Religious Syncretism Essay

Religious Authority’s Relationship to Syncretism

Africa has served as a place of religious encounter and change. Within Africa there is a unique blend of traditional religion and Western religions such as Islam and Christianity. Even in the modern day, neither traditional nor Western religions have eliminated the other. The religions coexist harmoniously within the African mindset. However, the way these religions coexist is not simply in the blending of the two, but rather in a culture of oscillation. Religious authorities create an environment where polyontology, but not syncreticism can thrive. The role of authority in religious traditions is to define and create the boundaries between their tradition and the religion of the other.

While from an external perspective, this coexsistence could seemingly be categorized as syncretism, however it can more accurately be described as polyontology. According to McIntosh polyontology is an attitude “of religious plurality that acknowledges the mystical potency of more than one set of religious or cosmological forces; marks these religious ontologies as distinct; and considers all of the ontologies in a question eligible to be propitiated or embraced by the same person” (McIntosh 189). This concept is distinct from syncretism, because it does not blend the religions, but rather has participants oscillating between the practices. Religious authorities prevent true syncretism from occurring because they define the official boundaries of the religions. While the practitioners are constantly in motion between the religions, the religions themselves are stagnant. McIntosh discusses Muslim and Giriama spirits as not getting along saying, “they don’t stay in the same place together, so the Muslim spirits and the indigenous kind of spirits each have their own space in the cave” (McIntosh 181). In the same way the religions themselves cannot occupy the same spaces and people must oscillate between them. Instead of combining the practices into one cohesive tradition, practitioners must make “bridges” between the traditions, travelling between them when it is necessary