[The following is part of my response to a Sunstone West paper on women who self-identify as both Mormon and Pagan:]

I was intrigued by the themes of syncretism and religious identity running through Doe’s presentation. I’m no stranger to syncretism—I spent several years growing up in my mother’s hometown in Japan. The Japanese say that you’re born Shinto and die Buddhist. Japanese babies are blessed at Shinto shrines and return again and again for various celebrations throughout their childhood. The great majority of funerals in Japan are Buddhist. (Recently many Japanese weddings are performed in Christian chapels by ordained ministers.) I’ve incorporated elements of Japanese worship into my own religious repertoire, so I guess I’m a Buddho-Shinto-Mormon.

I’m also a student of comparative religions and I believe that you can sometimes tease out valuable insights by putting similar phenomena from different traditions side by side. One of my areas of expertise is in Japanese religions, so I hope you’ll bear with me as I share a story of syncretism from my own studies.

When the Jesuit missionaries entered Japan in the 16th century, they had considerable success, converting thousands of Japanese, both peasants and feudal lords to Catholic Christianity. The Shogun, feeling threatened, eventually outlawed Christianity and forced the Japanese converts to recant or die. Many chose to die by crucifixion or burning at the stake rather than participate in the act of denunciation by stepping on fumi-e, images of Mary and Jesus. The government eventually required all Japanese families to declare allegiances to local Buddhist temples as a sign of their continued aversion to Christianity. A few small groups continued to practice their faith in secret, however.

One of the survival tactics of the kakure kirishitan or “hidden Christians” was to set up altars to Mary and the Christ-child in the guise of the Buddhist goddess of compassion, Kannon (known in China as Guanyin), who is often depicted cradling a small child. They also used statues of the Bodhisattva Jizo as a substitute for Jesus (Jizo descends into hell to suffer in place of penitent sinners). When the ban on Christianity was removed in the 1860s, after two and a half centuries of prohibition, many of the kakure kirishitan were warmly welcomed back into the Catholic Church. Others, however, refused to recognize the authority of the Church over them and continue, to this day, to practice their own unique form of hybridized, esoteric Christian-Buddhism.

So what can we learn from comparing the syncretism of Mormo-Pagan women and the kakure kirishitan? One of the things that occurs to me is that syncretism is a source of empowerment to both groups (for the Japanese Christians, a survival tactic). Rather than accept the limited choices presented to them by the authority structures, syncretism allows for the creation of additional options. Instead of recantation or death, the kakure kirishitan created a third option that allowed them to believe and live. Instead of being forced to choose between Mormonism and Paganism, the Mormo-Pagan women interviewed by Doe found a way to worship both God and Goddess and to retain their self-identities as both Pagans and Mormons.