Stories about the decline of Christianity in the Western world have dominated headlines for decades. A secularizing society, however, appears to be a fertile breeding ground for the return of deities which were once worshiped before the successful spread of the gospel.
Attention toward paganism and heathenism, which generally reference the ethnic polytheistic religions that predated Christianity in Europe, has indeed soared in recent years as fewer residents of Western nations direct their worship toward the God of the Bible. There are more than two million adherents to paganism, the modern neopagan syncretic religion called Wicca, and other New Age practices in the United States. Asatru, the practice which centers on the invocation of Norse deities such as Thor and Odin, is currently the fastest-growing religion in Iceland and the largest non-Christian religion on the island nation, even as virtually zero young Icelanders believe that God created the heavens and the earth.
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