Recent historiography and social studies in Latin America have developed new approaches to understanding the significance of movements by the poor for social change as well as the role of religion as a key factor for social mobilization. It is now possible to perceive the importance of messianic and revolutionary movements since the colonial period, and also the different forms of religious commitment that motivate people to reject modernization or to accept it. Several case studies coming from Catholicism and Protestantism are considered here.
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References
1.
1. Such is the case with the influential book by Otto Maduro, Religion and Social Conflict (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1982).
2.
2. David Martin, “Evangelicals and Economic Culture in Latin America,”Social Compass, 39(1):10 (1991).
3.
Hannah W. Stewart-Gambino, “New Approaches to Studying the Role of Religion in Latin America,” ibid., 24:187-99 (1989).
4.
4. Here I am using the term “the popular” in the way discussed and defined in Daniel Levine, ed., Religion and Political Conflict in Latin America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), pp. 3-7.
5.
It appeared first in Portuguese in 1967. His book Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Continuum, 1970) was published in English in 1970, the same year it appeared in Spanish.
6.
6. Samuel Escobar, Paulo Freire: Una pedagogía latinoamericana (Mexico: Kyrios, 1993).
7.
7. I refer here to movements such as the Partido dos Trabalhadores in Brazil, which emerged from grassroots movements such as Catholic and Protestant Base Communities. The same could be said of the Sandinista movement in Nicaragua, in which, in its initial phase, there was a confluence of political and religious grassroots movements.
8.
8. For an interpretation of the religious dimension of Shining Path, see Juan Ansion, “Sendero Luminoso: La política como religión,”Cristianismo y sociedad, 28(4):115-129 (1990).
9.
9. Hernando de Soto, The Other Path: The Invisible Revolution in the Third World (New York: Harper, 1989).
10.
10. Christián Parker, Popular Religion and Modernization in Latin America: A Different Logic (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1996).
11.
11. This term was coined by Robert Ricard in a classic book about the evangelization of Mexico, La conquista espiritual de Mexico (Mexico: Jus, 1947).
12.
12. Parker, Popular Religion and Modernization, p. 6.
13.
13. David Martin, Tongues of Fire (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), p. 1.
14.
14. Cecilia Loreto Mariz, Coping with Poverty (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), p. 6.
15.
15. Ibid., p. 7.
16.
16. A more extensive treatment of the subject of this section is offered in Samuel Escobar, “The Church in Latin America After 500 Years,” in New Face of the Church in Latin America, ed. Guillermo Cook (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1992), pp. 21-37.
17.
For an expanded and more detailed analysis of the colonial process, see idem, Argentina 1516-1982 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).
18.
18. Rock, “Political Movements in Argentina,” p. 11.
19.
19. Ivan Vallier, Catholicism, Social Control and Modernization in Latin America (Santa Cruz: University of California, 1970), p. 24.
20.
20. Ibid., p. 48.
21.
21. Parker, Popular Religion and Modernization, p. 12.
22.
22. Manuel Marzal, a Jesuit anthropologist and historian, is publishing a documentary history of the Jesuit reductions in Spanish; see Marzal, La utopía posible (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica, 1994).
23.
23. Ana María Bidegain, “The Church in the Emancipation Process (1750-1830),” in The Church in Latin America 1492-1992, ed. Enrique Dussel (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1992), p. 82.
24.
24. Ibid.
25.
See also idem, “La iglesia ante la emancipación en el Perú,” in Historia general de la iglesia en América Latina, vol. 8 Perú, Bolivia y Ecuador, ed. CEHILA (Salamanca: Ediciones Sígueme, 1987), pp. 159-192.
26.
An update on research about this case is found in Ralph Della Cava, “Brazilian Messianism and National Institutions: A Reappraisal of Canudos and Joazeiro,” in Readings in Latin American History, vol. 2, The Modern Experience, ed. John J. Johnson, Peter J. Blackwell, and Meredith D. Dodge (Durham: Duke University Press, 1985), pp. 179-194.
27.
The classic book about this war is Jean A. Meyer, The Cristero Rebellion: The Mexican People Between Church and State 1926-1929 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976).
28.
28. Maria Alicia Puente, “The Church in Mexico,” in Church in Latin America, ed. Dussel, pp. 223-229.
29.
29. For recent interpretation of this symbolism, see Parker, Popular Religion and Modernization, pp. 13-15.
30.
30. Puente, “Church in Mexico,” p. 224.
31.
See also Manuel Marzal, Los caminos religiosos de los inmigrantes en la Gran Lima (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica, 1988).
32.
32. See Scott, “Privileged Peru,” pp. 107-135.
33.
33. Namely, the feast of unleavened bread, the feast of weeks, and the feast of tabernacles, as they appear in Deut. 16:16-17.
34.
34. Jeffrey Klaiber, The Catholic Church in Peru 1821-1985 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1992), p. 298.
35.
35. Marzal, Caminos religiosos, p. 352.
36.
36. Scott, “Privileged Peru,” p. 170.
37.
37. Kenneth D. Scott, Los Israelitas del Nuevo Pacto Universal (Lima: PUSEL, 1990), pp. 72-73.
38.
38. Kenneth D. Scott, “Latin America: Peruvian New Religious Movements,”Missiology, 13(1):45-59 (1985).
39.
Other important studies are in Scott Mainwaring and Alexander Wilde, eds., The Progressive Church in Latin America (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989).
40.
A useful summary of the past and present of liberation theologies is Paul E. Sigmund, Liberation Theology at the Crossroads: Democracy or Revolution? (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
41.
41. Puebla document, par. 643. See text in John Eagleson and Philip Scharfer, eds., Puebla and Beyond (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1980), p. 213.
42.
42. Jorge Alvarez Calderón, “Peruvian Priest Recalls Origins of Church of the Poor,” interview in Latinamerica Press, 31 Mar. 1983.
43.
43. Gustavo Gutiérrez, quoted in Sergio Torres and John Eagleson, eds., The Challenge of Basic Christian Communities (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1982), p. 108.
44.
See also Roger N. Lancaster, Thanks to God and the Revolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988).
45.
45. Dodson, “Nicaragua,” pp. 80-81.
46.
46. Ibid., p. 83.
47.
An excellent interpretative work is José Míguez Bonino, Faces of Latin American Protestantism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996).
48.
48. J.B.A. Kessler, A Study of the Older Protestant Missions and Churches in Peru and Chile (Goes: Oosterban & Le Cointre, 1967).
49.
49. Seventh Day Adventists came to be considered by Evangelicals as a church and not a sect, after a process of dialogue. See Gary Land, ed., Adventism in America: A History (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1986), pp. 185-188.
50.
50. Ibid., pp. 228-30.
51.
51. One of the most notable cases was the conversion of Eduardo Francisco Forga in Arequipa. Forga was a well-to-do anticlerical writer who embraced and championed vegetarianism and abstention from alcoholic beverages. See Merling Alomía Bartra, Evolución de la educación Adventista en el Perú (Lima: Seminario de Historia del Protestantismo en el Perú, 1996).
52.
52. A good summary of recent historical scholarship about this period can be found in Manuel Burga and Alberto Flores Galindo, Apogeo y crisis de la república aristocrática (Lima: Rikchay Perú, 1979).
53.
53. Floyd Greenleaf, The Seventh-Day Adventist Church in Latin America and the Caribbean (Barren Springs: Andrews University Press, 1992), p. 304.
54.
54. Kessler, Older Protestant Missions, p. 236.
55.
55. Merling K. Alomía, “Comienzos de la obra educacional Adventista,”Theologika (Seminario Adventista Latinamericano, Lima)1(1):125 (1983).
56.
56. Luis E. Valcárcel, Tempestad en los Andes (Lima: Editorial Universo, 1972).
57.
57. Quoted in Norman Gall, “Peru's Education Reform. Part II: Escape from Poverty,”American Universities Field Staff, 21(4):13 (Dec. 1974).
58.
58. Walter J. Hollenweger, “After Twenty Years' Research on Pentecostalism,”International Review of Mission, 75:297 (1986).
59.
59. Emilio Willems, Followers of the New Faith: Culture Change and the Rise of Protestantism in Brazil and Chile (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1967), p. 13.
60.
60. Emilio Willems, “Protestantism and Cultural Change in Brazil and Chile,” in Religion, Revolution and Reform, ed. William V. D'Antonio and Frederick B. Pike (New York: Praeger, 1964), p. 103.
61.
61. David Martin, Tongues of Fire (Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1989), p. 284.
62.
See also C. René Padilla, ed., De la marginación al compromiso (Buenos Aires: Fraternidad Teológica Latinoamericana, 1991).
