Religious change: new religious movements

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Religious change new religious movements

• 07.04.2004

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Readings

• Martin (1990) The argument summarized and
  extended. (in Tongues of Fire The Explosion of
  Protestantism in Latin America. Oxford
  Blackwell)
• Willems (1974 1966) Religious Mass Movements
  and Social Change in Brazil. (in Heath)

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Protestantism in Latin America

• 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

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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.

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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.

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Protestants in Latin America in the 20th c

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

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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
• the gifts of / being possessed by the Holy Spirit
• Glossolalia speaking in tongues
• evidence of receiving the spiritual gifts of the
  Holy Spirit
• faith healing
• "laying on of hands"
• 11,000 different pentecostal denominations
  worldwide
• Assemblies of God (1914)
• 41 million members worldwide
• Fastest growing NRM in all Third World
• "third force of Christianity"
• Impact on other churches
• Charismatic Movement
• Adoption of certain Pentecostal beliefs and
  practices

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Regional differences

• Brazil and Chile
• historically been more liberal towards
  non-Catholic churches
• 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

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Brazil - other

• Kardecist Spiritism Kardecism Spiritism
  (Espiritismo)
• Allan Kardec (19 c)
• Reincarnation and psychic surgery
• Macumba
• umbrella" term for Afro-Brazilian movements
• Candomblé Batuque
• spritualist beliefs (numerous deities)
• by African (Bantu, Yoruba) priests
• brought as slaves between 1549 and 1888
• 1.5 of Brazilian population
• Umbanda
• 1920s
• blend of Catholicism, Kardecism and
  Afro-Brazilian traditions

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Research on religious change in LA I

• 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

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Research on religious change in LA II

• Religious change and modernity
• Stoll and Martin
• Protestantism
• a social reform that would lead Latin America
  into modernity
• a generator of social change
• 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
  andthe struggle for liberalism
• 20 c
• authoritarian and corporate pattern

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Research on religious change in LA III

• Religious change and gender
• male-centred Catholicism gt liberal
  Protestantism
• increase of 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

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Presentations

• Lehmann, D. 1996. Struggle for the Spirit
  Religious Transformation and Popular Culture in
  Brazil and Latin America.
• Timonen - ?
• Brown, D. D. 1986. Umbanda Religion and Politics
  in Urban Brazil.

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Discussion questions

• 1) What is the appeal of new religious movements
  compared to Catholicism?
• 2) Is Evangelicalization synonymous with
  Americanization?
• 3) What could be the most effective Catholic
  responses to the growth of NRMs in South America?