The 20th century continues to generate important Christian myths and legend-based practices, including pilgrimages made on Marian feast days to holy wells and fairy rings outside the Irish town of Sneed and devotions at the tomb of Christ in Japan, where, according to local legend, Christ ended his long life of missionary travels that began after his mock death in Jerusalem. These acts and the legendary explanations that accompany them detail the impact of Christian salvation on present-day reality. In all the cultures where Christianity has been propagated, myth and legend express the fulfillment of the religious desires and hopes that constituted the religious traditions in the local culture before contact with Christian revelation. The following examples suggest their variety and vitality.

The healing of sickness is, as it was in the time of the New Testament, a sign of the coming of the Kingdom of Christ in its fullness. In Africa, for example, many so-called Independent Churches creatively reinterpret disease and rites of cure along Christian lines. In Douala, Cameroon, during the 1980s, two healing prophets named Mallah and Marie-Lumière divided their disciples into groups named for the important categories of illness described in the Gospels: the Blind, the Halt, the Lame, the Deaf, the Epileptic, the Dumb, and the Paralyzed. Their disciples evidenced none of these physical symptoms, but they were asked to identify deep within themselves with the affliction described in the Gospel, so that salvation might touch them in their inner being. By becoming sick, they could be healed and thus join the elect. In lengthy sermons the healing prophets re-imagined traditional African religious imagery and refashioned it in the light of Christian belief. Their experience of the peculiar mystical disorders afforded a basis for social regrouping and for rethinking the past and present.

The Christian expression of sacred music and trance is often grounded in legend or myth. In Brazil, for example, Macumba, Candomblé, and other Afro-Brazilian cults have roots sunk deep into the religions of African slaves transplanted to the New World. Afro-Brazilian rites often centre on possession by a supernatural being, called an orixá. The innumerable orixás are ranked in hierarchies modeled on the pantheons of the Yoruba people of West Africa, among others. In Brazil (and in much of Afro-American religious life of the Americas), each orixá is identified with a specific Christian saint. In the Umbanda cult of Brazil, the altars hold small plaster images of the Christian saints associated with the orixás. Each one of the saints presides over a domain of human activity or over a disease, social group, geographic area, or craft. For example, Omolú, the god of smallpox, is identified with St. Lazarus, whose body, in Christian legend, is pocked with sores. Who heals diseases of the skin? Oxossi, who is the Yoruba god of hunting associated with the bellicose St. George or St. Michael, the slayers of dragons and other demonic monsters. Yansan, who ate the “magic” of her husband and now spits up lightning, is associated with St. Barbara, whose father was struck by lightning when he tried to force her to give up her Christian faith. In the worship site each orixá has its own stone, which is peculiarly shaped, colored, or textured; arranged in a distinctive position on the altar; and identified with the Cross of Christ. A single saint may be identified with several orixá or vice-versa. Regions vary the saintly identifications and some designations shift over time. Each orixá has its own musical rhythms and sounds. When called by drums, dance, and music, the supernatural being may take over the possessed medium, reveal valued information, and carry out effective symbolic acts on behalf of the community.

European communities continue to be fascinated with the rigorous asceticism of St. Anthony of Egypt, who repulsed wild beasts, reptiles, and other assaults and remained steadfast in his faith. He is considered the patron of domestic animals, and in many parts of Italy, the drama of the feast of St. Anthony, historically associated with the winter solstice, rivals any other feast day of the Christian calendar. To celebrate that festival in Fara Filiorum Petri, a town in the Abruzzi region of Italy, the townspeople ignite enormous bonfires on the night of January 16. Each of the 12 outlying hamlets brings into the main town's square a bundle (farchia) of long poles. Set on end, the bundles are lashed together to form a single tall mass, an act that commemorates the historical union of the mountain settlements as one bonded community. Then the bundles of farchie, 15 or more feet high, are set ablaze. The fire cleanses the community and holds at bay the evil forces of sickness and death. As the fire dies down, young men jump through the purifying flames. Spectators carry remnants of the blessed fire back to their homes, spreading the ashes in their stalls and on their fields.

The birth of Christ is still a focus for traditions of legends and myths that maintain their autonomous existence outside of the ecclesiastical institutions. In rural Romania, for instance, on Christmas Eve groups of young carolers (colindatori) proceed from house to house in the village, singing and collecting gifts of food. Often these carolers impersonate the saints, especially John, Peter, George, and Nicholas. The words of their songs (colinde) describe legendary heroes who carry the sun and wear the moon on their clothes. They live in paradisal worlds and subdue monstrous animals in order to leave the world free from harm and ready to renew itself in the fertile acts of spring.

These symbolic reenactments of legend often experiment with alternative social orders and criticize or reverse existing divisions of class and prestige. In Sicilian-American communities of Texas, Louisiana, California, and elsewhere, the female head of the household dedicates and displays an altar to St. Joseph and thus fulfills promises made in a moment of need. (Normally, in Roman Catholicism, a priest who is a celibate male presides at the liturgy and at devotional services.) In this case, however, a woman presides, together with other women who assist her. She prepares fruit, hard-boiled eggs, cakes, fig-filled pastries, pies, and special breads and uses them to decorate a series of tiers stretching from floor to ceiling. She also arranges on this festival altar the figurines of saints, the Virgin Mary, and the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The construction of this panorama of fruitfulness takes nine days, a period that constitutes a ritual novena of prayer and devout action. Representative act in the accompanying ceremony. They play the roles of the Holy Family and other saints important to the altar display. Re-creating the Holy Family's search for a room in a Bethlehem inn on the night of the Nativity, the ritual drama builds toward the moment when the altar-giver opens her home to Joseph and Mary. As Mother Mary prepares to give birth to Jesus, the hostess readies her home, heart, and community so that they may become fit dwelling places for the sacred being. The presiding women play the roles of Magi-Kings bearing gifts of food and hospitality to the Holy Family and their entourage, which includes most of the neighboring community. A single family can host from 500 to 1,000 people during the feast that terminates the celebration.

Sometimes the new Christian mythologies function as counter-theologies or theologies of resistance to the impositions of the Roman Catholic Christian culture, or, the protestant as well. They are contrary to the Christian missionary enterprise even while they embrace aspects of the new religion. For instance, biblical and Christian themes now occupy a large part of the mythology of the Makiritare Indians in the upper Orinoco River region of Venezuela. For them, Wanadi is the Supreme Being of great light and, although one being, he exists in three distinct persons (damodede, “spirit-doubles”). Over the course of creation and human history, Wanadi has sent his three incarnations to earth in order to create human beings and redeem them from the darkness into which they have fallen. In the end, Wanadi, the god incarnate who comes to save humankind, is crucified by mythical monsters called Fañuru (from the Spanish españoles: “Spaniards”), as instigated by evil being called Fadre (from the Spanish padre: “father” or “priest”). To all outward appearances, Wanadi was slain by the Fañurus, but, in fact, he cuts his own insides out, and, allows his inner spirit (akato) to dance free of his dead, cast-off body. Before Wanadi's spirit ascends into heaven, he gathers his 12 disciples about him and promises that he will return in a new and glorious body to destroy the evil world and create a new earth.

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