Europe has one of the richest cultural backgrounds ever existing in this world. Christianity takes a prominent part of the European culture, although there still are several cultural influences from ancient religions, most of all, from pagan beliefs and ritualism.

Relationship Between Christianity And Paganism In Europe

It’s interesting to notice that while Christianity lives on people’s memory, pagan ritualism looks more like a sort of “revival” of the pantheon of gods created by pre-Christian communities, even before the Roman conquest. Populations like Druids, Vikings, and Celts are historically known for their charming and somehow fancy gods.

With the advent of Christianity, paganism was gradually left. Over centuries, people forgot about the pagan gods and began to adore the true God of Life. However, while Christianity gained the highest levels of diffusion in Europe, some forms of paganism still survived. This happened in the centuries known as the Middle Age. Pagan rituals were mostly performed by small rural communities on the outskirts of Europe, especially Northern Europe.

Today, on the other hand, many bishops and priests claim that people are losing the Christian memory because of the changes taking place in the world. The loss of Christian memory has an immense impact on people’s lifestyles and social behaviors. The emergence of divorce, the increasing number of abortions, and many more contemporary social trends reflect how the actual world is changing in a worrying direction.

Physical Memory And Community’s Memory

We need to keep the memory of our roots and traditions – that’s the bottom line. Probably, we are all more focused on boosting our physical memory skills through dedicated brain exercises like puzzles, sudokus, crosswords, and more. That’s all useful and good, we are sure, but this doesn’t mean that we should neglect our community’s memory which is the ensemble of all the beliefs, traditions, mindset that made our community alive for so many centuries.

In this regard, we think it’s interesting to see what advanced technology allows humans to do in the present day. In fact, according to gotechjapan, several studies are meant to create a human-like memory in robots. That’s an extreme achievement that might not look as shocking in a few years.

But, as you can see, it’s all about working on the physical memory, neglecting what the community’s memory actually is.

Cultural Amnesia In Today’s World

It’s out of any doubt – we live in a world dominated by increasing cultural amnesia that leads us all not to keep the memory of any religious continuity in today’s world. People who live without religion are easy to get lost in the everyday challenges of this life. People who don’t have anything to believe and hope in are easy prey to any potential danger. So, this cultural amnesia is actually a dangerous condition not only for every individual but also for the entire communities and worldwide society.

Here’s in short why everyone should keep a religion’s continuity always alive in today’s society:

1. You won’t get lost
   As long as you keep a critical sense, you won’t get lost in society’s plaything made of passing fashions and temporary trends. You won’t lose yourself running after fake models that can only drag you to the brink.
2. It supports you
   When you have a religion to believe in, you know you aren’t alone no matter how difficult your present-day can be. You know that you have a series of commands and rules to orient your life and attitude in your everyday situations.
3. You have a community around you
   Atheist people are easy to feel like strangers in contemporary society. They don’t have a community of people where they can feel “part” of a whole. Also, people who don’t experience the community system can’t have the right people supporting them when they need it most. Having trusted people around you is fundamental to overcome any difficulties.
4. You love your culture
   There’s always been a deep and intense relationship between religion and culture. The first one is part of the second one and vice versa. You can’t divide them into two separate fields in many cases. As a result, if you have a religion in your life, you can love your culture and feel a legacy between your individual story and its century-old history.

Also, there’s an important distinction between the secular and the sacred that every good Christian should know: as Jesus clearly summed up in His words, we should “give to Caesar (who represents this world and its plaything) what is Caesar’s and to God (who represents the soul’s eternal life) what is God’s”.