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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2022
Is religion being politicized in Latin America? The question is commonly asked today, but rests only in part on concern with Latin American events themselves. To be sure, religious issues, groups, and people have lately been salient in the politics of El Salvador, Nicaragua, Brazil, or Chile—to name only some of the more familiar cases. But the question has deeper roots in a general North American concern with the potential of politicized religion to spur social protest and political change in cases otherwise as distinct as Iran, Poland, Southern Africa, Lebanon, the Philippines, or Latin America itself. Much of this concern is also clearly a refraction of puzzlement here at home with the resurgence of religious issues into national political discourse. These considerations suggest that finding answers to questions about the politicization of religion requires as much attention to the meaning of the questions themselves and to the assumptions built into their posing, as to the search for specific instances of politicized religion in Latin America today.
Questions about the politicization of religion arise from longstanding intellectual traditions which make religion secondary to supposedly more immediate, real, or rational social, economic, or political forces. When religion as an issue or religiously inspired groups do appear in political arenas, they are seen as interlopers, aberrant and likely short-lived phenomena. From this vantage point, religion appears mostly as a survivor from the past, doomed to privatization and ultimate disappearance.
1 I consider these issues at length in “Religion and Politics in Comparative and Historical Perspective,” Comparative Politics, October, 1986.
2 Two elaborations are needed. First, I do not discuss political parties here, because they are less central to Catholic political energies now than in the past. For the record, older ties to conservative parties have faded almost everywhere. At first these were succeeded by apparent consensus on Christian Democracy; these parties grew apace, coming to power during the 1960s in two major countries (Chile in 1964, Venezuela in 1968). But Christian Democracy soon stalled and divided, most notably in Chile. Where they were established earlier, Christian Democratic parties remain key actors (Chile, El Salvador, Venezuela) but there has been little new growth, and much outflanking on Left and Right. The center of gravity of Catholic political activism has moved lately to issues like the defense of human rights, or the promotion of grass roots organization. As I suggest below, in part this is a function of opportunities—authoritarian rule choked off “normal” political party growth in the 1970s. Second, the fundamentalism so visible (albeit in different form) in the U.S. or Iran, is not much in evidence. The region remains mostly Catholic, and Catholic Integralism is weak. One view of Protestant fundamentalism in action is Enrique Dominguez and Huntington, Deborah, “The Salvation Brokers: Conservative Evangelicals in Central America,” NACLA Report on the Americas, January/February 1984.Google Scholar
3 A common point of attack is Liberation Theology; Michael Novak offers a case in point. See his “The Case Against Liberation Theology,” New York Times Magazine, 21 October 1984.
4 The classic work is Gutierrez, Gustavo, A Theology of Liberation, Maryknoll: Orbis, 1973.Google Scholar Among recent books see especially Boff, Leonardo, Church: Charisma, and Power: Liberation Theology and the Institutional Church, New York: Crossroad, 1986.Google Scholar
5 For a range of accounts of CEBs, and detailed comment on the significance of their focus on the poor, see my Religion and Political Conflict in Latin America, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986.
6 “Christopher Hill's work is basic, most notably The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas in the English Revolution, New York: Penguin, 1982. See also Zaret, David, The Heavenly Contract: Ideology and Organization in Pre-Revolutionary Puritanism, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.Google Scholar
7 Gutierrez, cited above. The first Spanish edition was in 1971.
8 On Brazil, see Bruneau, Thomas, The Political Transformation of the Brazilian Catholic Church, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1974 Google Scholar, and The Church in Brazil: The Politics of Religion, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982. A recent study focusing on ties to popular movements is Mainwaring, Scott, The Church and Politics in Brazil, 1916–1985, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986.Google Scholar On Central America, an indispensable source is Berryman, Phillip, Religious Roots of Rebellion: Christians in the Central American Revolutions, Maryknoll: Orbis, 1984.Google Scholar See also Carrigan, Ana, Salvador Witness, New York: Ballantine, 1984 Google Scholar, for a moving biography of Jean Donovan, one of the four American missionaries murdered in El Salvador in 1980.
9 Church-state conflict once hinged on a predictable range of disputes: education, marriage and divorce, censorship or public subsidies. These have now faded, and center stage is held by concerns over social and political justice, or human rights. In effect, throughout the 1970s, churches were prime movers in the defense of human rights. National and transnational church structures were used to great effect to publicize the issues, save the innocent, and challenge the legitimacy of the systems which created such abuses.
