Meryuma wrote:Jochistan wrote:What do you guys think of "Pagan" Traditions Syncretic with Abrahamic religions? Like forms of Folk Christianity and Islam such as Voodoo and Alevism?
Do you think said heterodox groups are better than the Orthodox versions of the Abrahamic faiths? Do you think they're more "Pagan "or Abrahamic
Alevism seems more Muslim than Pagan. Haitian Vodou is definitely more Pagan than Christian tho and is really cool. I kinda like seeing Abrahamic folk practices like local saint cult myself ("cult" here used in the Roman sense). On an aesthetic level I certainly prefer Catholicism and Orthodoxy to Protestantism, for instance.
I feel pretty much the same way about all of that.
I should also note that hints of Christian traditions do appear in my own practice, although very little to none of my theology is informed by Christianity. For instance, I celebrate the Anglo-Christian holidays, because a) my family's culturally Christian, and b) many of them have become secular holidays, both in society at large and in my family's practices (none of my immediate family are Christian). Additionally, I do own one or two rosaries (and I think I have a set of Muslim prayer beads, too), although I don't really use them for anything. I could conceivably use them for a meditation/prayer focus, though, since that's essentially what they're meant to be.
Anyway, my point is that it would be hypocritical of me to revile syncretic religions and when I, myself, am most certainly syncretic on a number of levels.
