Religious Syncretism: Intellectualist Theory Vs Social Structural Theory

Intellectualist Theory Vs Social Structural Theory

    In the late 1960s and early 1970s, regarding to the approaches to the Afro-American religious syncretism, there is a big debate in scholarship. Focusing on ideas and its impact on African Christian’s minds, J. D. Y. Peel and Robin Horton assert their intellectualist theory. However, Caroline Ifeka-Moller questions his theory, because she assumes that it is social structural factors rather than intellectual exchange that cause religious confusion. Later, in response to her criticism, both Robin Horton and J. D. Y. Peel write a rejoinder to reply and attempt to defend their intellectualist approach.         

 
             In the late 1960s, both Peel and Horton advocate scholars to do their researches on the combination of African religious views with Christianity from an intellectualist approach. In analyzing religious Change in Yorubaland and attempting to understand alien belief systems, Peel demonstrates that an intellectualist approach is very helpful for him to understand African religious history.  In 1971, in Journal of the International African Institute, Robin Horton published his article — “African Conversion,” in which he asserted his intellectualist theory on religious conversion in detail. For one thing, he believes that when people faced with new situations, they tended to adapt themselves to it as far as possible in terms of their existing ideas and attitudes; for another thing, he argues that people would assimilate new ideas, they did so because ideas could make sense to them in terms of the notions they already held.  Based on these two assumptions, he explains his intellectualist approach. According to Him, there are four important implications in the field of religious change:

“1. Given the appropriate social changes, certain religious innovations normally associated with the influence of Islam and Christianity (e.g. development of the concept and cult of an active, morally-concerned supreme being) are likely to occur even in the absence of these world faiths.
2. Even where Islam and/or Christianity are present, the ideational changes normally associated with them are likely to occur only in the presence of the appropriate social changes.
3. Given the appropriate social changes and the presence of Islam and/or Christianity, acceptance of ideas from the world faiths will be highly selective. Just what is accepted and what rejected will be determined very largely by the structure of the basic cosmology, and by the limits which this structure sets to the cosmology's potential for adaptive change.
4. It follows from these three points that African responses to Islam and Christianity are responses which, given the appropriate social and economic conditions, might well have occurred in some recognizable form even in the absence of these world faiths.” 

Central to Horton’s theory is the exchange of ideas when people face with new circumstances. Moreover, he believes that his theory not only offers a key to the understanding of religious encounters, but provides a way to explain the response of Africans to the exterior religions. Therefore, in order to understand African conversion, it is very necessary for scholars to discuss why people change their minds in terms of religious views, as well as how they adapt themselves to the new atmospheres.