Syncretism and Christian Tradition: Race and Revelation in the Study of Religious Mixture

In the field of mission studies, the idea of “syncretism” is for many almost a dirty word. I remember one time when I tried to speak somewhat positively about it, I was virtually shouted down, accused of falling into “postmodern relativism.” In this learned, beautifully written, and provocative volume, however, Ross Kane attempts to show that not only is syncretism a natural process in all religious thinking and practice; it is a process that, if undertaken intentionally and critically, can give new life to every form of Christian theologizing and Christian life. ¹

Kane, professor of theology and ethics at Virginia Theological Seminary and former missionary in Kenya, structures his argument in two major parts. A first part is more historical. Chapter 1 surveys how the term “syncretism” developed from a positive notion—appearing first in Plutarch, who commended the inhabitants of Crete who bonded together against their enemies, and recommended in the sixteenth century by Erasmus—to a decidedly negative one. “Across the centuries . . . there have been four basic usages of syncretism: reconciling factions, questioning mixture, neutral descriptor, and—in Christianity over the last century—epithet” (20). This last use, Kane shows, is integrally entwined with both colonialism and racism, especially in Christian mission and theology. “Without Western Christianity necessarily noticing, ‘pure’ Christianity, unsyncretized Christianity, became white Christianity. . . . This white Christianity seemed to float free of culture, as if able to be exported wholesale” (53). Even attempts at inculturation, indigenization, and contextualization, Kane argues in chapter 2, are tainted with what George Yancy has called the “white gaze” (9, 48–49). Kane quotes John Mbiti: “To speak of ‘indigenizing Christianity’ is to give the impression that Christianity is a ready-made commodity, which has to be transplanted to a local area” (92). While practitioners of religious studies are more open to the fact and even the value of syncretism (ch. 3), under the influence of Hendrik Kraemer especially, “many Western Christians do not recognize . . . that the Christian gospel cannot be removed from culture because the human bearers of the gospel cannot be removed from culture” (53). Syncretism is a fact, Kane insists. It exists in every form of Christianity, Western or otherwise. Revelation is not a list of propositions. It is the presence of God enmeshed in created reality. It is the logos made flesh.

Having exposed the inevitability of syncretism within any form of religious thought and practice, Kane turns in a second part of the book to a constructive understanding of it. The basis of such construction (ch. 4) is found in the notion of a tradition—a particularly Christian tradition. Utilizing the more dynamic understanding of tradition proposed by Alistair MacIntyre and Edward Shils, even while recognizing in some understandings of tradition the danger of promoting colonialism and racist attitudes, Kane hones the notion of tradition with the help of Africanist historians. With their help, rather than an “agonistic” understanding of tradition that protects a static past, he proposes a “syncretizing” tradition, a “moving continuity” that is flexible and adjustable, and becomes “stronger for being so” (165), opening up new and startling ways of discovering the gospel. Putting theologians Jean-Marc Éla and Rowan Williams in conversation (ch. 5), Kane concludes that in such a syncretizing tradition, Christians can better see that “the logos of God continues to be realized in time and through human cultures, with Christ’s presence appearing especially among the oppressed and the stranger” (173). One does this by practicing what Éla calls “Shade Tree Theology”—listening patiently to the experience and faith of ordinary Christians. “A theologian is not the ultimate judge of syncretism, but the person who encounters the unfamiliar in a posture of listening and expectation” (206).

Chapter 6 offers two examples of how syncretism can enrich Christian tradition without the oppression of colonialism or the “white gaze” of racism. A first example is that of “ancestor reverencing” (not ancestor worship). “If we engage two theologians in particular, Ghanaian Kwame Bediako and Cameroonian Jean-Marc Éla, ancestor reverencing becomes a promising doctrinal development within the theology of the wider church” (212). Not only does such a practice jibe with the doctrine of the communion of saints; it shows how Christ’s presence in the Spirit was operative even before the missionaries arrived.

A second example is a Christian ritual of sacrificing a Mabior, a white bull, on the occasion of the celebration of a peace treaty in South Sudan. While, unlike ancestor reverencing, this mixing of Christian liturgy and Dinka ritual cannot be something that the entire church could practice, in a local context it “indicates the communal cost of participating in such a ritual. To give up a Mabior means giving up a substantial portion of one’s wealth for the sake of peace with one’s neighbor” (226). Such a celebration offers a new perspective on atonement, which is often seen in more individualistic terms. In addition to these two examples, Kane offers two more from the African context that point to the truth that not all syncretism fits into Christian orthodoxy. First, the strong identification with Afrikaner Nationalism in mid-twentieth century, while orthodox doctrinally, nevertheless exposes itself as really diabolical, since, like other racist nationalisms (Nazism, American white supremacy), it takes its identity from hate and oppression. Second, despite the fact that they openly reject the Bible and so cannot really be regarded as truly Christian, Kane suggests that the syncretism of the Friday Masowe apostolics (an African Independent Church) can offer something for the reflection of the Christian church—“material things can gesture to the divine but cannot fully express it” (244).

One question I might have is the treatment of contextual theology in chapter 2. While I am chastened by the overtones of colonialism and racism that can be found in my own work on models of contextual theology, I wonder if some of the models I propose are less prone to these defects than others. Kane does not deal with my work here (although it appears in his bibliography), but given the more personalist and less propositional notions of revelation in my anthropological, praxis, and transcendental models, and their possibilities of offering new and richer perspectives to Christian thinking and practice, I wonder if these models of contextual theology might be more akin to Kane’s understanding of syncretism in his book, and might redeem contextual theologizing in some way. In the light of Kane’s work, however, while the translation, synthetic, and countercultural models might still be valid in certain contexts, I realize that now I have to treat them with some hermeneutic of suspicion. I also believe strongly that authentic inculturation and indigenization proceed in a mutually critical conversation with a context or culture, offering both a particular situation and the Christian tradition surprising new ways of understanding itself. In sum, while Kane is certainly right in his critique, his critique might be a bit too harsh in some circumstances.

This is a rich, reflective, wide-ranging study that has relevance not only for mission studies but also for Christian systematic theology and Christian ethics. A greater openness to syncretism in what Pope Francis has called “daring prudence” and respect for ordinary peoples’ religion as what he named as a “locus theologicus” has the potential to open up Christianity in ways perhaps akin to Christians in Acts when the Spirit showed them things that without the grace of Christ would be unthinkable. Kane’s vision is bold, but upon reflection, it is hardly radical. Christians have always been syncretic. Syncretism is a natural response to the incarnation—God involving Godself with the messiness of this world. Colonialism and racism, however, have blinded us to this truly radical grace, and so perhaps an embrace of syncretism can help us finally see aright.