Latin American Religions: Histories and Documents in Context

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.

Author: Anna L. Peterson, Manuel A. Vasquez
Publisher: New York University Press
Published: 08/03/2008
Pages: 352
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 9.00h x 5.00w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9780814767320

Review Citation(s):
Choice 03/01/2009

About the Author
Peterson, Anna L.: - Anna L. Peterson, Professor at the University of Florida, is the author of Martyrdom and the Politics of Religion and Seeds of the Kingdom: Utopian Communities in the Americas.Vasquez, Manuel A.: - Manuel A. Vasquez, Associate Professor at the University of Florida, is the author of The Brazilian Popular Church and the Crisis of Modernity and co-author of Globalizing the Sacred: Religion Across the Americas. Together Peterson and Vasquez have co-edited Christianity, Social Change, and Globalization in the Americas.