I really don't think that that use of "in particular" is correct or notable? Cross culture motion of mythology and storytelling is the rule with humanity, not the exception.

Really it's only in the last/final generation of religions, where they started writing them down in canon/scripture/testaments/writs/dogmas/whatever, that you started to see unique stories get associated with specific religions.

Before that? It's all mush. Aphrodite descends pretty clearly from the same line as Astarte/Ishtar/Innana (maybe Isis too), etc... People steal good stories. People get conquered and then confused by retelling the stories their new overlords tell. Again and again.

"In particular" could also be interpreted here as just signaling the main subject of the article, not necessarily making any sort of claim to comparative amount of syncretism.

Editor snobbery digression: that would be poor writing. The job of signaling the main subject of the article belongs to the headline and lede, and "Christian saints" is right there.

No, that phrase is just filler. And IMHO it's basically wrong. Certainly if the author want to show that Christianity is more likely than other religions to import ideas, the article has a lot more work to do than point out one myth. Literally everyone does this.

This is a really pedantic editorial argument. I'm not going to claim the author's sentence is anything amazing, but you are being overly critical. The paragraph clearly introduces the general concept of religious influence through contact, then transitions that idea to pointing out instances of this in Christianity. It is quite literally particularizing the idea as it relates to the main subject, and so it uses the phrase "in particular" in its transition sentence. It's not "basically wrong", it's basically right and you are interpreting it in the least charitable way.

I can't tell what you're disagreeing with.

I'm just going to repeat: there is nothing notable or unique to Christian appropriation of myths and stories from other religions. It does it at least as much as everyone else does, and everyone does it everywhere. So trying to tie this uniquely to Christianity seems needless and confusing. The deeper point is more interesting and more important.

Is there anything in that paragraph you'd like to argue about?

Its called syncretism. The Greeks and Romans have been doing it since the time of Alexander the Great.

The Greeks and Romans were doing it long before Alexander, as were all the cultures of the Mediterranean and Ancient Near East as far back as history allows. Egyptians were borrowing Levantine gods early in the Bronze Age, and ancient Akkadian adopted the Sumerian pantheon wholesale.

Turns out, culture isn't a singular thing you can just have. People everywhere all the time are picking up bits of things to do, things to say, things to believe in, and borders, no matter how fluid they are, only exist in the aggregate.

It's more cultural colonization than syncretism. For example, America was culturally colonized by forcibly converting its inhabitants to Catholicism. Their temples were destroyed, the stones used to build churches, and while celebrations were still observed, the deities were replaced with Catholic ones. Even the folklore was rewritten with Catholic characters.

It wasn't syncretism, it was systematic eradication. Syncretism is more akin to reconciliation of different views.

Basically how christians have always operated since they first emerged and started doing the same throughout the hellenic world. Most (all?) christian traditions are pagan in origin. The main goal was not necessarily replacement but a sort of corporate ownership takeover of the littany of existing traditions, such that these cultures might be ingrained into a unified fold of christian power/influence/customs/laws/expectations and not see themselves as some distinct independent people. And boy that model worked to tame europe and much of the known world under the whip of the pope in a way the roman emperors never could, at least until Martin Luther screwed up a bit of that unity.

Mexico is interesting because it is a certainly a different catholicism than what is practiced elsewhere. Tell a devout old world European catholic about say Day of the Dead traditions and they will probably think its blasphemy. There is a lot of what amounts to local diety worship still as well, although they just label them as some patron saint of somesuch to preserve the veil of monotheism.

> Tell a devout old world European catholic about say Day of the Dead traditions and they will probably think its blasphemy.

Want to make a Catholic mad? Tell them saints are just minor gods of the Christian pantheon.

Yeah the protestants think the saint stuff is absurd and even creepy when you get into the relics. I'm not sure where it came from but I'm guessing some weird roman religion origin.

There's no reason the Catholics couldn't have invented it independently. I think that's just the human instinctive approach to religion. Lots of little per-concept semi-spiritual entities, sacred and profane objects, etc.

It could be an independent thing but it just reeks of that culture practice used in roman and egyptian times of elevating some great man e.g. emperor to the status of a god and having them be worshipped as such after death, and makes sense in terms of continuity that it might have just been adopted over inventing the same concept in the same part of the world around the same time but somehow having this be a purely independent invention. Society was already socialized for this sort of thing and support the political control of their own leadership through deep cultural ties like making them a seemingly unassailable part of the religion or some unstoppable force of nature.

Religious groups other than Catholics with few plausible connections to ancient Rome have independently conceived the idea of the importance of things like relics (e.g Buddhism), but it's called the Roman Catholic Church for a reason...

Of course the buddhist and the classical world were not so separated as people assumed, there was a period of cultural exchange after the conquests of Alexander and resulting greco-buddhist rump states.

> Tell them saints are just minor gods of the Christian pantheon

That’s the whole idea though:

“God became man so that men might become gods,” -St. Athanasius

Good reply! St Peter's words about "becom[ing] partakers of the Divine Nature" are intended literally.

Thank you both for the interesting rabbit hole:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divinization_(Christian)

Tolkien, who was a devout Catholic and who wanted his religion in LOTR to not contradict his own, literally had minor gods (the Valar). He squared that with his Catholicism because he had them subordinate to Ilúvatar (God), much like how saints and angels are.

It is not true that Christian practices are mostly pagan in origin. You do not need to look far to find the origin of the vast majority of what you would have seen in a medieval church service. You can see the common origin if you compare and contrast an Orthodox Jewish synagogue service with an Orthodox Christian liturgy. The first half of the Divine Liturgy and the synagogue service are virtually the same even in terms of the motions — the Torah scroll is replaced with the gospel book. Christianity owes far more to second-temple Jewish practices than it does to anything pagan.

It’s worth noting that “monotheism” is a modern word. It was not a word used by theologians of the pre-modern era. The Bible is insistent that God is in some sense “one” or “alone,” and that you don’t offer sacrifices to other gods. People just thought that other gods were demons. It made a big difference to this point of view whether a sailor was asking St. Nicholas to help him get home safely or asking a demon for help, in the same way it makes a big difference whether you call the local mob or the municipal police when you have a problem. The latter are quite analogous to an angel/saint because police don’t have power or make laws in their own right, they are just servants of a higher authority (ultimately, the constitution). The mob, like the demon in the Christian point of view, are in disobedience to that higher authority or in direct competition/rebellion against it. There’s a really big difference even if both paths end with armed men with guns coming to solve my problem.

I'd call judaisim pagan too as it was originally polytheistic little different than the rest of middle eastern paganism, until it became a cult of yahweh that rejected the rest of the proto canaanite pantheon. So that tracks with my interpretation of "nothing new in christianity" really.

Even then, they only claimed Yahweh as their God (of the Jews), not the one god of everybody. Things have certainly changed with the ascendance of Christianity though.

If second-temple era Jews are “pagan” then the term “pagan” has been expanded such as to denude it of all meaning, even if we assume this evolutionary view of Jewish religion, which is actually a very questionable view.

There are plenty of unique Christian traditions too that didn’t come from surrounding culture. The veneration of relics and body parts of saints in particular was considered grossly alien and offensive to the pagans of the time. It was deeply countercultural to have such veneration for pieces of a dead body and to go so far as to build your places of worship around them, to kiss them, etc. And as far as we know the Christians didn’t get this idea from contact with anyone else, they came up with it themselves. It’s deeply myopic to treat ancient people as devoid of creativity or agency.

Judiasm is monotheistic, Christianity, if you ask anyone besides a christian, is polytheistic, you have The Father (1), The Son (Jesus is also God, or A God, 2), and The Holy Ghost (3). There was a big, big brouhaha about this, the Nicene Creed is a core part of protestant religions to help remind everyone that they're technically a monotheist religion and somehow Jesus is a Flavor of God and not separate despite most of the new testament has him as a fully separate person with his own separate agenda. Even if you discount The Father as a legal entity only you still end up with a polytheistic religion. Writing Jesus into the canon 2000 years later as a seperate but equal entity was bound to be fraught with continuity issues.

The other reply offered a perfectly good set of corrections but I want to add my own clarifications.

One point I wanted to make in my original comment was that monotheism vs polytheism is not a helpful object category when talking about 2000 year old religions as their adherents understood it. This analytic category is a fairly recent invention. You can make this distinction if you want, but it will be of precious little use for actually understanding the people of the past.

It’s also not helpful to back-project contemporary understandings of Judaism back into the religious context of the 1st century. The idea that the messiah would be in some sense divine, or even that he would be YHWH Himself, is not purely an invention of the Christians, but was present in Jewish groups prior to Jesus. I would argue this has not even been entirely purged from all strands of modern Orthodox Judaism. This doesn’t even get into stuff like the Zohar/Jewish mysticism where you have 12+ special flavors of God.

All of these groups would have insisted that there’s one true God, but they would also have insisted that he had more than one hypostasis.” Romans at the time also believed that a single God could have different hypostases.* Nevertheless despite this agreement they accused the Christians not of being monotheists but of being atheists because the Christians alone refused to pay respect to any of the hypostases of any of the recognized gods.

The idea that Jesus is depicted as having some kind of separate agenda from His Father is also a very bizarre reading of the New Testament. Jesus’ relationship with The Father seems to be much more complex than that since he says The Son can do nothing Himself and that He only does what the Father is doing, that He and the Father are one, etc.

There nonetheless seems to be some kind of distinction between Them, hence the two thousand years of theological debate. If you want some sources on this type of thought prior to and parallel to Christianity, you can read the book Two Powers in Heaven.

> Writing Jesus into the canon 2000 years later as a seperate but equal entity was bound to be fraught with continuity issues.

If you pay any attention to Christian history, you would know that this goes back to the very founding instead.

> ... most of the new testament has him [Jesus] as a fully separate person with his own separate agenda ...

Just want to correct a couple errors of fact here, by quoting from the sources that you're misunderstanding.

"And he withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and knelt down and prayed, saying, 'Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.'" - Luke 22:41-42 (copied from https://biblehub.com/esv/luke/22.htm)

He doesn't want to suffer and die on the cross. Yet he chooses to serve the Father's agenda, not his own.

"I and the Father are one." - John 10:30 (copied from https://biblehub.com/esv/john/10.htm)

And note that, if you read just a few more sentences, you discover that this statement caused the Jews listening to him to pick up stones to stone him (for anyone who doesn't know, stoning was a method of execution: they intended to kill him). He asks (verse 32) why they want to stone him, and they reply (verse 33) that it's for blasphemy — "because you, being a man, make yourself God."

Finally, I want to address one other point in what you said:

> Christianity, if you ask anyone besides a christian, is polytheistic.

It's true that if you ask most people who are not Christians, most (not all, but most) will tell you that Christians worship three gods. But consider this: if you want to find out about Buddhist teaching, who would be a better source for explaining it to you correctly, a Buddhist, or a non-Buddhist? If you want to find out about Jewish teaching, who would be more informed about it, a religious Jew, or a non-Jew? (The word "Jew" is ambiguous, referring to both a religion and an ethnicity — so I use the term "religious Jew" to distinguish people who follow the religion from people who are ethnically Jewish but don't follow the Jewish religion). If you want to be well-informed about Islam, who would explain it to you better, a Muslim, or a non-Muslim? And if you want to understand what Christianity actually teaches, who's more likely to be correct about it, a Christian or a non-Christian?

P.S. To explain just a little further, the teaching of the Trinity is indeed one of the most complex teachings of Christianity to fully grasp, and there have been countless arguments and debates about it over the centuries. The council at Nicaea in AD 325, which formalized the Nicene Creed, did not completely settle that — some people continued to argue over the doctrine later — but it pretty well cemented the official church position. That the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit ("Holy Ghost" in older English texts, but "Holy Spirit" in modern English) are both three and one. The modern English translation of the Nicene Creed is probably worth quoting here (at least the relevant bits) so people can see what the actual teaching is:

"I believe in one God, the Father almighty ... I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages. God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial [which means "of one being, of one nature"] with the Father ... I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified ..." (Source: https://www.usccb.org/prayers/nicene-creed, though there are multiple translations, e.g. the translation I'm most familiar with says "of one being with the Father" rather than "consubstantial with the Father").

And before I quit writing this P.S., I want to mention one kind of awesome story about the council of Nicaea. Which is the story about what St. Nicholas allegedly did there. (Yes, the St. Nicholas whose life inspired the story of Santa Claus). Sadly, the story is probably not true, since Nicholas's name does not appear in any of the lists of attendees that have survived... but it's an awesome story anyway. The story goes that Arius was standing in front of the council arguing his position, which was that Jesus had not existed eternally, but was created by God the Father at one point. (The famous phrase is "There was a time when he was not".) That part is certainly historically true. What is likely not historical is the rest of the story: that Nicholas got so mad at Arius's denial of the divinity of Jesus that he got up and slapped (some sources say "punched") Arius in the face.

Which leads to this historical-humor variation on a famous American Christmas carol:

    He knows when you are sleeping,
    He knows when you're awake,
    He knows when you've denied the divinity of Christ,
    So if you're an Arian, DUCK!

P.P.S. One last note. My intention here is not to argue, but to explain. I am happy to argue/debate with anyone who wants to discuss further, but HN is not the right place for literal religious debate. If you want to argue or debate about Christian teaching, feel free to contact me at (my HN username) at pobox dot com. (And if you just write a note here that you've done so, that will avoid the possibility of my missing your email: my pobox address gets a lot of email).

I don't think Mexico is an exception in that respect. There are some pretty significant Incan elements in the Catholicism practiced in the Andes, Vodou and Santería stuff in the Caribbean, El Tío in Bolivia, Tetri Giorgi/Uastyrdzhi in the Caucasus, and lots of others no doubt. Christianity (and Western culture) didn't demolish these beliefs and practices.

Oh absolutely. Catholicism had to be modified wherever it was spread to fit existing societal expectations in order to maintain power structures and control. There is a sort of notion I think that colonialism meant a clean slate, but it was more akin to a corporate change in ownership as many of these cultures were already dominated by local or regional feudal powers, and well structured for this sort of exchange of power between one group of ruling class elites you pay tribute to, to another.

Another appropriate word for the colonization of America is genocide.

I'm old enough to remember being taught how America was settled by expanding into the vast wilderness of the continent, and that sometimes they had skirmishes with natives but they found them new places to live.

It turns out it wasn't quite as neat and tidy as suggested.

"It's not neat and tidy so it must be genocide" - not sure that's quite right.

In this case, it was genocide.

It definitely was. There were at least sometimes extenuating circumstances though.

My sense is that in the US and Canada settlers found a great deal of "apparently" uninhabited land, largely a result of the diseases that had swept through because of earlier contact, decimating the existing population.

My guess is that had disease not done its work, the European settlers would have found it much harder to displace the existing inhabitants.

I have yet to read 1491, but yes I imagine that it would have been much more challenging without that first strike. But the weapons capabilities of the europeans were also going to make it happen one way or another.

America is a big place, populated by a lot of different people. Some of those were in fact victims of a genocide by European colonists. Others were allied to the European colonists from day one, and were instrumental in defeating/exterminating their indigenous enemies (see e.g. Tlaxcallans). Most of the victims were decimated by Eurasian diseases well before seeing any European with their own eyes. So presenting colonization of America as a "genocide" is every bit as selective and simplistic as what you're old enough to remember being taught, just in the opposite direction. The history of Americas is much more interesting and complex than all that.

If by “America” you mean Meso and South America, sure. The USA, however, was Protestant, not Catholic.

The Spanish were colonizing the land that is now the United States for 100 years before the English even got here and the french were colonizing it for 100 years before the Louisiana purchase. The catholic church/Jesuits also ran a lot of the infamous indian boarding schools of the 1800s and early to mid 1900s though not exclusively.

Generally true, but it is quite funny that by pure chance Squanto was a baptized Catholic.

The missing term and concept is Inculturation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inculturation

Syncretism is mixing religions (as doctrines, beliefs). Assimilating local traditions into one's religious rituals is not that.

"It can include assimilation of several originally discrete traditions, especially in theology and mythology, thus asserting an underlying unity and allowing for an inclusive approach to multiple faiths."

"...in the realm of religion, it specifically denotes a more integrated merging of beliefs into a unified system, distinct from eclecticism, which implies a selective adoption of elements from different traditions without necessarily blending them into a new, cohesive belief system."

"It provides an opportunity to bring beliefs, values, and customs from one cultural tradition into contact with, and to engage different cultural traditions."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncretism

Which is what I wrote above?

That's not the right word here, as Catholic dogmatic teaching does not enter into negotiation with what you might call competing doctrines. It doesn't blend bodies of doctrine like that.

We're talking about adopting cultural practices in a selective and transfigurative way. If a cultural practice doesn't conflict with the Church's teachings and would be beneficial, then it could be embraced as such. A cultural practice may also be transfigured and adapted into something that maintains a certain resemblance, but has a changed and elevated meaning. For instance, having encountered a culture that practices ancestor worship, it might take that practice and transfigure it into a restrained expression of filial piety that moves it away from idolatry. Pagan harvest festivals are another example where the symbolic meaning is changed.

It's interesting that in religion back then they took the idea of the gods' existence as an obvious fact. So when they encountered other people with different gods they assumed that they were actually the same gods, just by different names. If they encountered civilized/intelligent people with different mythologies it meant either that those people knew something the Greeks previously didn't or they had just gotten events confused and it would become a matter of debate. It was more like two people with different, but honest, accounts of an event in the remote past trying to reconcile their own limited recollection or view point.

I guess for the ones associating their gods with real phenomena, it seems almost inevitable.

> So when they encountered other people with different gods they assumed that they were actually the same gods, just by different names. [...] It was more like two people with different, but honest, accounts of an event in the remote past trying to reconcile their own limited recollection or view point.

And not just with the classic Greek/Roman Gods. The similarities between Pandora and Eve, the Flood myths[0] like Deucalion and Noah; there are so many appropriated stories in the Abrahamic religions (probably others, but most familiar with Greek and Abrahamic ones) I don't even understand how these days religion is taken seriously given the historical pattern of appropriation and cleansing of the more fantastical shape-shifting, creature, magic-spell type bits.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_myth

There is nothing wrong with stories that purpose is to give you wisdom. Try to study few theological comments on eg. Genesis book from eg. "desert fathers" :)

In Bible we have stories, songs, history (that cruel part), teachings, prophecies and straight jurnalists like researched relations of Someone life and words.

Think about that: Church know that some stories are older myths and did not removed them from official books. Why ? Becouse religion is much serious thing that some industrialized system. At least for Christians. And "history" can only help to true seekers - why censor the truth, what someone did ? Learn in what "context" things was done and how it looks on others doings background and what was later and what you can learn from all of that. But someone with bad intensions can't be bothered to think much...

And about shape-shifting :) a) if omnipotent God exists than He can do miraculous things, right ? b) that magical creatures are usually described in books that are stories or prophecies not historical one. In case of doubt look a) ;)

Anyway: there is _insane_ amount of wisdom in Christianity teachings, even for atheists.

And if God is True then finally everything He done will be explained as good and just - logic :) There is 'if' there because faith is important. IMO without faith there is no free will - humans are not like angels that just know and decide only once...

I'm a bit taken with the "bicameral mind" theory and how it might explain parts of this. The basic gist is that in pre-modern societies it was the norm to hear voices or other sensory information and interpret it as the voice of gods or spirits. So religious information wasn't so much myth to them as it was a way of classifying the voices in their heads.

> the Roman Catholic Church has a long, pragmatic history of absorbing local traditions

One of the most studied issues in Catholic evangelism is the Chinese rites controversy which is also one of the historical reasons why religions are suppressed in China (aside from ideological policies ascribed to communism).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Rites_controversy

(That and the Taiping rebellion which was estimated to have killed as many people as World War 2 on the higher end. It was led by a failed scholar claiming to be alleged brother of Jesus. Most of the deaths were due to starvation. Not quite Netflix material but interesting plot nonetheless)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion

The issue is moot since nowadays local practices are accepted to a degree. Even if Rome decided to go back on that it would have little practical relevance nowadays since there are lots of branches of Christianity that are not in communion with Rome and who are perfectly fine with that.

It's significant because it effectively lost them their biggest market.

It's significant to the Church, but less so for Chinese authorities, who could always decide to establish their own state Church.

The CCP actually views the Taiping Rebellion positively, as an egalitarian movement which is a precursor to their own, albeit significantly flawed [1]. Upon looking this up, I was surprised to see they rarely even view it from a religious lens, maybe because the movement was so syncretic. Although, that could be due to the similarities between the Taiping Rebellion and Cultural Revolution’s aims.

1. https://bitterwinter.org/the-taiping-mystery-1-why-is-the-cc...

Starving tens of millions to death is also part of the CCP's traditional values.

America's too.

I don’t think anything assimilates religions better than Hinduism. New belief system? Just throw in a new avatar of Vishnu to legitimize it and carry on.

Even that doesn't cover it. Vaishnavism, though the most popular branch, is only one Hindu denomination. Shaktism and Shaivism don't give Vishnu the preeminant status he's given in Vaishnavism. "Hinduism" at this point in time indicates a tradition cares about some subset and some interpretation of the Vedic texts, which doesn't actually entail all that much.

There is a term for it. It's called "sect".

> some interpretation of the Vedic texts, which doesn't actually entail all that much

If you studied the Vedas you would know why this issue exists in the first place. The Vedas talk of One Supreme Brahman who should be given Havis during a Yajna. The dispute between the sects is on who the Supreme Brahman is identified as. Every name in the Vedas is but a name of the Supreme. Vyasa composed the Brahma Sutras to unravel it. But then, as is the case with Dharmics, we have around 30+ commentaries on the Brahma Sutras itself. This, coupled with commentaries on Prasthanatrayi as well as interpretation of Puranas created sects.

All of them come within the umbrella term of Hinduism as all of it is Dharmic and native to the Indian subcontinent.

> Just throw in a new avatar of Vishnu to legitimize it and carry on.

Except for it's never done. No Hindu believes Allah or Jesus is an Avatar of Vishnu.

It can't be. Vishnu literally means the "All-Pervading One". Allah is explicitly not Omnipresent. Jesus is Omnipresent but does not have infinite forms. So neither fit the bill. Even Buddha, who we Hindus associate as one of the Avatars of Vishnu is not the same Buddha as Gautama Buddha who founded Buddhism.

I'm not knowledgeable enough about Hinduism to argue the first point but that's too reductive of a view of Christianity and Islam.

There's a rich history of panentheism in both. Ibn Arabi, probably the most famous Sufi scholar was known for defending it ("[God] sleeps in the rock, dreams in the plant, stirs in the animal, and awakens in man"), Meister Eckhart and the Rhineland mystics held similar views etc. Of course that often got them into hot waters with Orthodoxy but it certainly existed and continues to exist.

A lot of these traditions are much more flexible than whatever is the dogma or institutional version of the time suggests. David Bentley Hart's writing on Vedantic traditions and Christianity is worth reading

Sufis were meant to propagate that Islam is syncretic to get people to convert wherever they went. Once Islam got a critical mass of converts (15-20%), Islamic invaders would have the necessary internal support to invade and destabilize the Kingdom.

This is literally how Islam got to places in Asia and spread. It was through Sufis who acted as initial points of contact.

> A lot of these traditions are much more flexible than whatever is the dogma or institutional version of the time suggests.

This is only so when it comes to missionaries in each religion. Be it Evangelists saying Vishnu is Avatar of Christ (we literally have Christ idols shaped like Vishnu with multiple arms and sitting on a lotus in a Church in India), Sufis singing Krishna is same as Allah or heck even ISKCON claiming Christ is an Avatar of Krishna /Vishnu. That does not make "traditions flexible". It's just a cheap tactic to increase followers/harvest souls. These converts are typically fluid in their own convictions and can easily be swayed one way or the other based on reasons unconnected to the Religion/Dogma/Philosophy itself. Reasons could range from political, monetary to finding fame/popularity within a new sect/group/cult/ideology.

Very few are seekers of Truth.

>That does not make "traditions flexible". It's just a cheap tactic to increase followers/harvest souls.

That's not mutually exclusive. You're certainly right that religions spread this way, but it's also what they become. Christians today are Pauline Christians more than anything else. The abolition of circumcision and dietary restrictions, household code, 'render unto Caesear' etc were obviously tactics to convert Gentiles, but once you had all the gentiles, you had genuinely altered what the faith is. They never went back to the radicalism of Jesus.

Buddhism is also an interesting case. By the start of the 19th century there wasn't strong Buddhist practice in India. When it was rediscovered it was heavily shaped by China, Tibet and Japan and had done a round about turn.

Same with modern Evangelicalism and Catholicism. Very successfully spread through indigenous cultures in LatAm and Africa but now the influence goes the other way, with real impact on the churches, just look at the last two popes. I don't think this deserves to be categorized as cheap tactic, that's very much what religion is.

I distinctly remember an Indian man on a bus in Kerala striking up a conversation with me (random white obvious tourist) in which he proclaimed both that he considered Jesus his Lord and Saviour and that he considered him to be an avatar of Vishnu. Not an explanation I'd asked him for, but certainly made a change from the standard bus conversation about where I was from and was I married yet and what salary...

I'm sure you are right that many/most Hindus would consider this incompatible with their belief system (and even more sure your average Christian would think he was missing the point of accepting Jesus as his Lord and Saviour), but this sort of syncretism definitely has been attempted and found its converts, probably rather more of them than Akbar's attempts to combine Islam and Hinduism.

I'm also reminded of this mostly unrelated comedy sketch :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tw7LIykvBw

I actually took a whole class in college on syncretic Christianity, and we had a unit on Goa, and there are Catholic shrines in Goa that are also frequented by Hindus, and you can find people there who identify as Christian but say that Vishnu is their favorite saint, and people who identify as Hindu who say that Jesus is their favorite god.

For central authorities of the Catholic Church, and Hindu theologians, this is all heretical, but the Catholic Church allowed for flexibility around traditions as it expanded. One big example is that many of what are considered Christmas traditions in northern Europe (the Christmas tree being an especially prominent one) are hangovers from traditions that predate Christianity.

> certainly made a change from the standard bus conversation about where I was from and was I married yet and what salary...

This man has definitely been to Kerala.

> but this sort of syncretism definitely has been attempted and found its converts

That's exactly the point of why he even attempted to have this conversation with you. It was to convert you to Hinduism.

I explain it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49620794

You're trying to apply logic to religion.

That's because there's not really a there there when it comes to Hinduism. It's a nationalism disguised as a religion (by eating every local religion.)

What do you mean by "there there"?

What do you mean by "local religion"?

Sound similar to other religions. You have a set of scriptures, traditions, and mythologies, that get interpreted by each individual believer. Christianity is pretty much the same.

We also have Christian nationalists in the US, for a more politically active flavor.

I'd think you overrate christianity too much. Javanese culture is known to be very welcoming of other traditions.

One of the stranger aspects of Roman history is that for centuries, there was a fight over who gets the public space. You'd have the local mystery cults defacing whatever the Christians put up and vice versa. Assimilating local traditions rather than demanding people just adopt theirs fits in with a faith that aims to be higher than all others. Jesus has no need to fight Vishnu, and never did.

We're just looking at this through the lens of the Protestant Reformation so this pragmatism is often lost.

Catholic church tries to be practical but inadvertently poisons Christianity. Christianity is way different from the Catholic church.

Because catholic church is whatever the newest model is in the distro but other distros try to be very very clean and try to follow the original texts and their meaning but catholic church is like the new iphone trying to be like whatever is the trendy trend nowadays.

HN is probably not the best forum for theological debate...

But e.g. modern American evangelical churches are to me quite clearly quite far from the original meaning of the texts with some theology outright invented in 18th and 19th centuries.

It really is the case that what you bring to a text colors what you get out of it, and the more people insist that they are reading a text "as it is clearly written" the blinder they seem to be to this.

The question being what text to whom? The original text in the context of the culture of the original audience or an English translation interpreted as though addressed to a contemporary audience?

The idea that Christianity equates to "very very clean" scholarship regarding "original texts" would surprise most Christians in most periods. It's also not plain to me how this could even amount to a religion, considering all the practical, anthropological value adherents naturally expect one to provide.

That couldn't be further from the truth. The Catholic Church has withstood the test of time, and is still the original church. It has had its dark times for sure when people said exactly what you are saying now, BUT it is still here and the closest thing we have to the way early church fathers practiced Christianity than any of the 30,000 protestant churches lol.

Not all protestants were trying to change the church in a new way. The Lutheran reformation was an attempt to correct drift from papal decrees from the original christian doctrine so I wouldn't say the Catholic Church is the closest to the early church. I could see how something like the Latter Day Saint movement to be something way off the original track though.

....."still the original church"

The Orthodox churches may want to have a word with you. Especially the orthodox church in India founded by Thomas (one of the Jesus' 12 disciples)

> The Catholic Church has withstood the test of time

What does this even mean? That the Catholic Church has some special authority by dint of having been around a long time? Also, what does it even mean if the Catholic Church has been around for a long time when so much about it (including the line of Popes) has been interrupted? Feels a bit like Theseus's ship.

> BUT it is still here and the closest thing we have to the way early church fathers practiced Christianity than any of the 30,000 protestant churches lol.

By what metric? Catholicism added _a whole lot_ onto traditional Christian teaching (Saints, the pseudo-divinity of mary, the infallibility of the papacy, relics, purgatory, etc) that many protestant denominations have stripped away. One could easily argue (and many do) that these protestant denominations are closer.

I'm not sure we can find an objective answer, or that finding one is even useful beyond ego stroking.

And then there’s the Orthodox Church, which included the Roman Church until the pope insisted on changing the Greek text of the Symbol of Faith in a way that altered basic theology. And hasn’t changed much at all.

A whole lotta "No True Scotsman" BS going on in both/all sides of this argument.

"A Christian is a person who believes in Jesus Christ and follows the religious teachings of Christianity."

Some are good people. Some are bad. All are Christians, so long as they have this core, defining belief system.

If you want to bicker over what constitutes a "good Christian", you might have some basis - but you're arguably in the wrong forum.

It's not the 16th century anymore. Can we please just give this up?

> Catholic Church is notoriously top-down and hierarchical

It has a hierarchy, but it has multiple hierarchies. It is not all that top down. Bishop's ave a lot of autonomy, and most decisions are made at the diocesan level. Dioceses have their own property and funds held by their own trustees. On top of that religious orders have their own hierarchy (and property and funds etc.). Then there are the rites such as the Ukrainian or Syro-Malabar churches that have their own hierarchies.

Historically this was the result of the fact the church predates modern communications. It was not possible for a Pope to direct things the way a CEO of a modern corporation does, but in recent times it has been recognised as guiding principle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity_%28Catholicism%29 that has been adopted by other org anisations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity

> It's not uncommon to see traditional Javanese processions integrated right into the mass.

That is encouraged, as long as there is not conflict with Catholic belief https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inculturation#

Right. The Church recognizes the principle of subsidiarity which is not coincidentally part of its social teaching.

Modern media has allowed the pope to receive unceasing attention that the papacy never possessed historically, but what is important to emphasize is that this is not a reflection of how the Church is administered or how authority is distributed. The idea that the pope is "running the Church" or "watching every member of the one and a half billion member flock like a busybody hawk" is a fiction drawn from jejune ignorance. Rome is notoriously slow to act, which should in general not be seen as a sign of incompetence, but as an expression of subsidiarity. It is much better to view the pope as the ultimate referee rather than some oppressive overlord. The moral ball is in your court, as it were.

W.r.t. absorbing what's around it, the Church has always recognized logos spermatikos or seminal reason, meaning, it recognizes reality as an intelligible creation of God, it recognizes the inherent rational nature of every human being, and thus it recognizes that every human being has an in principle capacity to recognize and know reality, to one degree or another. So, it sees no reason to suppose that there is nothing good or true or beautiful outside the Church and plenty of reason to recognize it and embrace it. What is good is good, what is true is true, what is beautiful is beautiful. When the Church encounters a culture, it seeks what is good within it and seeks to transfigure it in order to rescue its goodness and perfect it. Gratia non tollit naturam, sed perficit.

A fun one is the Anglican Ordinariates which are in full communion with Rome and permit existing clergy to remain married while serving as Catholic priests.

The Anglican Ordinataries are actually a rather mild example as they're still under the Roman Catholic church.

The eastern Catholic churches are also in communion with Rome but have a far longer history of independence and also allow married men to become priests, even if they weren't married clergy before joining, which the AO doesn't allow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Catholic_Churches

> Historically this was the result of the fact the church predates modern communications. It was not possible for a Pope to direct things

That's not really accurate. All bishops were essentially "autocephalus" in antiquity. Whether they could even be removed by a council of other bishops was something that was really not resolved for many centuries. There were many occasions of competing councils declaring each other heretics and shenanigans like that.

The Orthodox still practice this system of governance (although sovereignty has been moved up from diocesan bishops to the patriarch of each autocephalus church).

There is an offshoot of the Catholic church in the Netherlands were the bishop is not chosen by the Vatican.

Dutch people really handle hierarchy poorly and prefer "flat" organisation style. Anyone who acts as the boss doesn't last long.

There are many such because the Church's own belief is that a bishop always remains a bishop (even if removed from their diocese) and can make others bishops.

You are right and that history is another reason: the starting point was that. However, even when popes started claiming greater authority there was a practical constraint on centralisation.

Your theory seems to be that the speed of information significantly increased the power the pope can wield and this is what allowed for the centralization of power.

I don't think the historical record shows that. The speed of information changed little from the time of the Nicean council to the council of Trent, yet the primacy of the pope was very much established by the latter, even if it was only formalized in the 1st Vatican council.

Even to this day church politics plays out over many months and years (just look at the recent SSPX situation which was a slow-mo train wreck), the speed of information doesn't seem very significant.

>It has a hierarchy, but it has multiple hierarchies.

the Church has been "multipolar" on multiple levels for about as long as it's existed.

A very easy to parse political example from recent history is during ww2 when Croatia had the catholic fascist Ustase collaborating with Nazi Germany and Italian fascists whilst in Poland the Nazis were actively suppressing the church and sending the clergy and other religious to the concentration camps.

A theological example would be the "conflict" (and I use the term lightly) between Franciscan Scotists and Dominican Thomists wrt stuff like the Univocity of Being

> Historically this was the result of the fact the church predates modern communications. It was not possible for a Pope to direct things the way a CEO of a modern corporation does

These traditions settled over a very long time. I don't think a few months to send a letter would be a real barrier to deciding what's acceptable doctrine.

Side note as another Catholic:

Saints Josaphat and Barlaam never had an official decree of canonization. That process didn't exist (in its earliest form) until 1170 AD. Saints before that were generally just acclaimed by the Christians in the area and probably recognized by a local bishop.

The Vatican does keep a "Roman Martyrology" by which they try to keep a list of all known saints, but the saints that existed before the canonization process are known as "pre-congregation" saints and our certainty about them is generally less, well, certain.

In this case, these two names were removed from the Martyrology. That isn't to say that the Vatican has declared they are not saints, but is no longer actively making that claim.

There have been quite a few other pre-congregation names removed from the list when historical study has found little evidence of their existence or life story.

Catholics surely put great effort into bureaucracy and organization.

"The devil and a friend of his were walking down the street, when they saw ahead of them a man stoop down and pick up something from the ground, look at it, and put it away in his pocket. The friend said to the devil, 'What did that man pick up?' 'He picked up a piece of Truth,' said the devil.'That is a very bad business for you, then,' said his friend.'Oh, not at all,' the devil replied, 'I am going to let him organize it.'"

I don’t understand this story. What lesson/joke am I seeing here?

Raw truth is liberating. The moment people turn it into rigid systems, bureaucracies, political movements, or dogmatic institutions, it gets bogged down by ego, power struggles, hypocrisy, and rules. It starts to serve the evil.

Organizing information could be considered its own form of (self-inflicted) torment.

Ohhh, that’s why Google gave up its “dont be evil” stance!

> Catholics surely put great effort into bureaucracy and organization.

My (completely unfounded) theory is that monasteries have historically been the refuge of those with autism and their comorbidities.

> A friend of mine (who’s a very brilliant mathematician) once told a story that, in the beginning of the ages, God was making up a dictionary of all the words that would be used in language. And one day he visited the Archangel Gabriel, and they left the dictionary in the taxi. And while he was in talking to Gabriel, the devil got into the taxi and wrote into the dictionary two words: “ought” and “should.”

-- Alan Watts

https://www.organism.earth/library/document/four-ways-to-the...

>the Roman Catholic Church has a long, pragmatic history of absorbing local traditions in Indonesia.

This is straight out of the Manichaeism playbook whose followers believed that a wide range of previous belief systems including Platonism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism and Christianity each had a part of divine truth in them. This allowed them to absorb a diverse set of followers and contributed to them being one of the fasted spreading religions in Late Antiquity even giving Christianity a run for its money.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manichaeism

Manichaeism did run into a lot of practicality challenges. In particular, the restrictions on diets and behavior for the priestly class were very extreme. No harvesting food, no stepping in puddles, strict veganism, and celibacy.

I read a few books on it for a term paper in college, and the part that most sticks out in my distant memory is that the creation myth involves a lot of what were translated in my copy as aborted fetuses.

Sufis have done something similar within Islam. Similar to how there are different denominations of Christians some of whom view some of these as heretical you see the same thing playing on Islam where Sufi saint pilgrimage sites that were once Hindu temples are sometimes destroyed by fundamentalists

I saw a painting in a church in Peru of the last supper. On the painting they were consuming guinea pigs and chicha morada.

There also were countless statues and icons of Pachamama which is a kind of merge between mother Mary and a Andean earth goddess.

Arguably wet got Christmas trees the same way

Buddhism itself also has such a history, for example with the Hindu gods, or with Shinto in Japan.

My family are Orthodox Christians from Jordan, where the (minority) Christian culture is very orthodox, even though there is a large number of Catholics. It was very fascinating for me to see the huge difference between Catholics in Germany (where I live now) to the very Orthodox-style Catholics back in Jordan.