Individuals who practiced the pagan religion believed in many Gods. Their chief god was “Woden” and all the Anglo Saxon Kings claimed that they were descended from him. “Tiw” was the god of war, “Thunor” was the god of thunder, and Rig was a goddess. (Cannon) In paganism, the belief of “civic duty to one’s neighbor” was a way of life. (Carpenter 199) Each man in a specific community would not only defend their Lord but because the community acted as a family each man would look after their brothers. A specific God or Goddess who controlled a different aspect of life looked after each community and there was no one God but many Gods.
Pagans believed that when a thunderstorm occurred, it was God punishing them not a weather storm. (Hutton) Killing was widely accepted for Pagans because it was a way of surviving and not killing for the sake of killing. A difference between Paganism and Christianity is pagans have “the tendency towards renunciation of the world and the consequent cultivation or a purely spiritual love” where are Christianity focuses on “the insistence on a morality whose inspiration was a private sense of duty to God rather than a public sense of duty to one’s neighbor and to society in general” (Carpenter 200). Pagans felt it was their duty to one’s neighbor and Lord whereas for Christians their duty is to God.
