Syncretism
In Sid Meyer’s Civilization V, choosing “syncretism” to be an aspect of your religion will yield you a bonus whenever you conquer new cities.
In the video game Civilization V, choosing “syncretism” as an aspect of their religion will yield the player a bonus whenever he conquers new cities. Not for nothing—syncretism is the religion of empires. Especially global empires, like the one we live in.
Religion comprises two things—our relationship with God (i.e. spirituality) and our relationship with society (i.e. norms).
Spirituality is universal across humans, but norms are (by definition) particular to societies. Rules cannot be done away with—you must follow some norms to have a society, and you must have a society to have spirituality.
The People of the Twenty-first Century tend to ignore norms in favour of the spiritual aspect of religion, because (1) they are uncomfortable with rules and exclusiveness, and (2) because we live in a global society, and while rules are local, spirituality is (more or less) global.
Things like the Baháʼí Faith—a hodgepodge of virtually all religions—may make sense to their followers because most religions try to grasp the same capital-T Truth.
But the Baháʼí-style syncretism is also kinda cringe because deep down we know that religions must carry some societal rules, and rules are mutually exclusive or contradictory across different faiths.
You can read the Quran as a Christian, and you may read Hamlet as a Buddhist. But you gotta still pick one: you are either allowed to have seven wives or not, and your seven wives can either cook pork stew for you or not.
