The return of an 86 year-old thesis about paganism

When Wolpe says “pagan”, he’s talking about the boogeyman of transcendental monotheism. He’s using the term in the same way that a lot of Catholic writers use the term. See for example Ross Douthat’s 2018 editorial in the New York Times (also published at Christmastime), similarly titled “The Return of Paganism”. ( My response to that editorial is here.) Right off the bat, Wolpe’s article begins by calling Trump “pagan”. Now, he’s obviously not saying that Trump belongs to the religion of self-identified Pagans. Rather, when he says “pagan” here, he clearly states that he’s talking about “wealth worship” and the “ideological imperialism of the ego”.

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Tags: paganism