Syncretism: A useful concept?

In the twentieth century, syncretism was commonly used to describe the borrowing of practices between religious traditions. Thus the veneration of ancestors in versions of African Christianity or the similarities between Greco-Roman gods and Catholic saints could be referred to as syncretic.

This usage was widely followed in scholarly circles, but it inherited a polemic that had been articulated in the Protestant Reformation. Here Catholic ‘traditions’ could be contrasted with pure ‘religion’, derived solely from Scripture. Many of these traditions were ascribed to syncretic borrowings from other religions. For some, this has meant that Catholicism was not a form Christianity at all (I have heard such opinions in Belfast quite recently).

The genealogy of the term syncretism in this kind of polemic has led Charles Stewart and Rosalind Shaw to suggest that scholars abandon it as a term of analysis (i.e. as an emic term). They observe that the identification of syncretism tends to be undertaken by those who are advocating an anti-syncretism, and the purging of a religious tradition from foreign elements. In this sense, we can see anti-syncretism as a phenomenon like nationalism, where a commentator identifies a package of identities, behaviours and ideas as ‘pure’ or ‘orthodox’, and deviations from this are labeled inferior and impure.

Stewart and Shaw observe that if we use a term like syncretism in scholarship, this seems to imply that ‘pure’ religious traditions are a possibility. Thus to describe practices as a ‘Hindu-Christian syncretism’ implies that Hinduism and Christianity are both coherent, discrete systems. In practice, all believers constantly adapt new ideas that they encounter, both from religious and non-religious sources. In particular, religious converts often bring the same questions to their new faith that they asked of their previous faith. And in so doing, their new religion expands its remit.

Stewart and Shaw’s critique is particularly important for teachers of RE in secondary school. The time restrictions involved in teaching the subject, as well as the role of SACREs in determining curricula, can often prioritise ‘purist’ scriptural approaches to religious traditions. This can result in the imagination of these traditions as discrete units. One problematic consequence of this approach gives short shrift to the hybridization of religious practice.

However, there has been an interesting rebuttal to Stewart and Shaw from the anthropologist David Gellner. He suggests that scholars ought to be interested in the origins of religious ideas, precisely because so much weight is placed on the scriptural justification of religious practice in traditions such as Buddhism, Christianity or Islam.

Gellner puts forward a usable definition of syncretism that attempts to avoid its polemical genealogy: ‘an unsystematic combination of different traditions that their creators intended to keep apart’. He gives the example of the Buddhist priesthood of the Newar region of Nepal, which can only be occupied by members of the Brahmin caste. This is a region dominated by a Hindu king, and Hindu stories are widespread. Gellner suggests that the use of a Hindu-derived idea (caste) by a Buddhist priesthood who cannot justify this idea from their own Scripture is inherently unstable, and persists because of low levels of literacy among the Newar peasantry.

He contrasts this example of syncretism, with synchronism. He defines this as the evolution of complementary systems, where different religious traditions fulfill different roles. In his Newar example, he argues that Buddhism is only concerned with morality and soteriology (in this case, the achievement of Nirvana). But other features of religious life (the religious explanation of the household or the nation; belief in the sacred nature of the environment) are not justified by the Buddhist priesthood. Here the Newar follow the same kind of Hindu ideas popular elsewhere in Nepal.

I find Gellner’s approach a useful compliment to Stewart and Shaw. Stewart and Shaw’s work reminds us that the identification of syncretism has polemical roots. The language of religious studies is not neutral. It bears the imprint of a Protestant usage and of ‘reformers’ and unifiers in other traditions that have sought to differentiate alien impurities from an imagined authentic truth. But Gellner reminds us that different religions attempt to do different things, and that borrowings between religious traditions (especially non-Abrahamic religious traditions) may be stable and not in conflict. In particular, we should remember that ‘religion’ does not have to define the boundaries of a community, as it tends to do in Abrahamic traditions. At the same time, Gellner also carves out a space for scholars to recognize that scripture matters too, and that many religious traditions make claims about their origins in scripture that are widely discussed and defended. Contradictory religious beliefs of different origins can endure in the same society, or the same individuals. But where religious identities become more rigidly policed, where the religious identification of individuals is expected to align to their practices and beliefs, this leads to the closing down of hybrid religiosity and an emphasis on the scriptural origins of true religion.

References

Stewart and R. Shaw (eds.), Syncretism/ Anti-syncretism: The Politics of Religious Synthesis (London/ New York: Routledge, 1994).

Gellner, ‘For syncretism: The position of Buddhism in Nepal and Japan compared’, Social Anthropology 5 (1997), 277-91.

Barnes, ‘Misrepresentation of religion in modern British (religious) education’ British Jnl of Educational Studies 54 (2006), 395-411.