“What is your religious affiliation?

Catholic.

What do you believe about the afterlife?

I think I will come back in a different body.

 Reincarnation?

Yes.”

This was a frequent response I received while conducting religious surveys in Brazil. I was a teenager then, and these responses initially baffled me. How could Catholic adherents believe in reincarnation, which is totally foreign to the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church? The answer is syncretism. Often, these self-identified Catholics reported attending spiritist meetings each week where the Bible was regularly read publicly. This mixture of African religions with Catholicism clouded any vestige of the Gospel for those professed Catholics. Unfortunately, syncretism winds its tentacles around souls both foreign and domestic.

Long before Brazil or the United States existed, Israel struggled with syncretism. Just as Aaron once said to God’s people, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt” (Exodus 32:42¹), so we find American religion putting the gospel label on diluted imitations. The Israelites tried to worship Yahweh by bowing down to a golden calf. They attempted to import idolatrous Egyptian religion into the worship of the one true God. God’s decisive judgment on this false worship demonstrated His condemnation of syncretism. American Christianity has diluted the Gospel with the secular and theologically aberrant ideas that people are good and find fulfillment in themselves.

Even secular researchers are documenting the phenomenon of syncretism in America. In his book Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, sociologist Christian Smith posits that deism is “the de facto dominant religion among contemporary U.S. teenagers.”² Smith’s book, which surveyed thousands of American teens ages 13–17, coined the term “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism” (MTD)³ and listed five points that summarize this belief system.

1. A god exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth.
2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when needed to resolve a problem.
5. Good people go to heaven when they die. 

Though most Americans don’t consciously hold to these five points, these ideas characterize many of your average American acquaintances. Points 1 and 4 describe the deistic aspect of MTD. Many American young people indeed believe God made everything, but they don’t really think He is involved in their lives. Similarly, the Israelites at the foot of Mount Sinai could not see Moses or God for forty days and cried out, “Up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him” (Exodus 32:1). Under the smoking shadow of the mountain, Israel forgot God and assumed He was not all that concerned with their worship. Similarly, Americans, who uniquely enjoy the affluent gifts of God’s Creation, live as if God is not needed for day-to-day life.

Points 2 and 5 describe the moralistic aspect of MTD. Most Americans acknowledge the basic idea that a religion is good if it makes its adherents better people. When a loved one passes away who lived a godless life since attending vacation Bible school in fifth grade, the family declares that he is “in a better place.” Immoral and debauched people who declare God to be dead still say, “It’s mean for Christians to say people go to hell.” The assumption is that to be Christian is to be nice and avoid upsetting people.

Point 3 describes the therapeutic aspect of MTD. Americans walk through the doors of a church not looking for instruction in righteousness or to behold the face of God. They go to have “your best life now,” better marriages, tolerable children, and a good self-image. Second Timothy 4:3 explains the proliferation of self-help therapeutic churches: “Having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions.”

Syncretism, a frequent enemy of missionary efforts in Brazil and beyond, is also threatening and undermining the church in the United States in the form of MTD. First Corinthians 1:18 says, “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” Instead of conforming, the pure Gospel confronts popular views of the day. We who treasure Christ and the Gospel must follow the admonition in Hebrews 10:23: “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.”