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Understanding Folk Religion: A Christian Response to Popular Beliefs and Practices is unavailable, but you can change that!

Around the world, Christian churches face the challenge of folk religions. Missionaries brought formal Christianity and assumed that traditional religions would die out as the Gospel displaced animistic beliefs and practices. Today, it is clear that old ways do not die out, but instead remain largely hidden from view. People affirm orthodox theologies, but go to witch doctors, shamans, diviners,...

Cross-cultural reality testing forces people to examine both their own and others’ understandings of reality. Most people simply assume that the way they look at things is the way things really are, and judge other cultures’ views of reality before understanding them. These judgments are based on ethnocentrism, which closes the door to further understanding and communication. Furthermore, ethnocentric judgments keep missionaries from examining their own beliefs and values to determine which of them
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