There are great risks involved in attempting to promote a Christianity that is culturally and biblically appropriate. The risk of syncretism is always present. Syncretism is the mixing of Christian assumptions with those world view assumptions that are incompatible with Christianity so that the result is not biblical Christianity.
Syncretism exists whenever people practice Christian rituals because they consider them magic, or use the Bible to cast spells on people or, as in India, consider Jesus just another of many human manifestations of one of their dieties, or as in Latin America, practice pagan divination and witchcraft right in the churches, or insist that people convert to a different culture to become Christians. In America it is syncretistic, unbiblical Christianity that sees "the American way of life" as identical with biblical Christianity or assumes that, by generating enough faith we can pressure God into giving us whatever we want, or that we should out of love and tolerance regard homosexuality and even homosexual "marriage" to go unopposed despite clear biblical condemnations.
But there are at least two paths to syncretism. One is by importing foreign expressions of the faith and allowing the receiving people to attach their own world view assumptions to these practices with little or no guidance from the missionaries. The result is a kind of "nativistic" Christianity or even, as in Latin America, "Christo-paganism." Roman Catholic missionaries, especially, have fallen into this trap by assuming that when people practice so-called "Christian" rituals and use "Christian" terminology, they mean by them the same thing that European Christian mean.
The other way to syncretism is to so dominate a receiving people's practice of Christianity that both the surface-level practices and the deep-level assumptions are imported. The result is a totally foreign, unadapted kind of Christianity that requires people to worship and practice their faith according to foreign patterns and to develop a special set of world view assumptions for church situations that are largely ignored in the rest of their lives. Their traditional world view, then, remains almost untouched by biblical principles. This is the kind of Christianity evangelical Protestants have most often advocated, probably out of a fear of the first kind of syncretism. In many situations, this kind of Christianity is attracting some of those who are westenizing. But the masses of traditional people find little or nothing in Christianity that meets their needs, simply because it is presented and practiced in foreign ways to which they cannot connect.
Though we must be cautious concerning syncretism, there is a middle road that involves deep trust in the Holy Spirit's ability to guide people and the receiving people's ability to follow that guidance. We, then, are to always point to the Holy Spirit (not ourselves) as the Guide while participating with them in discovering His leading. We can assure people that the Holy Spirit will always guide them in accordance with the Scriptures. Practicing this approach, missionary Jacob Loewen chose to never answer directly any questions from the new Christians such as, "What should we do?" Instead, he would ask them, "What is the Holy Spirit showing you?" Only after they had struggled with the answer to that question would he participate with them in seeking guidance, and even then his approach was to offer them at least three alternative approaches from which they might choose. In response to this approach they usually developed a fourth alternative that was uniquely their own. If that approach worked they would continue it. If it did not, they felt free to change it in needed ways, since it was their own and did not come with the prestige that often accompanies the suggestions of respected outsiders.
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