Chapter 3 presents an ethnographic case study of Chrislam, a series of religious movements that mix Christian and Muslim beliefs and practices, in its sociocultural and political-economic setting in Lagos. In contrast to conventional approaches that study religious movements in Africa as syncretic forms of ‘African Christianity’ or ‘African Islam’, I suggest that ‘syncretism’ is a misleading term to describe Chrislam. In fact, Chrislam provides a rationale for scrutinizing the very concept of syncretism and offers an alternative analytical case for understanding its mode of religious pluralism. To account for the religious pluralism in Chrislam, I employ assemblage theory because it proposes novel ways of looking at Chrislam's religious mix that are in line with the way in which its worshippers perceive their religiosity. The underlying idea in Chrislam's assemblage of Christianity and Islam is that to be a Christian or Muslim alone is not enough to guarantee success in this world and the hereafter; therefore, Chrislamists participate in Christian as well as Muslim practices, appropriating the perceived powers of both.

Cicero says that almost no philosophers held atheism or agnosticism. For him the Central Question of philosophy of religion is not the existence of the gods, but whether the gods care for us by providence. He says we must answer this question to moderate religion. I argue that although traditional Roman pagan religion required orthopraxy, and not orthodoxy, Cicero thinks that the actions of a pagan practitioner could be "moderated" by what she believed about her religious behavior: if she believes that the gods care for us more than they do, that is superstition, but if she believes that they care for us less than they do, that is impiety. Yet Romans, Cicero says, were bewildered by their ancestral religion. He offers Hellenistic philosophy as a new route to responsible beliefs about it. Philosophy might help a Roman form true beliefs on the Central Question, or (like Cicero) to refrain from risky beliefs either way. On the nature of the gods and On divination are carefully designed to present this debate, among Stoics, with rich theories that the gods care and give us divinatory information, Epicureans, with rich theories to the contrary, and Academics, who withhold judgment.