Paganism: the term for ancient ethnic religions outside Judaism and Christianity

If you’ve ever heard the label Paganism and wondered what it actually covers, you’re in good company. It’s a broad term that can feel a little slippery because it isn’t a single creed, but a way to think about a big swath of the ancient world outside the big three monotheistic faiths we usually study—Judaism, Christianity, and in some contexts Islam. In the Studies of Religion field, Paganism helps us name a group of ethnic, regionally rooted religious traditions that shaped lives long before the modern world’s religious map began to look the way it does today.

What does Paganism really mean?

Let’s get the basics straight. Paganism is the label that scholars use for many of the ethnic religions of the ancient world that aren’t Judaism or Christianity. It’s not a single dogma; it’s more like a spectrum camera catching dozens of different beliefs and rituals under one umbrella. Most of these traditions were polytheistic—people worshipped multiple gods and goddesses, each linked to aspects of life, nature, or city life. But remember: “polytheism” is a separate idea from the umbrella term “Paganism.” It describes a belief system (many gods) rather than a whole cultural category of people and places.

Paganism isn’t negative by default. The term grew out of outsiders labeling these beliefs as “pagan” when the big monotheistic traditions were on the rise. That outsider label carried cultural baggage in some eras, yet for many scholars it remains a neutral shorthand to talk about ancient, non-Abrahamic religious worlds. It’s really about scope: Paganism points to a broad set of local cults, myths, seasonal rites, temple practices, and daily pieties that tied people to the land, to ancestors, and to the stories they told about the gods.

How Paganism sits next to related ideas

You’ll hear a few related terms tossed around alongside Paganism, and it’s worth keeping them straight:

• Polytheism: belief in many gods. This is a frequent feature of Pagan traditions, though not every Pagan practice is perfectly polytheistic in every culture. Some places blended gods with hero figures, spirits, and deities of nature in ways that blur neat categories.

• Animism: the belief that non-human things—animals, plants, rivers, stones, even winds—possess a spiritual essence. Animism often appears in Pagan contexts, but it’s not sufficient to describe all Pagan systems. Some Pagan worship centers on polytheistic pantheons, not on animistic spirits per se.

• Monotheism: belief in a single deity. This is the hallmark of Judaism and Christianity (and Islam, depending on how you frame it), and it’s one reason these faiths stand apart in the historical landscape from the ethnic religions we call Paganism.

A quick tour through ancient worlds

Think of Greece, Rome, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and a host of other cultures when you hear “Paganism.” Each had its own gods, myths, and rituals, yet they shared a few common threads:

• Local cults and city-focused worship: Temples and priestly families tended to serve the gods who watched over a city or harvests. Worship wasn’t just a private matter; it was part of a community’s social fabric.

• Ritual life tied to cycles: Agricultural rhythms—planting, growing, harvesting—often shaped ceremonies, processions, and feasting. The passing of seasons was literally written into the ritual calendar.

• Myth and memory: Myths weren’t just stories; they explained why gods behaved the way they did, how the world came to be, and what moral or social codes mattered to the community.

• Public and private piety: There was room for grand public festivals and intimate household rites. You could see a god’s presence in a temple’s architecture or in a family’s daily offerings to ancestors.

If you’re picturing marble temples and heroic tales, you’re not far off. But there’s a human side, too. Festivals weren’t distant spectacles; they were social glue—shared meals, music, dance, and stories that reinforced communal identity. It’s easy to imagine a village square buzzing with priests, merchants, farmers, and children, all participating in rituals that connected daily life to the divine.

Why this broader label matters in Studies of Religion

For students of SOR, Paganism isn’t just a catalog of ancient beliefs. It’s a way to study religious pluralism—how different communities understand the sacred, organize their worship, and pass down knowledge through generations. It also invites critical questions:

• How do sources describe other faiths without projecting modern biases back onto them?

• What counts as a “religion” in a given cultural context, and who gets to decide?

• How do myths, rituals, and material culture (like temples or statues) reflect a society’s values and power structures?

When you compare Pagan traditions with Judaism and Christianity, you start to see both differences and overlaps. Monotheistic faiths often frame the divine as a single, all-powerful ruler. Pagan systems tend to imagine a pantheon with varied personalities and domains. Yet both worlds are filled with stories of creation, justice, mercy, and human longing. And in both, rituals aren’t just about pleasing the gods—they’re about ordering life, marking transitions, and naming what matters to a community.

Common misunderstandings worth clearing up

• Paganism isn’t a single set of beliefs: It’s a family of traditions. Some communities honored a few major deities; others had dozens.

• It isn’t synonymous with “primitive.” Some ancient Pagan practices were sophisticated in their artistry, civic organization, and philosophical reflection, just in different ways from the philosophical achievements of Greece or Rome.

• Animism isn’t the same as Paganism, but it can be a feature of Pagan practice in particular cultures. Don’t assume every Pagan ritual centers on spirits in objects; sometimes the emphasis is on a god’s governance of nature, or on ancestors, or on city gods.

A few practical notes for studying

If you’re exploring these topics, a few strategies help keep things clear:

• Keep the terms distinct. When you read a source, note whether it’s talking about polytheism, animism, or an ethnic religious tradition labeled as Paganism. The distinction matters for understanding the beliefs and social worlds behind the rituals.

• Look for local context. Pagan practices varied a lot from one place to another. What a temple ceremony means in Athens might look different from a festival in Carthage or in a Mesopotamian city.

• Pay attention to artifacts. Temples, coins, inscriptions, and art tell stories that words sometimes can’t capture. A goddess statue, a ritual vessel, or a calendar tablet can reveal how people imagined the divine and how they organized their days.

• Consider bias and translation. Ancient sources were written by people with specific goals and backgrounds. Translators and commentators bring their own perspectives too. A careful reader notes where interpretation might shape what’s reported.

A concluding thought you can carry forward

Paganism, as a label, helps us map a rich and diverse part of the human religious story. It points to a world where gods had offices in the sky and at street level, where festivals stitched communities together, and where stories explained the forces that rule seasons and harvests. It’s a reminder that belief systems aren’t just about abstract ideas; they are living patterns—songs, rhythms, and rituals that held communities together.

If you’re ever tempted to see Paganism as merely ancient background noise, pause for a moment. These traditions were deeply human: they were about belonging, memory, and a shared sense of place in the wider cosmos. That sense isn’t relic, either. It echoes in modern cultural expressions—art, literature, and even contemporary spiritual quests—that keep asking big questions in old disguises.

A last note on the vocabulary, just to keep things straight

• Paganism: a broad label for ethnic, ancient religious systems outside Judaism and Christianity; often polytheistic and nature-linked; culturally diverse and historically rich.

• Polytheism: belief in many gods; a common feature within Pagan contexts, but not a universal rule across every Pagan tradition.

• Animism: belief that spirits inhabit elements of the natural world; a perspective found in some Pagan systems, though not a universal description.

• Monotheism: belief in a single deity; central to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; a defining contrast to many Pagan frameworks.

So next time you encounter a reference to Paganism in your studies, you’ll know what the term tries to capture without flattening a whole continent’s worth of belief into a single narrative. It’s a useful umbrella—big enough to cover Greece’s temple rituals, Rome’s imperial cults, Egypt’s temple economies, Mesopotamia’s ziggurats, and countless local cults that never left a map or a papyrus. And that, in itself, is part of what makes the study of religion such a fascinating journey: there’s always more history beneath the surface, waiting to be understood through careful reading, thoughtful comparison, and a touch of curiosity about how people once lived with the sacred day by day.