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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,...

will be explicitly rejected as unbecoming for Christians. The reason for such rejection is often not apparent to missionaries or outsiders, who may see little difference between the songs and rites the people reject and those they retain. But the people know the deep, hidden meanings of their old customs and their significance in the culture. At some points the missionary may need to raise questions that the people have overlooked, for they often fail to see clearly their own cultural assumptions.
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