Before Columbus, the Americas were populated by many indigenous cultures, with a great diversity of religions. After 1492, European governments and churches dominated religious life. While Roman Catholicism was the official religion, great religious hybridization occurred, mixing European, indigenous, and often African traditions into distinctly New World forms.

Latin American Religions provides an introduction through documents to the historical development and contemporary expressions of religious life in South and Central America, Mexico, and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean. A central feature of this text is its inclusion of both primary and secondary materials, including letters, sermons, journal entries, ritual manuals, and ancient sacred texts. These documents provide readers with direct access to the voices of adherents, enabling them to act as academic investigators, experiencing and interpreting the same texts on which historians draw. The documents are framed by substantive introductions which provide both historical context and theoretical insights for the study of these religions traditions and the ways in which they have developed over time.

From the religious traditions of the Mayas and Aztecs and of the African diaspora, to official and popular Catholicism, to liberation theology, the rise of Pentecostalism, and emerging trends and new religious movements in Latin America, this new work offers a concise overview of this fascinating field.

Over the past several decades, postmodernist and postcolonial challenges to traditional theories and methods have revolutionized the social sciences. The discipline of religious studies, however, has been relatively slow to confront these developments, continuing to rely heavily on textual methods and a framework that privileges belief over practice, doctrine over performance, text over context, and inner emotion over public ritual. Recently, however, developments in social theory have begun to transform the study of religion. In this book, Manuel Vasquez maps out the dynamics of this paradigm shift, exploring systematically the epistemological and methodological challenges contemporary social theory poses for traditional approaches to religious studies. Offering a panoramic view of key debates on identity, culture, and society across the social sciences, he assesses the impact of these debates on the study of religion, offering specific examples of how they are shaping the study of particular religious traditions. He concludes by proposing a robust yet flexible materialist approach to the study of religion that will be capable of addressing the increasing complexity of religious life.

Before Columbus, the Americas were populated by many indigenous cultures, with a great diversity of religions. After 1492, European governments and churches dominated religious life. While Roman Catholicism was the official religion, great religious hybridization occurred, mixing European, indigenous, and often African traditions into distinctly New World forms.

Latin American Religions provides an introduction through documents to the historical development and contemporary expressions of religious life in South and Central America, Mexico, and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean. A central feature of this text is its inclusion of both primary and secondary materials, including letters, sermons, journal entries, ritual manuals, and ancient sacred texts. These documents provide readers with direct access to the voices of adherents, enabling them to act as academic investigators, experiencing and interpreting the same texts on which historians draw. The documents are framed by substantive introductions which provide both historical context and theoretical insights for the study of these religions traditions and the ways in which they have developed over time.

From the religious traditions of the Mayas and Aztecs and of the African diaspora, to official and popular Catholicism, to liberation theology, the rise of Pentecostalism, and emerging trends and new religious movements in Latin America, this new work offers a concise overview of this fascinating field.

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. Vasquez'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.

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. Vasquez'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.

Over the past several decades, postmodernist and postcolonial challenges to traditional theories and methods have revolutionized the social sciences. The discipline of religious studies, however, has been relatively slow to confront these developments, continuing to rely heavily on textual methods and a framework that privileges belief over practice, doctrine over performance, text over context, and inner emotion over public ritual. Recently, however, developments in social theory have begun to transform the study of religion. In this book, Manuel Vasquez maps out the dynamics of this paradigm shift, exploring systematically the epistemological and methodological challenges contemporary social theory poses for traditional approaches to religious studies. Offering a panoramic view of key debates on identity, culture, and society across the social sciences, he assesses the impact of these debates on the study of religion, offering specific examples of how they are shaping the study of particular religious traditions. He concludes by proposing a robust yet flexible materialist approach to the study of religion that will be capable of addressing the increasing complexity of religious life.

"A Place to Be" is the first book to explore migration dynamics and community settlement among Brazilian, Guatemalan, and Mexican immigrants in America's new South. The book adopts a fresh perspective to explore patterns of settlement in Florida, including the outlying areas of Miami and beyond. The stellar contributors from Latin America and the United States address the challenges faced by Latino immigrants, their cultural and religious practices, as well as the strategies used, as they move into areas experiencing recent large-scale immigration.

Contributors to this volume include Patricia Fortuny Loret de Mola, Carol Giron Solorzano, Silvia Irene Palma, Lucia Ribeiro, Mirian Solfs Lizama, Jose Claudio Souza Alves, Timothy J. Steigenga, Manuel A. Vasquez, and Philip J. Williams.

Recent immigration is changing American religion. No longer only a Protestant, Christian, or even Judeo-Christian nation, the United States is increasingly home to religious traditions from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. The history, spirit, and institutions of Protestantism often shape the beliefs and practices of new immigrants and their societies of faith. But immigrants are also creating their own unique religious communities within existing denominations or developing hybrid identities that combine strands of several faiths or traditions. These changes call for new thinking among both scholars of religion and scholars of migration. Immigrant Faiths responds to these changes with fresh thinking from new and established scholars from a variety of disciplines. Covering groups from across the U.S. and a range of religious traditions, Immigrant Faiths provides a needed overview to this expanding subfield. Sponsored by the Social Science Research Council.

Recent immigration is changing American religion. No longer only a Protestant, Christian, or even Judeo-Christian nation, the United States is increasingly home to religious traditions from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. The history, spirit, and institutions of Protestantism often shape the beliefs and practices of new immigrants and their societies of faith. But immigrants are also creating their own unique religious communities within existing denominations or developing hybrid identities that combine strands of several faiths or traditions. These changes call for new thinking among both scholars of religion and scholars of migration. Immigrant Faiths responds to these changes with fresh thinking from new and established scholars from a variety of disciplines. Covering groups from across the U.S. and a range of religious traditions, Immigrant Faiths provides a needed overview to this expanding subfield. Sponsored by the Social Science Research Council.

"Globalizing the Sacred breaks new ground in our understanding of the transnational role of religion. Based on case studies in the Americas, this book challenges modernist assumptions about the ways Christians communicate and interact in an increasingly global world. Vasquez and Marquardt demonstrate a sophisticated knowledge of transnational theory as they engage debates related to hybrid identities, the transformative impact of the Internet, and the increasing flow of migrants across national borders." --Donald E. Miller, executive director, Center for Religion and Civic Culture, University of Southern California "A magnificent exploration of the multiple ways local religion shapes and is shaped by its institutional, regional, and global contexts. Locating their analysis at the crossroads between religious studies and emerging literature on globalization, Vasquez and Marquardt masterfully interweave theory and case studies to provide essential insights for understanding religion and social change in the twenty-first century." --Timothy Matovina, director, Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, University of Notre Dame Drawing on case studies in the United States and Latin America, Manuel A. Vasquez and Marie Friedmann Marquardt explore the evolving roles of religion in the Americas in the face of globalization, transnational migration, the rapid growth of culture industries, the rise of computer mediated technologies, and the crisis of modernity. Combining ethnographic research in local congregations, studies of material culture and sacred space, textual analyses, and approaches to mass and electronic media, the authors challenge dominant paradigms in the sociology of religion. Manuel A. Vasquez is an associate professor of religion at the University of Florida, Gainesville. He is the author of The Brazilian Popular Church and the Crisis of Modernity and is coeditor of Christianity, Social Change, and Globalization in the Americas (Rutgers University Press). Marie Friedmann Marquardt is a Ph.D. candidate in the sociology of religion at Emory University.

This interdisciplinary volume resulted from a three-year collaborative research project into the ways diverse Protestant and Catholic congregations in the Americas interpret and respond to the changes globalization has wrought. Contributors from the fields of religion, anthropology, political science, and sociology draw on fieldwork in Peru, El Salvador, and the United States to provide their own perspectives on economic globalization, migration, and the increasing religious pluralism in Latin America.

Organized around three central themes -- family, youth, and community; democratization, citizenship, and political participation; and immigration and transnationalism -- the book argues first that, at the local level, religion helps people, especially women and youths, solidify their identities and confront challenges. The essays show religious communities to be both peaceful venues for people to voice their needs and forums for the building of participatory democracies in the Americas. Finally, the contributors look at communities of Peruvians and Salvadorans in the United States. They examine how religion enfranchises poor women, youths, and people displaced by war or economic change and, at the same time, drives social movements that seek to strengthen family and community bonds that have been disrupted by migration and political violence.

Skillfully edited to cohere and complement each other, these essays represent an important contribution to our understanding of the many powerful forces shaping life in the Americas at the dawn of the twenty-first century.