The Völkisch movement was not an homogeneous set of belief, but rather a "variegated sub-culture" that rose in opposition to the socio-cultural changes of modernity. The "only denominator common to all was the myth of a national rebirth" inspired by (reconstructed) traditions of the Ancient Germans, either by "Germanizing" Christianity—an Abrahamic, i.e. Semitic religion that spread into Europe from the Near East—or by rejecting any Christian heritage in Germany, in order to revive a pre-Christian Germanic paganism.[3] In a narrow definition, the term is used to designate only groups that consider human beings essentially preformed by blood, or by inherited characteristics.[4]