How Religions Evolve

Rainn’s heart is in the right place here, but it’s not all too strange. In fact, it’s how religions arise and it’s how they evolve. The melding of ideas into something new based on established, codified, and extant traditions is called “syncretism.”

In America, we have traditions predicated upon this like the Latter Day Saints. Joseph Smith mixes magic, religion, and a few heaping spoonfuls of con artistry to create what we call the church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints.

Over time, and dependent on the prevailing attitudes of a given locale, Mormon doctrine shifted to accommodate it.

Outside of America, Haitian Vodou mixed indigenous African religious thought with Catholicism, much like what we call Voodoo in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Christianity itself is syncretic. What once amounted to a small, obscure Jewish cult become a world phenomenon when emperor Constantine made it the official religion of the Roman Empire.

That iteration of Christianity mixed with pagan thought to appeal to the masses, and was predicated on Saint Paul’s mission of being the apostles to the gentiles.

Henry VIII wanted to get divorced, so he created his iteration of Christianity called the Church of England. He did so by basically telling the pope to fuck off because he couldn’t get his marriage annulled.

Not to be overly western biased, Siddhartha was a Hindu with a different interpretation of Hinduism (not unlike Jesus being Jewish) that subsequently lead to a new religion altogether. We know this as Buddhism.

When we try to make sense of these in our world view, our current world view also shapes how we view the religion, in a feedback loop. This explains why we have Nordic gods, who, when personified in pictures, typically look like the people of the region.

Follow it through, and you get white Jesus. Now, the historical Jesus (for whom evidence of his existence actually does exist) obviously wouldn’t have been white. But since Christ Jesus is a mythical figure, it would make sense for this change to occur.

The transformation is natural and expected. Perhaps best example of this is in Neil Gaiman’s book American Gods, which is absolutely worth the read. Neil put unparalleled effort into his research, and made us love it because of the story.

But the real problem (or blessing, depending on your point of view)?

The real problem is the world view that informs the interpretation.