The English word “syncretism” comes from the Greek word synkretismos. Its origin is the custom of the people who lived in the Island of Crete in ancient days, who always fought themselves, but when enemies from outside attacked, they combined force with each other to combat their foreign enemy. They called this practice synkretismos, which comes from the verb meaning ‘to combine’. The concept is also employed to refer to the uniting of quarrelling brothers in the face of common enemies. Generally, syncretism would refer to the attempt to unite together those elements which do not agree (Gehman, 2001).
Tippet (cited by Yamamori, 1975) defines syncretism “as the union of two opposite forces, beliefs, systems or tenets so that the united form is a new thing, neither one nor the other”. This agrees with the understanding of Schreiter (1994), who defines syncretism as the “mixing of elements of two religious systems to the point where at least one, if not both, of
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Ezenweke & Kanu: Perspectives of Syncretism & its Modern Trend: Christian & African Traditions
the systems loses basic structure and identity”. Pinto (1985) has a dismal concept of syncretism. In his opinion, it is the “fusion of incompatible elements” or the “mingling of authentic notions and realities of the revealed faith with realities of other spiritual worlds”. By this, he is saying that elements of other religions are uncritically borrowed and fused into Christianity, watering down or spoiling Christianity in the process (Chidili, 1997).
Heavily perturbed by the problem of syncretism, Schineller (1992) called for the abolition of the word because it bears many connotations and is no longer helpful or constructive. In so suggesting, he failed to suggest an adequate word to replace syncretism, and so the word is retained. As long as the church is universal and Catholic, she must dialogue with other religions, and if she must make herself truly present among them, she must take in something of other religions, so as to make Catholicism the religion of the people. Shorter (1977, p.43) speaks of “crude syncretism”, while Saneh (1985, p.43) speaks of “uncritical syncretism”.
In this case, we distinguish between “critical syncretism” and “uncritical syncretism”. While a “critical syncretism” can be good, “uncritical syncretism” is misleading.
