But what if Christianity is not water? What if, instead, we understand the Christian era as a clearing in a forest? The forest is paganism: dark, wild, vigorous, and menacing, but also magical in its way. For two thousand years, Christians pushed the forest back, with burning and hacking, but also with pruning and cultivating, creating a garden in the clearing with a view upward to heaven.

But watch as roots outstretch themselves and new shoots spring up from the ground. The patch of sky recedes. “Paganism has not needed to be reinvented,” writes Steven Smith: It never went away. “In a certain sense, the Western world has arguably always remained more pagan than Christian. In some ways Christianity has been more of a veneer than a substantial reality.””

With no one left to tend the garden, the forest is reclaiming its ground.

[This is, as the friend who sent it to me says, a must-read for all Christians. And really for anyone who values Western civilization, which was built on blending classic philosophy and Judeo-Christian values. As we reject the latter and ignore the former, we retreat back to the forest of paganism — and its demands for sacrifices to appease the gods it creates for its own purposes, especially the Gaia worship that makes every storm and weather change a punishment for our supposed sins. But that’s not the worst of it; the worst will be when might once again denotes right, and the pagans seizing power makes sure everyone knows it. — Ed]