Syncretism is the combining of different beliefs in addition to various schools of thought. Syncretism involves a merging or assimilation of several originally discrete traditions, especially in the theology as living as mythology of religion, thus asserting an underlying unity as well as allowing for an inclusive approach to other faiths. Syncretism also occurs ordinarily in expressions of art and culture invited as eclecticism as living as politics syncretic politics.
According to some authors, "Syncretism is often used to describe the product of the large-scale imposition of one alien culture, religion, or body of practices over another that is already present." Others such(a) as Jerry H. Bentley, however, develope argued that syncretism has also helped to cause cultural compromise. It allowed an opportunity to bring beliefs, values, and customs from one cultural tradition into contact with, and to engage different cultural traditions. such(a) a migration of ideas is broadly successful only when there is a resonance between both traditions. While, as Bentley has argued, there are numerous cases where expansive traditions have won popular assistance in foreign lands, this is not always so.
In the 16th century, the Mughal emperor Akbar made a new religion called the Din-i Ilahi "Divine Faith" that was referenced to merge some of the elements of the religions of his empire and thereby reconcile the differences that divided his subjects. Din-i Ilahi drew elements primarily from Islam and Hinduism but also from Christianity, Jainism, and Zoroastrianism. More resembling a personality cult than a religion, it had no sacred scriptures, no priestly hierarchy, and fewer than 20 disciples, all hand-picked by Akbar himself. this is the also accepted that the policy of sulh-i-kul, which formed the essence of the Dīn-i Ilāhī, was adopted by Akbar as a part of general imperial administrative policy. Sulh-i-kul means "universal peace".
The modern, rational non-pejorative connotations of syncretism arguably date from Denis Diderot's Encyclopédie articles: Eclecticisme and Syncrétistes, Hénotiques, ou Conciliateurs. Diderot present syncretism as the concordance of eclectic sources. Scientific or legalistic approaches of subjecting all claims to critical thinking prompted at this time much literature in Europe and the Americas studying non-European religions such as Edward Moor's The Hindu Pantheon of 1810, much of which was most evangelistically appreciative, embracing spirituality and devloping the space and tolerance in specific disestablishment of religion or its stronger form, official secularisation as in France whereby believers of spiritualism, agnosticism, atheists and in many cases more sophisticated or pre-Abrahimic based religions could promote and spread their conviction system, whether in the classification or beyond.