What is an example of Syncretism in world history?

Overt syncretism in folk belief may show cultural acceptance of an alien or previous tradition, but the "other" cult may
survive or infiltrate without authorized syncresis nevertheless. For example, some Conversos developed a sort of cult for
martyr-victims of the Spanish Inquisition, thus incorporating elements of Catholicism while resisting it.
Some religious movements have embraced overt syncretism, such as the case of the adoption of Shint elements into
Buddhism as well as the adoption of Germanic and Celtic pagan elements into Catholicism during Christianity's spread
into Gaul, the British Isles, Germany, and Scandinavia. Indian influences are seen in the practice of Shi'i Islam in Trinidad.
Others have strongly rejected it as devaluing precious and genuine distinctions; examples of this include post-Exile
Judaism, Islam, and most of Protestant Christianity.
The Romans, identifying themselves as common heirs to a very similar civilization, identified Greek deities with similar
figures in the Etruscan-Roman tradition, though without usually copying cult practices. (For details, see Interpretatio
graeca.) Syncretic gods of the Hellenistic period found also wide favor in Rome: Serapis, Isis and Mithras, for example.
Cybele was worshipped in Rome essentially represented a syncretic East Mediterranean goddess. The Romans imported
the Greek god Dionysus into Rome, where he merged with the Latin mead god Liber, and converted the Anatolian
Sabazios into the Roman Sabazius.
The degree of correspondence varied: Jupiter makes perhaps a better match for Zeus than the rural huntress Diana does
for the feared Artemis. Ares does not quite match Mars. The Romans physically imported the Anatolian goddess Cybele
into Rome from her Anatolian cult-center Pessinos in the form of her original aniconic archaic stone idol; they identified
her as Magna Mater and gave her a matronly, iconic image developed in Hellenistic Pergamum.
Likewise, when the Romans encountered Celts and Germanic peoples, they mingled these peoples' gods with their own,
creating Sulis Minerva, Apollo Sucellos (Apollo the Good Smiter) and Mars Thingsus (Mars of the war-assembly), among
many others. In the Germania, the Roman historian Tacitus speaks of Germanic worshippers of Hercules and Mercury;
most modern scholars tentatively identify Hercules as Thor and Mercury as Odin.
The "Syncretistic Controversy" was the theological debate provoked by the efforts of Georg Calixt and his supporters to
secure a basis on which the Lutherans could make overtures to the Roman Catholic and the Reformed Churches. It
lasted from 1640 to 1686. Calixt, a professor at Helmstedt, had through travels in England, the Netherlands, Italy, and
France, acquaintance with the different churches and their representatives, and extensive study, developed a more
open attitude toward the different religious bodies than had the majority of his contemporary Lutheran theologians.
While the latter firmly adhered to the "pure doctrine", Calixt tended not to regard doctrine as the one thing necessary
for a Christian, nor did he regard all doctrine as equally certain and important. Consequently, he advocated unity
between those who agreed on the fundamental minimum, with liberty as to all less fundamental points. In regard to
Catholicism, he would have (as Melanchthon once would have) conceded to the pope a primacy human in origin, and he
also admitted that one might call the Mass a sacrifice.
2013 The College Board

Syncretism
David Lindenfeld, "Indigenous Encounters with Christian Missionaries in China and West Africa, 1800-1920: A
Comparative Study," Journal of World History 16 no. 3 (2005), 327-69.

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (10th edition, 1999) defines syncretism as "the combination of
different forms of belief or practice." As such, its application to world history is virtually limitless.
However, it is not very helpful as an analytical tool, since it stands to reason that any two groups that
encounter each other will experience some kind of combination of old and new customs. The American
Heritage Dictionary (4th edition, 2000) gets closer to the actual range of the term's usage when it defines
syncretism as "reconciliation or fusion of differing systems of belief, as in philosophy or religion, especially
when success is partial or the result is heterogeneous." This still leaves open, however, an enormous range
of possibilities. These combinations may superficially resemble one other but still be quite different in terms
of their meanings for the people who engage in them. My own view is that syncretism is an umbrella-like
term, covering a wide variety of strategies and processes by which cultures with differing beliefs and
practices adapt to one another. Indeed, I call my own research project, which is a comparative study of
differing indigenous encounters with Christian missionaries since 1800, "Beyond Conversion and
Syncretism."1 This does not mean, however, that the term has no use in the classroom, as I will attempt to
show.

The word itself has a fascinating if rocky history. It supposedly originated with a practice of the Cretans,
as explained by Plutarch (45-125 ce) in his moral teachings on brotherly love:

When differences arise among brothers: we must be careful especially . . . to associate familiarly with our
brothers' friends, but avoid and shun all intimacy with their enemies, imitating at this point . . . the practice
of Cretans, who, though they often quarreled and warred against each other, made up their differences and
united when outside enemies attacked; and this it was which they called "syncretism."2
The term was revived in the Renaissance, when scholars like Erasmus used it to identify the classical
admixtures in Christian theology. At this time it still retained its positive connotation. This changed
dramatically, however, with the Reformation, when such admixtures came to be viewed as signs of religious
impurity. This negative view continued in the Protestant missionary literature through the nineteenth
century and well into the twentieth.3 It is alive and well today in some Christian circles, as a cursory search
of the Internet will reveal. Meanwhile, however, the advent of anthropology shifted the connotation once
again from negative to positive, as it came to be associated with cultural and linguistic mixture in general
(and probably at some level with the United States' self-image as a melting pot).4 This opened the
floodgates to a huge variety of uses, making the term more or less interchangeable with "acculturation,"
"hybridization," "creolization," "bricolage," etc. Once again, this raises problems of precision: in each case,
questions remain to be answered as to how such mixings occur, whether they vary in time and place,
whether they are intentional or unintentional, etc. In the interest of manageability, many scholarsthough
by no means allprefer to restrict "syncretism" to religious interactions.

Syncretism from Above and Below

As a starting point, I find it useful to distinguish between "syncretism from above" and "syncretism from
below."5 The former refers to conscious decisions of religious authorities to incorporate native elements in
their attempt to bring new adherents into the fold. One example would be the policies of the Franciscan
missionaries in sixteenth-century Mexico, who not only learned the Nahuatl language of the Aztecs, but
deliberately imitated the style of Nahuatl religious writings in their sermons. In addition, they built churches
on sites of former Aztec temples, which then continued to serve as places of pilgrimage. One such site later
became associated with the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, although its actual existence is doubtful.6

Syncretism from above may also be said to characterize the policies of the Roman Catholic Church since
the Second Vatican Council. The pronouncements of Pope John Paul II are quite striking in this respect.
Addressing a Native American audience in Phoenix, Arizona in 1987, he said:
The early encounter between your traditional cultures and the European way of life was a harsh and painful
reality for your peoples . . . I encourage you, as Native people . . . to preserve and keep alive your cultures,
your languages, the values and customs which have served you well in the past and which provide a solid
foundation for the future . . . These things benefit not only yourselves but the entire human family. This
sharing of cultural riches must include the Church native cultures are called to participate in and enhance.7

This has led, for example, to the deliberate incorporation of Native American motifs in church
architecture, such as a church in the shape of a tipi on Manitoulin Island, Ontariothough it is worth
adding that such efforts were not always to the liking of the parishioners, who sometimes felt uncomfortable
with the mixture of styles.8 It is also important to note that such syncretisms are as a rule tightly controlled:
it is the church which decides what elements to incorporate and which to leave out.

Syncretism from below refers to ways in which people incorporate elements from other religions more or
less spontaneously, whether consciously or not. Typically this occurs when a less powerful group
encounters the religion of a more powerful group; syncretism thus becomes a means of adaptation and selfpreservation. The religions of the African slaves in the new world yield a host of examples, such as
Candombl in Brazil, Vodoun in Haiti, and Santera in Cuba, which I will discuss here.9

Many of the Africans who came to Cuba as slaves from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries
were of Yoruba origin, i.e. the people of what is today southwestern Nigeria. They brought with them an
elaborate pantheon of deities and mythologies to go with themnot to mention practices of divination,
worship, and spirit possession. These deities were called orisha, who served as intermediaries between the
people and the supreme God Olodumare, who was considered remote and beyond worship directly. Once in
Cuba, these Africans were baptized as Roman Catholics, as required by Spanish law. The slaves found in
the veneration of Catholic saints a bridge between the Christianity they obligingly practiced on Sunday
mornings and the Yoruba rites they practiced on Sunday evenings or whenever their free time allowed.
They devised a set of correspondences between the two sets of intermediaries. True, their enslavement
necessitated certain adjustments, such as moving their orisha feast days to coincide with Catholic ones. But
what is remarkable is the extent to which this Santera did not become Catholic. The African-derived
religion retained its integrity. The corresponding saints are there almost as an afterthought: the reasons for
their inclusion have less to do with their significance within Catholicism than with their association to a
significant Yoruba belief or myth. For example, Ogun, a great warrior, symbolizing force and energy, is
also the god of iron, patron of blacksmiths. His Catholic counterpart is no less than St. Peter, whose only
resemblance to Ogun is that he holds the metal keys to the kingdom of heaven. Another popular orisha is
Ogun's brother Shango, god of thunder and lightning, described in one source as "a womanizer, pugnacious,
hard-drinking, brave, fearless, adventurous, given to defiance and challenges, proud of his manly attractions
and very conscious of his strength and virile beauty."10 As a saint, however, he androgynously becomes St.

Barbara, whose father was struck dead by lightning after beheading her for becoming a Christian.
The Pitfalls of Syncretism
Such examples should alert us to the distortions that are likely to arise when we employ the notion of
syncretism. One of these is to confuse what appears to be a syncretic combination to an American or
European observer with a very different meaning it has for the non-Westerner who actually practices it. A
good example would be the West African Aladura (praying) churches which arose among the Yoruba in
Nigeria between the First and Second World Wars.11 These were years marked by a number of traumatic
events, such as the great influenza epidemic of 1918, an outbreak of bubonic plague in 1925, and the Great
Depression of the 1930s, not to mention rapid urbanization and concomitant social change. In these
circumstances there arose a number of Christian charismatic prophetic leaders, promising healing and
overcoming of adversity through prayer. They attracted masses of followers away from the mainstream
Christian churches. Faith healing involved a rejection of Western medicine, which might appear as a return
to traditional ways; but the Aladuras equally rejected the healing rituals of the orishas and urged their
followers to burn any signs of such idolatry. If they emphasized certain aspects of worship such as dream
interpretation and visions which might appear to be more African than Christian, they could respond by
pointing to numerous passages in the Old Testament which sanctioned such practices. An authority on the
Aladura, J.D.Y. Peel, rejects the label of syncretism as applied to them. At the same time, Peel points to
another phenomenon that occurred at the same time which can be regarded as syncretic (though not as
widespread as the Aladuras): the so-called Ethiopian churches, which preached that each culture had its own
tools to reach the kingdom of God, and that African Christians should not reject the intermediaries of their
traditional religion as a means to this end.12 This illustrates an important point about religious cross-cultural
relationships in general, namely that any one society will adopt a number of different adaptive strategies in
varying degrees, which involve different types of combinations, a fact which renders a single label such as
syncretism all the more misleading.

The spectacle of the Aladuras throwing their old fetishes, charms, and statues into the flames brings to
10
mind another pitfall of syncretism: the fact that novel religious combinations may sometimes work not to
bring two religions together, but to drive them apart, by sweeping away large portions of preexisting beliefs
and practices on either side. A good example is the great Taiping Rebellion in China (1851-1864).13 This is
a movement that may legitimately be called syncretistic, at least superficially. Its originator, Hong Xiuquan,
had studied the Confucian classics for some twenty years in preparation for the civil service examinations,
which he failed four times. In 1837, after one of these failures, he experienced an extended vision of being
in heaven facing a heavenly father who ordered him to return to earth to slay the evil demons there. Much
of the imagery in this vision, as he later recounted it, is comprehensible in terms of the Chinese classics and
folk culture with which Hong was familiar. In 1843, however, he read a Christian missionary tract which
convinced him that the heavenly father of his vision was Jehovah, and that he himself was Christ's younger
brother. The Taiping ideology which developed thereafter was based on a very rudimentary understanding
of Christianity, which Hong had only studied for about a month; thus many elements of Christian teaching
were left out, such as the idea of Christ as redeemer of sins.14 There was more of an emphasis on the Old
Testament, such as the moral teachings of the Ten Commandments, which Hong found consonant with the
basics of Confucian morality. But the injunctions to have no other gods before Jehovah and to make no
graven images unleashed an anti-idolatry campaign that accompanied the Taipings wherever they
conquered. One of Hong's first acts upon assuming his new calling was to smash the tablets to Confucius in
the school where he taught (a gesture to be imitated, incidentally, forty years later by a youthful admirer of
Hong who would go on to become China's most famous Christian, Sun Yat-Sen).15 Later the Taipings also
destroyed images and temples to local divinities throughout the area they occupied, including Buddhist and
Taoist shrines.
The exclusionary character of the movement, I suspect, had much to do with its eventual failure: a set of
Confucian practices minus Confucius himself was unacceptable to the gentry and bureaucracy and
mobilized support for the Qing dynasty that would otherwise have been lacking. And a Christianity with
more than one begotten son of God was equally repulsive to the British and French, who sided with the
Qing against the Taiping. Nevertheless, the family resemblances between the Taiping and other militant
religious movements of reformWeber likened it to Cromwell's model armyis unmistakable. The
emphasis on purity, asceticism, and concentration of spirituality in a few powerful religious symbols all
point, however, to a mindset that is just the opposite of what we usually associate with syncretism.16

11

A further pitfall of syncretism is that the name is sometimes used to refer to a widespread type of crossreligious adaptation that is in fact just the opposite of mixing and merging: the simultaneous but separate
practice of two religions. This is sometimes called "mosaic syncretism," but the term "dual religious
participation," coined by the anthropologist William K. Powers, is probably less confusing.17

12

Powers is a student of the Lakota Sioux Indians, a nation which illustrates well the varieties of adaptive
strategies that can be tried when a culture and its religion are under deadly attack, as was the case with the
North American Plains Indians in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. One of these strategies,
as is well known, was the Ghost Dance movement of the late 1880s. Performing the dance, so the
participants believed, would bring back the buffalo and the plentiful life which the whites had taken away.

13

It is sometimes labeled syncretic because of some elements of Christian imagery that entered into the Ghost
Dance belief. The prophet Wovoka of the Paiutes in Nevada, whose vision was the source of the movement,
had been exposed to Christianity when he worked for an American rancher. Some, although not all,
accounts portrayed him as Christ returned (despite Wovoka's own disclaimers to this effect).18
The label is misleading, however, in that the dance itself was Indian in inspiration and form. The fact that 14
it was adopted by the Sioux clearly had less to do with the Christian elements than with the fact that their
own major annual ritual, the Sun Dance, had been banned since 1883, and that poverty and desperation, due
to crop failures, epidemics, and a cut in rations all reached a crisis point in 1890.19 The movement helped
precipitate the tragic massacre at Wounded Knee, extinguishing the hopes that the Ghost Dance had raised.
At the same time, many Lakota were turning to Christianity as brought by missionaries, so that by the midtwentieth century virtually all could claim affiliation with one church or another.20 Powers emphasizes the
various material and social advantages that church membership brought with it: the church could be a
source of needed food and clothing, it helped to preserve the language and clan structure, and it provided
opportunities for intertribal meetings in the form of annual religious convocations which could draw as
many as 10,000 participants.21 These convocations obviously also served as surrogates for the banned Sun
Dance ceremonies. There is abundant evidence that many Sioux did not merely participate as a matter of lip
service, but took Christianity to heart. Yet, at the same time, they continued to perform their own religious
ceremonies away from the eyes of the missionaries. Even when the attitudes towards traditional ceremonies
became more tolerant in the 1960s and 70s, the dual pattern continued. Thus, according to Marla Powers
(William's wife and fellow anthropologist) writing in 1986, the Oglala Sioux observe christenings,
marriages, and the Christian religious holidays, but may also visit a medicine man for help in curing an
affliction.22 Of course, there are overtly syncretic combinations among the Lakota as well, such as the socalled peyote cult, more properly known as the Native American Church, which originated in the
Southwest. But according to Marla Powers, it probably embraced fewer than 5% of the Oglala Lakota.23
There are also examples of post-Vatican II syncretism from above: The Jesuit priest and anthropologist Paul
Steinmetz not only introduced the Sioux sacred pipe into the mass, but also obtained a papal blessing for the
Native American Church in 1975.24
The practice of dual religious participation is quite widespread in many cultures, and is found in other
15
cases we have discussed, such as Santera. Peel also finds it among the Yoruba in Nigeria, not so much
among the Aladuras as among those who attend the missionary churches.25 I suspect that future research
will reveal many more cases. It is also clear that peoples who practice dual participation do not necessarily
see it as inconsistent or incoherent. Rather they embrace a belief in convergence of religious traditions: that
different spirits and traditions are simply different manifestations of a single universal God. This may be
said to be one final distinct strategy that falls under the syncretist umbrella. Different spirits do not need to
be fused or merged to be acknowledged as emanations of a single Supreme Being.26