On a recent visit to my native country, I was struck at how Christianity as I knew it was changing. Independent African churches have large followings, supposedly because they make Christianity meaningful to indigenous Africans. Besides “revelations” and long, meditative periods of prayer in seclusion, these churches emphasize healing and the use of spiritistic powers. They strike a responsive chord because they resonate with the African worldview, but to others they come across as syncretistic. Syncretism generally refers to the replacement or dilution of the essential truths of Christianity with non-Christian elements.

While the African church strives to become meaningful to its own worldview, its Western counterpart seeks to be “user friendly,”¹ making church life more flexible, understandable, and applicable— especially for newcomers. Included is a concern that the Christian message not “intimidate” potential worshippers. Two perspectives are discernible. For Stanley Grenz, the global context of cultural pluralism and postmodernism necessitates reframing the “question of truth.” He calls for a critical engagement “that takes seriously the postmodern condition and draws creatively from postmodern sensitivities for the sake of the advancement of the gospel in the world.”² David Wells, on the other hand, raises concerns about syncretism, perceiving that the character of evangelicalism is changing “because of its unwitting entanglement with a culture that, in its postmodern configuration, has the power to eviscerate the doctrinal substance of that faith.” So it seems that African Christians risk syncretizing Christian theism with animism while the Western church risks syncretizing Christian theism with secularism.

Although syncretism is not a biblical term, the Bible shows an awareness of and concern for this danger (Exod 23:31-33; Deut 18:9-14; Col 2:8-23; 1 Tim 1:3; 6:13; 1 John 4:1-6). Some, however, question whether we can talk about syncretism today. First, they say, syncretism in some circles encompasses every cultural aspect of the church and loses its analytic value. Second, some argue that characterizations of ideas and practices as syncretistic usually involve power-plays by theologians and missionaries. Third, in contemporary hermeneutical discussions the issue of objectivity arises: who can be the judge?

Still some things should be kept in mind. From the Biblical perspective, syncretism as defined above is wrong. Not all ideas and practices are consistent with the Christian message. To the extent that syncretism develops as a result of churches attempting to make their message relevant, this matter deserves even greater attention in our hermeneutical discussions. While care needs to be exercised not simply to label as syncretistic those practices and theological expressions we do not understand, we must also be careful that our cultural, theological, and personal subjectivities do not blind us to the normative standards clearly revealed in Scripture. This realization calls us to humility, sensitivity, and cooperative effort.