The Pagan-Contamination Conspiracy
by Stephen Ferguson | 16 April 2024
Recently I saw an interesting social media post on an Adventist-related forum. The author noted how they had watched the feed of Pastor Ted Wilson, the General Conference president, every day in the lead up to Easter. Every day this keen observer waited for Pastor Wilson to say something related to the passion-story, and every day he was disappointed. Eventually Easter Friday, Saturday, and then Sunday came and went—nothing.
I did my own checking, and as best as I could see, this was true. All through Holy Week, President Wilson bizarrely posted about the Mark of the Beast, Sabbath-keeping as the Seal of God, the Law of God, and the Great Controversy. It was baffling, as if he’d gone out of his way to avoid any mention of Jesus’ death and resurrection, at a time when most of the world – even the secular world – is open to this topic.
It seemed obvious to me, however, why Pastor Ted did this. To be fair to him, I don’t entirely blame him: if he had directly mentioned Easter, or even indirectly referenced Jesus’ death and resurrection, then a whole section of the Adventist community might pounce on him. They would raise what I call the “pagan-contamination conspiracy.” He’s a consummate politician, so I understand why it may have just been better to avoid the controversy.
The pagan-contamination conspiracy
Most Adventists are familiar with the pagan-contamination conspiracy. This involves seeing any aspect of the outside, secular, and non-Christian world, especially anything linking to ancient paganism, as an overwhelming corrupting power. Some theological miscegenation, some philosophical poison, even the smallest trace of the non-Christian world, could corrupt the supposedly pure form of Christianity.
The conspiracy comes in various guises, but common and repeated themes include the notion that Christmas and Easter are really pagan holidays associated with the gods Tammuz and Ishtar, and thus contain no Christian benefit whatsoever.
The conspiracy extends to other issues: from Christmas trees to chocolate eggs, to wedding rings, to Valentine’s Day cards, to trick-or-treating, to birthday celebrations, to reading fictional novels, to listening to secular music, to voting, to singing the national anthem, to women wearing pants.
The pagan-contamination conspiracy is not just an Adventist thing. In 1647, Puritan leader Oliver Cromwell, England’s only ever republican head of state, famously approved legislation banning Christmas Day itself!
The conspiracy among us is usually connected to the Roman Catholic Church. The pope is more a pagan Roman Emperor than a Christian leader—perhaps secretly leading a cabal of Masonic-Jesuit secret agents.
Christianity and non-Christian syncretism
Like most conspiracies, there is an element of truth. It is true that to win over broader Greco-Roman society, the early church adopted native customs and concepts. This included, for example, celebrating Jesus’ birth on a pre-existing Roman holiday.
It is also true that the Roman Catholic Church would in time take syncretism too far. It doesn’t take a professor in history to see parallels between the idea of ancient pagan gods and their counterparts in medieval patron saints. The worship of Mary, purgatory and indulgences also have no basis in scripture, but rather in Greco-Roman thought. Central themes of Roman Catholic theology and ethics seem to owe more to the teachings of Plato (who was much loved by Augustine of Hippo) and Aristotle (incorporated into the church by Thomas Aquinas) than to Peter or Paul.
Don’t take it from me. Anglican-Episcopalian bishop N. T. Wright wrote:
“The New Testament is deeply, deeply Jewish, and the Jews had for some time been intuiting a final, physical resurrection. They believed that the world of space and time and matter is messed up, but remains basically good, and God will eventually sort it out and put it right again. Belief in that goodness is absolutely essential to Christianity, both theologically and morally. But Greek-speaking Christians influenced by Plato saw our cosmos as shabby and misshapen and full of lies, and the idea was not to make it right, but to escape it and leave behind our material bodies.”
Christianity after paganism
So the pagan-contamination conspiracy is real, then? Not so fast.
The problem is not that there hasn’t been pagan influence on Christianity. There obviously has been. The problem is the extreme overreaction one finds amongst believers, as if pagan beliefs and practices will inevitably contaminate us. As if we can somehow escape pagan influence and discover some sort of pure Christianity.
The whole idea of separating ourselves from pagan or secular influences seems to be based on some serious misunderstandings. Let me explain to you how much the Bible can be separated from non-Christian, secular or pagan influences:
That much. Zero.
In fact, we fail to realize just how much the Bible itself is a product of the surrounding pagan world. An interesting area of biblical interpretation involves the realization that when written by God’s people under oppression, occupation or in exile, the Bible’s prophets and authors often co-opted the names, titles, and concepts of their pagan oppressors.
The Old Testament and the pagan world
To go right back to the beginning, there is evidence that Moses, in writing the Torah (and in turn later collated by Jewish editors in Babylon), was drawing heavily upon pre-existing Ancient Near Eastern stories. For example, the pagan Ancient Near East had several such stories, including their own creation (e.g., Enuma Elish, Nu, Yamm, and Epic of Gilgamesh) and flood accounts (e.g., Atrahasis’ Story). Importantly, these pagan accounts had uncanny similarities to the biblical narratives we find in Genesis.
While I am not disputing the truthfulness of the Genesis account, we should not overlook the obvious: that Moses’ original Sinai audience had just spent four hundred years in Egyptian capacity. The children of Israel probably knew more about these pagan stories than the Yahweh ones. The same is likely true for Jewish generations stuck in Babylonian and Persian capacity, when the Old Testament was finally turned into a canon of scripture, and the Babylonian Talmud began to be the interpretative commentary to the Torah.
As a result, it seems likely there was interaction or influence between these pagan and Hebrew accounts. God told Moses: “See, I have made you like God to Pharoah” (Ex. 7:1).
Even names we consider as archetypically biblical, such as Moses (an Egyptian name), Hebrew (probably derived from the Egyptian word for “outsider,” which is habiru), and Elohim (the supreme deity of Canaanites) did not fall out of the sky but derive from the influence of pagan neighbors.
Importantly, pagan influence does not mean wholesale pagan adoption. In the pagan accounts, the gods are capricious, humans are created as mere slaves, and life can only arise out of horrific Darwinian death and struggle. In the Genesis accounts, by contrast, God is a loving Creator who lovingly creates human beings as His companions and heirs. Far from contamination to be avoided, the pagan accounts become the medium by which God reveals – in altered form – His message of love.
The New Testament and the pagan world
We find similar outside influences in the formation of the New Testament. As renowned historian Diarmaid MacCulloch explains:
The Emperor Augustus’s birthday was called ‘good news’ and his arrival in a city the “parousia” – exactly the same word which Christians used for Christ’s expected return. It would be easy for sensitive Romans to hear such Christian usages as deliberate and aggressive plagiarism.
Jesus Christ, the murdered Jewish king, clearly invokes the influence and parody of Roman imperial politics. Even the christological title “Son of God” was an honorific used by Caesars, as dead emperors were deified by the Senate, making their successors literal sons of a god.
Paul is the best exemplifier of this accommodating approach. On at least one occasion in Athens, he openly debated pagan philosophers on their own terms, quoting pagan philosophers (Acts 17:22-28). Paul did not worry that outside ideas would somehow corrupt him. Rather, he used their own pagan ideas, such as an altar to an unknown god, in order to communicate a message in a way his pagan audience would culturally understand.
The Adventist Church and the American world
If you still have some compunction about the influence of non-Christian ideas on our beliefs and practices, look at our own church. What do we call our leaders? What do our leaders wear? What do we call our deliberative bodies, and how do they govern our organization?
We call our leaders “presidents.” Our leaders wear suits, with shirts, ties, jackets, trousers, and shoes. Our deliberative bodies are called “conferences,” “unions,” and “sessions,” with a form of representative-democracy, governed through meeting procedures akin to Robert’s Rules.
Where is any of this in the Bible? It isn’t – not really. These are all resoundingly American (or Western) ideas. Why are they American? To state the obvious, because the Adventist pioneers were from the United States. I don’t think American Adventist readers, in particular, appreciate just how Americanized Adventism is as a religious community.
There is nothing embarrassing about that, because God chose people from this place, impacted by that culture. Nonetheless, we should be careful of equating secular American culture with some sort of divine ordinance. We shouldn’t look past how odd it is for a religious community to be influenced by a political system devised by Deist, slaveholding, freemasons.
We might make the obvious comparison between the world’s Catholic leader in Rome and the leader of an ancient world-empire in Rome. However, it is just as easy to draw a comparison between the world’s Adventist leader in Washington, D.C., and the leader of today’s world-empire in Washington, D.C. Both men adopt the titles and attributes of their secular equivalents.
Thus, just as it makes sense for the early church to become Roman, it makes sense for the today’s church to become American. This is how God intended it. Secular culture, even pagan culture, has clearly influenced both religious groups.
Can we celebrate Christmas and Easter?
What is the answer, then? The key point, I think, involves realizing that any supposedly “pure” form of Christianity, totally devoid of non-Christian influence, isn’t possible. It is also, with some irony, an unbiblical concept.
Likewise, just because one can be influenced by non-Christian culture does not mean one has to adopt it wholly without question. There is a sensible approach to be taken here, which involves modification. It is the approach which Paul took, in being a Jew to the Jews and a Gentile to the Gentiles, in order to win over both groups (1 Cor. 9:20).
For these reasons – yes – it is legitimate to acknowledge Jesus was unlikely to be born on the date 25 December. It doesn’t mean, however, we need to be grinches. It is possible to use the Christmas holiday as a time of outreach, to let people know about the very biblical story of a baby born in Bethlehem—even to have fun and joy while we are doing it.
Similarly, no one said Pastor Ted had to extol the virtues of eating Easter eggs and chocolate bunnies. In the lead-up to Easter, President Wilson didn’t have to go out of his way (weirdly, in my opinion) to talk about the Mark of the Beast, while ignoring the central message of Jesus’ death and resurrection as found in the gospels.
Stephen Ferguson is a lawyer from Perth, Western Australia, with expertise in planning, environment, immigration, and administrative-government law. He is married to Amy and has two children, William and Eloise. Stephen is a member of the Livingston Adventist Church.