PAGAN: n. one who is not a Christian, Muslim, or Jew; one who professes no religious belief
“Pagan” has undergone an interesting transformation. In ancient times, the Latin pagus referred to “country people, provincials, rural dwellers.” Around 1300, it referred to “a person of non-Christian or non-Jewish” faith, and by 1568, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, its adjectival form meant “not belonging to a nation or community that acknowledges the true God.” The current definition first appeared in 1908 and has since been chiefly applied to pantheists and nature worshipers.
Nineteenth-century philologists speculated that the religious sense arose from the fact that city dwellers adopted Christianity faster than rural dwellers, who persisted in...
is a retired secondary teacher of English and philosophy. For forty years he challenged students to dive deep into the classics of the Western canon, to think and write analytically, and to find the cultural constants reflected throughout that literature, art, and thought.
Get Salvo in your inbox! This article originally appeared in Salvo, Issue #70, Fall 2024 Copyright © 2024 Salvo | www.salvomag.com https://salvomag.com/article/salvo70/godless
