Pagans And Paranormal-seekers Need The Unchanging Gospel

I used to listen to George Noory’s Coast to Coast AM on the radio during middle-of-the-night commutes. I was amused by his guests as they talked about UFOs, ghosts, and chupacabras. Along with regular swigs of coffee, they kept me awake.

At the time, I thought I was laughing along with opportunists pretending to be flat-earthers to shock a global audience. I was wrong. Around 80 percent of Gen Z and young millennials report belief in astrology. What was once fodder for tabloids and midnight radio is now mainstream practice.

Charles Taylor and others have argued we live in a disenchanted world. The scientific materialism of modernity stripped the transcendent from the world, leaving us with a longing that culture can’t fulfill.

Yet despite persistent calls to imagine there’s no hell below us and above us only sky, awareness of the supernatural is the normal state of humanity. The heavens don’t point to their own self-existence, as Carl Sagan asserted, but to something greater beyond the material world. There’s a God-shaped hole in the human heart that begs to be filled. It’s no wonder our increasingly post-Christian society is drawn to paganism and the paranormal.

In some ways, the general openness to supernaturalism makes Christianity seem less weird. We less often need to start our apologetic discussions by arguing for God’s existence.

It’s helpful to recognize the contours of the spiritualism thriving in our culture as we evangelize. Yet it’s more important that Christians are well versed in the gospel and orthodox doctrine.

Paganism Without Pillars

Modern paganism isn’t usually the temple-bound variety we associate with ancient civilizations. C. S. Lewis expressed tongue-in-cheek hope in 1952 that Paganism would return to Britain with “Parliament opened by the slaughtering of a garlanded white bull in the House of Lords.” That’s the Paganism Paul confronted in Lystra and Athens.

Moving into the second quarter of the 21st century, we’re wrestling with paganism with a small p. Unlike sacrifices to Molech, where kids were burned in public to assuage a regional deity’s wrath (2 Kings 23:10), contemporary paganism is generally privatized. Its horrors are often shrouded by medical jargon and lab coats. The benefits sought are primarily personal.

Yet spirituality goes beyond the search for personal gods; it extends into the paranormal. Bigfoot visited my small city this year; this Sasquatch sighting was officially rated as credible. That cryptid’s alleged appearance spawned a surge in satirical ads from local businesses and a flood of amateur cryptozoologists who displaced fishermen this summer in local Airbnb rentals. Discussion of UFOs has moved from a punchline to sober questioning in the halls of Congress.

As trust in traditional institutions collapses, roughly three-quarters of Americans hold some paranormal beliefs. People want personally curated truth, and the buffet is open.

Enchanted Individualism

The growth of “spiritual but not religious” is a reincarnation of the ancient shift from temple-bound worship of the god-king to personalized cults mediated by shamans and sages, who, Michael Horton argues, embodied “the rise of the autonomous individual” centuries before Christ was born. It affected most ancient cultures, at least as far back as 600 BC.

People want personally curated truth, and the buffet is open.

We even see individualistic spiritual practice in the pages of the Bible. Ancient Israel’s perpetual cycles of individuals doing whatever was “right in [their] own eyes” continue through the life of Christ (Judg. 21:25).

Historically, the church hasn’t escaped the quest for autonomy. Even during the supposed theological hegemony of the Roman Empire’s Christianity, alternative spiritualities—like Neoplatonism, Manichaeism, and Zoroastrianism—ever lurked in the cathedral’s shadow. As one historian observes, the rising frequency and severity of warnings by the medieval church against practicing magic reflect the widespread practice of personal spiritualism.

The scientific revolution wasn’t disenchanted either. Lewis rightly described the magician and scientist as twins: both seek mastery over the created world. For centuries, alchemists used magic to try to turn lead into gold; physicists did it this year through science.

In truth, as Ferdinand Mount argues, the rise of scientific rationalism energized “a new sort of pantheism which sheds an equal radiance over the whole earth and every creature on it.” The result is what Horton calls “natural supernaturalism.” It’s a worldview that rejects an active, personal, creator god, while affirming the transcendent wonder of nature that can provide an individual experience of the divine. It describes the way many people see the world in our age of science and spirituality.

How Should Church Leaders Respond?

The popularity of spiritualism makes it more likely we’ll encounter people willing to accept Christianity’s supernatural claims without objection. Yet the individualistic nature of contemporary spiritualism, where people often adopt contradictory ideas they’ve acquired from internet influencers, means differentiating Christianity from other forms of spirituality is more important than ever.

There’s some value in trying to learn about alternative spiritualities. Books like James Sire’s The Universe Next Door are still valuable for highlighting big themes in diverse worldviews. But it’s more important to be able to articulate the truthfulness and exclusivity of Christianity.

Differentiating Christianity from other forms of spirituality is more important than ever.

The deficiencies of a counterfeit are most evident in the distinguishing marks of the authentic. That’s why the U.S. government’s training program to help bank tellers recognize fake money focuses on what real currency looks like rather than common counterfeit techniques. That’s instructive for Christian discipleship.

Our primary need is for counter-catechesis that highlights what distinguishes Christianity from false spiritualities—attributes like salvation by grace through faith, God’s perfect holiness, and the unchanging nature of the Trinity. Knowing what true Christianity looks like in contrast to cultural narratives helps us point people toward the gospel by showing the deficiencies of enchanted individualism.

I haven’t listened to late-night radio in years. Yet some of the strange theories that used to entertain me in the wee hours of the morning pop up in conversations between ordinary people at the YMCA. Now is the perfect time to talk about Christ’s bodily resurrection. It’s probably not the weirdest thing our neighbors have heard this week.