Oppositional Consciousness Among the Privileged: Remaking Religion in the Central America Solidarity Movement

Abstract

Many movements are strengthened by the support of outside parties yet we know little about how members of privileged groups develop an insurgent mentality. In this article, I explain how some white, middle class North Americans developed oppositional consciousness that led them to resist U.S. policy toward Central America. I argue that solidarity organizers, many of whom were former missionaries, facilitated this cognitive shift within the free spaces provided by progressive U.S. churches. In this context, missionaries cultivated a Christian culture of resistance by conveying “moral shocks” and politicizing the religious themes of conversion and resurrection. As time progressed and this oppositional culture and consciousness waned, they also created transmovement free spaces where rituals were used to reinforce this insurgent mentality.