Books about Syncretism from Amazon.com

In this captivating chronicle of the Native American story, Rosebud Lakota Sioux Richard Twiss sifts through myth and legend to reveal God's strategy for the world's First Peoples. With wit, wisdom and passion, Twiss shows God's desire to use the cultures of First Nations peoples-in all their mystery, color and beauty-to break through to those involved in new age mysticism, eastern religions-even Islam.

Once Church, Many Tribes is a rallying cry for the Church to work as one so that the lost may walk in life and beauty, along the path of the Waymaker..
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In Living Spirit, Living Practice, the well-known cultural studies scholar Ruth Frankenberg turns her attention to the remarkably diverse nature of religious practice within the United States today. Frankenberg provides a nuanced consideration of the making and living of religious lives as well as the mystery and poetry of spiritual practice. She undertakes a subtle sociocultural analysis of compelling in-depth interviews with fifty women and men, diverse in race, ethnicity, national origin, class, age, and sexuality. Tracing the complex interweaving of sacred and secular languages in the way interviewees make sense of the everyday and the extraordinary, Frankenberg explores modes of communication with the Divine, the role of the body, the importance of geography, work for progressive social change, and the relation of sex to spirituality.

Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and other practitioners come together here, speaking in terms both familiar and surprising. Whether discussing an Episcopalian deacon, a former Zen Buddhist who is now a rabbi, a Chicano monastic, an immigrant Muslim woman, a Japanese American Tibetan Buddhist, or a gay African American practicing in the Hindu tradition, Frankenberg illuminates the most intimate, local, and singular aspects of individual lives while situating them within the broad, dynamic canvas of the U.S. religious landscape..
Price: $12.56 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In this new book, Brian Hatcher examines the modern Hindu penchant for constructing religious worlds in an eclectic fashion. Noting how Hindu apologists from Rammohun Roy to Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan make an almost promiscuous use of the world's many philosophies and religions to define and defend Hinduism, Hatcher sets out to explore the ancient roots and contemporary significance of such eclectic borrowing. A discussion of the Vedic and classical roots of Hindu eclecticism affords Hatcher the opportunity to reflect upon the profound and widespread role of eclecticism in South Asian religion, while consideration of the work of Swami Vivekananda--as well as a variety of religious reformers from nineteenth-century Bengal--suggests the ongoing significance of the phenomenon in colonial and postcolonial contexts.
By examining the development of Brahmo and Neo-Vedanta discourse, Hatcher is able both to problematize the notion of a monolithic concept of religious eclecticism and to reflect upon the various ways scholars might nevertheless attempt to make sense of a bewildering variety of eclectic philosophies. What emerges is not simply an attempt to refine our understanding of the role eclecticism has played in the modern Hindu context, but an extended reflection upon changing attitudes toward eclecticism in the West, from Diderot and Kant through postmodern critical theory. By investigating modern and postmodern perspectives on such issues as history, system, authenticity, and difference, Hatcher seeks to set in motion a dialectical approach to the study of eclectic world construction that balances the positivisitic confidence of modern scholarship with the playful exuberance of postmodern pastiche. Invoking the critical theories of Salman Rushdie, Theodor Adorno, and Richard Rorty, Hatcher advocates an approach to modern Hindu eclecticism that honors its creative poetics while retaining the critical distance necessary for judging its sometimes baleful fruits..
Price: $38.88 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Part of the Ritual Studies Monograph Series. This unique set of essays explores the multiple ways in which ritual practices have responded to, or have been a part of, historical and political changes. Particular chapters on China deal with the revival of festivals in Pucheng, Zhejiang Province (Paul Katz); the Emperor Huizong's musical insignia (Joseph Lam); music and rituals for Hong Kong's reunion with the Mainland (Yu Siu Wah); Christianity in nineteenth century South China (Joseph Tse-Hei Lee); and refusal by Buddhists and Christians to bow to the Emperor (Eric Reinders). Chapters on Taiwan discuss cultural revival movements (Stewart and Strathern); a Daoist master's performances (Marc Moskowitz); history in spirit-writing morality books (Philip Clart); and the cult of a female figure, Wang Yulan, on Jinmen Island (Michael Szonyi). Vesna Wallace's chapter is on transformations in Indian Tantric Buddhism. Throughout, the emphasis in this book is on complex connections between ritual, state politics, and changing senses of local and personal identity..
Price: $34.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Using the example of the Eastern Algonkians, this book argues that Native Americans did not necessarily convert to Christianity, but rather incorporated it into their own belief system. .
Price: $24.35 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Syncretism, refers to the mixing of different religious traditions whether as active, ongoing process or as historical fact. In the present era of displacement, migration and generally increasing "cultural compression" syncretism is very much a current event. But syncretism does not just happen because religions have similarities and cross over into one another. It occurs in social conditions characterized by unequal power and it is sometimes directed by the interests and agency of prominent individuals. Contributors to this volume explore not only how syncretism occurs, but how the very idea of religious mixture is accepted or contested in ten different societies. Topics covered include multiculturalism in India, Japanese "new religions", the translation of the Bible in Ghana, the Christian interpretation of circumcision in Papua New Guinea and Turkish migrants' efforts to remain Muslims in Germany.

Whether syncretism is a good or a bad thing is a disputed matter. Anti-syncretism can arise in situations of multiculturalism where a group attempts to preserve its integrity by guarding against foreign influences. In situations of ethnic revival groups are liable to deconstruct their own traditions and extirpate elements considered to be foreign or borrowed.

Dispensing with objectivist and historicist attempts to decide what is syncretic, the contributors to this volume use their anthropological expertise and experience to present local understandings and debates about what is mixed, what is pure, and which is most "authentic.".
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The building of Egypt’s High Dam in the 1960s erased innumerable historic treasures, but it also forever obliterated the ancient land of a living people, the Nubians. In 1963--64, they were removed en masse from their traditional homelands in southern Egypt and resettled elsewhere. Much of the life of old Nubia revolved around ceremonialism, and in this remarkable study, John G. Kennedy and other leading anthropologists from around the world reveal and discuss some of the most important and distinctive aspects of Nubian culture. Since its original publication, Nubian Ceremonial Life has become a standard text in the fields of anthropology and cultural psychology. In addition to basic ethnographic data, this groundbreaking study contains a number of theoretical discussions on topics of interest to students of comparative religions: the psychology of death ceremonies, the nature of ‘taboo,’ theories of circumcision rituals, and the importance of trance curing ceremonies. The book also presents information about a village of Nubians who had been resettled some thirty years earlier, thereby providing some clues regarding the possible patterns of future culture change among these recently relocated people. With a new foreword by Robert Fernea, this edition brings back into print a major work of scholarship on the unique ceremonial traditions of a changed and changing Nubian world..
Price: $15.67 [Notify me when price goes down.]