Folk religion…?

In the Moore College course about Buddhism and Islam one of our topics is folk religion. We include this topic because most Buddhists and Muslims don’t practice their religion according to the textbook accounts, but are strongly influenced by the indigenous spiritual traditions of their areas. There are visits to traditional healers, sacrifices, attempts to ward off evil forces through various kinds of magic, fear of local spirits, attention to omens – all characteristic of folk religion. Folk religion revolves around trying to deal with the unseen spiritual world and spiritual forces in a way that will reduce their harm and harness their power. People in the West tend to discount the existence of spirits and so folk religion appears to them as a host of superstitions. Folk religion is often closely attached to a particular tribe or region, and any one tribe’s sets of practices will differ from others. So folk religion forms part of a group’s identity.

One of the benefits of thinking about how other people act is that this provides us the opportunity of thinking about our own beliefs and actions compared with others. It is easy to point the finger at someone else, but we must acknowledge that we may be doing similar things ourselves (as Paul says in Romans 2). Are there ways that Christians – even ‘Christians like us’ act in ways that are more folk religion than biblical Christianity? Read more