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# Re-Paganize the West!
- URL: https://mereorthodoxy.com/re-paganize-the-west/
- Published: 2007-09-07T01:34:48.000Z
- Updated: 2026-04-20T21:24:22.000Z
- Description: Re-Paganize the West!
- Author: Mere Orthodoxy
- Tags: Matthew Lee Anderson, Uncategorized

Peter Leithart [offers a typically instructive and provocative article](http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=841&ref=mereorthodoxy.com) at First Things today. If I understand it correctly, he claims that we need to understand the ways in which what we often call "modernism" is the same as primitive cultures. He writes:

> Re-paganizing the West means acting on the premise that, for all our pretense of sophistication, the West has never entirely escaped the impulses and habits of primitive culture, or that, by escaping Christianity, we are reverting to it. Re-paganizing the West means working out the implications of the French sociologist Bruno Latour’s assertion: We have never been modern.

I hope it is a hypothesis that he expounds upon and defends [in his forthcoming book](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1587432048/ref=nosim/?tag=mereorth-20&ref=mereorthodoxy.com) (ht: [Macht](http://prosthesis.blogspot.com/2007/09/links.html?ref=mereorthodoxy.com)). The full essay is a must read.