Secular Syncretism 2: Mechanisms

The way that syncretism develops begins with bad communication, bad contextualization. The extreme example is seen in the “evangelization” of Latin America by the Roman Catholic church. In extreme cases, indigenous populations were offered a choice: convert or die. Hardly the message of the Gospel, this is a clear case of poor communication. The result was, of course, mass “conversion.” But all that really occurred was the rebranding of local religions and customs. Local deities continued to be worshiped, just under new, acceptable names.

The true Gospel is radically different to any other worldview. When people try to communicate it across cultures, they work to make the message understandable to the new hearers. The problem of syncretism arises when such “contextualization” instead changes the message to make it more acceptable to the new audience. In such cases, they no longer have the Gospel message, but rather their same, old, comfortable worldview with new “Christian” labels.