During the 1980s, as the contradictions of communist rule became increasingly clear in Eastern Europe, younger, radicalized priests pushed senior echelons of the Church hierarchy toward opposition to governmental authoritarianism and human rights violations. In Poland, for example, combative priests strongly identified with society's aspirations to achieve basic political and social freedoms, and took the leading role in the creation and consolidation of representative social movements. The formation of Solidarity in 1980 was strongly influenced by the Pope's visit to Poland in 1979, which coincided with the emergence of a number of Catholic grassroots organizations. It was an essentially biblical radicalism, often melded with facets of Marxism-Leninism as in the case of Base Christian Communities, which stimulated a number of Catholic priests and Protestant ministers to champion the concerns of the poor in Latin America beginning in the 1960s. Our third category, syncretistic religious movements, is found predominantly among certain rural dwellers in parts of the Third World.
Syncretic movements involve a fusion or blending of religions.
They feature a number of elements found in more traditional forms of religious association, such as ancestor worship and healing practices. In northern and sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, more or less syncretistic versions of Islam, called sufism, have evolved which meld traditional religious beliefs with Islamic norms. The conversion to Christianity was seen by many Africans as a necessary step to acquire education and jobs in the modern sector. Centres of missionary activity offered these to induce conversion. Thus, conversion was predominantly instrumental and did not necessarily involve spiritual transformation from traditional to European religious beliefs.