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Name
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The Accommodation
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Description
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The genius of the Manx church: each arriving culture adapted to what was already there rather than replacing it. Christianity settled beside the holy wells. The Norse built their parliament on sacred ground. The ritual year wove both traditions together so tightly that by the eighteenth century nobody could have said where Christianity ended and the older religion began. The early missionaries did not suppress the older world. Moore explained the mechanism: the early teachers of Christianity encouraged belief in charms against fairies and witches as a means of diverting their converts from the worship of nature. The clergy knew that to preach against the existence of fairies would make the people refractory. So they did not try. The accommodation was not a compromise. It was a way of being in the landscape.
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Type
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Theology
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Cultural Practice
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Source
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Moore, Folk-lore (1891), Ch. VII
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Waldron
