This article looks at the ways in which the legal system of a modern European jurisdiction has engaged with a counter-cultural minority religious movement. The jurisdiction in question is England and Wales, and the religious movement is revived modern Paganism. The article seeks to cast light on the question of what a post-Christian secular state does in practice when its commitment to pluralistic values encounters a group whose self-understanding challenges the norms of both Christianity and secularity. In more general terms, it allows us to look at how the law of England and Wales has attempted to move beyond its historic confessional Protestant premises; and how this attempt has not been without its anomalies and shortcomings.
This article seeks to shed new light on an unresolved question in modern religious history: how did classical traditions of paganism come to be revived in modern times in the form of neo-paganism? It seeks to contribute to addressing this question by identifying a hitherto overlooked
individual who embraced revived paganism as a religious philosophy before other, better known figures who have been discussed by previous scholars. The individual in question was the teacher and writer John Fransham (1730–1810). This article seeks to elucidate the main tenets of Fransham's
religious outlook and to locate him within the intellectual context of his time, as both a product of and a rebel against the British Enlightenment. It also publishes his most explicitly pagan piece of writing for the first time.
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