Here’s something we rarely admit to, even though it’s almost universally true: none of us follows just “one” religion.
This is the case even if you are fully invested in one religious tradition, because all religious traditions have been so influenced by other traditions they are inextricably either multi-religious by mixing with those religions, or by striving to not be them.
Small examples: if you don’t do weekly communion or didn’t back in the 2000s and were at a Lutheran Church, you did it to look more like the Protestants and less like the Catholics. Lutheranism is a weekly Eucharist tradition.
A larger example: The Qu’ran was revealed orally to Muhammad direct from Allah through the archangel Gabriel over a series of about 23 years, and Muhammad took dictation, then had scribes write it down. So the Quran is, for Muslims, like the direct Word of God in Christian tradition. Many Protestants, emulating Islam, elevate their own Scripture to this same level, even assume it was all dictated directly by God, even though theologically it is Jesus Christ, not Scripture, that is the Word of God, and only very small portions of the Scriptures (like some of the words of the prophets) were actually dictated from oral statements of “God.”
But let’s keep going. Early Christians were so oppressed by the Roman Empire, they developed many rites to surreptitiously illustrate how they were NOT conformed to Roman nationalism. Today, by contrast, if you go to a high school basketball game in Anytown, USA, you’ll watch hundreds of people put their hands over their heart, pledge allegiance to the flag, and then stare at that same flag on the wall while a tepid recording of the National Anthem plays.
Even though the Bible clearly says not to pledge to anything, and has a real problem with idol worship, which is exactly what that whole flag ceremony looks like.
And we could keep going. Let’s not even get started on Anon adherence rates. Perhaps your Christianity is woven into the religious folds of capitalism or white supremacy. Or maybe you’re a Christian who also has some household gods and honors the ancestors in a corner of your house.
The point: no one’s religion is ‘pure.’
The last year or so, I’ve been pondering this reality in some new ways. For quite some time, I’ve been a practitioner of interfaith engagement. I happen to think there is much value in those of different faiths spending time together and learning from one another, even praying and worshipping in shared spaces. I love interfaith prayer services. We host an interfaith camp for youth.
Increasingly, I also know Christians who Christian and also… they are multiple religious practitioners. Common for many years have been people who are Christian and also practice eastern forms of meditation or stretching. And of course, there are probably millions of Christians who follow horoscopes and astrology.
At issue here is a kind of fascinating phenomenon: many people practice more than one religion, but some forms of religiosity are cleaned up and presented in modern garb in a manner that allows the practitioners to trick themselves into thinking that this other thing they are doing is just a philosophy, or a tool, etc.
Some examples: lots and lots of my pastoral colleagues are into the Enneagram. But the Enneagram is actually a religion, and not a Christian one. It comes out of this occultist tradition and was given by an archangel to its originator Oscar Ichavo of Bolivia in a series of dreams.
Sound a lot like a religion: that’s because it is.
Or take American nationalism. Because American Christians are convinced that patriotism is a Christian value, they’re comfortable with worshipping the nation as a kind of sub-manifestation of the deity. It’s likely many American Christians pray more frequently to the flag than to God, and certainly spend more time staring at it than the cross.
I do not raise any of this in order to then say, “Now let me tell you how to practice ‘pure’ Christianity.” I’m not convinced any religion can be practiced in purity. I’m not even sure any one religious should be practiced in purity.
What I am worried about: that many people who believe they are being pure in their religiosity then judge others for actually being overt and obvious in their syncretism or multiple religious belonging.
Let me offer an example. A colleague of mine in the ELCA, Lenny Duncan, is a Christian who also practices spiritual forms of his ancestors. He’s got a long-form essay up about it, “Ancestral Practice as Anti Racist Esoterica,” which I commend to you.
I don’t confess to understand very much of Lenny’s ancestral practice, anymore than I understand the Enneagram. Both are largely a mystery to me. But what I do know is that Lenny is much more honest about his multiple religious belonging, his “syncretism,” than most white pastors I know. I find it refreshing and clarifying.
The risk a lot of folks might have seeing this would be to say: see, he’s leaving behind Christianity.
But isn’t it weird that nobody says that when a bunch of clergy get together and start talking about their Enneagram numbers?
I think members of the dominant culture are more at risk of having masked from themselves how syncretistic their religious practice is. It takes minority voices like Lenny’s modeling alternatives for us to see it, but then the danger is we hyper-focus on how different Lenny is rather than how similar we all actually are to him without admitting it.
A more interesting question: what would it look like for me as a white pastor from Iowa to engage in ancestral practice as anti racist esoterica? If I were to go back to my ancestors and their spiritualities what might I recover that would have value, and offer space for healing?
Or is that already what I am doing when I read someone like Bonhoeffer, and just have never called it ancestor work?
I had a parishioner the other day mention to me that she thinks witchcraft and Christianity would do much better together rather than separated. I had another friend recommend that even if I didn’t understand what Mercury in Retrograde means, I should still think carefully about how many events I schedule while it is in retrograde.
Then I went to a basketball game and stood awkwardly while everyone worshipped a flag, because although I’m open to some kinds of syncretism, that isn’t one of them.
You can’t keep your Christianity pure by not mixing it with anything, but you can be intentional about what you mix with it. Some mixes are better than others.
Oh, and Christian Scripture does lay down a beat on pure religion, for those who really want to go that route: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world” (James 1:27)
Good luck.
Just had conversation today with employees, realizing we all had a different religion and points of view. I said we all have one thing in common, we all believe in God, and got back to work.