Humans are pattern-seeking creatures. We like to place things and people into categories. This is especially true of our modern society, with its rules and complexity and organization. We often refer to people as residents of a particular country. We say they have a specific ethnicity. We talk about them practicing a certain religion. Every person becomes a list of checkboxes, with one attribute in each column. If we don’t think about it too much, it all seems simple and straightforward.

Yet, if your studies of AP world history—and your own experiences—have taught you anything so far, it’s that real human societies are messy and real people aren’t so easily categorized. People can have multiple citizenships. They can be of mixed ethnicities, with parents or grandparents from all over the world. And, really, people can practice religions that defy the boundaries of what we might easily define as Christianity, or Hinduism, or anything else. They can take ideas from one group, mix them with beliefs from somewhere else, and create practices that are entirely new. In fact, people have been doing this ever since we developed belief systems.

This merging of religions or cultures to create something new is called syncretism. Though it has a long history, syncretism became particularly significant in the creation of new societies in the Americas between 1450 and 1750, as the hemispheres connected and people from the Americas, Europe, and Africa met each other and began to try to understand a rapidly changing world.

The context of cultural and religious syncretism in the early modern Americas

Religious syncretism was created by people. The most important actors in creating syncretic religions were probably people of African descent. That’s because of the specific historical context of the colonial Americas.

When Europeans colonized the Americas, they brought with them various forms of Christianity. First, the Spanish and Portuguese brought Catholicism, and then, later, other Europeans brought Protestant faiths. Many of these later arrivals, like the English Puritans and French Huguenots, were leaving Europe to escape religious persecution. Because these Europeans were mostly voluntary migrants and generally in positions of power as settlers, they were able to preserve their religions, and in fact, they often tried to impose them on the Indigenous Americans and on enslaved Africans.

The people of African descent who migrated to the Americas, on the other hand, had mostly been kidnapped and enslaved. They found themselves in new places, far from their sacred sites, which made it difficult for them to retain their religious rituals and knowledge. Often, they found themselves living among people who had been kidnapped from parts of Africa other than their own, and, sometimes, they lived among Indigenous people. Their oppressors often sought to impose Christian beliefs on them, and to suppress their African belief systems. In this context, mixing Christian practices with their own traditions and knowledge was a way to keep their beliefs alive: Syncretism was a form of cultural survival.

Syncretism was also a form of resistance in the face of slavery and colonialism. By blending traditions into new, hybrid religions like Santería, Vodun, and Candomblé, people protected their identities, formed strong communities, and found strength to endure and push back against oppression. These religions became powerful symbols of resistance to colonial control, helping people stay connected to their roots while enabling them to adapt to new and often brutal circumstances.

Francisca da Silva, who is remembered today by her religious title, Iyá Nassô, is a great example of this process. She was a Yoruba-speaking priestess in late eighteenth-century West Africa, serving the orisha (deity) Shango. Captured in a war, she was forcibly transported to Bahia in Brazil. There, she created at least two shrines to Shango, and later a temple known as the Casa Branca. Although the Portuguese considered her a witch and believed that the religious gatherings she led were a form of witchcraft, by mixing her beliefs with Catholic symbols she was able to build a large community of both free and enslaved worshippers.

Syncretic beliefs and practices

The religious community Francisca da Silva helped to create was called Candomblé, and it mixed religious traditions from as widespread areas of Africa as Congo and Nigeria. Most of the Candomblé deities were from Yoruba orisha, but each was also linked to a Catholic saint. Candomblé also included some Muslim practices brought from West Africa, and it melded these with understandings of sacred places and healing plants gained from Indigenous people of South America, such as the Tupi-Guarani.

Brazilian Candomblé followed some similar patterns to Santería, a belief system that emerged on the island of Cuba. Santería also merged Catholic saints with Yoruba orisha, partly to hide the worship of these gods from Spanish colonial scrutiny. Santería adopted a lot of Catholic prayers and rituals, but it also incorporated ideas of spirit possession and offerings that were familiar to Yoruba-speakers.

Often, syncretic religions did incorporate ideas of a supreme god, one that was either adopted from Christianity or from those African faiths that believed in a single, all-powerful creator figure. Believers in Vodun, a syncretic religion that developed in Haiti and Louisiana, associated many Ewe and Fon spirits with Catholic saints, but also generally believed there was a single paramount god. Vodun, sometimes called Voodoo, was connected to the power of the land, and many of its sacred sites were inherited from Indigenous people such as the Taino.

Not all syncretic religions in the Americas were highly influenced by African beliefs. Some were more a mix of European and Indigenous American belief systems. A good example is the worship of the Virgin of Guadalupe, which emerged in sixteenth-century Mexico. Here, missionaries had aggressively spread the Catholic faith, but some Indigenous belief systems remained. In 1531, the Virgin Mary—a very important figure in Catholicism, as she’s understood to be the mother of Jesus Christ—appeared to an Indigenous Nahua man named Juan Diego. The site where she appeared immediately became holy. Soon, pilgrims began to visit the site, and statues of the Virgin of Guadalupe and other symbols dedicated to her were made for churches and homes. But the site where she appeared was actually a sacred site dedicated to the Aztec goddess Tonantzin. The figure Juan Diego saw had features that were said to be more Indigenous than European, and the message she gave to Juan Diego was given in Nahuatl, not Spanish. More important, the festivals that the local people held in her honor blended Christian and Aztec elements.

Syncretism in an age of slavery and colonialism

Religious syncretism is evidence that, even in oppressive circumstances, people can be enormously innovative. In helping to create Candomblé, Francisca da Silva actively combined her own religious tradition—learned as a Yoruba priestess—with the faiths of other Africans in Bahia, including those of people from what are now Angola, Congo, Benin, and Togo. Partly to avoid persecution, she hid these beliefs behind symbols of Catholicism, but it’s likely that she and her fellow priestesses also just came to appreciate some Catholic practices. She also taught other women to follow after her.

Although the religion she founded thrived, Francisca da Silva’s personal story isn’t a happy one. Her sons were arrested by the Portuguese authorities at a religious gathering. Da Silva petitioned the authorities to exile rather than imprison them, and it was agreed that they would be returned to Africa. Francisca da Silva chose to accompany them, and she was told she could never return to the church she had founded. She had to leave behind the life she had built, the financial success she had found despite every attempt by the Portuguese officials to stop her, and the community she had painstakingly built. The community continued without her, however, and Candomblé—like many other syncretic belief systems—continues to exist today, an example of how religious adaptability can create a community.