Religious change

1
Religious change

• 06.04.2006

2
Presentations

• Martin, D. 1990. Tongues of Fire The Explosion
  of Protestantism in Latin America. Oxford
  Blackwell.
• Stoll, D. 1990. Is Latin America Turning
  Protestant? The Politics of Evangelical Growth.
  Berkeley University of California Press.

3
Readings

• Míguez (1999) Exploring the Argentinian Case
  Religious Motives in the Growth of Latin American
  Pentecostalism. (in Smith and Prokopy Latin
  American Religion in Motion. New York Routledge)
• Stoll (1993) Introduction Rethinking
  Protestantism in Latin America (in
  Garrard-Burnett and Stoll Rethinking
  Protestantism in Latin America. Philadelphia
  Temple University Press)

4
Protestantism in Latin America in 19th c

• first Protestant community in Latin America
• 1816 in Rio de Janeiro
• a group of English Anglicans
• Non-Catholics in the 19th c
• few churches
• low percentages
• increase very slow
• Mainly owing to immigration
• Catholicism in favoured position
• Religions intolerance towards non-Catholics
• Except towards foreigners
• To encourage European immigration

5
Manuel Gamio (1916)

• Why was the transition from Indian paganism to
  Spanish Catholicism in the 16th century
  relatively easy? Why has only Catholicism rooted
  among us, no matter how actively one has
  intended to introduce Protestantism?
• The transition from Indian paganism to
  Catholicism found no obstacles because both
  faiths, from the indigenous point of view, were
  analogous which favoured religious fusion.
  Paganism and Protestantism, however, were in
  their essence and form different and
  dys-symbolical. It is thus logical that
  Mexican Indians voluntarily accept the Catholic
  creed, assimilating it in their own manner, and
  reject Protestantism because it appears to them
  as abstract, exotic, iconoclastic,
  incomprehensible.

6
Theodor Roosevelt

• The absorption of Latin America will be
  difficult until these countries are Catholic.

7
Esquivel Obregón (1946)

• the Hispano-American soul is unadaptable to
  Protestantism, the Protestant propaganda here,
  unlike in the United States, only leads to an
  increasing number of atheists who have no other
  moral guidelines but their own material
  instincts.

8
Símon Bolívar

• The Constitution of Colombia of 1821 contained no
  article on religion
• When the Constitution of Colombia was drawn up,
  knowing that tolerance of any religion other than
  the Catholic would not be permitted, I was
  careful that nothing should be said in the
  constitution about religion The people of
  Colombia were not yet prepared for any change in
  the matters of religion.

9
Protestants in Latin America in the 20th c

• 1960s
• Linear -gt exponential growth
• 1980s
• 8.000 Catholics in Latin America converted into
  Protestantism daily
• 1970 - 1990
• 40 million Catholics converted to Protestantism

10
Periodization of theProtestantization of Latin
America

• Martin (1990)
• 1) Puritan
• 2) Methodist
• 3) Pentecostal
• Stoll (1993)
• 1) European immigrant churches
• 2) U.S. mainline denominations
• 3) Fundamentalist faith missions
• 4) Pentecostal churches
• Escobar (1994)
• 1) transplanted Protestantism (European
  migrants in the 19th century)
• 2)missionary Protestantism (e.g. Methodists,
  Presbyterians and Baptists, faith missions)
• 3) Pentecostal Protestantism.

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Pentecostalism

• Core doctrines
• Belief in the gifts of the Holy Spirit
• Glossolalia speaking in tongues
• Faith healing
• Other
• greater emphasis on personal spiritual experience
  
• importance of emotions, trance, dance, music
• women allowed in ministry

12
Pentecostalism

• 11,000 different pentecostal denominations
  worldwide
• Fastest growing Christian churches
• 120-400 million worldwide
• majority in the Third World countries
• gt Pentecostalism "third force of Christianity"
  
• Syncretic mixes
• Especially Latin America
• David Martin
• Rise of Pentecostal churches in LA Cultural
  revolution

13
Charismatic Movement

• Adoption of certain Pentecostal beliefs and
  practices
• By mainstream Protestant and Catholic churches
• eg. speaking in tongues, faith healing, ecstasy,
  dance, music
• Charismatic Catholicism
• second largest sub-movement within Roman
  Catholicism

14
Regional differences

• Brazil and Chile
• historically been more liberal towards
  non-Catholic churches
• Brazil Kardecism, Umbanda, Candomblé
• Guatemala
• First Protestant Presidents
• General Efraín Ríos Montt
• took office after a military coup in 1982
• Jorge Serrano Elías
• democratically elected in 1990
• Argentina
• Argentinian Constitution till 1994
• Article 76
• president vice-president had to be Roman
  Catholic

15
Research on religious change in LA

• 1960s first studies
• Emilio Willems
• NRMs Brazil
• Lalive dEpinay
• Chilean Protestantism
• 1970s / 1980s
• relatively descriptive case studies
• 1990s
• More analytical research social implications of
  religious change
• Stoll (1990) Is Latin America Turning Protestant?
• Martin (1990) Tongues of Fire

16
Research on religious change in LA

• Religious change ? social change
• Stoll and Martin
• Protestantism
• a vehicle of social change
• condition for modernity in Latin America
• Bastian (1994)
• Protestantism
• a plural phenomenon
• gt difficult to assess its relationship to
  modernity
• Protestantism of 19c vs 20c
• 19 c
• active force on the forefront of social protest
  and the struggle for liberalism
• 20 c
• authoritarian and corporate pattern

17
Research on religious change in LA

• Religious change ? gender
• male-centred Catholicism gt gender-blind
  Protestantism
• increase of womens political and social status
• creation of spaces for public participation
• Smilde (1994)
• Evangelicalism
• elective affinity towards Latin American women
• Loreto and Das Dores Campos (1997)
• gt emergence of a new man and a new woman