By Auguste Meyrat

It's no secret that Christianity is on the wane across America. Even before the COVID-19 lockdowns, church attendance was steadily decreasing and the religiously unaffiliated 'Nones' were becoming the largest "denomination" in America. After COVID, this decline has been even more precipitous.

John Daniel Davidson, an editor for The Federalist and a devout Catholic, debunks this myth in Pagan America: The Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come. Far from ushering in a futuristic DEI utopia, a post-Christian America will come to resemble pre-Christian dystopias - that is, backward, brutal, and barbaric.

Many believe that this is simply a consequence of social progress. As society dispenses with religious traditions and superstitions about the afterlife, it will become more rational, practical, and tolerant. Even if sentimentalists like Richard Dawkins lament the loss of Christmas carols and pretty churches, it will allow more cultural inclusivity, material abundance, and scientific development.

As Davidson reminds us, nature abhors a vacuum, and this applies to religion most of all. Not only does all of history show this time and time again, but current trends also confirm the resurgence of paganism in modern America. Left unaddressed, Christian culture and Christians themselves will face persecution and erasure, which will end modern liberal democracy and its many blessings.

Davidson begins by describing a few of the pagan civilizations preceding the arrival of the Christian gospel, specifically the Vikings, Aztecs, tribes in Western Africa, and the Romans. Without exception, human sacrifice, torture, sexual exploitation, and slavery were widespread. Because of its insistence that all men are created in the image of God, Christianity largely purged these communities of these evils.

In this way, Christian doctrine laid the foundation for the rise of democracies in the modern era. Davidson explains how America was indeed founded on Christian principles, not just Enlightenment ideals: "Reason alone, in the Founders' view, would not be sufficient for the great mass of citizens to choose virtue over vice, or to maintain public morality. . . .A pagan or atheist neighbor, or too many of them, might endanger the liberties of a nation."

America's gradual separation from Christian morality in the twentieth century has resulted in an equally gradual encroachment of pagan morality. This happened through a series of pivotal court cases, which effectively removed Christianity from the public square on the misguided notion of separating church and state. Over the years, neopagan leftists unleashed a host of deeply immoral policies poisoning American culture: abortion, euthanasia, transgenderism, and pedophilia.

As paganism grows, Americans are increasingly experiencing loss of community, friendship, and fulfillment. The things that inspired virtue and action from Americans no longer exist because they are treated as limits on personal freedom. Davidson concludes, "Americans are increasingly living alone and dying alone, and their civilization could very easily die with them."

Politically speaking, the decline of Christianity spells disaster for American democracy. As Davidson shows, the freedom and security that most Americans once enjoyed were the direct fruits of Christian morality: "respect for individual and religious liberty, freedom of speech, constraints on government power, were all part of America's Christian inheritance, and would lose legitimacy - as they are losing it now - in the eyes of a people without Christian faith."

In practice, this leads to persecution of minorities, unchecked propaganda and censorship, elimination of vulnerable populations, and the establishment of a totalitarian state. As Davidson ominously puts it, "if you want a picture of the future, to paraphrase George Orwell, imagine a boot stamping on [Christian cake-maker] Jack Phillips's face - forever."

The substance of neo-pagan ...