Now for a game of 'let's be pagans'.

It has become fashionable (now, there's a give-away) in some church circles to pay some sort of honour to the Aboriginals who inhabit, or previously inhabited, or were thought to have or claimed to have inhabited parts of Australia.

It's called the 'acknowledgement of country'. It pretends that this is not a recognition of the spiritual binding of people to the land in animist terms. But, even though recently invented, that's what it amounts to.

Then there's 'respects' paid (how?) to elders past present and coming down the line. Ancestor worship is here promulgated.

Contrast this with the scriptures.

Here's how interaction with pagan practice were handled: just think of the Golden Calf, the sons of Korah, the priests of Baal.

Or in the New Testament: the gospel irrespective of persons (Galatians 3:28), not binding the worship of our creator-redeemer to pagans (2 Cor. 6:4), or our call to worship: Romans 12:2.

Imagine if we had a hitherto unknown second epistle of Paul to the church at Ephesus:

'Hi, Paul to the church at Ephesus. But first, let me acknowledge Artemis, the god of this great city, and pay my respects to her priests past, present and emerging. Now, on your being pulled back into your pagan past, like our pals in Corinth. Don't....' 

Wouldn't work, would it?