"Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor" represents Leonardo Boff's most systematic effort to date to link the spirit of liberation theology with the urgent challenge of ecology. Focusing on the threatened Amazon of his native Brazil, Boff traces the ties that bind the fate of the rain forests with the fate of the Indians and the poor of the land. In this book, readers will find the keys to a new, liberating faith.

In a series of clear, short chapters, Leonardo Boff unpacks the mysteries of Trinitarian faith, showing why it makes a difference to believe that God is communion rather than solitude. Instead of God as solitary ruler standing above a static universe, Christian belief in the Trinity means that at the root of everything there is movement, an eternal process of life, outward movement, and love.

Boff shows how the Holy Trinity is, among other things, the image of the perfect community and the image of the church in its ideal form: not a hierarchy of power, but a community of diverse gifts and functions.

Ideal for study or personal reflection.

Between 2010 and 2025, most of the countries of Latin America will commemorate two centuries of independence, and Latin Americans have much to celebrate at this milestone. Most countries have enjoyed periods of sustained growth, while inequality is showing modest declines and the middle class is expanding. Dictatorships have been left behind, and all major political actors seem to have accepted the democratic process and the rule of law. Latin Americans have entered the digital world, routinely using the Internet and social media. These new realities in Latin America call for a new introduction to its history and culture, which Latin America at 200 amply provides. Taking a reader-friendly approach that focuses on the big picture and uses concrete examples, Phillip Berryman highlights what Latin Americans are doing to overcome extreme poverty and underdevelopment. He starts with issues facing cities, then considers agriculture and farming, business, the environment, inequality and class, race and ethnicity, gender, and religion. His survey of Latin American history leads into current issues in economics, politics and governance, and globalization. Berryman also acknowledges the ongoing challenges facing Latin Americans, especially crime and corruption, and the efforts being made to combat them. Based on decades of experience, research, and travel, as well as recent studies from the World Bank and other agencies, Latin America at 200 will be essential both as a classroom text and as an introduction for general readers.

Between 2010 and 2025, most of the countries of Latin America will commemorate two centuries of independence, and Latin Americans have much to celebrate at this milestone. Most countries have enjoyed periods of sustained growth, while inequality is showing modest declines and the middle class is expanding. Dictatorships have been left behind, and all major political actors seem to have accepted the democratic process and the rule of law. Latin Americans have entered the digital world, routinely using the Internet and social media. These new realities in Latin America call for a new introduction to its history and culture, which Latin America at 200 amply provides. Taking a reader-friendly approach that focuses on the big picture and uses concrete examples, Phillip Berryman highlights what Latin Americans are doing to overcome extreme poverty and underdevelopment. He starts with issues facing cities, then considers agriculture and farming, business, the environment, inequality and class, race and ethnicity, gender, and religion. His survey of Latin American history leads into current issues in economics, politics and governance, and globalization. Berryman also acknowledges the ongoing challenges facing Latin Americans, especially crime and corruption, and the efforts being made to combat them. Based on decades of experience, research, and travel, as well as recent studies from the World Bank and other agencies, Latin America at 200 will be essential both as a classroom text and as an introduction for general readers.

Since the arrival of the Spanish in the sixteenth century, the Maya population of Guatemala has been forced to adapt to extraordinary challenges. Under colonial rule, the Indians had to adapt enough to satisfy the Spanish while resisting those changes not necessary for survival, applying their understanding of the world to the realities they confronted daily. Despite the major changes wrought in their way of life by centuries of submission, the Maya have managed to regenerate, and thus maintain, their self-identity.

Among the major challenges they have faced has been the imposition of outside religions. Quiche Rebelde examines what happened when Accion Catolica came into the Guatemalan municipio of San Antonio Ilotenango, Quiche, to convert its inhabitants.

Ricardo Falla, a Guatemalan Jesuit priest and anthropologist, analyzes the movement's origins and why some people became part of it while others resisted. He shows how religion was used as another tool to readapt to the changing environment--natural, economic, political, and social. His work is the first major empirical study of how change occurred in a Maya community with no serious loss of Maya identity--and how the process of conversion is related to more general processes of cultural change that actually strengthen ethnic identity.

Berryman writes against the background of the rise of "megacities" - the sprawling urban centers that are the home of most of Latin America's population. In that context he contrasts Sao Paulo and Caracas. The Catholic Archdiocese of Sao Paulo, under Cardinal Arns and progressive Catholics, was a major point of resistance to military dictatorship. It is also a city in which Protestant Pentecostal churches especially have enjoyed explosive growth. Berryman's sure-footed feel for what is happening gives the reader a concrete feel for what is happening in both Protestant and Catholic communities. Caracas, Berryman shows, is a very different kind of megacity, one that a Protestant missionary called "the Secular City", a place where the relative wealth and consumer lifestyle make it hard for the Gospel to take hold. Catholic and Protestant churches in Caracas face challenges quite different from those of Sao Paulo. Religion in the Megacity explores those similarities and differences within the respective cities and between them. Berryman breaks new ground in showing the way in which Catholics and Protestants face similar situations, and he does so in a dynamic, readable style that gives the reader insights from knowledgeable men and women on the ground who show that facile stereotypes about what is happening in Latin America today need to be corrected.