The English word âsyncretismâ 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 âto combineâ. 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 âas the union of two opposite forces, beliefs, systems or tenets so that the united form is a new thing, neither one nor the otherâ. This agrees with the understanding of Schreiter (1994), who defines syncretism as the âmixing 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 identityâ. Pinto (1985) has a dismal concept of syncretism. In his opinion, it is the âfusion of incompatible elementsâ or the âmingling of authentic notions and realities of the revealed faith with realities of other spiritual worldsâ. 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 âcrude syncretismâ, while Saneh (1985, p.43) speaks of âuncritical syncretismâ.
In this case, we distinguish between âcritical syncretismâ and âuncritical syncretismâ. While a âcritical syncretismâ can be good, âuncritical syncretismâ is misleading.