Latin America is undergoing a period of intense religious transformation and upheaval. This book analyzes some of the more important new discoveries about religious movements in the region. It examines important shifts such as the expansion and politicization of Protestantism, the ongoing transformation of the Catholic church, the growth of Afro-Brazilian religions, and the genuine pluralization of faith.

This book is at the crossroads where a New Age sensibility, advancing like an ecumen of worldwide spirituality without national, cultural, or ecclesiastical frontiers, meets Latin America's syncretic religions, practiced by groups of people wiht African or indigenous roots or developed from the tradition of popular Catholicism. The Syncretic character of the two sensibilities makes both the New Age and popular religion behave like two, syncretizing and syncreticizable matrices of meaning. This book opens up a rich vein of debate with new dilemmas and discussions, that will provide a framework for a new field of study in anthropology. What new ways of signifying living and experiencing religion is the New Age generating in Latin America? What are its limits? Contributors are: Alejandra Aguilar Ros, Santiago Bastos, Lizette Campechano, Sylvie Pédron Colombani, Alejandro Frigerio, Jacques Galinier, Silas Guerriero, Cristina Gutiérrez Zúñiga,Nahayeilli B. Juárez Huet, José Guilherme C.Magnani, Antoinette Molinié, María Teresa Rodríguez, Deis Siqueira, Carlos Alberto Steil, Engel Tally, Renée de la Torre, and Marcelo Zamora.

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.

Alejandro de la Fuente and George Reid Andrews offer the first systematic, book-length survey of humanities and social science scholarship on the exciting field of Afro-Latin American studies. Organized by topic, these essays synthesize and present the current state of knowledge on a broad variety of topics, including Afro-Latin American music, religions, literature, art history, political thought, social movements, legal history, environmental history, and ideologies of racial inclusion. This volume connects the region's long history of slavery to the major political, social, cultural, and economic developments of the last two centuries. Written by leading scholars in each of those topics, the volume provides an introduction to the field of Afro-Latin American studies that is not available from any other source and reflects the disciplinary and thematic richness of this emerging field.

Although church historians often call the 19th century the Great Century of Protestant mission, for Latin America it was the 20th century that was the great century of Protestant growth and expansion. The 20th century witnessed vast societal changes and the realization of systemic poverty and injustice as well as the exponential growth, pentecostalization, and diversification of Latin American Protestantism. Latin American Protestant Theology emerged during this century of change. This text provides an introduction to Latin American Protestant Theology by engaging its dominant theological streams (Liberal, Evangelical, and Pentecostal) and how they understand themselves through the lens of mission. The text offers both a critique of the Christendom cartography that is dominant in Latin American Protestant Theology as well as suggestions for how to move towards a transformative theology of mission. The primary intention of this text is to offer an informed outline and analysis of the theological landscape of Latin American Protestantism. The secondary intention of this book is to note the contributions as well as deficiencies of the streams of LAPT in the hope to signal a possible path towards the development of an integral, transformative, contextual, and decolonial theological voice.

This comprehensive history of the church in Latin America, with its emphasis on theology, will help historians and theologians to better understand the formation and continuity of the Latin American tradition.

Winner of the 2013 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award Christianity in Latin America provides a complete overview of more than 500 years of the history of Christianity in the ‘New World’. This book specifically focuses on conquest, exploitation of slave- and forced labor, mission, the formation of the Catholic Church after the council of Trent, Inquisition, popular religiosity, and postcolonial state formation. Attention is also given to the emergence of Protestant immigrant and mission churches, modern forms of exploitation of indigenous and Afro-American workers, Catholic-Protestant antagonisms from the beginning of ecumenism, liberation theology, the proliferation of Pentecostal churches, and the military dictatorships in the second half of the 20th Century. The inclusion of German research in this book is an important asset to the Anglo-American research area, in which information is disclosed that was previously unavailable in English. This book will present the reader with required handbook material on the history of Christianity on the South American continent, based on a tremendous breadth of literature. During his years as Technical Director in Central America, the author studied Mesoamerican Indian Cultures as well as the social conditions of the impoverished sectors of the population. This book is a compilation of the author’s extensive research while a lecturer of church history at the Theological Faculty of São Leopoldo (Brazil), as well as during visits to nearly all countries of Latin America, and as a visiting professor in Portugal, Brazil, Nicaragua, Cuba, Argentine and Peru. Thorough research was also completed while lecturing at the University of Cologne (Germany) on Iberian and Latin American History, as well as during his term as professorial chair of Richard Konetzke and Günter Kahle. This publication is an amalgamation of the knowledge and expertise the author gained during research from his entire career.

An overview of Latino/a spiritualities today--Protestant, Catholic, Pentecostal, and non-Christian and the challenges they bring to Christian theology and ministry. Given the context of increasing religious pluralism and a burgeoning interest in religions, religiosity, and spirituality within the United States and the knowledge that by the mid-twenty-first century an estimated 100 million Americans will claim Latin origin, an understanding of the varieties of Latino/a spirituality becomes essential. This book focuses on the ways in which Latinos and Latinas participate in the pursuit and practice of the spiritual or "holy" santo as part of their lived religion. In seven chapters, Aponte explores various understandings of santo and its participation in daily life, rites of passage, and worship.

In Aztec Philosophy, James Maffie shows the Aztecs advanced a highly sophisticated and internally coherent systematic philosophy worthy of consideration alongside other philosophies from around the world. Bringing together the fields of comparative world philosophy and Mesoamerican studies, Maffie excavates the distinctly philosophical aspects of Aztec thought. Aztec Philosophy focuses on the ways Aztec metaphysics—the Aztecs’ understanding of the nature, structure and constitution of reality—underpinned Aztec thinking about wisdom, ethics, politics,\ and aesthetics, and served as a backdrop for Aztec religious practices as well as everyday activities such as weaving, farming, and warfare. Aztec metaphysicians conceived reality and cosmos as a grand, ongoing process of weaving—theirs was a world in motion. Drawing upon linguistic, ethnohistorical, archaeological, historical, and contemporary ethnographic evidence, Maffie argues that Aztec metaphysics maintained a processive, transformational, and non-hierarchical view of reality, time, and existence along with a pantheistic theology. Aztec Philosophy will be of great interest to Mesoamericanists, philosophers, religionists, folklorists, and Latin Americanists as well as students of indigenous philosophy, religion, and art of the Americas.

How do religions spread in today’s world, where Christian missions have lost influence and modern nations have replaced colonial empires? Religion on the Move! is a collection of essays charting new religious expansions. Contemporary evangelists may be Nigerian, Korean, Brazilian or Congolese, working at the grassroots and outside the mainstream in Pentecostal, reformist Islamic, and Hindu spiritual currents. While transportation and media provide newfound mobility, the mission field may be next door, in Europe, North America, and within the "South," where migrants from Africa, Asia, and Latin America settle. These essays, using perspectives from religious studies, ethnography, history and sociology, show that immigrants, women, and other disempowered peoples transmit their faiths from everywhere to everywhere, engaging in globalization from below. Contributors include: Afe Adogame, Shobana Shankar, Matthew Forrest Lowe, Dyron B. Daughrity, Janel Kragt Bakker, Rebecca Catto, Jonas Adelin Jørgensen, Shuma Iwai, Albert Wuaku, Hakano Abdi Wario, Ramzi Ben Amara, Rebecca Y. Kim, Annalisa Butticci, Heidemarie Winkel, Anderson H M Jeremiah, Olufunke Adeboye, Mark Shaw, Marilia Fiorillo, Musa. O. Adeniyi, Daniëlle Koning, Susanne Kröhnert-Othman, Philip Wingeier-Rayo, Matthew Kustenbauder, Damien Mottier, and Bolaji Bateye.