How White Christians turned syncretism into an insult
Early-20th-century European and North American missionaries grew concerned about it—but never in their own churches.
Theology doesn’t have many insults. This is a good thing, because insults diminish another’s humanity and make light of the Creator of that humanity. I take it as a positive sign for the health of Christian theology that it has so few of them.
In recent years, however, syncretism has become one such derogatory term. What it implies may include “Your Christianity doesn’t seem pure,” “Your Christianity is less refined than mine,” or “Your Christianity feels exotic to me.” It nearly always comes down to “Your Christianity makes me feel uncomfortable.”
It wasn’t always this way. For centuries, syncretism was something to aspire to. This makes it different from heresy, theology’s other epithet, which has never been a compliment. Syncretism was long used to express admiration for the ability to form alliances across ecclesial divisions. It only became pejorative in the early 20th century. Our insults tell us a lot about ourselves, and the Holy Spirit often works through our feelings of discomfort. Reevaluating how we think about syncretism may open up our understanding of the Spirit.
