Lived Religion in Latin America

Abstract

This book is about religion and modernity, how religion interacts with modern culture, and how modernity influences religion. “Modernity” signifies not only technological developments, but also the dynamics of capitalism, the differentiation of social functions, specialization of spheres of knowledge, and expansion of human rights. By religion is meant the cultural practices people use to connect with a suprahuman power that they experience as influencing their lives. The thesis presented is that in Latin America there is an interaction between modernity and religion, but the result has not been religion’s diminishment (secularization), but its transformation. Exploring religion as ordinary Latin Americans practice it, the research presented in this book discovered that there is more religion than secularists expect, but of a different kind than religious leaders would wish. The difficulty in assessing religiosity as it exists in Latin America is due in part to the continuing use of categories that were not designed for religious cultures outside the North Atlantic world. Those categories point us toward a different kind of dynamics, which in fact obscure Latin American religious dynamics. If we look at religion from the perspective of Latin America and of the people who practice it there, we will find a different definition and different conceptual tools for understanding the religious experience of Latin American people, and these new tools help us to look at religion in a different way.

Religiosidad y salud mental

“…Por el contrario, ellas adquieren crecientemente un carácter combinatorio, sincrético y dinámico, atributos que se adquieren en los bordes de la institucionalidad religiosa. En ese sentido, si bien la perspectiva de la "religión vivida" (Morello, 2021) tiene valor en la medida que observa lo religioso "en el acto" y mientras se "performa" en lugar de centrarse en sus expresiones "típico ideales", lo cierto es que esta libertad parece estar asociado a un costo, aunque mejor y mayor investigación necesita ser llevada adelante para afirmar esto último de manera más resuelta.…”

The construction of the sacred through photographs displayed in Latin American homes

“…To understand how contemporary, urban Latin Americans build the sacred, I employed a lived religion framework that focuses on practices, looking at religion as an ongoing human relationship with a supra-human power (Morello, 2021). Lived religion pays attention to the concrete historical and cultural context, to the practitioner's material and embodied engagement with the 'other than' ordinary realm.…”

“…Religious things happen when there is a relationship (Ammerman, 2021). When talking about lived religion, we are not necessarily talking about a reality that conforms with churches' mandates, nor necessarily with the bar sociologists have been using to measure religious practice (church attendance) (Ammerman, 2021;Morello, 2021).…”

Lived religion beyond words: A denotative analysis of participant-produced photos of meaningful objects

“…In Lima, Peru's capital with a population of more than 10 million, 78% identify as Catholics, 16% as Protestant, 3% Non-Affiliated, and 3% as members of Other Traditions (Romero-Cevallos, 2019). In Córdoba, Argentina's second largest city with 1.3 million inhabitants, about 60% of the population identify as Catholic, 8% as Protestant, 29% as Non-Affiliated, and 1% as members of Other Traditions (Morello, 2021b).…”