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by petsfed
542 days ago
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I think, in a technical sense, you're right. But the difference between ancestor veneration (especially semi-legendary ancestor veneration) and veneration of a pantheon of lower-tier dieties is practically nonexistent. Its a distinction without difference. Nobody hesitates to call Shintoism polytheistic, and its core practices, to an outsider, seem strikingly similar to how a Christian, especially a Roman Catholic, interacts with the saints. |
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But overall in any case I think it's sometimes valuable to think of christianity this way and sometimes not. It is a syncretic religion so of course it has regional variations and contradictory remnants of absorbed practices. IIRC some of the specific saint traditions, like icons in the home, predate christianity in the mediterranean.
But on the other hand there are practices and relationships common in true polytheistic religions that you don't see in christianity at all. If taking the saints as minor deities, you don't find sects exalting one of them exclusively, nor do you see individual christians "defect" from one saint to another for personal advantage. There's no theology of competition or opposition between the saints to base such practices on at all. So there are limits to the usefulness of this perspective too.
The shintoism example is interesting, I'll need to look more into it. I had considered it polytheistic but now that I think about it I haven't read shinto writings on the subject so I don't know if most shinto practitioners experience it that way. Outside perspectives aren't completely invalid of course but they aren't as interesting to me as how believers experience their own religions.