essential to diplomats, policymakers, tourists, businesspeople, and many others. It
is the type of geography every well-informed person should carry with them in
the form of amental map. This point was perhaps made best by the writer James
Michener in his essayThe Queenly Science:If I were a young man with any talent for expressing myself, and if I wanted
to make myself indispensable to my society, I would devote eight to ten years
to the real mastery of one of the earth’s major regions. I would learn lan-
guages, the religions, the customs, the value systems, the history, the nation-
alisms, and above all the geography, and when that was completed I would
be in position to write about that region, and I would be invaluable to my
nation, for I would be the bridge of understanding to the alien culture. We
have seen how crucial such bridges can be.The “region,” one of the oldest spatial concepts in geography, was also the first to
attempt to organize the world into logical patterns that may be studied, analyzed,
and perhaps to some degree, understood. At the fundamental level, this under-
standing is what all scholarship in geography continues to strive for today.Religious Syncretism
Religious syncretism occurs when the characteristics of two or more faiths blend
to alter one of the faiths, or to create a completely new religion. This is usually
the result ofcultural diffusion, when a new religious worldview encounters the
established set of sacred precepts already present in a givenregion. The process
of syncretization, or the incorporation of new rituals, dogma, or concepts, may
be voluntary or enforced. The process of religious syncretism frequently leads to
alterations in thesacred spaceof a location, as new religious structures may be
built, or existing ones changed to suit the changes brought about by the integration
of new beliefs. This may involve the establishment of entirely new sacred loca-
tions, or it may mean the use of previous sacred spaces, but with a modification
of their former characteristics, relevance, or importance in the new religious sys-
tem. Religious syncretism is often viewed by at least some believers as a threat
to the “purity” of religion, and an attack on orthodoxy and tradition. Those who
support the syncretic process are sometimes labeled heretics and accused of under-
mining the principles of the faith. However, most faiths indicate at least some
ideas or practices that have been borrowed from other religious traditions, and
the process of religious syncretism may be so subtle and lengthy that it is not282 Religious Syncretism