AHC: Surviving Ancient Relgions

It's certainly possible. The question is, why do the Norse kings - who seem to have seen an advantage in converting OTL - decide it isn't useful?

As for a crusade, with a POD that far back, we have rather drastic impacts on if there ARE crusades.

If you can prevent the conversion of England (cetainly doable considering the time when it likely took place) that would stop missionary activity into Scandinavia cold. With England as another option in the North Sea-Baltic Sea region there's less pressure to convert and fall into Frankish orbit.

Another good possibility would be killing Charlemagne before he launches the Saxon Wars. No Charlemagne means his use of religious conversion as a tool for engaging in political subjugation doesn't get started which is what gave the Scandinavian kings a good political reason to convert. While preventing the rise of Charlemagne won't stop someone else from coming up with that policy later if you remove the Saxon Wars and give things more time that could lead to time for conditions in Scandinavia and Germany to reach a point where there is no need to ally with the Church or the Frankish Empire.
 
Prevent Constantine or someone who, like him, with closet Christians in his immediate family, from becoming Caesar and using his position to benefit his Christian friends and giving the church its many privileges and tax-exemption. If Christianity remains a diverse bunch of denominations scattered thinly throughout the provinces, with no presence in the imperial administration, then the larger collections of Romanized ethnic religions and other "mystery cults", which were mostly still part and parcel with the native ethnic religions and weren't intentionally "competing" for believers, would evolve over time as they did.

If and when the Roman Empire breaks up without becoming Christian first, no single organization will have a monopoly on education, so important literature may survive in various private collections, which will survive as their owners would find themselves working for their new barbarian rulers as secretaries and bureaucrats.

In more urbanized parts of western Europe, the Burgundian, Frankish, Visi/Ostrogothic and Vandal overlords would likely adopt the popular myths and the names and backgrounds of the local Romanized religions as their own. They may even co-opt elements of the Imperial Cult in imitation of the Roman Emperors.

In Gaul in particular, any lingering remnant of the old Druid caste might go public again in the wake of the collapse of Roman authority in the west. If so, they may end up ministering to the new Frankish, Visigoth and Burgundian rulers in Gallia. Unlike in Christianity, Roman religion did not involve a full-time vocation for serving clergy, so many important priesthoods would be held by prominent citizens, and a society with broadly secular leanings, with no great deal of land coming under the possession of a religious order.

If any "pagan" equivalent of the Bible is written, if it happens, may happen in the eastern Roman Empire, over time, with the back-story largely grounded in Greek Polytheism.
 
Have the Hellenistic Jews either greatly depart from their views on Monotheism or make sure they do not exist or are marginalized so that any Christian like religion would remain amongst the Aramaeic speaking 'Hebrews'.
 
I'm actually somewhat surprised that Shinto or at least the use of certain Shinto practices hasn't become more popular in the states-it would mesh very well with the modern interest in ecology/sense that we "need more nature" and the kind of animism it can espouse seems quite appealing to the "spiritual, but not religious" sensibility it espouses, it's quite easily combined with Buddhism (which is becoming quite popular in the states), and it doesn't demand a real exclusive commitment.
 
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