Admittedly the first book does "pimp the pagan" somewhat heavily (gets better in later books) but there's a good case for neo-pagans doing well in this sort of situation. Many, indeed most neopags are into midevalist skills like herbalism, many have gardens which means even if the gardens themselves don't survive the skills for growing and caring for plants are still there, they often pursue hobbies like blacksmithing, many are members of the SCA or pusue hobbies like fencing and/ martial arts. This btw is not conjecture, am a neo-pag myself and every skill I listed has at least a couple of people doing it. Also, of course the books take a modern view of paganism, it's modern pagans who are the characters.
Trump delenda est
There is also the issue of mass conversions to paganism, how they claim they can do magic but never do so, how no one points out to the selfrighteous Tolkein knockoffs that the author of the stories was a Christian, and how a priest gets a vision form the Virgin Mary telling him to support a Gary Stu pagan son the head of the Mackenzie and the former head of the Bear Killers in order to help him set up a kingdom over basically the entirety of the US's half of the Oregon Country.
Conversions to paganism were explained in context: some converted to fit in with the community, some did so because they felt it made more sense with the life they were living now, later members were raised in the faith or felt called to it as one of a number of potentially-valid options. Also, take it in context: one of the communities we follow in the series is a pagan community, so of course we encounter a lot of pagans there! As for "the selfrighteous Tolkien fanatics," they don't consider Tolkien the creator of the series, but the channel through which the "Histories" were transmitted; they refer to him as "The Great Translator." So they probably regard the matter of his personal religion as irrelevant. As for Ignatius's vision calling on him to support Rudi, it was explained in context as that while Rudi was not a perfect leader through Christian eyes, he was a) a hell of a lot better than the CUT, and b) basically a force for good.
Is it possible that you are unhappy with the fact that Christianity is not the dominant worldview in the Emberverse? Because really, everything you complain about is justified in context.
As for the magic, we see a number of examples, beginning with Juniper's invocation of power in "Dies the Fire," and culminating in the Sword of the Lady (which is never soiled or damaged, can cut through anything, is an effective truth detector, and — not least — can break the demonic power of the CUT over individuals who have been possessed by it). Along the way, we also see a priestess sending what amounts to a sleep spell onto Cole, the Boise scout, we see Juniper and Delia casting visible protective wards when Orlaith is attacked, and several characters make what prove to be accurate prophecies.
Also, Rudi/Artos as a Gary Stu? Well, ouch. Considering the gamebreaker-level powers he wields, I suppose one could make a case for that. But he is such a completely-formed and relatable character that I, for one, have a hard time thinking of him that way.
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Dies the Fire, Pimps the Pagan Excessively
The overall series is an interesting what if situation. What if we lost all of our modern tech. What would we do? Some of the characters have abilities or skills that are a bit too convenient and the general populace does not seem to be portrayed as hard hit as it would be in real life.
The organization of various groups working together is believable overall and provides an interesting look and what people might do. There is still some post apocalyptic feel to the books despite how well some things seem to work out. Maybe I take this view because I have read plenty of post apocalyptic fiction where the world is written to be more bleak by comparison.
Now we get to the part of the book that bugs me. The Pagan commune. Yes there are pagans in the U.S. But the segments of the book that cover the community are honestly rather boring and a less believable then other parts of the book. It seems the author completely ignored history in favour of a "modern view" of paganism. It was trying to hard play up how good the pagan community was vs the rest of the groups ins ome cases.
Other thenthe overly convenient skill and ability sets and the excessive pagan commune good others bad vibe I got from the books it was overall an entertaining read.