While syncretism in terms of the appropriation of saints and religious iconography as a mask or cover for other religious concepts has been well documented, there is another register of syncretism that is less explored. This is when the rituals and iconography of one religion take on special resonance for a population that doesn’t have a specific referent in their own indigenous iconography. Baptism for African Americans is one syncretism of this type. Their relations to water and desire for rebirth are steeped in the stories of their history, but the ritual doesn’t necessarily have a one-to-one correspondence–so the mask covers something more subtle than an icon or a religious figure.