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Predominantly Catholic for centuries, Latin America is still largely Catholic today, but the religious continuity in the region masks great changes that have taken place in the past five decades. In fact, it would be fair to say that Latin American Christianity has been transformed definitively in the years since the Second Vatican Council. Religious change has not been obvious because its transformation has not been the sudden and massive growth of a new religion, as in Africa and Asia. It has been rather a simultaneous revitalization and fragmentation that threatened, awakened, and ultimately brought to a greater maturity a dormant and parochial Christianity. New challenges from modernity, especially in the form of Protestantism and Marxism, ultimately brought forth new life. In The Rebirth of Latin American Christianity, Todd Hartch examines the changes that have swept across Latin America in the last fifty years, and situates them in the context of the growth of Christianity in the global South.
In this book David Martin brings together a coherent summary of his many years of ground-breaking academic work on the sociology of religion. Covering key and contentious areas from the last half century such as secularisation, religion and violence and the global rise of Pentecostalism, it presents a critical recuperation of these themes, some of them first initiated by the author, and a review of their reception history. As such, this collection is vital reading for all academics with an interest in David Martin’s work as well as those involved with the sociology of religion and the study of secularisation more generally.
Preface. Introduction. Part I Celibacy, Patriarchy, and the Priest Shortage. 1 Celibate Exclusivity Is the Issue. 2 Compulsory Celibacy and the Priest Shortage. Part II Social Change in Organized Religion. 3 Toward a Theory of Social Change in Organized Religion. 4 The Transpersonal Paradigm. 5 The Special Character of Organized Religion. 6 Forces for Change in Catholic Ministry. Part III Conflict and Paradox. 7 Unity and Diversity. 8 Immanence and Transcendence. 9 Hierarchy and Hierophany. Part IV Coalitions in the Catholic Church. 10 Bureaucratic Counterinsurgency in Catholic History. 11 Pri.
In the follow-up to his widely read The Struggle for Human Rights in Latin America, author Edward Cleary examines some of the robust human rights movements of the past two decades in Mobilizing for Human Rights in Latin America. Advocates of the rights of women, indigenous groups, the landless, and street children have achieved notable gains, so much so that in 1999 the New York Times claimed that women have achieved more rights in Latin America than in any other region. Cleary establishes a record of why, how, where, and when human rights reached this level. It is often assumed that the concept of human rights is something that must be imported by Western liberal democracies to developing countries. Cleary shows that human rights has a long history in Latin America distinctive from other traditions and that this tradition has expressed itself profoundly since the military period. He argues that the region’s unique history is not only creating solutions to issues such as corruption and minority rights, but also can offer a valuable balance to the larger international discourse on human rights.
Drawn from the pages of Sociological Analysis/Sociology of Religion, this collection of original essays demonstrates the complexity of the religious structure of Latin America, discussing interactions among Protestant and Roman Catholic religious movements, and democratic as well as antidemocratic political agendas.
Liberation theology is widely referred to in discussions of politics and religion but not always adequately understood. This Companion offers an introduction to the history and characteristics of liberation theology in its various forms in different parts of the world. Authors from four continents examine the emergence and character of liberation theology in Latin America; black theology; Asian theology; and the new situation arising from the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa. The major Christian Church's attitude to liberation theology, and the extent of the movement's indebtedness to Marxism, are examined; and a political theologian writing from another perspective of Christian theology offers an evaluation. Through a sequence of eleven chapters readers are given a comprehensive description and evaluation of the different facets of this important theological and social movement. There is also an Introduction relating liberation theology to the history of theology, and a Select Bibliography.
Only by understanding the enduring poverty of Brazil can one hope to understand the recent growth of Protestant evangelical churches there, Ceciacute;lia Loreto Mariz contends. Her study investigates how religious groups support individualism and encourage the poor to organize. Groups with shared values are then able to develop strategies to cope with poverty and, ultimately, to transform the social structure. Interviews with members and leaders of religious groups, accounts of meetings, and close readings of religious literature contribute to a realistic account of Christian base communities and Assembly of God churches, folk Catholic tradition, and Afro Brazilian Spiritism. Author note: Ceciacute;lia Loreto Mariz, a Brazilian national, teaches Sociology at the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco in Recife, Brazil.
For a generation, the Catholic Church in Brazil has enjoyed international renown as one of the most progressive social forces in Latin America. The Church's creation of Christian Base Communities (CEBs), groups of Catholics who learn to read the Bible as a call for social justice, has been widely hailed. Still, in recent years it has become increasingly clear that the CEBs are lagging far behind the explosive growth of Brazil's two other major national religious movements—Pentacostalism and Afro-Brazilian Umbanda. On the basis of his extensive fieldwork in Rio di Janeiro, including detailed life histories of women, blacks, youths, and the marginal poor, John Burdick offers the first in-depth explanation of why the radical Catholic Church is losing, and Pentecostalism and Umbanda winning, the battle for souls in urban Brazil.
Provides a new understanding of the relationship between Church and State in 20th-century Costa Rica. Understanding the relationship between religion and social justice in Costa Rica involves piecing together the complex interrelationships between Church and State — between priests, popes, politics, and the people. This book does just that. Dana Sawchuk chronicles the fortunes of the country’s two competing forms of labour organizations during the 1980s and demonstrates how different factions within the Church came to support either the union movement or Costa Rica’s home-grown Solidarity movement. Challenging the conventional understanding of Costa Rica as a wholly peaceful and prospe...
This 1997 study explores one of the most dramatic current interactions between religion and politics: the development of progressive Catholicism in Latin America. In particular, it examines economic, social and religious obstacles to progressive theology in Brazil. This 'popular' church built a utopian vision of social emancipation, drawing on Catholic social thought, humanistic Marxism and existentialism. It was a major democratizing force as Brazil emerged from dictatorship in the late 1970s. In the 1980s, however, the popular appeal of progressive Catholicism came under threat. Focusing on a Catholic community near Rio de Janeiro, Manuel A. Vásquez's incisive study shows how economic and political changes have affected religious practices, and argues that the plight of progressive Catholicism in Brazil forms part of a wider crisis of modernity and of humanist discourses.