to formally embrace them). This probably wouldn't get a pagan faith that spreads much into Asia or Africa, but it would cover the anglosphere and possibly parts of continental Europe.

Surmising from ths blog, the embrace of paganism by Unitarianism caused a bit of friction with the humanist wing. When I was regularly attending a UU church in Canada a few years back, there were a few goddess-worshippers in the congregation. I concur with the commentator who says that the pagans probably lowered the average age of Unitarians by a considerable amount.
 
So to update Sinclair Lewis, "When fascism comes to America, it will carry Thor's Hammer".

Seriously, even in the event of a Nazi victory, I still think Christianity would be too strong for anyone to impose unadulterated paganism in most western countries. OTL, the Nazis preferred allying with clerical authoritarians(eg. Franco and Petain) rather than self-announced pagans.

Though I guess Stalin did manage to do a pretty serious number on Christianity in the USSR. On the other hand, one of the main selling-points of fascism was that they were good allies for all the people that Communism was trying to harm. Undertaking the kind of psychopathic social engineering neccessary to wipe out Christianity and enthrone paganism would be a little off-message, to say the least.
Yeah, the Nazis were pretty much the only protestant fascist movement. Non-German fascism was limited to predominantly Catholic countries like Austria, Spain, Portugal, and Italy. Hitler and the core Nazi leadership from the '20s was made up of lapsed Catholics, but their electoral support was almost exclusively from Protestant areas of Germany. Fascists by Michael Mann presents a lot of data on the typical supporters of different fascist movements.
 
For a less dystoian solution, and taking into account jerseyguy's clarification that it need not be a LARGE religion, just global...

There is a sizable(well, relative to the denomination) contingent of pagans in Unitarian Universalism(full disclosure: my faith, but I'm not pagan). Maybe find a way to get even more pagans, preferably the overwhelming majority, into UUism, and have the Christians, Buddhists, humanists, athesits etc eventually drop out(even if UUism continues to formally embrace them). This probably wouldn't get a pagan faith that spreads much into Asia or Africa, but it would cover the anglosphere and possibly parts of continental Europe.

Surmising from ths blog, the embrace of paganism by Unitarianism caused a bit of friction with the humanist wing. When I was regularly attending a UU church in Canada a few years back, there were a few goddess-worshippers in the congregation. I concur with the commentator who says that the pagans probably lowered the average age of Unitarians by a considerable amount.
So you don't have to be Christian to be a Unitarian?

Would you say that Unitarian Universalism is syncretic?
 
So you don't have to be Christian to be a Unitarian?


No, not at all. Though there could be some confusion around terminology, since the word "unitarian" is still used in some circles to mean a Christian who rejects the Trinity. Unitarian Universalism is loosely descended from those kinds of Christians, but you need not be any sort of Christian to be a Unitarian Universalist.

And yes, I would say that Unitarian Univeralism as a whole is definitely syncretic. But no individual member is required to believe all the faiths that the church itself embraces, eg. I'm a culturally Christian theist with little interest in paganism or Buddhism, but I worship alongside them in UU congregations.
 
No, not at all. Though there could be some confusion around terminology, since the word "unitarian" is still used in some circles to mean a Christian who rejects the Trinity. Unitarian Universalism is loosely descended from those kinds of Christians, but you need not be any sort of Christian to be a Unitarian Universalist.

And yes, I would say that Unitarian Univeralism as a whole is definitely syncretic. But no individual member is required to believe all the faiths that the church itself embraces, eg. I'm a culturally Christian theist with little interest in paganism or Buddhism, but I worship alongside them in UU congregations.
So is the position of Christian in unitarianism almost like a Christian version of Islam (i.e. there's still one God and Christ is a major prophet/moral teacher, but not divine)?
 
What if Julian the apostates 25th great grandson, decided to promote Greco Roman Gods combined with a great deal of sexual liberation.
 
C'mon guys, we've pretty much got that already...The Abrahamics all talk about Satan and other angels, and what, pray tell, are they if not Gods. I won't even get into the concept of the "Holy Trinity". You supposed monotheists are just blowing smoke up your own asses, leave my ass out of it!
 
So is the position of Christian in unitarianism almost like a Christian version of Islam (i.e. there's still one God and Christ is a major prophet/moral teacher, but not divine)?

If we're talking about unitarians in the sense of "Christians who reject the Trinity", I think there are different versions of the idea. Probably the most common is that Jesus was indeed the son of God(specially created with a divine purpose), but that, as the son, he is a separate being from the father. Jehovah's Witnesses today would be an example of a Christian group believing this.

If we're talking about Unitarian Universalists, I don't believe there is any specific teaching on Jesus, and UUs are free to hold any opinion they wish about him and his teachings. I'd suspect, though, that the majority tend toward something like "Great moral teacher, but not divine, and said a lot of the same stuff as the Buddha and a few others." I know I've seen banners in Unitarian churches proclaiming that most major relaigions have some version of the Golden Rule, so I'd gather most members would think that, at least, is a good thing.

Here's the website of a group for Christians within Unitarian Universalism. If anyone is curious about checking them out, I should mention that one of their pastors was arrested on child pornography charges last year. Not that I think that reflects badly on the group as a whole(his crimes do not seem to have involved anyone else, and I actually think the church handled the situation as well as can be expected), but I do think it's something people should have full disclosure on.

Oh, and back to "biblical Unitarians"(ie. Christians who reject the Trinity), I'd be willing to bet that if you did a search of the AH pre-1900 forum along the lines of "Bishop Arius wins", you could find some interesting stuff. Other than that, there is at least one website dedicated to advancing that view.
 
There are also Unitarians in the UK who are not directly part of Unitarian Universalism, but share a similar outlook. From what I've seen, their literature seems to give slightly more prominence to Jesus than do the UUs, but their views on him are still pretty much the same.
 
They'd run into the same issue as a lot of Universalist religions: if all gods are true, why go out and pay lip service to a religion that has no real defining structure or beliefs when you could be with people who believe in the same gods you do, who worship in a similar way as you, and thus have similar experiences as you?
 

trurle

Banned
Although there are small neo-pagan revival movements today, they're generally limited in growth to a single country or culture.

Would a more syncretic and global faith that sees all pagan traditions as interpretations of the same good be possible? I'm thinking of a religion that says you can worship Neptune if you're in Italy or Poseidon if you're in Greece, because they're both local interpretations of the same ocean god/spirit.

This could potentially group together Japanese Kami, Aztec Gods, and European paganism into a coherent theology that can theoretically be adopted by all of humanity the way Christianity and Islam spread. The closest otl analogue would be the way that the Baha'i faith interprets Jesus, Mohammed, and Buddha as different prophets of the same monotheistic deity.
Possible, but such arrangement would be rather unstable. No unified dogma mean barrier for the new cult formation is much lower, and cults will proliferate incompatibilities until the entire system collapse with the timescale of few centuries. See what happened on late stages on Roman paganism.
 
^ I think the last post on that thread, by a guy named Philip, has the best summation of some of the issues discussed.
 
Food!
Use food as a recruiting tool!
If you read Leo Frankowski’s Conrad Stargard series of (B-list) science fiction novels, you will encounter the notion that Polish peasants ate 25 percent of their calories during medieval Catholic feast days!
IOW an medieval peasant who skipped a high holiday risked ascending to heaven before the end of this winter.

Sikhs understand how food attracts seekers. That is part of the reason why Sikh temples offer free meals to anyone who wanders in. The other reason is that Sikhs believe in charitable works as a step along the pathway to heaven.
I met a young Muslim man on his way to volunteer at the local food bank.
Mennonites, Catholics, Salvation Army, etc. all operate soup kitchens in Vancouver’s poorest neighbourhood.
One of the advantages of Universalism is that any time the Hindus host a religious festival, you can sing with the Hindus, dance with the Hindus and dine with the Hindus.
The next day, you can say grace at a Salvation Army soup kitchen.
Saturdays, Mennonites hand out sandwiches, etc.
Free food is a fabulous recruiting tool.
 
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