"I have a dream . . ." we recall as the lead-in to soaring oratory about racial harmony prevailing in the world, with people not judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. A Baptist minister, Martin Luther King, Jr. evoked the imagery in Amos 5:24 of justice rolling down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream-looking to the day, as everyone should, when all God's children will be able to sing that we're "free at last."
This pioneering leader of the civil rights movement in the United States is famous for his rhetoric, encouragement of nonviolent civil resistance and, sadly, for his assassination in 1968. Despite serious character accusations against him in recent years, he remains a revered historical figure, with his birthday observed as a national holiday on the third Monday of each January.
Yet here's a fact many are unaware of. Before his career in ministry, Dr. King was a seminary student who received high marks on research papers, published later, showing mainstream Christian doctrine and practice arising in significant respects from pagan mystery religions, especially Mithraism. He presented this derivation without concern, but it's highly relevant to the matter of what constitutes true Christian practice and following God's will, as the Bible makes clear.
Assimilating the Great Mother and divine hero son
In his second year at Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania (1949-1950), King wrote a research paper titled "A Study of Mithraism" about the worship of the Persian sun god and savior Mithras and then expanded on that with a broader examination titled "The Influence of the Mystery Religions on Christianity," both citing numerous historians. These two articles are reprinted in The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Vol. 1, 1992, pp. 211-225, 294-313 (available online at kinginstitute.stanford.edu).
In the second paper, King surveyed several of the ancient mystery religions that had been spreading when Christianity came on the scene, seeing them as important influences in Christian religious development. As he wrote: "That there were striking similarities between the developing church and these religions cannot be denied. Even Christian apologists had to admit that fact. Christianity triumphed over these mystery religions after long conflict. This triumph may be attributed in part to the fact that Christianity took from its opponents their own weapons, and used them: the better elements of the mystery religions were transferred to the new religion" (p. 296).
He saw that transfer as due in large measure to an influx of former pagans into the new faith: "The victory of Christianity in the Roman empire is another example of that universal historical law, viz. [or namely], that that culture which conquers is in turn conquered. This universal law is especially true of religion. It is inevitable when a new religion comes to exist side by side with a group of religions, from which it is continually detaching members, introducing them into its own midst with the practices of their original religions impressed upon their minds, that this new religion should tend to assimilate with the assimilation of their members, some of the elements of these existing religions" (ibid.).
He first turns to the cult of Cybele and Attis-the Great Mother goddess and divine hero son-which came into southern Europe via Asia Minor. "Attis was the Good Shepherd, the son of Cybele, the Great Mother, who gave birth to him without union with mortal man, as in the story of the virgin Mary. According to the myth, Attis died, either slain by another or by his own hand . . . Cybele mourned vehemently until he arose to life again in the springtime . . .
"In Rome there was a festival celebrating the death and resurrection of Attis. This celebration was held annually from March 22nd to 25th. The influence of this religion on Christianity is shown by the fact that in Phrygia, Gaul, Italy, and other countries where Attis-worship was powerful, the Christians adapted the actual date, March 25th, as the anniversary of our Lord's passion . . .
"At this same Attis festival on March 22nd, an effigy of the god was fastened to the trunk of a pine tree, Attis thus being 'slain and hanged on a tree.' This effigy was later buried in a tomb . . . That night the priests went back to the tomb and found it empty, the god having risen on the third day from the dead; and on the 25th the resurrection was celebrated with great rejoicing. During this great celebration a sacramental meal of some kind was taken, and initiates were baptised with blood, whereby their sins were washed away and they were said to be 'born again'" (pp. 298-299).
We can see elements here of what became the Good Friday-Easter Sunday tradition. King notes: "There can hardly be any doubt of the fact that these ceremonies and beliefs strongly coloured the interpretation placed by the first Christians upon the life and death of the historic Jesus. Moreover, 'the merging of the worship of Attis into that of Jesus was effected without interruption, for these pagan ceremonies were enacted in a sanctuary on the Vatican Hill, which was afterwards taken over by the Christians, and the mother church of St. Peter now stands upon the very spot'" (p. 300).
King is certainly right that major elements of the pagan mysteries became part of what was actually a corrupted Christianity. But he goes off track in suggesting that the New Testament writers such as Paul were influenced by paganism in their presentation of the story and teachings of Jesus Christ.
Other cults from Syria, Egypt and Greece
After next turning to the worship of the god Adonis, who had a great festival in Antioch and a shrine at Bethlehem identified by Christians as the birthplace of Christ, King refers to the story of the god's descent into hell and then rising to ascend to heaven, celebrated in a resurrection festival with the words "The Lord is risen"-noting similarity to Christ.
King states: "This coincidence had led many critics to suppose that the story of the burial and resurrection of Jesus is simply a myth borrowed from this pagan religion" (p. 301). He then bizarrely remarks, "Whether these critics are right in their interpretation or not still remains a moot question" (ibid.). This makes no sense, as the Christian faith would then be a lie. How is that a moot question-one that does not matter?
In both of his papers, he labels naive the argument some later made with respect to Mithraism about the devil creating a pagan imitation of the true religion to confuse people. Yet we should recognize that Satan did just that. Well before the time of Christ, he established in pagan religions the counterfeit of a dying and saving god along with various other prophesied features. Yet it should also be recognized that the mystery religions actually copied aspects of true Christianity as it spread, which further explains some of the similar storylines. It's not always easy to know if some pagan teachings and practices predate Christianity or came after.
But there was clearly much adoption of paganism by a growing Christian religion that was progressively abandoning its scriptural roots. The descent of Christ into hell is a case in point, King noting that "in fact the idea did not appear in the church as a tenet of Christianity until late in the fourth century," giving rise to the view "that this idea had a pagan origin, since it appears not only in the legend of Adonis, but also in those of Herakles, Dionysus, Orpheus, Osiris, Hermes, Balder, and other deities" (pp. 301-302).
He next notes that "the Egyptian mysteries of Isis and Osiris exerted considerable influence upon early Christianity" (p. 302). He even traces the Christian festivals of All Saints and All Souls Day in early November (giving us today's Halloween) to an Egyptian feast of the dead and the resurrection celebration of Osiris, stating, "Thus Christians unconsciously perpetuate the worship of Osiris in modern times" (p. 303).
King further points out that "the myths of Isis had a direct bearing on the elevation of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, to the lofty position that she holds in Roman Catholic theology"-assuming the role of "the lady of sorrows, weeping for the dead Osiris, and . . . the divine mother, nursing her infant son, Horus" (ibid.), motifs also seen in other pagan systems. He says that when Christianity triumphed, the statues and paintings of the pagan Madonna and child became Mary and Jesus. "In fact archaeologists are often left in confusion in attempting to distinguish the one from the other" (p. 304).
Presented next are the Greek mysteries of Eleusis-based on the myth of Hades or Pluto carrying away harvest goddess Demeter's daughter Persephone away to the underworld, where she must remain for part of the year as an explanation of the changing seasons (the temple at Eleusis commemorating Demeter's grief). Detailing Greek Christian rites, King states: "Now when we observe the modern Greek Easter festival it seems certain that it preserves the spirit if not the form of the old Eleusinian worship . . . So we might say that Eleusinianism was not blotted out by Christianity. On the contrary many of its forms and some of its old content has been perpetuated in Christianity" (p. 307).
The great impact of Mithraism
Finally, King comes to the influence of Mithraism, which he had written about previously. Mithra or Mithras, a god of the sun and light, was initially a lesser god in the Persian pantheon who by Christ's day had come to be coequal with the supreme god Ahura Mazda. The worship of Mithras was very popular yet hindered, as King brings out in his earlier paper, by restriction to men-women being compelled to seek salvation elsewhere (with Mithraic temples often in juxtaposition to Great Mother temples).
In any case, despite rivalry with the growing Christian religion, many elements of Mithraism made their way in. King points out: "It was suppressed by the Christians sometime in the latter part of the fourth century A.D.; but its collapse seems to have been due to the fact that by that time many of its doctrines and practices had been adopted by the church, so that it was practically absorbed by its rival" (ibid.).
He mentions various parallels like belief in immortality, baptism, communion, a mediator between God and man, and even a beast slain at the end of the world. Yet he notes that all was not direct copying, acknowledging that baptism and a communion meal grew out of Jewish precedents (though what we see in mainstream Christianity is a corruption closer to Mithraism).
Like many others, King makes the error of stating: "The Hebrew Sabbath having been abolished by Christians, the Church made a sacred day of Sunday, partly because it was the day of resurrection . . ." (p. 309). The fact is that true Christians continued to observe God's Sabbath and did not shift the weekly worship day to Sunday-and the resurrection was not on Sunday. It was on Saturday.
He does, however, then give other reasons for the moved day of worship and the adoption of other worship days: ". . . But when we observe a little further we find that as a solar festival, Sunday was the sacred day of Mithra; it is also interesting to notice that since Mithra was addressed as Lord, Sunday must have been 'the Lord's Day' long before Christian use. It is also to be noticed that our Christmas, December 25th, was the birthday of Mithra, and was only taken over in the Fourth Century as the date, actually unknown, of the birth of Jesus" (ibid).
Comparison between Mithraism and the developing Christian religion "became so evident that many believed the Christian movement itself became a mystery cult" (ibid.). Indeed, as King notes in his conclusion, "there can hardly be any gainsaying of the fact that Christianity was greatly influenced by the Mystery religions, both from a ritual and a doctrinal angle" (p. 311).
King is not troubled in his evaluation here, remarking especially on Christianity's indebtedness to the mystery religions for paving the way for Christian missionary work and for being the source of important concepts. As he writes: "To discuss Christianity without mentioning other religions would be like discussing the greatness of the Atlantic Ocean without the slightest mention of the many tributaries that keep it flowing" (pp. 311-312).
But just what Christianity are we actually talking about here? It is definitely not the true religion of Jesus Christ and His apostles.
Free at last-through the truth
This is all very important in terms of what constitutes true Christian practice and what doesn't. God had made it clear in the earlier laws He had given to Moses that His people were not to adopt pagan worship practices in the worship of the true God (Deuteronomy 12:1-4, Deuteronomy 12:29-32). And Jesus made it clear that His followers were to adhere to the commands of Scripture and not push that aside through human traditions (Matthew 5:17-19, Matthew 15:3, Matthew 15:9).
The apostle Paul was not enamored with pagan ideas and practices, as he warned gentiles new to Christian faith against reverting to former pagan ways: "But then, indeed, when you did not know God, you served those which by nature are not gods. But now after you have known God, or rather are known by God, how is it that you turn again to the weak and beggarly elements, to which you desire again to be in bondage? You observe days and months and seasons and years [from former false worship]. I am afraid for you, lest I have labored for you in vain" (Galatians 4:8-11).
And his assessment of syncretistic blending of paganism with the teachings of Christ? "Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry . . . The things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to demons and not to God, and I do not want you to have fellowship with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the Lord's table and the table of demons" (1 Corinthians 10:14 and 1 Corinthians 10:20-21).
"For," as he later states, "what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? And what accord has Christ with Belial [Wickedness personified, the devil]? . . . And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? . . . Therefore 'Come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord . . .'" (2 Corinthians 6:14-17).
Pagan religion was not absorbed by true Christianity, "the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3). Rather, a false, corrupted Christianity emerged that replaced many elements of the truth with the lies of earlier paganism-a "mystery of lawlessness" that was already at work in Paul's day (2 Thessalonians 2:7).
Here was the transformation of Christian belief into the ultimate successor to the pagan mysteries-which eventually took over the Roman Empire and has persisted from then until the end time as what Bible prophecy identifies as "Mystery, Babylon the Great" (Revelation 17:5).
Martin Luther King, Jr. did not understand this biblical reality. But what he and many others have uncovered has helped to identify what these passages are referring to. It's only in coming out of the devil's great deceptions that we can find true freedom at last.
As Jesus said, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:32). Look to the Bible as the source of your beliefs and practices-and reject the lies that sprang from pagan mystery religion. In Jesus' words of John 4:24, learn to "worship in spirit and truth."
Related Information:
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