David F Lindenfeld and Miles Richardson's book Beyond Conversion and Syncretism: Indigenous Encounters with Missionary Christianity, 1800-2000

    In 2007, David F Lindenfeld and Miles Richardson edit Beyond Conversion and Syncretism: Indigenous Encounters with Missionary Christianity, 1800-2000, in which they attempt to beyond traditional canons on syncretism. As two authoritative experts on African studies, Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff presume “that curious mix of consent and contestation, desire and disgust, appropriation and accommodation, refusal and refiguration, ethnicization and hybridization — subsumed in the term ‘the colonial encounter.’”  Following them, in editing the book, both David F Lindenfeld and Miles Richardson believe that the “curious mix” is in need of further consideration. Moreover, as the Comaroffs also recognize, the study of such encounters is inextricably tied to the meaning of “conversion” and points to a needed complexification of that term. In the book, “it looks at the ways in which different indigenous peoples have responded to the intrusion of foreign Christian missionaries into their worlds, and offers a number of case studies with an eye to identifying strategies and processes by which this negotiation typically takes place. Its aim is to point to a more nuanced and differentiated picture of such interchanges than is conveyed by terms presently in use.”

        During this phase, as we can see, traditional cannons and methods are greatly questioned. As scholars are equipped with post-structural and post-colonial theories, they attempt to reconsider religious syncretism in various ways. Accompanying with this historical tide, scholars adopt more fashionable methods to discuss it and explore the undeveloped frontiers of religious syncretism.