"no evidence for" "an ongoing opposition between a repressive, orthodox Christianity and a suppressed, often feminist and sex-positive 'paganism'"

"the idea of an ongoing opposition between a repressive, orthodox Christianity and a suppressed, often feminist and sex-positive 'paganism' (defined here as the umbrella term for 'the ancient pre-Christian religions of Europe') endured for much of the twentieth century.  Margaret Murray's influential witch-cult hypothesis, which held that the witch trials of early modern Europe were an attempt to stamp out a more joyful, female-led 'Old Religion', was rapidly accepted by many historians less familiar with the trials.  In 1929, she was invited to write the Encyclop[a]edia Britannica entry for witchcraft, further cementing her authority with the public.  Her ideas filtered through into the work of writers such as John Buchan and Rosemary Sutcliff, and she provided an approving foreward for Wicca founder Gerald Gardner's Witchcraft Today in 1954.
     "However, as Hutton suggests in his opening chapter, the idea that 'in some form and to some extent, the ancient pagan religion or religions of Britain had persisted actively long after the introduction of Christianity as the official faith' was largely a late Victorian creation, stoked by the waning dominance of the Church of England and the rapid urbanization of British society.  It was further propagated by James Frazer's highly influential book The Golden Bough (1890) and the newly formed Folk-Lore Society. . . .  Together with Murray's witch-cult hypothesis, these affected popular historical accounts until the 1960s and 70s, when a more systematic study of historical records revealed no evidence for such theories."

    Elizabeth Dearnley, "Blessed ladies:  the rise of the fairy queen in Christian Europe," a review of Ronald Hutton, Queens of the wild:  pagan goddesses in Christian Europe:  an investigation (New Haven:  Yale University Press, 2022) in Times literary supplement no. 6254 (February 3, 2023):  26.  The point seems to be that these figures first arose in the late medieval and early modern but especially late Victorian periods, not pagan antiquity.  Take the Green Man, for example.  "The Green Man was linked in the twentieth century with an ancient vegetation deity, largely on the strength of a single article from 1939.  Hutton (italics mine):

'it is perfectly legitimate to pick foliate or woodland figures . . . and group them together now as expressions of the human relationship with green and fertile nature[.] . . .  The trouble only starts if those who embrace such beliefs back-project them onto the past and declare that they are revealing an ancient mystery'.