Some may call this being tolerant, some may call it cretinism. I’m blunt. I call it falling away from the faith, I call it for what it is. Apostasy.

Moses was on the mountain. When the main leader was away, the Israelites wanted Gods, rituals and license. They knew how pagans worshipped. The wanted a festival: some hymns, a feast, and some fornication.

Exodus 32:1-5

1When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron, and said to him, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” 2Aaron said to them, “Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” 3So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears, and brought them to Aaron. 4He took the gold from them, formed it in a mold, and cast an image of a calf; and they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” 5When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a festival to the LORD.” 6They rose early the next day, and offered burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to revel.

 

Psalm 106:19-23

¹⁹  They made a calf at Horeb  and worshiped a cast image.
²⁰  They exchanged the glory of God         for the image of an ox that eats grass.
²¹  They forgot God, their Savior,           who had done great things in Egypt,
²²  wondrous works in the land of Ham,  and awesome deeds by the Red Sea.
²³  Therefore he said he would destroy them — had not Moses, his chosen one,    stood in the breach before him,  to turn away his wrath from destroying them.

 

Philippians 4:1

¹Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved.

 

via Revised Common Lectionary — Devotions and Readings — Mission and Ministry — GAMC.

This still happens. In 2009 a Zen Buddhist was made a bishop by a particularly stupid group of Anglicans. Christianity Today comments:

Forrester supporters within the Episcopal Church have also rejected charges that his use of Zen Buddhism was inappropriate. “When did the way in which we are deepened into the Presence of God become a litmus test for being a follower of Jesus Christ?” one retired bishop asked in a letter to his colleagues. Other defenders have cited examples of Roman Catholic clerics and religious who practice Zen.

However, in his 1994 book Crossing the Threshold of Hope, Pope John Paul II warned against appropriating Buddhist practice. Buddhism “is, like Christianity, a religion of salvation,” but the doctrines of salvation contained in it are “contrary” to Christian doctrine. Buddhism’s salvation is “negative,” based upon the conviction that “the world is evil, and is the source of evil and suffering for man,” and that “to free oneself from this evil one must free oneself from the world.”

For the Buddhist, freeing oneself from the world does not mean drawing nearer to God as the Christian does in prayer. “Complete detachment is not union with God, but the so-called Nirvana, or rather a state of perfect indifference toward the world,” he said.

And the academic pseudo discipline of cultural studies has opened the door wide to let syncretic practices in. This is an example from  a Maori Theology website.

Two key concepts included in this model are the concepts of tapu and mana which I identify with potentiality (tapu in itself) and with power (mana). Related to the concept of tapu is the concept of noa, freedom from restriction.

The knowledge spoken of as contained in the third basket of knowledge is our experience of oneness with people, with creation and with Io, God, an experience which takes us beyond the limits of space and time. This experience is especially found in our participation in ritual and in our use of the karakia. The karakia are the ritual chants of the Maori and cover every aspect of life. It is in the use of the karakia that we find what it is to be a human person. Their immediate purpose is to link up with the ancestors and the spiritual powers. Their wider purpose is to share in the work of creation Their effectiveness comes from our faith in the ancestors and the spiritual powers..

At the core of this world, and of the whole of the universe, is Io, Io matua kore, Io the parentless, and Io taketake, Io the root cause of all. The richness of the Maori understanding of Io is seen in the different names applied to Io, while the Io creation genealogy shows a cosmic, rather than this world only, awareness. There has been much dispute as to where the Io tradition comes from. My own understanding of the Io tradition, though supported by the written evidence, stems from the Ngaapuhi oral tradition.

It is very easy to go from — prayer is good, and praying on the marae (meeting house) is good for all the members of a tribe are related — to praying to the tipuna (ancestors) to praying to Tane Mahuta (the god of the forest).

Better not to go there. All the rants about popery in the time of the reformers was about stripping syncretic practices from the church. This reforming movement started inside the Roman church itself — indeed there has beenreforms of saints and warnings against cults around saints coming from the Vatican throughout Church History.

We are not to compromise with fashion or the culture.A good rule of thumb is if you are using Christian as an adjective — Christian socialism, Christian feminism (or MRA), Christian nationalism, you are probably really worshipping the noun — socialism, feminism and nationalism, and the Christian bit is a rationalisation.

Of your apostasy.

Don’t go there. I now avoid all Maori prayer — not because I have anything about praying in Maori but because (like most New Zealanders) I know enough of the language to realise that they are not praying to my God and Saviour. So I treat them like my Buddist and Muslim friends — happy to eat with you, not happy to worship with you.

Note: the illustration is of a tukutuku panel made for the Anglican Church. This is a positive example of how crafts within a culture (Tukutuku are flax panels, initially used as screens within important buildings) can be appropriate. Now, traditional patterns referring to various pagan events… less so. (I would argue the same way about teste david cum sybilla in Dies Irae, or the tendency to have statues or images of Venus & Jove made during the renaissance — great art, but not inside a kirk.