this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2026
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The term "pagan" originally meant "anything other than christian." Maybe before that it meant something like "country bumpkin," referring to people who lived outside the cities and major towns. The meaning changed as population centers converted faster than rural areas.
It originated in Europe though, so obviously it's more deeply rooted in European paganism and other cultures that had close contact, like Egypt and Anatolia.
Further removed cultures probably didn't/don't think of themselves as pagan. For example, a Shinto priest probably doesn't call himself pagan. There's no cultural reason to.
But that sorta breaks down when you look at post-colonized cultures, where the cultural cross-pollination lent the word pagan to their cultural identity. For instance, some followers of Native American spirituality refer to themselves as pagan. It's a way of reclaiming the term, which was originally used to exclude and oppress them, but now it just frightens christians. A lot of people who call themselves pagan use the term that way deliberately.