Why did Christianity live Side by Side with Rural Paganism before the Burning Times for almost a millenium?
Christianity not only lived side-by-side with Pagans, but when some Christian churches were built on the holy sites of the Pagans, there were at times altars to the Pagan gods as well as the new god, in the same building. The reason was simple. The new church didn’t have the power to drive out the old religion at once. They were simply not powerful enough to quell the uprising that would have resulted had they at once outlawed the practice of the old religion. Their solution was clever: allow the old religion to exist. They attracted new believers by assimilating the old gods and goddesses, adopting parts of the Pagan calendar, and making it appear as if they were accepting of the old beliefs. When enough people came into the new church, they began to malign those remaining practitioners of the old religion, making them look stupid, backward. This is the reason for what was once a pejorative: Pagan. It basically meant what “hick” means today. When more power was gained, and the church
