It’s All One
The Japan Times profiles Hyun Kyung Chung, a professor of ecumenical theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. She is the keynote speaker at the Women’s Conference held at the Amagi Sanso Retreat Center in Izu, Japan. The Japan Times refers to her appearance at this Christian conference as “controversial” because of her syncretist nature which mixes Buddhism, Christianity, traditional shamanistic beliefs, and eco-feminism.
“Why controversial? Because fundamentalist Christians will think Hyun Kyung — who claims to be a pagan, shamanistic, eco-feminist Buddhist-Christian…She thinks having two religions is like being bilingual. “Just as Japanese are Shinto and Buddhist, I believe it perfectly possible to have a simultaneous translation in progress between Christianity and Buddhism.” She admits to being a syncretist — combining Christian theology, Asian imagery and other streams of thought — pointing out that we all are syncretists; it’s just that most people don’t realize or accept it. Once asked by a German TV program what she was in terms of religion, her answer was both simple and profound: “I said that metaphorically my womb was shamanistic, my heart Buddhist, my head Christian, my aura eco-spiritualist.” With 5,000 years of shamanism in Korea, 2,000 of Buddhism and just a century of Protestantism, Hyun Kyung embraces her heritage and brings them all to her Christian faith.”
I wonder what the thinkers within modern Paganism would make of her faith. Our faiths have lately been concerned with “purity” of tradition and practice in reaction to what was perceived as an over-abundance of syncretic and eclectic practitioners. But for many people around the world a dual or even triple religious identification isn’t unusual, and often these beliefs and practices meld and blend into something unique. Is our own problem with syncreticism stemming from a negative reaction to crappy “how-to” manuals and not to the practice of multiple faith traditions?
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