On the Non-Ineluctability of Christianization: Notes Toward a Grand Unified Theory of Pagan Resistance, Survival, and Revival

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I. Overview: The Five Phases of Christianization

1. "With increasing harshness and machinery of enforcement": The Christianization of the Roman oikoumene (312-476)
   
2. Decline and Fall: The retreat of Christianity in the Dark Ages (476-718)
   
3. The Formation of a Persecuting Society: The violent resurgence of Western Christendom (718-1492)
   
4. The Whole World In Their Bloody Hands: Conquest, Genocide, Slavery, & the Burning Times (1492-1960)
   
5. By Other Means: Post Colonial Christianization (1960-?)
   

II. Illuminating Case Studies

1. Crypto-Pagans in Byzantium: Procopios, Lydos, Psellos, Italos, Juvenal, Plethon, Mistra
2. Pagan resistance among the Longobards
3. The highly non-monotonic Christianization of Britain
4. The Cult of Vergil
5. Profiles in Dissimulation: The Family of Love, Marranos, English Catholics, French Libertins, etc (see especially, Zagorin's Ways of Lying)
   
6. Paganism in the Renaissance
7. The religious dimension of the Early Modern European Witch-Hunts
8. Did the Yaqui convert?
9. Catholic Shamans among the Huichol and Nahua
10. Angelique Kidjo on Vodun & Catholicism
11. Secrets Gossip & Gods
12. Rejecting coerced syncretism in Haitian Vodou and Cuban Santeria (Max Beauvoir: "No, contrarily to what even good scholars have stated, I don't believe there is any significant Christian-Vodou syncretism or Christian inclusions in the Vodou religion." Lazaro Cuesta: “It’s an error for the Catholic Church to consider us deviants. We simply have our own religion: the Yoruba religion.”)
13. Mexican Folk Catholicism among mestizos
14. The continuous history of Hermeticism, Alchemy, and Astrology (Campion, Maxwell-Stuart, also: Ghibellinism & Traditionalism)
15. Traditional Religion in Sub-Saharan Africa
16. Reincarnation as a marker of Pagan survival
    

III. Key Concepts and Theoretical Projects

1. "Submerged Animism" a la Alan Richard Tippett
2. Toward a generalized theory of crypto-religiosity a la Richard Popkin (How to look for Pagans)
   
3. Christian Pagan Syncretism = Pagan Survival (and the varieties of religious syncretism in general: Secret Knowledge, Because We Can, "When you enter a village ...", Lady Gaga Prayer Candles, Kidjo on Voodoo, Ficinus. Paganus?, What they mean by "dialogue", Banding together in the Cretan fashion, "Playing the fish", "We had no choice")
   
4. The false dichotomy of learned versus popular Paganism ("A different world"?)
   
5. Sympathetic Magic: Eros, Pneuma, Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Stoicism, Vergil, Ovid, Iamblichus, Proclus, Psellos, Plethon, Ficino, Pico, Agrippa, Bruno, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Erasmus Darwin, Herbert Spencer, Witches, Mages, etc. (Plato and the Threefold Law, Cosmic Sympathy, Eleusis and the Aeneid, Luck on Warburton on Vergil, Philosophy Science Divination & Astrology, Six Degrees of Charles Darwin, Eleusis and Evolution, Vergil and Modern Paganism, Hutton Vergil & Ovid)
   
6. Soul Snatchers: Exposing the Christian conception of all-or-nothing conversion (aka, the "one drop rule" of Christian identity; see "Africa became Christian by submission")
   
7. Reincarnation as a Pagan belief
8. Why Harran matters, but not as much as you might think.
9. The seamless continuity of Late Antique and Ancient Paganism
10. The Theurgy-Wicca connection
11. The Evil Twins: Christianity and Islam
12. Communism: preparing the way for the gospel in India, China and Latin America
13. Christianization versus liberty, equality, democracy and the rule of law
    
14. Christianization is everywhere incomplete.
    
15. Christianization is always reversible.
    
16. "Paganism is the ancestral religion of the whole of humanity." (Primary versus secondary religions, Pagans don't need no stinking continuous traditions, monotheism vs. polytheism vis-a-vis tolerance, no "different" religions among ancient Pagans ...)