In Tultitlán, a suburb of Mexico City, there is a church dedicated to Santa Muerte - St Death. The saint accepts gifts of money and tequila. She is sometimes portrayed smoking a marijuana joint.
In Nyanza province in Kenya, members of a church called Legio Maria seek to control the spirit world through possession, exorcism, and the use of mediums. Their churches have enormous ornaments, their members carry enormous rosaries - the larger a crucifix or image is, the more powerful it is.
At Beatenberg, you can visit the cave where St Beatus, baptized in England by St Barnabas and ordained at Rome by St Peter, fought with and killed a dragon which tried to hinder his work of converting the pagan Helvetii. Fighting dragons, no doubt in imitation of the archangel Michael (Rev 12:9), was one of the challenges of being a saint, it seems!
Many tourists in Australia visit Ayers Rock, or Uluru. Parts of the mountain are sacred and may not be photographed, and the local people want to close the path to the summit because it crosses a track made by a python in the Dreamtime.
You may wish to take some, or all, of these stories seriously, or quite the reverse! And you can no doubt think of other examples of pagan legend and heathen superstition coming into contact with Christian teaching.
Missionaries bringing the Gospel to a pagan people have two choices. They can reject everything in the pagan culture that is associated with old beliefs, or they can accept as much as possible and try to give it a Christian meaning. So in Britain, we find springs sacred to the Celtic gods rebaptized as "St Bridget's Well", or the like. We find sacred trees given a Christian message (think of "The Holly and the Ivy"). We find ceremonies like dancing round the maypole or lighting the winter fire in November emptied of their pagan religious significance and incorporated into the Christian year.
But which customs of other societies can be tolerated and which are dangerous? The tragedy in Haiti reminds us of the power of voodoo - can this be incorporated into Christianity? In South Africa, the church struggled, and perhaps still struggles, with the practice of polygamy. Is monogamy part of the Christian message, or is it a part of the culture of Jesus' time, hallowed by him and by the early Church, which might be adapted in a different way to societies outside Europe and the Middle East? As attitudes change, to slavery, to the rôle of women in society, to the use of weapons, should we as Christians reject them, or try to give them a Christian perspective?
"If you can't beat them, join them," some might say. But the Bible gives a different perspective. On one hand, the writer of Deuteronomy was in no doubt that God wanted nothing to do with pagan customs. They must be rooted out, and those who practise them must be put to the sword. In fact, though, it is clear from the rest of the Old Testament that the other nations continued to coexist with the Jewish people, and went on reverencing their sacred pillars.
But this was not "joining" the heathen. Foreign ideas about creation, floods, kings, angels and so on were not simply taken over - quite the reverse. The Jewish faith transformed them into something new and unique.
Jesus came, he said, "to fulfil the Law" - the dot on each i and the cross-stroke of each t of the old Law would remain to the end of time (Matt 5:18). And when Christians moved outside the Jewish world, they took this attitude with them. When Paul met Athenian worshippers of "an unknown god", he did not condemn them, but explained how the God in whom "we live and move and have our being" was none other than the God and Father of Jesus Christ. (Acts 17:22-31) Old ways were not replaced, but fulfilled in Jesus.
The people whom Christians condemned were those who did not put God first. A big issue for the early Church was eating meat which had been butchered according to pagan ritual. Throughout the New Testament it is clear that this was permitted, unless it gave rise to offence, or unless it caused the faith of a "weaker Christian" to waver. The only commandment was to love God and to love one's neighbour.
A month ago we recalled how The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight. The Jewish prophets had their hopes and fears. The worshippers of the Unknown God had their hopes and fears. All cultures, all religions, even the worshippers of Santa Muerte have their hopes and fears. If they are left to superstition, they will remain hopes and fears. But Christ, who fills and fulfils the whole of creation, can transform them and give them a new perspective. Our eyes should be fixed not on the saint fighting the dragon, but on the news the saint is bearing - the news of love and salvation.
HD