Why Study Religion from a Latin American Sociological Perspective? An Introduction to Religions Issue, “Religion in Latin America, and among Latinos Abroad”

Abstract

This article introduces the Religions issue on Latin American religiosity exploring sociological perspectives on the Latin American religious situation, from a Latin American perspective. The Secularization Theory proposes “the more modernity, the less religion”, but in Latin America we see both, modernity and religiosity. The Religious Economy model, on the other hand, affirms “the more pluralization, the more religion”, but in Latin America there is not so much pluralization, and it is not easy to switch from one religion to other. Finally, the article presents a Latin American model, the “popular religiosity” one. The problem with it, is that it is mostly ‘Catholic,’ and so does not account for the growing religious diversity in the region. It also emphasizes the “popular” aspect, excluding middle socioeconomic status individuals and elites, assuming they practice “real” religion. This introduction presents a critical approach as a way to recover, describe, and understand Latin American religious practices. This methodology might be a path to creating sociological categories to understand religion beyond the north Atlantic world.

Una mirada eclesiológica al desafío de la pluralidad en la Iglesia

“…Con el desarrollo de la modernidad, en su etapa posmoderna o ultramoderna, se produciría el "fin las religiones". Esta visión se sostenía en la experiencia especialmente europea (Morello, 2019); sin embargo, las teorías de la secularización no son leyes sociológicas aplicables directamente a todos los contextos, sino que señalan una tendencia muy variable y heterogénea que debe ser analizada en cada contexto particular (Stolz, 2020).…”

I’ve got you under my skin: Tattoos and religion in three Latin American cities

“…The Latin American religious landscape has also gone through transformations (Da Costa et al, 2019;Rabbia et al, 2019) that question the use of traditional sociological categories to understand its current developments. Therefore, studies that look at the people's religiosity beyond institutional mandates might be more helpful: what are the practices that contemporary subjects deem as sacred, even when religious institutions and seculars scholars do not do so (Morello, 2019). Today, tattoos are not a sign of uncivilized deviance, but socially accepted practices that have become a privileged venue among young adults to express their interiority (Castro and Aragonés, 2016;Heywood et al, 2012;Koch and Roberts, 2004;Maloney and Koch, 2019;Pérez Fonseca, 2009).…”

The dynamics of religious mobility: investigating the patterns and sociodemographic characteristics of religious affiliation and disaffiliation in a Brazilian sample

“…On the other hand, the findings of national surveys on "religious affiliation" present a less diverse society in which approximately 87% of the population declares to be Christian (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics 2010). This intriguing scenario in which two very distinctive ways to describe Brazil's religious identity are possible (i.e., a multi-religious country while predominantly Christian) has been analyzed by different researchers in the last few decades (e.g., Birman and Leite 2000;Mariano 2013;Dawson 2007;Morello 2019;Usarski 2002). They argue that the understanding of such apparent contradiction requires the investigation of phenomena such as (a) "switching" of religious identity among Christians, which are largely migrating from Catholicism to different Protestant denominations; (b) the role of Catholicism "as a sort of 'universal donor' from which all religious faiths recruit a significant percentage of their followers" (Almeida and Monteiro 2001, p. 5) and with which they establish complex exchanges in terms of beliefs and practices; and (c) a significant increase in the number of those who define themselves as Unaffiliated, Atheist, or Agnostic.…”