1. In Humanae Salutis, his formal convocation to the Council, Pope John stated that, “We should make our own Jesus' advice that we should know how to discern the `signs of the times' ”. Cited in Peter Hebblethwaite, John XXIII, Pope of the Council (London, 1984), pp. 397-8.

2. I have commented in detail elsewhere on the significance of Medellín. Among other sources see my Religion and Politics in Latin America: The Catholic Church in Venezuela and Colombia, Princeton, 1981, especially Ch. 2, and also my “Religion, Politics, and the Poor in Latin America Today”, in Daniel H. Levine (ed.) Religion and Political Conflict in Latin America (Chapel Hill, 1986).

3. The classic of this genre is J.L. Mecham, Church and State in Latin America (Chapel Hill, 1966), revised edition.

4. Conceptual reorientation in the study of Latin America has gone through several stages. Early work pursued neo-functionalist models which gave religion a key role in forging a new social and political equilibrium. Ivan Vallier's Catholicism, Social Control, and Modernization in Latin America (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1970) was very influential. There was also concern about the link of religious change to “modernization”, for example in Frederick Turner's Catholicism and Political Development in Latin America, (Chapel Hill, 1971). More recently, scholars have studied the character of Churches as complex organizations and their impact on the scope and limits of change, most notably in Thomas Bruneau's The Political Transformation of the Brazilian Catholic Church (Cambridge, 1974) and Brian Smith, The Church and Politics in Chile: Challenges to Modern Catholicism (Princeton, NJ, 1982). Elite mentalities, cultural formation and organizational change have been considered in Levine, Religion and Politics, op. cit. note 2. Recently, several studies have focused on popular religious movements and revolutionary change, most notably in Central America as in Phillip Berryman's The Religious Roots of Rebellion, Christians in the Central American Revolutions (Maryknoll, 1984). The evolving link of popular to institutional norms and actions provides a central thread in much new scholarship. See, for example, Scott Mainwaring, The Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 1916-1985 (Stanford, CA, 1986), and the studies collected in Levine, Religion and Political Conflict.

Conceptual reorientation is not limited to the study of Latin America. For more general considerations, see my “Religion and Politics in Comparative and Historical Perspective”, Comparative Politics, October 1986.

5. The dynamics of this process are considered in detail in the next section.

6. Cf. my “Religion, Society and Politics: States of the Art”, Latin American Research Review 16(3), Fall 1981; and also my “Religion and Politics: Drawing Lines, Understanding Change”, Latin American Research Review 20(1), Winter, 1985, and the studies reviewed there.

7. Church authorities in many countries are also afraid. They fear loss of authority, as grass-roots groups develop a sense of collective identity and press for greater autonomy. It is vital to be clear about what is at issue: loss of authority is taken here above all as loss of hierarchical authority and decay of previous expectations of unquestioned obedience.

Leonardo Boff puts the matter sharply, noting parallels and mutual influences between religion and politics in very suggestive ways: “We must recognize that in the past few years, especially after Vatican II, extremely important steps have been taken. Just as the Church previously took on Roman and feudal structures, it is now taking on structures found in today's civil societies that are more compatible with our growing sense of human rights. This is the often argued `democratization of the church'... There is no real conflict between the ecclesial institution and the ecclesial communities [CEBs]. The real tension exists between a Church that has opted for the people, for the poor and their liberation and other groups in that same Church that have not made this option, and who have not made it concrete or who persist in keeping to the strictly sacramental and devotional character of faith” (Church. Charism and Power: Liberation Theology and the Institutional Church, New York, 1986, pp. 44, 126).

8. Cf. my “ `Whose Heart Could Be So Staunch?' ”, Christianity and Crisis, 22 July 1985, where I consider the biography of Jean Donovan, one of the four American churchwomen murdered in El Salvador at the end of 1980.

9. I review the origins and trajectory of Tierra Nueva and other Latin American religious journals in “Religion and Politics: Drawing Lines, Understanding Change”, op. cit. note 6.

10. Much has been written about Puebla. See in particular Phillip Berryman, “What Happened at Puebla” in Levine (ed.) Churches and Politics in Latin America. As noted in the text, Puebla came at a time of great political upheaval in Central America, which itself coincided with much change and dislocation in the Catholic Church generally. The year 1978 saw three Popes in the Vatican. After 15 years in office, Paul VI died in late August, and his successor, John Paul I, died scarcely a month later, on 28 September. Pope John Paul II was elected on 16 October, and soon after travelled to Latin America, coming to inaugurate the Puebla conference in January 1979. See Peter Hebblethwaite, The Year of Three Popes (New York, 1979).

11. Michael Novak presses this point repeatedly, for example in his “The Case Against Liberation Theology”, New York Times Magazine, 21 October 1984.

12. But see Juan Luis Segundo's comment on the Pope's highly selective criticisms of violence, in Segundo, Theology and the Church: A Response to Cardinal Ratzinger and a Warning to the Whole Church (Minneapolis, MN, 1985), pp. 107-36, 151-2.

13. The point has been made sharply by Leonardo Boff in the book which prompted his silencing:

“Throughout its history, the Church has defined itself at times with the ruling classes and at other times with the lower classes. The unequal social structures, revolving around ownership of the means of production, slowly came to predominate within the Church itself. An unbalanced structure in the means of `religious' production was created; in socioanalytical language (so as not to give a moral connotation) there has also been a gradual expropriation of the means of religious production from the Christian people by the clergy. In the early years, the Christian people as a whole shared in the power of the Church, in decisions, in the choosing of ministers; later, they were simply consulted; finally, in terms of power, they were totally marginalized, dispossessed of their power.”

“Just as there was a social division of labor, an ecclesiastical division of religious labor was introduced. A group of functionaries and experts was created, responsible for attending to the religious needs of all through the exclusive production of the symbolic goods to be consumed by the now dispossessed people... It is clear that a church so structurally unbalanced is in harmony with the social realm that possesses the same biased means of production. The church has often become the legitimating religious ideology for the imperial social order” (Boff, op. cit. note 7, pp. 112, 113).

14. This reworking can be seen in the two well-known Vatican documents on Liberation Theology authored by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 1984 and 1986. The first (dated 6 August 1984) is entitled “Instruction on Certain Aspects of the `Theology of Liberation' ”. The second (dated 22 March 1986) is entitled “Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation”. Both were issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, of which Cardinal Ratzinger is Prefect.

15. I develop this point more fully in “Religion, Politics, and the Poor in Latin America Today”, op. cit. note 2.

16. For details see Berryman, Religious Roots, op. cit. note 4.

17. The following comparative discussion draws heavily on Daniel H. Levine and Scott Mainwaring, “Religion and Popular Protest in Latin America”, in Susan Eckstein (ed.) Protest and Resistance in Latin America (forthcoming). I also rely on the sources already cited here, on Thomas Bruneau, “Church and Politics in Brazil: The Genesis of Change”, and also on Daniel H. Levine, “Continuities in Colombia”, both in Journal of Latin American Studies (United Kingdom), November 1985.

18. Peter Hebblethwait details the opposition and strenuous competition between the two in his insightful account of the Synod held at Rome in late 1985. For details, see his Synod Extraordinary, London, 1986.

19. One unintended consequence of the hierarchy's success is the characteristic extremism of alternative visions in Colombia. It is hard to get them started, and harder still to make them survive. When they do get off the ground, pervasive repression in the Churches drives them to extremes: a middle ground is hard to find. In this light, the short and sharp trajectory of Camilo Torres makes sense.

20. For detailed comment on this point, see my “Religion and Politics in Comparative and Historical Perspective”.

21. See Levine and Mainwaring, “Religion and Popular Protest”, op. cit. note 17, for extended analysis and commentary on this issue.

From Church and State to Religion and Politics and Back Again

Abstract