once again weighing if I want to talk about 'folk Christianity' as it's discussed here on Tumblr.
@kaleb-is-definitely-sane since you asked -
I'm speaking as a several-generations "folk" Christian, both on the Native and white settler sides of my family. I have multiple ancestresses who practiced a mysticism-heavy, sometimes-syncretized-with-traditional-religion low-church Protestantism that comes with family stories of a number of minor miracles and signs of holiness (curing illnesses, handling hot objects without being burned, healing wounds, clairvoyance, etc). I have one ancestress who I know was essentially a conjure woman and was called a witch by her son-in-law because of her practice and her abilities, and from what I can tell she was the last of my Native family to truly hold on to some aspects of traditional beliefs. She herself identified as Christian, though, and that's important because
most of the people we take our "folk" practices from or "folk" identity from considered themselves ordinary Christians. superstitions around eggshells and apple peels, divination through cartomancy, snapdragon and other fortune telling games, candle spells, iron and salt, invocations to saints that may or may not be syncretized pre-Christian gods - all of those things were, for the people doing them, Ordinary Orthodox Christianity, because they were doing them as Christians in the name of Jesus. they didn't self-define as Christian witches, and they didn't consider themselves folk Christians or folk Catholics. Christianity was a big enough tent for their practice. By insisting that these things are only present in folk Christianity, you're diminishing the lived experiences of your own ancestors.
"folk" is useful in an academic context, but only in an academic context. since the people doing these things generally consider themselves Ordinary Christians, rather than some special category of "folk" Christian, it's best I think to see them as examples of what the faith can be (within reason - polytheism, for example, or co-opting witchcraft's praxis rather than drawing on enculturated Christian traditions, could be argued to be outside the tent) rather than as something beyond the faith.
a lot of people on Tumblr seem to use "folk Christian/Catholic" as an excuse to do I Can't Believe It's Not Witchcraft and introduce polytheism into their practice. there are things that are distinctly neopagan that a lot of folk Christians/Catholics do, simply because those things look cool and they want to do it. creating an altar in the neopagan style, divining through the Ryder-Waite tarot, sage and crystals, occasionally "venerating"/praying to other gods outright (almost always 'mother goddesses' plus Aphrodite, treating Mary as one aspect of a Great Mother Goddess or as one goddess among many) - none of that is "folk" Christianity, it's straightforwardly copied from neopaganism, which in many cases copied from the original folk Christianity because most of the ancestral traditions that 20th and 21st century Anglophone Protestants associated with ancient witchcraft were just enculturated Catholicism. it's a game of telephone.
a lot of white people seem to use "folk Christian/Catholic" as a Get Out Of Guilt Free Card. it's never explicitly stated, but there's often a vibe of "see, my Christianity is the legitimate, woke, cool, hip Christianity!" running through all of this as an undercurrent. traditional Christianity is racist, homophobic, conservative. folk Christianity is edgy, underground, witchy, woke, affirming to queer people. traditional Christianity did a lot of bad shit to a lot of people. folk Christianity didn't do any of that, it's Totally Different. you can't say I'm part of this group of people who are responsible for those atrocities. I don't even think this is being done consciously! I think it's pretty clearly unconscious! But it comes up just about everywhere. Being queer-affirming or antiracist or what have you seems to be going hand in hand with folk Christianity. This is wildly out of touch with real life - enculturated Catholicism is often the most socially conservative and actively homophobic branch of the faith around, because tradition and ancestral culture do not go hand in hand with progressive causes. (The idea that they do go hand in hand is, once again, a consequence of the 20th century neopagan movement and the assertion by modern witches that they're part of an Actually Totally Real Progressive Reconstruction Movement for a faith that was pro-queer and pro-abortion and anticolonial and all that stuff that's ancient and predates [checks notes] the Epic of Gilgamesh.)
you probably already have some folk practices and family/culture-specific folk Christianity! any family that's been Christian for multiple generations will have specific family lore or recipes or family beliefs, and every culture leaves its own mark on Christianity. you don't have to adopt neopagan praxis for that to be something you incorporate into your daily life! in fact you probably shouldn't, because God has told us pretty clearly how we're supposed to interact with Him.
it's genuinely okay to just be an ordinary Christian guys. like it's so okay. it's aggressively okay. it's So Okay.
Additionally, Folk Christianity is regional. As an amateur folklorist, I've read a lot about British folk Christianity, and one of the things that sticks out is that folk Christianity varied greatly even within countries, never mind between them. For example, my local saint, St. Wistan, was (as far as I know) never venerated outside of the English Midlands, much less outside of England. And there are even more region-locked saints, such as St. Walstan, who was only venerated in the county of Norfolk, and St. Sidwella, who was only venerated in the city of Exeter and the surrounding area.
Whenever I see a self-identified folk Christian, I always want to ask "folk Christianity from where? Poland? Mexico? Italy? Some other place" There's no ageographical folk Christianity any more than ageographical folk music.
