Is It Possible To Be Both Christian AND Pagan? [Exploring My Religious Identity]

[SavedByFaith201]

Hi everyone, I am J and I am new to the forum.

I've decided to make an account and join this community because I have questions that need answers and am hoping to share my story as well as my woes here in confidence without fear of judgement in hopes that the people on this message board would be able to help me find my path, or maybe be able to relate and offer a hand of support?

To begin, I'd like to say that in recent months I've had a resolution of sorts. My entire life I was primarily non-religious, but as of August of this year I had a change of heart. I decided for the first time ever I wanted to give religion a fair chance and ever since converting from a non-religious lifestyle to a newly found religious lifestyle, I can honestly say that my life and perspectives have changed for the better!

There's one issue though...I'm confused and distressed over my religious identity.

I'd like to say that I am Christian, but Paganism (specifically Wicca) interests me far too much to simply be Christian. I'd like to incorporate both Christian and Wiccan traditions, rites, sacraments, beliefs, etc into one and have that (although I am not completely sure what "that" is) be my religious identity.

Christian-Pagan? Christian Witch? Pagan with Christian Interests? I'm not sure.

When trying to express these thoughts and interests to other Christians, I've been scorned, turned away from, and discriminated against. I've been told that what I'm interested in is "ungodly" and "the devil", and I feel like I'll never be accepted by other Christians.

Is it possible to be both? Does anyone else have this issue? Is anyone else a Christian-Pagan?

 

[Pavel Mosko]

Is it possible to be both? Does anyone else have this issue? Is anyone else a Christian-Pagan?

I don't think it is really possible. Not if you take the Bible seriously because there is lots of material in both testaments against the notion. But if you want to see the Faith purely as some kind of Jungian archetypal journey of self discovery etc..... sure.

 

[paul1149]

I don't know much about it specifically; I'm sure others will have more insight. But I think you might find some general and superficial commonalities, but as you progress in Christ you will find that at core they are incompatible.

Are you studying the Bible prayerfully? At John 8 Jesus says "if you remain in My word, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free". The need to remain in the word implies an ongoing process of learning, sanctification, and growth. If you do that with a sincere heart the Lord will show you the good and the bad of the things you are interested in.

Welcome to the forum. I hope you find what you need.

 

[dzheremi]

Hi. Welcome to CF, SavedByFaith201. I'm afraid I can't read your post very easily (the font color doesn't show up easily on a white background, and I already have pretty poor eyesight), so my apologies for not being able to get into it in detail.

I think most examples we could come up with from the history of Christian-Pagan interactions would show that, no, being Christian and Pagan at the same time is not something that is allowable, at least not according to the Christian side of the interaction. Whether it's historical events like St. Shenouda the Archimandrite disputing with and confronting pagans in the Egyptian countryside in the 4th century, or Boniface cutting down the tree that the Germanic pagans worshipped in the 8th century, or any other thing, the answer is pretty consistent: there are some things we simply will not do or allow to be done under the banner of Christianity.

Granted, today there are a lot of people who are more or less willing to accept pagan practices or a kind of syncretization of them with Christianity (such as is common in Latin America in some respects), but that's a move away from the historical norm. Maybe it's therefore better put that you can't be both without damaging your fidelity to one or the other, and then the question could be posed about just what benefit there is to practicing a religion in a half-hearted manner. (A question, I should say, that we should be asking ourselves regularly even if we do not actively seek to syncretize non-Christian faiths and Christianity in our own lives.)

 

[SavedByFaith201]

I don't know much about it specifically; I'm sure others will have more insight. But I think you might find some general and superficial commonalities, but as you progress in Christ you will find that at core they are incompatible.

Are you studying the Bible prayerfully? At John 8 Jesus says "if you remain in My word, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free". The need to remain in the word implies an ongoing process of learning, sanctification, and growth. If you do that with a sincere heart the Lord will show you the good and the bad of the things you are interested in.

Welcome to the forum. I hope you find what you need.

Hi Paul.

I appreciate your honest and realistic yet tactful response. Sometimes it's difficult to meet and find people who are capable of expressing their thoughts and opinions without being impolite and unreasonably pretentious about it!

I'll consider this. Thank you.

 

[Sketcher]

Hi everyone, I am J and I am new to the forum.

I've decided to make an account and join this community because I have questions that need answers and am hoping to share my story as well as my woes here in confidence without fear of judgement in hopes that the people on this message board would be able to help me find my path, or maybe be able to relate and offer a hand of support?

To begin, I'd like to say that in recent months I've had a resolution of sorts. My entire life I was primarily non-religious, but as of August of this year I had a change of heart. I decided for the first time ever I wanted to give religion a fair chance and ever since converting from a non-religious lifestyle to a newly found religious lifestyle, I can honestly say that my life and perspectives have changed for the better!

There's one issue though...I'm confused and distressed over my religious identity.

I'd like to say that I am Christian, but Paganism (specifically Wicca) interests me far too much to simply be Christian. I'd like to incorporate both Christian and Wiccan traditions, rites, sacraments, beliefs, etc into one and have that (although I am not completely sure what "that" is) be my religious identity.

Christian-Pagan? Christian Witch? Pagan with Christian Interests? I'm not sure.

When trying to express these thoughts and interests to other Christians, I've been scorned, turned away from, and discriminated against. I've been told that what I'm interested in is "ungodly" and "the devil", and I feel like I'll never be accepted by other Christians.

Is it possible to be both? Does anyone else have this issue? Is anyone else a Christian-Pagan?

I appreciate your curiosity. I encourage you to keep seeking, keep investigating Christianity. However, becoming a Christian is something that has always meant trusting in Christ's death and resurrection to forgive your sins, not having any gods besides the Christian God, throwing away the old sins, including participation in pagan religions. You pledge your life to this. Baptism symbolizes your dying to that old life, and rising again in Christ, and the life in Christ has no place for idolatry, or witchcraft. That would include Wiccan practices as far as Christianity is concerned. I accept you as a seeker. When you are ready to take the aforementioned plunge, you will be on the verge of becoming a Christian.

 

[SavedByFaith201]

Hi. Welcome to CF, SavedByFaith201. I'm afraid I can't read your post very easily (the font color doesn't show up easily on a white background, and I already have pretty poor eyesight), so my apologies for not being able to get into it in detail.

I think most examples we could come up with from the history of Christian-Pagan interactions would show that, no, being Christian and Pagan at the same time is not something that is allowable, at least not according to the Christian side of the interaction. Whether it's historical events like St. Shenouda the Archimandrite disputing with and confronting pagans in the Egyptian countryside in the 4th century, or Boniface cutting down the tree that the Germanic pagans worshipped in the 8th century, or any other thing, the answer is pretty consistent: there are some things we simply will not do or allow to be done under the banner of Christianity.

Granted, today there are a lot of people who are more or less willing to accept pagan practices or a kind of syncretization of them with Christianity (such as is common in Latin America in some respects), but that's a move away from the historical norm. Maybe it's therefore better put that you can't be both without damaging your fidelity to one or the other, and then the question could be posed about just what benefit there is to practicing a religion in a half-hearted manner. (A question, I should say, that we should be asking ourselves regularly even if we do not actively seek to syncretize non-Christian faiths and Christianity in our own lives.)

Hi, Dzheremi.

I apologize that my original post was difficult to read. I'll be responding to your comment with all default presets (except, I'll be making the text a bit larger than normal to aide your eyesight difficulties) which will hopefully make this response easier for you to read!

I greatly appreciate your insight and feel that you've made good points in your statement. I suppose I'm just a little lost/confused right now. I'm not sure where my journey is going to end, but I'll definitely take in account your thoughts.

However, I do have a question, if being Christian-Pagan isn't a realistic goal to have, what would your thoughts be on being a witchcraft practicing Christian?

 

[SavedByFaith201]

I appreciate your curiosity. I encourage you to keep seeking, keep investigating Christianity. However, becoming a Christian is something that has always meant trusting in Christ's death and resurrection to forgive your sins, not having any gods besides the Christian God, throwing away the old sins, including participation in pagan religions. You pledge your life to this. Baptism symbolizes your dying to that old life, and rising again in Christ, and the life in Christ has no place for idolatry, or witchcraft. That would include Wiccan practices as far as Christianity is concerned. I accept you as a seeker. When you are ready to take the aforementioned plunge, you will be on the verge of becoming a Christian.

Hi, Sketcher.

I'll consider this. Thank you.

 

[Paul4JC]

Welcome to CF and more so to the faith. Give it time, God will give you understanding as you trust and learn more about him. It's a long journey. God bless.

 

[Jeshu]

If you want Christianity just as a religious framework then sure you can mix it with paganism. This has happened throughout history.

However at the core Christianity has to do with faith in God's truthful love. Faith in both God's Truth and God's love stand central here.

Christianity is a faith which breaks away from that which is wrong and seeks to do what is right. So sooner or later you are going to have to make choices.

Jesus tells us that we can't serve two masters for we be devoted to one but despise the other. i think that is the road you are on now.

Explore the fact that a holy Spirit seeks to make our spirit holy! So we can commune with God our Heavenly Father.

Christianity ought to be a faith that touches our hearts and minds in an life changing way, not a religious tag we might use to identify ourselves with.

Peace.

 

[SavedByFaith201]

If you want Christianity just as a religious framework then sure you can mix it with paganism. This has happened throughout history.

However at the core Christianity has to do with faith in God's truthful love. Faith in both God's Truth and God's love stand central here.

Christianity is a faith which breaks away from that which is wrong and seeks to do what is right. So sooner or later you are going to have to make choices.

Jesus tells us that we can't serve two masters for we be devoted to one but despise the other. i think that is the road you are on now.

Explore the fact that a holy Spirit seeks to make our spirit holy! So we can commune with God our Heavenly Father.

Christianity ought to be a faith that touches our hearts and minds in an life changing way, not a religious tag we might use to identify ourselves with.

Peace.

Hi, Jeshu.

When you word it like that...my thoughts, opinions, and interest in Christianity seems more like a "framework" more than anything else.

When it comes to Christianity, I enjoy attending church, being surrounded by a community, partaking in bible study, basically partaking in Christian sacraments however when it comes to traditional/typically held Christian beliefs, I tend to have my own personal interoperations and ideas of the Bible and who/what God is.

So then, would that make me Christian at all? I'm not too terribly sure.

 

[Jeshu]

So then, would that make me Christian at all? I'm not too terribly sure.

i think it makes you more a Christian seeker.

i hope you find Jesus in your life. He is awesome to have as King of the heart. i love Him with my life.

Peace.

 

[Melody Suttles]

Hi Saved by Faith and welcome to CF. I hope you don't mind if I just call you Faith, and I hope that you are blessed with new friends here and that all your questions are answered with truth, wisdom, and the love of Christ.

I think the best answer I can give you at this time is that to be a true Christian means to become the Bride of Christ. It means forsaking all others - being totally and completely One with him. It means believing that He is the one true God - that man sinned against God and the penalty for man was death which separated man from God's presence forever. That God's love for man was so great, that he sent his Son to be born of a virgin, to suffer and die as a sinless man - a perfect sacrifice - in order to take mankind's punishment - that this perfect Son of God, Jesus Christ, was raised from the dead on the 3rd day, thus, defeating death and then ascended back up to heaven where He sits at the right hand of the throne of God. This sacrifice Jesus freely gave for us is our redemption and the forgiveness for our sins.
To be a true Christian, one must acknowledge in his or her heart that they are lost without Jesus. One must confess to God their sins - that they know they need a Savior - ask God to forgive them - ask Jesus to come into their heart and be their Lord; their Master; their Friend; their Provider, Protector, Counselor, Healer, Savior... and one must serve and love the Lord Jesus and Him only.
Like a marriage between a man and a woman - a marriage based on God's original design - she belongs to him and he belongs to her - they forsake all others. She cannot be the wife of two men nor he the husband of two women.

God says in his Word that to serve him, one must not become a part of any cult or pagan religion because these religions practice the worship of false gods and this is a great sin.
To be a true Christian, one must put away things that are open and deliberate sinful practices. One must seek to know the will of God by reading his Word; asking questions of wise godly Christians; praying daily for God to sanctify one and make them to become like Christ and to live a life pleasing to Him.

 

[Tone]

Hello and welcome to the CF! @SavedByFaith201

Perhaps this book will interest you:

Pagan Christianity! Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices


Yah bless!

 

[dzheremi]

I greatly appreciate your insight and feel that you've made good points in your statement. I suppose I'm just a little lost/confused right now. I'm not sure where my journey is going to end, but I'll definitely take in account your thoughts.

However, I do have a question, if being Christian-Pagan isn't a realistic goal to have, what would your thoughts be on being a witchcraft practicing Christian?

I don't think it's a very good idea, but rather than just leaving it at that I'd ask you (rhetorically, of course) what it is in the practice of magic that you feel would need to be retained or continued in your practice of Christianity.

In my Church in particular (the Egyptian Church), our historical authorities do testify that for the first 2-3 centuries, during the process of active Christianization of the native Egyptians, there was a sort of admixture of paganism and Christianity, as more and more practitioners of traditional Egyptian paganism converted to Christianity. This is hypothesized by some in relevant fields to account for the uniqueness of Egyptian Christian chant (which is sometimes hypothesized to date back to the times of the Pharaohs), Egyptian Christian theology as expressed in Coptic rather than in Greek (not that there's anything wrong with Greek; we've always used both, as the earliest bilingual Greek-Coptic Biblical texts are dated to about 150 AD, +/- 90 years from the martyrdom of St. Mark in 68 AD), etc., etc.

So some people, looking at this history, would say that the Coptic Orthodox Church in particular didn't get rid of enough of its supposedly 'pagan' practices in the conversion of Egypt to Christianity. That's pretty silly to people actually in the Church, though, who have made the point to me that each one of these things we retained as part of the indigenous religious culture were things that strengthened our Christianity: that the people would chant the way that they always had since that was the Egyptian way of praying to God already; that they would pray in their traditional language because that's what they find most spiritually fulfilling; and so on. You can even find the pre-Christian Egyptian ankh symbol (the cross with the little circular handle at the top) in Christian art and textiles produced in Egypt in the late Roman period. As friends of mine have put it, their ancestors were the ones who made the connection between the ankh as the symbol of eternal life and the cross as the symbol of eternal life, so in that way the pre-Christian religion of Egypt prepared their ancestors to see the coming of Christ as the fulfillment of what they had always done and believed. (Similar to how the Jews of the holy land joined Christianity in the context of a messianic movement, not necessarily as a 'new' religion separate from Judaism, even though that line would definitely be drawn at some point in early Christianity.)

Anyway, I provide this example to show that the question of what to incorporate from one's previous religious life (whether pagan or not) is one that the Church has had to deal with many times over the centuries, and in each case what was acceptable was baptized into Christian practice by the Church (i.e., now we still sing the 'Egyptian way', but to Christ our God, instead of Toth or Anubis or whoever), meaning that what was not acceptable was discarded, because Christianity did not and does not lack anything to be 'filled in' with paganism. Christianity is whole and complete as it is, in this view.

 

[returntosender]

Aren't we pagan before we are Christians?
WELCOME!
the pink is hard to read but maybe just for me

 

[Carl Emerson]

Witchcraft is expressly forbidden in our sacred scripture.

The reason is that we are to become totally dependent on God's power and provision at every level.

We are not to attempt to manipulate outcomes by appealing to any created spiritual source.

We have been given access to ultimate spiritual authority in the name of resurrected Jesus.

I will quote below Deuteronomy 18

Spiritism Forbidden

9“When you enter the land which the LORD your God gives you, you shall not learn to imitate the detestable things of those nations. 10“There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, one who uses divination, one who practices witchcraft, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, 11or one who casts a spell, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. 12“For whoever does these things is detestable to the LORD; and because of these detestable things the LORD your God will drive them out before you. 13“You shall be blameless before the LORD your God. 14“For those nations, which you shall dispossess, listen to those who practice witchcraft and to diviners, but as for you, the LORD your God has not allowed you to do so.

 

[Tone]

Aren't we pagan before we are Christians?
WELCOME!
the pink is hard to read but maybe just for me

Well, not since science has been de godded...meaning, for some reason, people don't consider it an idol.

So, people think, "No, I'm not pagan, I just have this scientific view.", as if science is the "Twilight of the Gods"...

*Was that a soapbox...?

 

[Tolworth John]

I'd like to say that I am Christian, but Paganism (specifically Wicca) interests me far too much to simply be Christian. I'd like to incorporate both Christian and Wiccan traditions, rites, sacraments, beliefs, etc into one and have that (although I am not completely sure what "that" is) be my religious identity.

A simple question for you.
Can you be a member of the Republican party and also a member of the Democratic party and at elections vote for candidates from both parties?

Christianity is exclusive. One either follows Jesus or one does not follow Jesus.
There is no mixing of ideas.
John 3:1+6-19 and 14:6 makes it very clear. It is follow Jesus or follow some other way.

 

[Job3315]

Hi everyone, I am J and I am new to the forum.

I've decided to make an account and join this community because I have questions that need answers and am hoping to share my story as well as my woes here in confidence without fear of judgement in hopes that the people on this message board would be able to help me find my path, or maybe be able to relate and offer a hand of support?

To begin, I'd like to say that in recent months I've had a resolution of sorts. My entire life I was primarily non-religious, but as of August of this year I had a change of heart. I decided for the first time ever I wanted to give religion a fair chance and ever since converting from a non-religious lifestyle to a newly found religious lifestyle, I can honestly say that my life and perspectives have changed for the better!

There's one issue though...I'm confused and distressed over my religious identity.

I'd like to say that I am Christian, but Paganism (specifically Wicca) interests me far too much to simply be Christian. I'd like to incorporate both Christian and Wiccan traditions, rites, sacraments, beliefs, etc into one and have that (although I am not completely sure what "that" is) be my religious identity.

Christian-Pagan? Christian Witch? Pagan with Christian Interests? I'm not sure.

When trying to express these thoughts and interests to other Christians, I've been scorned, turned away from, and discriminated against. I've been told that what I'm interested in is "ungodly" and "the devil", and I feel like I'll never be accepted by other Christians.

Is it possible to be both? Does anyone else have this issue? Is anyone else a Christian-Pagan?

Welcome to CF! I couldn't read the whole text because it's too light and small, but the answer to your question is no. Your question made me think of this, so I am sharing it in case it helps you.