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🕑 Added 2025-03-14 03:02:35 +0000 UTCToday, the largest religion in Europe is Christianity. While more and more Europeans are secular, Christianity played a gigantic role in European history over the past two thousand years, from bloody religious wars to great philosophers. But what if everything went different? What if Europe wasn’t Christian—what if it was still pagan, instead?
This is What Why How, and that’s what the video’s about. If you like this don’t forget to subscribe and check out my Patreon for early previews of future videos.
Now, the stereotypical historical change I could make would occur in October, 312, when Emperor Constantine beat his rival for power at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge after, as the legends go, pledging himself to Christianity. Historians debate how Christian Constantine actually was, but Constantine did change the empire’s policy from repression to promotion of Christianity. So, we can just have Constantine drown in a river, right? Well, one problem: basically all of Constantine’s rivals also issued edicts of toleration; Christians were a powerful force, and it made sense to court their support. So while Constantine gets the credit, somebody else might’ve done the same later on.
The true solution is to go back to Diocletian, whose shoes Constantine and all his enemies were fighting to fill. Diocletian implemented some of the harshest persecution of Christians in Roman history. But, after getting sick in November 304, Diocletian decided to resign from power and grow cabbages instead. If Diocletian didn’t get sick, or stayed in power until his death in 311, he would’ve extended persecution of Christians for several more years. That means more and more churches destroyed, more and more Christians killed. With Constantius—that’s Constantine’s father—dying on campaign and co-emperor Galerius dying, allegedly from some sort of terrible gangrene, the eastern co-emperor Maximinus Daza mobilizes his forces and secures his power as Diocletian withers away.
So, come 311, Maximinus is the most powerful man in the empire. He also continues the persecution of Christians. Now, doubtlessly there would be more civil wars, but with Christianity pressed deeper and deeper underwater, no later emperors successfully embrace the religion. Instead, they turn to the Cult of Sol Invictus, or the Cult of Mithras, or other mystery cults that offer the secrets of the universe in exchange for learning esoteric rituals. Eventually, Christianity becomes digested, with Jesus made just another foreign god polytheistic Romans sacrifice to.
So, what happens over the next 1700 years?
Well, that’s a really complicated question. I do think Rome would still collapse; the empire was too big, too prone to civil war, and the Germans are on the horizon. But after that, there probably wouldn’t be religious wars between Christian crusaders and Arab Muslims, or huge religious wars between different branches of Christianity. But wars wouldn’t go away, and Europe may experience invasion from powerful Abrahamic armies from the east.
Now, the issue of how society would change is also a gigantic question. Early Christianity, indisputably, challenged the stagnant social hierarchies of Roman society, allowing for those on the edges of society to participate in a new community. Christianity’s emphasis on all mankind being made in the image of God also inspired philosophers in the 1700’s to argue for limited government and legal equality. But I don’t think those ideas are exclusive to Christianity.
Christianity’s impact on European society is the subject of thousands upon thousands of pages of debate, and there’s not really a settled answer. What do you think—comment below!
Let’s just talk about the more answerable stuff: here’s what I think religion would look like in the year 2025.
First a plurality but not a majority of Europeans believe in some variation of Neoplatonism, which by 2025 refers to the idea that there does exist a single, universal God—the One—with all of existence emanating from him, including other gods and goddesses. We call this Monism. Now, the rest of religious Europeans are either true polytheists, monotheists, or don’t know what the difference really is.
While plenty of Europeans believe some single God created the universe, they can’t agree who that is. There’s no such thing as separation of church and state, so the ruling dynasties and republics of Europe promote their preferred god as a form of nationalism. Both Francia and Italia promote Jove, or Jupiter, who has since evolved from being just the king of the gods to the god of creation and part of a trinity alongside Juno, the goddess of birth, and Pluto, the god of decay. The kingdom of Hispania promotes the god Sol, a fusion of several different sun gods, which is also popular across the Mediterranean. To the north, Britannia and Germania promote Wotan, who they imagine as a sort of wizened clockmaker behind the universe. Throughout this area, by the way, the old Celtic gods are still alive and well; the Irish and various other Celtic people Lugh, who they equate with Apollo from the south. To the east, Slavic countries promote Perun, whose warlike attributes are frequently cited in that region’s bloody wars. Greece doesn’t have a national religion; they’re a melting pot of a bunch of different religions, including monotheistic religions I’ll talk about later.
Now, just because the governments promote these gods as a matter of national pride doesn’t mean the people themselves don’t worship a thousand other gods too. These include the usual sort of gods you probably know. Among women, Minerva, Isis, and Freya are the most common.
And how do people worship these gods? Well, they attend festivals, make sacrifices, and pray in temples and in the home, just like they did thousands of years ago. But, probably as a result of Christian influence, acting virtuously has become a key part of European religion. How to live with virtue is the subject of many philosophical and religious texts over the ages, but most take inspiration from the old Greek philosophers’ debates on the matter—serving society in your social role, balancing extremes, self-lessness are all common virtues discussed ad nauseam in countless self-help books.
Now, you could probably classify most of the religion I’ve talked about so far as “vulgar” religion—the religion of the masses and the public. But across Europe, various specialized, exclusive religions have taken hold: mystery cults that promise knowledge of the secrets of salvation in exchange for monetary donations. These started off thousands of years ago and are stronger than ever; basically every god or deified prophet has a mystery cult attached to him. Today the most noteworthy are the Cult of Nostradamus, founded by a French astrologer who promised his followers secret knowledge of the future; the Cult of Hegel, founded by followers of the German philosopher who promise the power to shape reality using the power of the spirit-mind; and mutant forms of Buddhism. There are of course all sorts of bizarre, exploitative full-on cults too which have thousands of followers, as well as religious communes that establish villages away from the din of modern civilization.
There are also a few class-based religions. While the masses of their national gods, among intellectuals, college students, and businessmen, the most common religion is Hermeticism. They worship Hermes, Thoth, and Odin, combined into the form of Hermes Trismegistus. As the holy texts say, this God lived on Earth as a man and taught humans various important things, like metalworking, writing, and of course magic rituals. As a guide to bring humans to the afterlife, the followers of Hermes also believe they are uniquely positioned to be reborn in the next life.
Ok, so we’ve covered all sorts of things that can doubtlessly be classified as pagan. But after 2000 years, Christianity is still around, especially in Greece. One problem: half of Christians aren’t monotheistic. Across Europe, many consider Jesus to be another god deserving of a totem in their household shrine, if they can afford one. Jesus is an aspect of their national god, or a prophet of their preferred mystery cult. About a third of Christians are Neoplatonists who believe that Jesus was an emanation of the creator god, Yahweh, alongside other deities like Hermes, Apollo, and Odin. But the remaining Christians are monotheists, often targeted with ridicule, harassment, and at times violence, especially in poorer countries. They’re joined of course by Judaism, which lasts to this day, Islam, and a few other later Abrahamic faiths founded by one prophet or another. These monotheistic religions can most easily be found in the Near East and in villages across southern Europe.
So, here’s what we have: a Europe much more religiously complicated than ours. Now, this is a much shorter video than usual, so let me know in the comments below if you like this sort of format. And don’t forget to support me on Patreon.com/whatwhyhow so I can keep making videos like this. All it costs is a buck a month and you get your name in the credits, like:
