In the second half of Pagans & Christians in the City, Smith sets out a bold claim. In short, he argues that paganism never went away. The immanent orientation to the sacred it advances is not only in direct competition with Christian transcendence, but competition between the two orientations continues today — it manifests in the US as “culture wars” — because a number of progressive values comport readily with pagan conceptions of the sacred. This is particularly so when it comes to sex and sexuality. To take two of Smith’s case studies among many: modern liberal democracies have simply abandoned the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim view of same-sex attraction and abortion and substituted the pagan Roman view wholesale.

Modern rulers claim “legitimacy” by a long series of Byzantine pretenses and procedures no more moral, just or rational than “Divine Right of Kings” was, then claim that their subjects somehow agreed to obey due to something called a “social contract” by virtue of being born within a particular set of imaginary lines the rulers drew on a map; the fact that nobody can “choose” when, how or where to be born is pretended to be irrelevant, and the rulers claim the “right” to inflict violence – including assault, maiming, robbery, rape, child-abduction, locking them in a cage for decades and even murder – if the subject violates any of a vast, confusing, vague, broad, and ever-increasing body of arbitrary rules called “laws” which are invented by the rulers as excuses to expand their own power, destroy their enemies (especially rebellious subjects) and suppress everyone who isn’t a member of the ruling class.