> Given the borrowing of ideas, why then do modern Christians, including evangelicals, dismiss other cultures so aggressively?

That's really just an American thing. Americans have this concept of "manifest destiny" in their culture is the final one and it is their duty to spread it to the rest of the world. The American settlers have colonized the entire continent, but the spirit of Manifest Destiny still persists, just embodied in different forms.

For example, among evangelicals there is this paranoia of anything that might be considered pagan. Some will go even so far as to consider Christmas pagan. Meanwhile in the rest of the world it's perfectly accepted that Christianity has taken some local practices and re-dedicated them to Christ. This is not a concession to pagans to make Christianity more palatable for them (pagans are not stupid, they know it's a different religion). I can recommend the YouTube Channel "Jonathan Pageau", he used to talk a lot about this sort of stuff in his older videos.

It's not the only answer, but I would direct you to the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy.

Around a hundred, hundred and fifty years ago when our understanding of the universe had finally reached the point where it became obvious that (a) all of our creation stories were just stories and (b) we actually kind of knew the actual story now, everyone had a big crisis over how to deal with that.

The two options on the table where fundamentalism -- doubling down on Biblical literalism and faith -- and modernism, taking the Bible as more a spiritual message, adapting our understanding of it for the modern world.

Some churches went one way, others the other, but over the following century the fundamentalist churches have proven to be better at attracting, retaining and motivating their members.

There are still modernist churches, but the loudest Christians in America are almost all of the fundamentalist bent.

Because all ideas and all thought and all knowledge stem from Jesus and eventually will be used to worship HIM only but other gods are just made up distractions. This is the profound underlying theology

It's even weirder than that, there's many ideas that might very easily be described as "pagan" except that they're entirely accepted as orthodox. For instance the entire notion of the Trinity is at its root a straightforward application of Neoplatonic philosophy, where the "One" Godhead exists as three lower "hypostases" (Greek) or "persons" (Latin). And much Stoic ethics was adopted directly within early Christianity.

To be entirely fair about it, the linkage may easily go back to the very time of Jesus in some important ways, seeing as many of Jesus's teachings were shared with the Essenes', and the Essenes in turn were quite knowledgeable about Greek/Hellenistic philosophy.

I have the same questions as you. I find many Hindu and Buddhist practices are compatible with Christianity. Eastern religion has different words than western religion for certain things, and concepts naturally get misunderstood, so I think Christians (in America at least) are somewhat afraid that by learning about eastern religion they will be worshiping a false God. The condemnation that comes with Christian groups unfortunately dissuades people from seeking the truth outside the church for fear of social exclusion.

>why then do modern Christians, including evangelicals, dismiss other cultures so aggressively?

The vast majority of modern Christians doesn't, the influences of Greek culture are readily apparent in the conceptual language of the New Testament, John most obviously when he turns Christ into the Logos. Culturally many pre-Christian practices have been incorporated into for example, Latin American Catholicism. You can literally see it in the architecture of churches.

American Evangelical Christianity is a bit of a different beast and best viewed as a nationalist program that brings particular American tendencies to bear on the religion rather than the other way around.

I’ve always seen American evangelism as a political movement first and a religious one second.

This impression has strengthened quite a bit in recent years as it’s become clear that political movements and politicians that are diametrically opposed to the teachings of Jesus are perfectly okay if they align on other more immediate secular political issues.

There’s always been a claim that the US is an outlier compared to other developed nations in terms of religiosity. I don’t really believe this anymore. I think we have a lot of politics with heavy religious veneer, but if you look only at sincere belief in the tenets of a faith I don’t think the US is much more religious than the UK for example.

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