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Interfaith Smoothie
(aka: Syncretic Religion)

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Interfaith Smoothie (trope)
Okay, doubtful that it's really the first.

"[Netty's] faith is omnistic: finding truth in every religion. She draws on American folk magic for blessing; works with Catholic saints; uses Buddhist house-clearing techniques to help Reddit friends with ghost problems."
Jessica Rawnsley, The New Statesman, "The Witchcraft Generation"

This is when a constructed fictional religion is clearly a mix of any number of real-world religions. That Other Wiki knows this process as it happens in Real Life as syncretism.

Differs from Crossover Cosmology in that this creates a "new" cosmology from pieces of established idea systems. Popular in Space Opera and Science Fiction as representative of alien cultures. A subtrope of Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot and a Sister Trope to Culture Chop Suey. Can also be Truth in Television since there are few religions that don't share certain rituals or beliefs with other religions.

This seems to come up a lot in anime fantasy settings, although it could (and oftentimes appears to) just be a cultural misunderstanding of Western ideas and philosophies while substituting familiar concepts (like Buddhism and Shintoism) into the knowledge gaps. Also, sometimes in anime, instead of All Christianity Being Catholic, you'll see a mix-mash of ideas from various Christian denominations all pooled into a single faith.

In both reality and fiction, these faith systems tend to operate under one of two general trains of thought. One occurs when people reason that there must only be one true source of divinity in the universe, which all faiths try to find, and that there's no reason to make strong distinctions between them but try to glean useful practices or truths from all of them. The other, more common in polytheistic systems, assumes that all the different gods, spirits, demons, and so on and so forth are indeed distinct and different powers, and that it thus make sense to court favor with or appease as many as possible to make sure that you've got a safe source of spiritual backing or at least don't have any notable deities mad at you in particular.

Related to Emergency Multifaith Prayer, when a character in a tight spot offers a prayer to every deity they can think of in the hopes that at least one of them will be listening.

Compare and contrast Church of Saint Genericus, where the religious details could cover any number of faiths simply because they're left nonspecific. See also Universal Chaplain, who will provide services for someone of any faith if necessity calls.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • High School D×D is largely a Crossover Cosmology, but still makes this trope out of Heaven and the Angel faction, which appear to be a broad-strokes amalgamation of every major Abrahamic religion. What makes this stand out is one character being a properly-researched Protestant, as contrast to the usual all-pervasive Catholicism. The writer has stated this just made the whole mess much easier to keep track of, while the story explains that Heaven being more unified than its followers is classified information, as God Is Dead and the faith-based mechanism Heaven gets its power from if already close to falling apart without Him, and revealing the truth could sink the faction entirely. Also, while Church-faction civil wars do drive a couple of conflict arcs, they're always Catholic schisms who know the truth or never have their denomination made clear.

    Comic Books 
  • Black Panther: The religion of Wakanda is a mix of multiple African sources. They mostly worship the Panther God, of course, but believe that the Panther is an aspect of Bast, and have a patheon that includes other Egyptian gods such as Thoth and Ptah, as well as Nyami (a version of the Akan god Anyami), Kokou (an undergod in Benin mythology) and Mujaji (probably derived from the Rain Queen Modjadji of the Balobedu). According to X-Force (2024), a Wakandan myth says Bast is a sibling to Anansi the Spider. It actually makes sense; in the Marvel Universe, where All Myths Are True, of course the most advanced civilisation on the continent would notice the beliefs of their neighbours were also true.
  • Buck Godot: Zap Gun for Hire: The Church of Slag-Blah are "militant agnostics" and celebrate a different religious holy day every day. As a result, their religious calendar year is 7,823 days long to make room for all of them.
  • Tintin: In Tintin in America, it's a mixture of Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam, they claim they were the fastest growing religion, and want Tintin to become a member of them.

    Films — Live Action 
  • Gandhi:
  • The Matrix movie trilogy is all over the place, embedding clear (in order of dominance throughout the series), Buddhist, Christian and Gnostic philosophies not only throughout the characters and plot, but including the music score, especially in The Matrix Revolutions soundtrack, which uses Ominous Latin Chanting, Sanskrit flavored, while the Big Bad ridicules the hero about being a Messianic Archetype.
  • Pitch Black has 'Chrislam' (which is a real thing) pilgrims heading for the planet of New Mecca.
  • Star Wars: The Force, once described by Mark Hamill as "Religion's Greatest Hits!" The religion of the Force has strong elements of Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism, Daoism and a bunch of other mystical traditions, with Christian symbology (the Jedi are Knights In Brown Robes who have a fair bit in common with monastic knightly orders, and not for nothing is the hero named Luke, to say nothing of Anakin's virgin birth).
  • What Dreams May Come: The Film of the Book blends Eastern mystical concepts of reincarnation with Christian concepts of monotheism, heaven and hell,note  as well as an Epiphanic Prison for those that commit suicide. Dogs go to heaven, too.

    Literature 
  • Agent Of Byzantium: The Byzantine main character is shocked when he hears a nominally Christian English nobleman casually express a belief in Thor.
  • Chaos Timeline: The Indian Chandramoorthy develops his own religion, which combines elements from Hinduism, Islam, Catholicism and the classical Greco-Roman religion.
  • Discworld: Because All Myths Are True and Gods Need Prayer Badly, a sort of default primary pantheon has emerged on Dunmanifestin based around the gods most people have heard of, even if they come from completely different cultures. This has several consequences:
    • Led by the decidedly Classical Mythology flavoured Blind Io, their appearance in The Last Hero also includes Offler the Crocodile God, the national deity of the "Arabian Nights" Days-style country Klatch, a handful of deities from the Ancient Egypt counterpart, and a nature spirit worshipped by shamans in the deep woods. The one exception is Om, since one of the main things everyone knows about him is that he's not part of any pantheon.
    • In a world where at the last census, research theologians have identified 3,700 different gods, this effectively means that services at Small Gods - Ankh-Morpork's nearest thing to a cathedral - have to be, out of necessity, inclusive and pantheistic. The main Gods, and many of the lesser gods, tend to have their own dedicated temples up and down the Street of Small Gods.
  • Dune: The far future religions are either this (i.e. the Orange Catholic Bible) or the Coca-Pepsi, Inc. type (Zensunni). The Orange Catholic Bible is more dominant in the first novel, but then a Zensunni branch ends up overrunning the known universe. The Orange Catholic Bible was also created to be the most universal holy text reasonably possible, not necessarily the most universal religion reasonably possible.note  The prequel novels show that the creation of the OCB was far from a peaceful and universally-accepted process (taking place less than a century after the end of the Butlerian Jihad). In fact, the people who compiled the book nearly got themselves lynched by the angry mobs. They were only spared when The Emperor intervened and granted them sanctuary in his palace. That is, until his young daughter caught one of them supposedly raping the Empress (said daughter would later start to suspect that the act may have been consensual). The Emperor then had all the translators publicly executed, making his daughter watch the consequences of her actions. It's not clear when that hatred for the OCB turned into nigh-universal acceptance.
  • The Four Horsemen Universe: "Unto the Last—Stand Fast", a Short Story, features a syncretic religion resulting from cultural exchange between Roman Catholic human colonists and Crystal Dragon Jesus Arritim colonists (they had inadvertently both colonized the same planet, fought over it, and then ended their war when they noticed the similarities in their religions). Both groups' home churches consider this faith heretical, and the Arritims' progenitors the Arezzo (same species, different church) are engaged in a crusade against it.
  • Janissaries, by Jerry Pournelle, has a world that has both Christians and pagans, with the pagan religion being very loosely based on Classical Mythology. When a Christian nation enters into a political alliance with two pagan nations, a bishop has a rather convenient revelation that the two religions in fact worship the same god, resulting in the creation of a politically-backed syncretic religion.
  • Jetlag Travel Guides: Played for Laughs in Phaic Tăn, where a blend of the major South and East Asian religion is referred to as "Confusionism".
  • Left Behind: Enigma Babylon One World Faith consists of Roman Catholicism merged with various Christian sects.
  • Life of Pi: Pi manages to be a practicing Hindu, Christian, and Muslim all at once, to the confusion of most of the other characters. He was born a Hindu but chooses to simultaneously practice both Islamic and Christian rituals as he grows up. His stated reason is that he "just wants to love God."
  • The Lost Years of Merlin: In-Universe, Merlin's mother Bronwen worships both the Celtic gods such as Dagda and also Jesus. The series has Dagda show a lot of traits traditionally attributed to Jesus as well (possibly in the books they are the same being).
  • The Night's Dawn Trilogy (Peter F. Hamilton): A case of intrafaith smoothies. By the time of the Conderation, the various factions of Christianity and Islam have reconciled their differences and each formed a single unified religion.
  • The Pendragon Adventure: The end has Ravinia, in which people see life in the rest of the universe (Halla) for the first time. This is not a religion in itself, but something that attracts people regardless of religion into one group. On the other hand, it divides people based on social class.
  • The Peshawar Lancers is set in an Alternate History where a series of devastating comet strikes wiped out civilisation in the Northern hemisphere and India is the centre of the "Angerez Raj".
    • Most of the Raj's ruling class are the descendants of Anglo-Christians, but over the generations there's been inevitable cultural osmosis which has resulted in some Hindu-Christian syncretism. The Church's official stance is that all the Hindu deities are just aspects of the One True God, and the main character is part of a sect that worships Jesus as an avatar of Vishnu.
    • A short story shows that Texans have regressed into a tribal society with a polytheistic religion incorporating elements of Christianity and various Native American traditions. The Christian God is still worshipped as Top God, but other important deities include Coyote and the Corn Lady. They also believe that "olshaytan" is responsible for the asteroids.
  • Philip K. Dick was particularly fond of this: in several novels (notably The Divine Invasion) there was a merger between the Catholic Church and the Soviet Union in the backstory.
  • Piecing Together the Ashes: Reconstructing the Old World Order:
    • One of the major post-Deluge religions, Widdhism, is a fusion of Wicca, Taoism and Buddhism, along with some smaller sects.
    • The major post-Deluge branches of Christianity in America also qualify — the Reconstructionist Christians are the result of remaining Catholics, Eastern Orthodox and some Protestants while the Southron Church of Christ combines numerous Protestant denominations together along with Confederate nostalgia.
  • Gaianism in Paul McAuley's The Quiet War combines generic nature worship with Catholic ritual. It's "green saints" are similar to gurus.
  • Safehold (David Weber): The Church of God Awaiting is a mash-up of real religions that was created for the purpose of putting ultimate power in the church's hands and precluding the possibility of technological advancement.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire: The cult of the Many-Faced God holds that every death god, psychopomp, and similar being is an aspect, "face", or local anthropomorphism of the universal power of death, and its temple includes shrines to death and war gods from all over.
  • Sorry, Bro: Erebuni was raised an Orthodox Christian like most Armenians. She also practices Wiccan magic though while taking communion and sculpting traditional cross statues, blending both.
  • Space Viking: The human colonists of the planet Gilgamesh in this H. Beam Piper novel follow a syncretistic religion described as "an absurd potpourri of most of the major monotheisms of the Federation period, plus doctrinal and ritualistic innovations of their own", which includes "a maze of dietary and other taboos" the Gilgameshers use to maintain social separation between themselves and the "heathens and worshipers of false gods".
  • Stranger in a Strange Land has Valentine Michael Smith form a union of every single religion called "The Church of All Worlds," which eventually inspired a real religious community of the same name.
  • The Sword of Saint Ferdinand: Agatín is half-Christian half-Islamic. He assures his guests he is fully Christian but he merely keeps Islamic relics so he is not given grief by potential Moorish visitors. Fortún and García are not convinced, since he casually will quote both Jesus Christ and Muhammad in the same breath, but they will not give him grief about his weird syncretism either.
  • Tasakeru: Sanshinto or Tritheism is based primarily on Shinto, but has elements from Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology. The species' differing beliefs draw from everywhere, even, according to the author, the Cthulhu Mythos.
  • Thursday Next: The Global Standard Deity (GSD), a church that openly and shamelessly mixes and matches elements of various faiths apparently at will — her brother "the Very Irreverent Joffy Next" is basically a hedonist. This is partly down to the fact that in this world literature is the major Serious Business in people's lives, with sport, religion and television distant runners-up.
  • The Unincorporated War by Dani and Eytan Kollin: The various religions in the Outer Alliance get together for a conference in order to come up with something like this. Mostly the Abrahamic religions but others as well. Unfortunately it's interrupted by an attack from the United Human Federation resulting in slaughter.
  • Uplift: In one of the novels, a crazy alien evangelist preaches that a single Creator made humans without one of the sinful Galactic species uplifting them in a species-wide virgin birth, and cites not only Jesus but also Moses, Buddha, Mohammad, Tipler, and Weimberg-Chang.
  • Videssos, being chockablock with Fantasy Counterpart Cultures, has lots of these. The religion of Videssos proper (the fantasy analogue of the Byzantine Empire) looks a lot like Orthodox Christianity (with bishops, monks, ecumenical councils, schisms over variations in the Creed), but the dualistic belief system is much more like Zoroastrianism (two powerful gods, one good and one evil, at war). There are heresies with variant understandings of the war (Videssians believe the good god is sure to win, Khatrishers believe the two gods are perfectly balanced, Namdaleni believe the gods are balanced but you ought to act as if you're sure the good god will win). The main other empire starts out as practically-Muslim (with belief in a single God and four supreme Prophets), but ends up being dominated by a diabolist religion that worships the evil Videssian god.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Andromeda: Wayism is mostly Buddhist 'peace in suffering' teachings, with a few other things thrown in. In universe it was created by a Magog who was taught the concepts of various religions to him by the human host he was spawned from.
  • Babylon 5 has a few varieties of these. Dr. Franklin follows a religion called Foundationism that believes all religions in the galaxy reflect the same greater truth at their core, and freely adopts customs from all of them for its own use (such as the Australian Aboriginal practice of going walkabout). There's also a The Maker religion, a belief so generic that members of several different cultures take it up and integrate it into other faiths. We are also introduced to an order of Catholic monks who have made it their mission to find out all they can about alien faiths in order to "learn all the names of God".
  • A Bit of Fry and Laurie: Satirized in a sketch in which a schoolmaster (played by Hugh Laurie) invents a new religion to accommodate all his students' diverse beliefs, which he describes as "a kind of religious Esperanto, if you will." Named "Lip Wip Wip Wip," the religion believes in "a committee of Gods. There are eight voting members and a non-executive chair who rotates every four years," and worships air, flexible work-share schemes, and things with rounded corners. Unfortunately, the religion has already split into a rival sect that worships oblongs instead, resulting in Inquisition-style tortures and burnings for little heretics.
  • Firefly is a subtle example, as the only explicitly religious ceremony it shows is a funeral which combines Christian and Buddhist elements, which may just be Artistic License – Religion. That said, Shepherd Book is explicitly Christian, and in one episode there's a character wearing Jewish religious clothing (a yarmulke and tallit), so evidently those two religions are still practiced.
  • Kaos: Humans worship the Greek pantheon with some elements of other religions: the confessional-like tacita and funerals are rather Christian, while the notion of being reincarnated into a next life befitting your actions in the current one is reminiscent of karma.
  • Lost always favored the archetypal over the specific, and throughout its run contained references to many different religions and philosophies, hinting that there's some universal basis to all of them, even John Locke's personal shamanistic and prophetic belief system. The finale reinforces this by showing a stained glass window with symbols of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Taoism and Hinduism on it, all radiating outward from one single source (that's also the same color as the light at the heart of the island).
  • The Mandalorian: We don't really know much about the actual beliefs of our main character's sect, the Children of the Watch, but we do know a lot about their practices. They never remove their helmets, which is vaguely reminiscent of anything from the Jewish kippah to Sikh turban to Muslim hijab. Since it goes so far as to hide the face, and this level of covering causes periodic conflict with the secular world, it's most like the Muslim niqab. Mandalorians ritualistically carry weapons, like Sikhs. They practice a form of baptism, like Christians.
  • Motherland: Fort Salem: The witches seem to practice some kind of paganism, judging by their Beltane orgy and other references. Raelle is mocked by another cadet for using a Bible quote in her spells though, described as "Christo-pagan".
  • Saturday Night Live: The Church of Confusion sermonette. For starters, it's delivered by the Most Reverend Archbishop Maharishi O'Mulliganstein, D.D.S.
  • Star Trek:
    • The Klingon belief system seems to be an odd mish-mash of Shinto and Norse mythology, with a Messianic Archetype figure (Kahless), and an added quirk that the Klingons killed their gods (as Worf says, "They were more trouble than they were worth.")
    • Vulcan spirituality seems to have elements of Shinto ancestor worship within a predominant Buddhist philosophy, with 'logic' substituted for Dharma. Like Shinto and most Buddhists, they also refer to worshipping multiple gods.
    • The Bajoran faith which features prominently in nearly every episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine combines elements of all three Western monotheisms (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) together with Eastern Hindu/Buddhist mysticism (with the bonus that their gods are definitely real and occasionally show up to chat with the heroes). Plus, they once had castes like Hinduism. Also they have a Catholic-style leadership (the Kai and the Vedek Assembly lining up with the Pope and the College of Cardinals, respectively), but their clergy aren't swore to remain celibate.
    • Star Trek: Discovery: "New Eden" featured a Lost Colony whose ancestors were whisked away from Earth during World War III. They believe they were saved by God, but couldn't agree on which God saved them. As a result they created a religious text that brought in aspects of, among others, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism, and even Wicca.
  • Teachers (2016): Ms. Bennigan's religion combines Catholic, Mormon, and evangelical stereotypes.

    Music 
  • George Harrison's song "My Sweet Lord" features background vocals that begin by chanting "Hallelujah," gradually shift to chanting "Hare Krishna," and eventually become a Vedic prayer to Vishnu, all while the main vocal continues in the same prayer to "my Lord" (of course, Hindus also refer to their gods as "lords"-e.g. Lord Vishnu, Lord Shiva, etc.). This could also reflect his personal journey from Christian to Hindu beliefs.

    Tabletop Games 
  • BattleTech: The Handbook: House Davion sourcebook details a religious movement in the Federated Suns called the "Unfinished Book Movement" which is a literal mash-up of a number of existing religions (most of which still exist elsewhere in the setting, even within Davion Space) into a single entity with a single, collected, holy scripture. Apparently it's becoming quite a major player in the realm by the time the book was set.
  • Dungeons & Dragons:
    • The game has liked to present players with the option to include "pagan" religions as real pantheons of deities in their settings. This has on occasion led to pantheons being offered up which are actually made by rather crudely combining different faiths together; the most infamous examples, which hail from the game's earliest days, are the Native American pantheon (which combines heroes and deities from many different beliefs) and the Celtic pantheon (which combines Continental Celtic, Romanized Celtic, Irish and Welsh gods into a single group).
    • Forgotten Realms: The Realms have an incredible blend of deities from multiple real-world religions operating alongside both each other and completely fictitious deities. The core pantheon alone includes the Nordic Tyr, Finnish Loviatar, and Irish Oghma alongside a Crystal Dragon Jesus in Ilmater and the elf and dwarf creator-gods Corellon and Moradin.
  • Legend of the Five Rings: The state religion of Rokugan, a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of Japan, is Shinseism, a fusion of Japan's two most common faiths (Shinto and Buddhism), plus Taoism.
  • Grim Hollow: Clan Limgri are a Tribe of Priests who are known to encorporate the religious beliefs and practices of whatever nations they come into contact with; since the actual gods are all dead, Divine Magic is getting harder and harder to use, so they'll pray to whoever or whatever still answers. Limgri sees it as their holy duty to preserve life, protect the helpless, and stave off the end of the world for another day, and any religion that gives them the power to do so is acceptable.
  • Warhammer:
    • While there are four Chaos Gods (representing the emotions of rage, desire, hope and despair) and many of their worshippers devote themselves to a single one, it's also possible to worship them as a pantheon as a follower of Chaos Undivided. (The possibility of worshipping just two or three of the four is never mentioned.) The Imperial faith from 40k is a mix of all kinds of things in and out of universe, although at its core is a cult of personality.
    • Warhammer 40,000: The Invocators are a ragtag collection of minor Chaos Marine warbands who seek power by colluding with and summoning as many Chaos powers as they can. They are known to try to ingratiate themselves to all four Ruinous Powers, and some rumor to other gods besides.
    • Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: The Bjornling tribe, unlike other Norscans, are not exclusively Chaos worshippers, but will opportunistically worship a variety of deities. This is especially pronounced among their raiders and merchants, who often bring back icons and idols of sea deities from other cultures under the reasoning that you never know which god's or spirit's aid you might end up needing out at sea. Their multifaith shrine at the Seafarers' Cave is filled with a great variety of idols, effigies and statues, including ones of the Old Worlder sea god Manann, his evil but not Chaotic counterpart Stromfels, a sea daemon, a Daemon Prince of Khorne with a taste for naval warfare, a froglike idol of an Old One of the waters that was stolen from Lustria, the reliquary of a Manannite traveling priest, and an effigy of straw and seaweed that keeps being repaired as it rots even though nobody remembers what it's an effigy of anymore.

    Video Games 
  • After the End: A Post-Apocalyptic America: The end of the world brought new faiths, some which try to mix old ones into one:
    • The "Druidism" of Northwest Canada combines Celtic paganism with the religions of the Innu and Inuit peoples of the region.
    • The cult of the Falling Star is a a syncretic mix of the shamanism of the native Miskito people’s and the Moravian church which became a major part of the Miskito people’s culture when missionaries arrived, with the addition of a messianic figure of the titular "Falling Star", an angel that prevented the world to be destoyed. The Moravian church can be restored through an event chain reveals that the "falling star" was simply a falling meteor, however.
    • The Crusader Kings III version of the mod has:
      • In this version, there is much more widespread syncretism, as it is a tenet faiths can have applying to Christian faiths, Jewish faiths, New Age faiths, and even Islamic faiths.
      • Within religious groups, there are radical syncretic faiths that incorporate even more influence from another belief system to the point of being almost unrecognizable. Among the more notable ones being the United Arsenals of America — an Industrial (a Cargo Cult which worships the industrial ruins of the Rust Belt) faith taking heavy cues from Americanism, Mayflower Society an Americanist (a religion which worships the Founding Fathers and general American ethos) creed deeply infused with New England Puritanism, and Freaky Fellowships of Jesus/Jesus Freaks — a Christifornian group that reimagine Christ as the prime Guru above all others and infusing Christianity with Hippie subculture.
      • The faiths of the "Universal" religion has real-life religions known for this, the Unitarian Universalism and Baha'i, both which meld different religious traditions across the globe trying to find a common understanding of faith.
  • Civilization: Beyond Earth: Kavitha Thakur of the Kavithan Protectorate is some kind of religious leader, though the tenets of her belief system are mostly left ambiguous. However, an in-game quote from one of her prayer devotionals is a prayer to angelic and celestial beings take from Christianity, Hinduism, and Zoroastrianism — which, interestingly, do have some links; Zoroastrianism and Hinduism evolved, in fairly divergent ways, from the Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-European polytheism and thus shared some terminology and similarities, and the Zoroastrian concept of angelic and demonic beings also influenced the developement of the early Abrahamic faiths as they developed in a Persian-dominated world.
    Seraphim, Cherubim, Devas, Fravashi, and Yakshas, extend thy arms to cover us, hear us and convey our prayer to the Lord Creator.
  • Crisis of the Confederation: At the outset, the Pilgrimage has elements of this. Formally it is only a loose association helping to organize pilgrimages to Earth, but this exists to a large part because seeing Earth as sacred has become a shared element across many religions (there are those that reject it, but that is a cleavage point across modern-day religions rather than between them). If chance should place a faithful Pilgrimage adherent in a strong enough position over Sol, it is possible for the Pilgrimage to be reformed into an actual, if broad, church, the Terran Orthodoxy.
  • Crusader Kings III adds a lot of syncretism between faiths and allows you to create new faiths and syncretize with others through certain tenets. There's also a lot of faiths which are syncretic by nature.
  • The Elder Scrolls: In-universe with the original Eight Divines pantheon. Founded by Empress Alessia of the First Cyrodilic Empire, she is said to have consciously made a synthesis of elven and Nordic gods, in order to appease both her Nord allies (notably Kynareth/Kyne and Stendarr/Stuhn) and the elven Cyrodiilics and Ayleids (notably Auri-El/Akatosh and Xarxes/Arkay)she now ruled.
  • Fallout contains shades of this with few easily defined religions having survived the atomic war. By the time of Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 4 the largest surviving faiths seem to be the Church of Atom that worships nuclear weapons, and some variation of Christianity preserved by the NCR with all others being down to individuals groups. The majority of organized churches seen hold the view of praying to whatever gives the individual comfort rather then being faith specific.
  • Hatoful Boyfriend: The heroine describes herself and her family as Shin-Buddhist, but is perfectly willing to celebrate Christmas if given the opportunity. This is pretty much exactly how real Japanese people treat Christmas.
  • New Era - Old World, an unofficial spin-off of After the End set in the Old World has a few flavors:
    • Muwahidunna is an Islamic sect located in Sahara, which preaches that all monotheistic religions of the world follow the same God and, as such, are all brothers which shouldn't fight.
    • Chrislam, the religion of the Nigerian Empire, is a syncretic blend of both Christianity and Islam, incorporating elements of both.
    • Yugoslavism of well, Yugoslavia, is a blend of Catholicism, Orthodoxy and Sunni Islam, attempting to bring peace to a crumbling Empire.
  • Nexus Clash: Angels each follow one of three Elder Powers, only one of whom can win the battle to shape the next world. However, since every Angel is a Player Character and most players don't identify with specific Elder Powers, most Angels just identify with Good generally, regardless of which Power it says they follow on their character sheet.
  • Oracle of Tao has a strange mix of Shintoism, Taoism, and Christianity. They call it Aiken (based on Japanese ai ken, not Clay Aiken). It's basically very heavily into nature and love (and ancestor worship).
  • The Outer Worlds: Scientism is a weird mix of Christian Scientist, Taoism, Confician Philosophy, and megacorporate Cargo Cult. It is supposedly the culmination of Deist philosophy, a purely logical religion that worships the laws of physics themselves... but it's pretty clearly more intended to keep everyone controlled and obeying their superiors.
  • Rift: In the backstory, the Guardians, made up of humans, high elves, and dwarfs, had all at one point worshipped the five gods separately. But when the Dragon of Death, Regulos, had tried to invade Telara, the gods came together to form the Vigil, and now all three races worship all five of the gods together.
  • Silent Hill: Although never fully explained, the Order of Silent Hill was born through an amalgamation of Christianity and some sort of Native American religion. According to an in-universe book in Silent Hill 3, when white settlers arrived at the place that would become Silent Hill, they appropriated the religion of a Native tribe who fled the place. The religion has a supreme deity, angels, priests, etc., but their human sacrifice ritual is reminiscent of the Aztec religion. "God" is implied to be an evolution of a Native deity that personified crows, an animal revered as a trickster in many real-life Native religions.
  • Solatorobo's Oshilasama seems to be one part the Buddhist-Shinto amalgam common to Japan and one part Functional Magic. Oh, and something about an evil dog-god who loses his powers if you turn his statues upside-down.
  • Shadowrun: Hong Kong: Ten-Armed Ambrose shares that his sister was a practitioner of Trans-Catholicism, a mix of Catholicism and Hinduism. With the academic etiquette, your character knows some prayers for it.
    "Ambrose silently bows his head as you recite a string of words in Sanskrit and Latin, invoking Karen to rejoin the Trans-Catholic concept of universal oneness: the Atma Brahma of the Holy Ghost."
  • Siren 1 has the local religion of Hanuda, which combines village and Japanese folklore with Christianity and worship of an "alien god" who the locals ate during a famine and whose new physical incarnation serves as the final boss of the game.

    Webcomics 
  • Freefall: Omniquantism is the idea that if God is omnipotent and all things are possible, then it is possible that all religions are correct simultaneously. One in three A.I.s lock up after hearing the concept, Florence managed to make sense of it though.
  • Homestuck: Gamzee's religion seems to be based around Christianity, with a little Islam for flavour (he gets very upset about seeing video depictions of his Messiahs), and perhaps with a little Judaism (his ancestor was responsible for the persecution of the Troll Jesus), mixed up with stoner / hippie culture, and then all applied to Juggalo fandom. A parody, obviously. Word of God is that is was inspired by an Eldritch Abomination and his Manipulative Bastard Dragon, arguably making it a Religion of Evil.
  • Koan of the Day: The guru is an amalgamation of Jesus, the Buddha, and Socrates.
  • Last Res0rt: Pangaeism, the most politically correct religion ever, is briefly mentioned. Apparently they have a minor holy war every time a new species is contacted and the scripture needs to be revised to include their mythology.
  • Rusty and Co.: There are enough Odd Job Gods from different pantheons that they group up to offer themed LLC (Limited Liability Congregation) spellcasting packages to worshippers.
    Derek the Cleric: Before, if you wanted to worship, say, the Sun, you had to compare plans with Apollo, Mitra, Ra, Shamesh, Surya, and like a dozen others... Now you'd just sign up for a general Sun-worshipping package, and the gods invested in it will share the devotion and spell-granting duties among themselves.
  • Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: Generic Temple allows its worshipers to pick and choose their own beliefs for the explicit purpose of psychological relief.
  • Sinfest: The Eastern Dragon is a living embodiment of all East Asian religions.
  • xkcd: In one strip, Cueball apparently goes to church on Christmas and Easter, and rest of his time is at the mosque. When Megan expresses doubts about this system, he claims that his rabbi swears it's legit.

    Websites 
  • Gaia Online: Parodied by the Church of Non-Specific Worship. This may exist because one plotline has shown that not only do Physical Gods exist in Gaia, they're numerous and varied enough to make categorization and organized religion difficult.
  • SCP Foundation: Several examples:
    • SCP-3004 is a horrific form of this: an old cicada-based nature deity that found itself syncretized with the Christian God by missionaries to win over its cult. Unfortunately, this worked too well, as this meant the cicada god itself was convinced it was the Christian God, and is essentially trying to replace God as the central figure of Christianity—and it doesn't help that it also conflated the idea of venerating Jesus's sacrifice with just venerating pain and torture in general. This manifests in abrupt and inexplicable instances of staunch Christians and churchgoers performing bizarre sacrificial rituals that usually end in live cicadas crawling out of someone's orifices.
    • The Fifthist Church is this trope played for a different type of horror. The Church's central tenet is something about transcending reality and assimilating into the mysterious 'Fifth World', which is so alien that the only way they can relate to normal human belief systems is by co-opting a kludge of whatever beliefs are common to the area, some astral symbolism and Lovecraftian themes. A lot of modern Fifthist cults take a New-Age Retro Hippie look, but there's versions that appropriate Christianity, Buddhism, Communism, Aztec polytheism, Confucianism, self-help books, chapstick sales, and every other belief system under the sun. The general effect is to highlight how creepy the Fifthists are.
    • The Horizon Initiative is an organization created in 1960s from sects in the main three branches of Abrahamic religion as a response to the growing threat of anomalous activities. The group's primary goal is the unification of the Abrahamic religions and the recovery or destruction of religious anomalous objects; their sacred scripture, the Universal Texts, is a result of attempting to reconcile the revelations of the various branches of the Abrahamic tree with each other and anomalous events. They are generally inimical to anomalous religions like the Church of the Broken God and the Fifthists, although in one potential timeline the Initiative and the Church conclude that the God of Abraham and Mekhane are in fact the same being and merge.

    Web Videos 

    Western Animation 
  • Futurama plays with a somewhat joke-y version of this trope in the First Amalgamated Church, headed by Father Changstein El-Gamal. Supposedly created from the merging of major 20th century religions —Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism as well as agnosticism— and the logo shows it. Differs from more serious examples in that part of the joke appears to be that the Church doesn't have even a semi-coherent belief system and mostly just tries to be as generically 'spiritual-ish' as possible.
    Father Changstein El-Gamal: Dearly liked, we stand here before one or more gods, or fewer; to join this couple in pretty good matrimony. If anyone objects to this union, may they speak now, or forever hold their peace; or do something else.
  • God's Gang is a cartoon about an interfaith-themed crime-fighting superhero team.
  • The Simpsons:
    • The only thing you can definitively say about Reverend Lovejoy's church is that it's some variety of Protestantism. In an episode where Bart and Homer convert to Catholicism, the Rev describes the One True Faith as being "the Western Branch of the Reformed Church of American Presbilutheranism".
    • Ned Flanders confesses in one episode that he's "kept Kosher to be on the safe side."

    Real Life 
  • Historically, most non-monotheistic religions tended to assume that the deities or spirits of newly-encountered cultures were either foreign names for their own gods, in which case they would just continue revering them, or new deities, in which case it made sense to get on their good side as well. Exactly what the relationship between the various pantheons was depended on the priests, but most laity simply accepted that All Myths Are True until their local priest told them otherwise.
    • The ancient Canaanites believed that the gods of other pantheons they were aware of (such as those of Egypt and Greece) were the children or cousins of their own gods.
    • Ancient Roman religion accrued a large number of deities in this way as the empire expanded. In addition to syncretizing most Latin and Greek gods, several Egyptian deities developed well-established cults among the Romans, as did the Iranian god Mithras.
    • In the Middle Ages, missionaries found it fairly easy to convince the Norse to take up worship of Jesus. Getting them to also stop worshipping the Aesir was the hard part. In Iceland, for instance, it was common for people to worship Jesus at home and to then pray to Thor before setting off at sea.
    • It helps that polytheistic pantheons often included the same basic archetypes (Love Goddess, War God, patriarch deity in the sky etc.) and thus could easily be mashed together by explaining the foreign gods as alternate names for your own pantheon, as the Romans were particularly fond of doing, especially with their War God Mars, whom they believed themselves to be descended from.
    • According to historians, the Roman, Greek, and other nearby faiths really are different branches of an earlier Proto-Indo-European religion as they had developed after the conquerors merged with local peoples and developed in isolation over centuries. Calling them alternative names for the same god is, more or less, true.
  • Certain Unitarian Universalist congregations can end up like this. Since UUism rejects the idea of central dogma in favor of emphasizing the value of spiritual community, nothing stops any individual from being a Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Pagan or even atheist/agnostic and still a practicing UU. It's not too far from the truth to joke that UUs begin their prayers with "To whom it may concern..."
  • Messianic Judaism, which combines the main tenets of Judaism with a belief in Yeshua, or Jesus as Messiah. Most Jews consider Messianics to be simply Christians by another name, or at worst, disguised proselytizers.
  • The proper term for this trope is Syncretism. As you can see, there are enough examples of it in Real Life.
  • Manichaeism claimed its prophet Mani as a successor to Zoroaster, Gautama Buddha, and Jesus.
  • In the 19th century, it was very common among scholars of world religions to seek a complete understanding of God by bringing the knowledge of all religions together to create a unified whole. While certainly admirable, religious authorities of all religions were mostly unimpressed and didn't share the belief that other religions had anything to contribute to their models. However, such pluralism is quite popular in liberal religious circles now, and it's fairly standard to hold that "all religions are a path to God".
  • The independent/noncanonicalnote  Eastern Orthodox denomination named the Evangelical Orthodox Church that blends Orthodoxy with Protestant (mainly Evangelical and Charismaticnote ) elements, and their current mission is to spread their religious beliefs through the world. There are currently 120 churches under the EOC and most are in Burundi.
  • Very common in East Asian cultures. While Judaism, Islam, and several modern denominations of Christianity forbid syncretism, major East Asian religions like Shintoism, Buddhism, and Taoism have no such restrictions. Sikhism also explicitly declares that no religion (including itself) can hold a monopoly on the divine truth. For instance, most Japanese religious people are Shinto Buddhists.
    • Similarly, during the Middle Ages and even into the early 20th century, a form of Christian syncretism was common enough among the educated classes. Greek and Norse and Celtic and other ancient European pagan gods were often reinterpreted as Christian angels who had been mistakenly worshiped (whereas the gods of other parts of the world were often assumed to be demons who had been mistakenly worshiped) or reinterpreted as Christian saints who had been deified against their will.
    • The Mune Shinri, a web-based religion, is a syncretic blend of Taoism, Shintoism, and Christianity. If Christianity forbids syncretism, and Taoism allows it, does that make it right or wrong?
  • The Baha'i faith recognizes the prophets of a wide range of other religions (including Moses, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, and others) and claims that they all founded "the religion that was necessary (and possible) at the time", in a scheme for humanity's collective evolution, whereas Baha'i is (obviously) the appropriate religion for our own time. The actual belief system seems to be a syncretic mish-mash of (primarily) the monotheistic religions, with all the nasty bits taken out and a pinch of rationality and egalitarianism thrown in.
  • The currently under-construction Temple of All Religions in Russia aims to offer services for all religions.
  • Chapels in public facilities such as hospitals or airports have to accommodate anyone who wants to visit and pray, regardless of their religion. So they can become like this simply out of necessity— if four patients' families are Muslim, Hindu, Catholic, and Protestant, it can make for a rather eclectic prayer service.
  • Interfaith families often practice a mix of both parents' religions. A Jewish/Christian family, for example, might celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah.
  • This concept actually played quite an important role in initially winning over the Turkic and Mongol tribes to Islam, as the belief in Tengri was close enough to an Abrahamic monotheism that Turkic tribes such as the Volga Bulgars were able to look upon Islam and see a basically more refined version of their traditional religion.
    • The Mongol ruler Ghazan of the Ilkhanate also converted to Islam and argued that his ancestors' veneration of Tengri was actually a form of proto-Islamic religion.
    • Also employed in the Dastans of Dada Korkut, a collection of sagas regarding Oghuz Hakaan, the mythical father of the Turkic peoples, where it is said that Dada Korkut (a figure similar to Merlin, or Odin) is said to have journeyed to Madinah where he spoke with Muhammad (PBUH) and accepted Islam, carrying that religion back to his people in the steppes. Over time, that belief in Islam was misinterpreted as the worship of the sky god Tengri. It's quite clear that this was added by Turkic chroniclers sometime after their conversion to Islam in order to mitigate their pagan past.
  • The conversions of many formerly pagan areas to Christianity resulted in a lot of this.
    • Mexico's Día de Muertos combines the Catholic All Saint's Day with an Aztec festival.
    • South American Catholics often practice what were originally Incan religious festivals. For example, the parades with the statues of the Holy Family and major saints were originally done with the mummies of Incan kings.
    • What little we know of Slavic pagan beliefs comes mostly from extrapolation backwards from records of Slavic/Christian syncretism. The Slavs seem to have initially taken Christianity as simply an afterlife, while still paying obeisance to pagan spirits in day-to-day life.
    • Several Afro-Caribbean faiths mix Catholicism with the native religions of enslaved Africans: Yoruba in the case of Santería; Ewe, Fon and related cultures in the case of Voudoun; and so on.
  • There is a lot of debate over whether Christmas originated as a syncretic co-option of pagan celebrations such as Saturnalia, Dies Soli Invicti and Yule. While today this is mainly brought forward by neo-pagans to argue that it was a plot to suppress their own faiths, historically this argument was primarily used by Protestants to denounce the 'impurity' of Catholicism. Prior to the mid-18th century (and in places, well into the 19th), some Protestant sects rejected all religious holidays except Easter (and even then often preferred to called it the Celebration of the Resurrection, as the name 'Easter' was seen as syncretism) and went to great lengths to reject Christmas and Halloween in particular. This even reappeared in the 20th century among a number of Christian sects and offshoots, especially those in the Charismatic and Millenarian movements.
  • This trope was — partially — the reason why Japan was so eager to convert to Buddhism. Before that, each clan was assumed to have its own deities and the power of each kami was closely tied with the family's standing. So, when Buddhist missionaries from Korea started to preach about this "Buddha" — who's said to be stronger than everything else — some people were more than eager to adopt him as their personal Olympus Mons.
    • This became a key component in the founding of Japanese religious group Happy Science, which blends Buddhism, Shinto, Christianity, and other known religions into a New Age framework, in which a lineage of figures (La Mu, Hermes, Ophealis, Thoth, Rient Arl Croud, and Buddha), are reincarnations of the cult's patron god, El Cantare. However, Buddha is highly regarded for finding the secret to defeat demonkind once and for all, with the cult's late founder, Ryuho Okawa, being worshipped as his reincarnation.
  • The Lord's Resistance Army is a heterodox Christian terrorist group operating in Uganda, Central African Republic, Sudan and South Sudan that practices a bizarre mixture of Christianity and Acholi mysticism. Their leader Joseph Kony is a former Catholic altar boy turned Dark Messiah whose aim is to establish a theonomy based on the Ten Commandments. This isn't unique to the LRA, though. A lot of other cultures across the continent have syncretized their native traditions with Christianity or Islam, usually with more benign results than what Kony thought up.
  • The "God Worshipping Society" of Qing Dynasty China mashed up elements of Protestant Christianity with Chinese folk religion, at the hands of Hong Xiuquan, who claimed to be the second son of the Judeo-Christian God (and thus Jesus' younger brother) and also considered God to be the true Chinese emperor. This spawned the 14-year-long Taiping Rebellion, with the commonly estimated death toll being 30 million.note 
  • From a review of Cursed Britain: 
A History of Witchcraft and Black Magic in Modern Times by Thomas Waters:
    Since Waters is covering the whole period from 1800 to the present, he has to include the story of Wicca, a religion constructed in the Fifties by a retired civil servant, Gerald Gardner, out of “freemasonry, high Victorian occultism, eastern spirituality, nudism, Malayan knife-work and domestic folklore”. (Unfortunately the role of those Malayan knives is not explained.)
  • Aleister Crowley's Thelema religion was intended to be a unification of all mystical knowledge. To that end, a number of its beliefs and practices are incorporated from various Abrahamic ceremonial magic traditions (most notably Hermeticism, Gnosticism, Sufism and Kabbalah), various polytheistic sects (especially the one of ancient Egypt), Hinduism and Taoism.
  • Elvis Presley was known to wear a necklace with a cross, star of David, and Hebrew Chai symbol on it; when asked about this, he said he didn't want to miss out on Heaven on a technicality.
  • The last act of the Viking King, Rollo the Walker (who founded Normandy and who had converted to Christianity for political reasons), before he died was to donate 100.000 silver coins to the Church and to sacrifice 100 prisoners to Odin. Apparently he wanted to keep his bases covered.
  • Military Chaplains can fall into this due to a lack of available options. Usually they just administer to different sects of the same religion, but in a pinch, will provide their best attempts for military personnel outside of their faith. The good ones tend to plan for such an occasion. There are chaplains on university campuses as well, especially for those in small towns where there are unlikely to be holy places for minority religions.

Alternative Title(s): Religion Chop Suey, Syncretism, Syncretic Religion, Syncretic Faith, Mix And Match Religion

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