RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS AND THE LANGUAGE OF RIGHTS IN LATIN AMERICA*+
Daniel H. Levine, University of Michigan
To understand the relation of religion and politics in the Latin America of the 21st
century, it is essential that we recognize the profound changes that the continent has
experienced in both “religion” and “politics” and in how the relation between them is
understood, created and sustained: the new actors, organizational vehicles and arenas in
which the relation of faith to social and political action is worked out.
This is a
dialectical relationship: as both religion and politics change, they also exchange basic
ideas and concepts, learning from and adapting to one another. Religion is neither the
passive reflection of the social order (as Durkheim might have had it) nor is it a template
or worse, a cookbook, for political action as much contemporary commentary on
fundamentalism suggests. The path is two way, and the influence is mutual.
Three dimensions of change combine to give form and content to the relations of
religion and politics in Latin America: religious pluralism, socio political pluralism and
democratic politics, and the creation and diffusion of a language of rights which includes
the defense of human rights, but goes beyond this to promote the creation of autonomous
subjects capable of themselves claiming voice and participation in social life. The
emergence of a practical vocabulary of rights provides an empirical and theoretical
bridge between religion and politics.
The public face of religion in Latin America, and the overall presence of churches
and religious groups and images in the public sphere and the social and political life of
the continent, has changed beyond recognition over the last half century. In the not so
distant past, thinking about the public face of religion evoked images and symbols of
civic religious fusion at all levels. The repertoire included Te Deums with the presence of
political and ecclesiastical “authorities” at the highest level, along with the infallible
*
Prepared for presentation at a conference on “Religion and Politics: A Holy but
Controversial Affiliation” National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan,
+ The author thanks Paul Freston, José Enrique Molina, and Timothy
Steigenga for their comments and suggestions.
presence of politicians, clergy and military officers at the inauguration of public works,
the opening of stores or factories, and a wide range of public events or programs.
i
Together on a public stage, this joint presence perfectly reflected and reinforced the
identification of “the church” (only one was recognized) with political and economic
power and social hierarchy. Thinking about the public face of religion in this new century
brings very different images to mind. Street
mostly
preachers fill the scene, men (they are
men) carrying a Bible, a loudspeaker and sometimes a portable platform,
preaching and often singing with some small group in a public square , on a street corner,
or near a bus or train station. In any city of the continent, and in the smallest and most
remote towns as well, it is now just about impossible to linger in a public square, get on
or off a bus, metro or train, without running into one or more preachers. They no longer
represent “the church”; they speak in the name of many.
The contrast with the traditional face of religion is strong, and reflects a net of
related changes. Where there was monopoly there is now pluralism, where a limited
number of spaces were once officially reserved for religious practice (with a limited
number of authorized practitioners), there is now a rich profusion of churches, chapels,
and mass media programming, not to mention campaigns and crusades that carry the
message to hitherto “profane” spaces like streets and squares to beaches, sports stadiums,
jails, bars and nightclubs. Instead of a limited number of voices “authorized” to speak
in the name of religion, there is now a plurality of voices, not only between distinct
denominations but within churches as well.
There is a song by Atahualpa Yupanqui, called Preguntitas Sobre Dios ("Some
small questions about God") that has a lot to say about the traditional image and public
presence of religion
in Latin America. The singer asks members of his family where
God can be found. The family is poor--peasants, miners, and woodcutters--and no one
knows. No one has seen God, no one responds. Of his brother, the singer says, "And
nobody should ask him if he knows where God is /Such an important person has never
been to his house." 1 Yupanqui concludes :
2
There is business here on earth
More important than God.
[It's that] no one should spit blood
So that others can live better.
Does God watch over the poor?
Maybe yes, maybe no.
But one thing is sure
He eats at the boss' table.2
The God that Atahualpa Yupanqui sings of is remote: familiar friend of the rich,
but invisible and at best indifferent to the poor. This God is no friend to those who fight
for change. Anyway,
the singer tells us that fighting for justice on earth is more
urgent than searching for a God who is too important to care about (much less be present
among) the poor. This image of God extends to religion and specifically to the Catholic
Church, and has long echoes in the liberal and radical tradition of Spain and Latin
America. From the civil wars of the nineteenth century to the Mexican and Cuban
revolutions, over a wide range of issues and circumstances, progressives of all kinds
consistently identified religion with superstition and churches with reactionary forces.
Looking backward from the present, these images have a dated, almost antiquarian
quality about them. Over the course of the last fifty years, new groups, insurgent voices
and social forces with religious inspiration and support have reshaped religion’s image
and social connections in Latin America and profoundly altered
the terms of its
engagement in politics. Allies of the past (especially military and economic elites) no
longer found religion trustworthy; progressive movements looked to religion for moral
and material support.
1. In Spanish, Y que nadie le pregunta si sabe donde está Dios /por su casa no ha pasado tan importante
señor.
2. In Spanish, Hay un asunto en la tierra mas importante que Dios/y es que nadie escupa sangre, pa'que
otro viva mejor/ Que Dios vela por los pobres, tal vez sí, tal vez no/ pero es seguro que almuerza, en la
mesa del patrón.
3
To summarize, in less than half a century, a securely established routine of mutual
support and indeed, mutual blessing among
church, state and power, has been
transformed in dramatic fashion. New and sometimes
contestatory voices emerged
ranging from Christian democratic reformism and liberation theology to Christian
Marxist alliances. Protestantism once a collection of small groups with a public stress
on personal salvation, obedience to authority, and a ferocious anti communism has
grown to the point that it constitutes a significant presence on the public stage. At the
same time, Protestantism has diversified, and now incorporates a wide and growing
range of views and
positions. This is a lot of change in very little time, change that
repeatedly caught scholars and observers by surprise. How can we grasp the dynamic of
change in a way and look to the future with reasonable confidence of accuracy?
The Transformation of Religion: Plurality and Pluralism
Before getting into the particulars of analysis, a brief note is in order on how the
concepts of plurality and pluralism are employed and how they are distinguished from
one another. Plurality is above all quantitative, and is used here to denote the growing
number of groups, groups, activists, spokespersons, churches, chapels and the like. The
concept of pluralism is social, and is used here to denote the construction of rule of the
game that incorporate multiple actors as legitimate parts of the process. For pluralism to
gain acceptance in society and politics, plurality is clearly a necessary but not a sufficient
condition. Together, the new facts of religious plurality and pluralism are reshaping the
public face of religion in Latin America, as they intersect with the equally new facts of
pluralism in politics and civil society.
A plurality of churches,
social movements
identified with religion, and “voices” claim the moral authority to speak in the name of
religion; a pluralism is increasingly evident in civil society and access to public spaces.
Barriers to
organization drop as the ‘rules of the game” for a plural religious arena
are gradually worked out and put into practice. This is a two way street, a dialectical
relationship to be more precise. Just as religious plurality and pluralism transform social
and political life, putting more actors, voices, and options into play, so too the
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consolidation and expansion of democratic politics, the reduction of barriers to
organization and access, and the gradual elaboration of practical rules of the game for a
plural civil society, have dramatic impacts of their own on religious institutions.
The emergence of pluralism and plurality as part of the public presence of religion
in Latin America can be situated with some confidence in time and space. Although
precursors can be found in every instance, most observers agree that for Catholicism the
overall process gets under way in the post World War II period, with the emergence of
reformist currents within the churches including a loose network of pastoral centers,
journals and locally based initiatives that in different ways represented a search for ways
to create a more effective presence of the Church throughout the region.
spin off organizations
Related and
soon crystallized into Christian Democratic parties breaking
long standing ties between Catholic institutions and
conservative politics. These and
other similar initiatives were energized and reinforced by well known developments in
global Catholicism that punctuated the 1960s and 1970s, including of course the Second
Vatican Council, the regional conferences of Medellín and Puebla, and the emergence of
liberation theology The social and political impact of these developments was amplified
and extended by the region’s political experience of the 1970s and 1980s which drove
activists into the churches (often the only space remaining open) where they met with
welcome and shelter. This is a well known story and I will not go into detail here.
(Levine, 1992, 1996, Smith, 1991) For present purposes, it suffices to underscore the
point that
all these movements of change created and legitimized new voices, new
agents, and new venues for religious action whose social and political meaning was
magnified beyond the original intent of many by political circumstances.
For Catholicism, the changes sketched out here present a profound challenge to its
traditional role as the church—officially acknowledged wielder of moral and social
authority within the boundaries of a defined national territory. The effort to hang on to
this unique status and to the privileges that come with it runs counter to the logic of an
open and more varied society. Casanova argues that only when religions abandon the
status of “church”
can be they be fully compatible with a modern society. “The
5
conception of modern public religion that is consistent with liberal freedoms and modern
structural and cultural differentiations, he writes, is one that builds on notions of civil
society.” (217) The Protestant story begins to consolidate into a visible and public
presence of pluralism about twenty years later. Starting in the late 1980s, and building on
a long, process of church “planting” and growth,
Protestant groups and spokespersons
began to find their way in growing numbers onto public platforms and into politics. With
the end of the cold war and the passing of early ‘heroic figures’ like Guatemala’s Efraín
Ríos Montt, Protestant groups began to
consolidate a substantial, varied public
presence –building churches, creating schools, acquiring a media presence and so forth.
This gave the Protestant community—itself increasingly diverse and plural internally
(Freston) an indispensable platform for entering the political arena, at the same time that
the end of the cold war made it possible for that entry to advance a broad range of
interests and positions.
Pluralism and the new presence of a plurality of options change the dynamics of
religious growth and competition and work in subtle ways to reconfigure the relations
between religion (ideas, practices and institutions) and the ordinary structures of power
and identity in the society. This happens as new groups are created and drawn into active
involvement with new voices taking a place in the public arena. The whole process
presents both challenge and opportunity for churches as institutions and for
their
members and activists, who are slowly learning to live in a world that no longer can be
defined by one church in mutual alliance with one state. Reality is now far richer, more
complicated, and messier.
Pluralism presents religion with both challenge and opportunity. The challenge of
challenge of adaptation to new rules of the game comes with the opportunity to enter the
public arena in new ways, benefiting from and supporting openness and a consolidation
of democratic institutions, practices and norms. The challenge and opportunity of
adapting to, or perhaps better, of creating new rules of the game includes elements that
range from the new need to compete for members or resources in an open market
(Chesnut) to the difficulties of coexisting with hitherto demonized groups, or, for the
6
specific case of Catholicism, of accepting the legitimacy of others as equal partners on
the public stage. Among the most notable of the opportunities that pluralism puts on the
table are the chance to acquire new followers, to reach and energize them in new ways,
and to exploit new media. There is also the opportunity
to develop ways of acting in
politics and relating to potential political allies and partners that preserve independence
and a moral center to actions while still making it possible for the church and its leaders
to pursue goals. This task is complicated by the new fact of a more open, less regulated
civil society, and by the more open kind of politics that has accompanied transitions to
democracy. At the very least, more open politics means the possibility of greater choice,
more options for competing the allegiance and membership of the potential audience and
less regulation of the effort. Protestants in many countries have devoted substantial effort
to leveling the playing field, above all by sharing in public subsidies hitherto limited to
catholic institutions (Smith, 1998) and by removing or fighting barriers to the ordinary
life of their communities such as laws regulating “noisy churches” .
The impetus behind this effort is partly competitive. (Chesnut) Steigenga also
points to a broad “pentecostalization” of religious belief and practice as elements once
limited to Protestant (and specifically Pentecostal experience) including stress on the
direct experience of charismatic power, speaking in tongues (glossalalia) certain kinds of
music, patterns of group organization and leadership, with emphasis on equal access to
all, men and women, to the gifts of the spirit ) have been widely diffused in the Christian
community. It is further reinforced by the reality of another kind of pluralism within
Catholicism. Opinion surveys regularly show considerable variation in degrees of
commitment to the church which
undermine traditional expectations of obedience to
the hierarchy (Mallimaci 1996, Parker)
To be sure, the existence of a gap between
leadership expectations and projections and what followers will commit to
in itself is
nothing new. But in the context of growing competition from other churches, the matter
seems more urgent to Catholic leaders because of the implications for control as well, of
course, as the challenge it raises to the status of the Catholic church as the church. This
explains in part the stress on reinforcing internal unity and hierarchical control which
gained strength throughout the papacy of John Paul II and continues with Benedict XVI.
7
As we shall see, these developments have the institutional churches to withdraw from
activism, closing well known institutions like Chile’s Vicaría de la Solidaridad. (Drogus
and Stewart Gambino, Sikkink 1996) Within the Protestant community, as noted earlier,
pluralism is a common expectation, and it has resisted efforts at regional or even national
coordinating bodies that might yield a single authorized voice.
The presence of plurality and plural options within each religious community
means that analysts should be particularly careful drawing inferences from such pluralism
in beliefs and memberships to specific political consequences. There are too many
churches, too many spokespersons, and too many venues and media for voice for simple
references to church and state to suffice. Further, although multiple options and resulting
choices can be a starting point for democratic politics, this does not mean that any
particular group is necessarily democratic within. As Harris reminds us in his excellent
study of religion and African American political activism, participatory ideals can find it
hard going within theocratic structures. At the same time, the very variety of options and
the volatility of identities and connections
makes it unlikely that any unified and
sustained political movement will emerge out of the blooming garden of protestant
growth .
The continuing erosion of Catholicism's monopoly status bears on issues ranging
from traditional concerns about education, censorship or public morality to the allocation
of official subsidies, and competition for places on
government commissions,
committees and public platforms. Set in the general political context, pluralization also
suggests that building and sustaining a new role will require groups to play the old
politics more skillfully and more consistently than in the past. This means working to
maintain the presence of groups and hold members, sustaining grass roots democracy
while working on allies and connections, and assuming a realistic bargaining stance to
politics. Groups need to bargain for better terms with everyone and enter into alliances
only with great care and caution. Allies, connections, resources, and the shield they
provide remain of critical importance. Allies, resources and connections are required
precisely because what ordinary people need in politics and what defines a system as
8
legitimate in their eyes is predictability, accountability and a sense, however minimal, of
being a legitimate part of something larger.
Many of the grass roots groups that began to operate and consolidate in Latin
America in the crucible of the 1970s and 1980s shared a concept of politics according to
which “the people” (defined in terms of social class) constituted a natural majority. In
this view of the world, the people would ultimately construct a new counter hegemony
whose eventual victory would obviate the need for ordinary politics. Once a counter
hegemonic understanding could be forged and spread in the population, this people
would join together and create a new and different kind of political order.
This is an
old utopian dream, mostly left behind at least for now. This self concept had its
counterpart in the changing experience of
many newly confident Protestant groups as
they entered the political arena in the 1990s. As “children of light” bringing a new ethic
and political style, they would presumably moralize politics and the political world. But
here, as in the case of
earlier generation of Catholic progressives, the old politics
proved tenacious—not merely resisting
the new but also effectively incorporating,
dividing and demobilizing.
In some cases, this de mobilization has been accelerated by decisions of the
Catholic hierarchy to back out of center stage of politics, reducing the material support
and ideological cover that groups long relied on. (Drogus and Stewart-Gambino) This
process gained strength. The For the Protestant communities, in leading cases such as
Guatemala, Brazil, or Peru, initial enthusiasm about the prospects for building a new
Jerusalem and a new kind of politics
yielded
to disillusionment and discredit (as in
Guatemala or Peru) or to an evangelical pluralism in which utterly new churches (like
Brazil’s Universal Church of the Reign of God) have emerged as self confident players
of the “old politics” (Garrard Burnett, López, Drogus and Stewart-Gambino)
I want to underscore the issue of choice, how pluralism or what rational choice
scholars might call the “supply side’ can appear to the potential audiences. Very often
analysis of pluralism and plurality takes off primarily from the point of view of groups
9
and leaders: from what those working in a rational choice vein would term the “supply
side”. Although this is important, it is
incomplete insofar as the motivation of the
audience is ignored. Ignoring the audience for change is a little like discussions of
governability that center attention exclusively on control and order without addressing
issues like voice, representation or access. In religion as in politics or social life as a
whole, we need to ask how such plurality appears to those on the receiving end. From
the point of view of the target audience or audiences, the presence of a plurality of
options opens possibilities. To be sure, many new churches are exclusive in membership
and make extensive demands on new believers. But the choice to assume these demands
and obligations is made freely. On the ground level, what we know is that those who
belong to new churches are in fact rarely exclusive in group membership. They belong to
groups of all kinds at rates pretty much comparable to other religious groups. This opens
possibilities for creating and maintaining ties and relationships across groups, keeping
the flow of information open and under girding the possibilities of common action.
The Transformation of Politics: Civil Society and Democracy
The religious transformations outlined in the previous section have had many and
varied impacts on politics. The loosening of long established ties binding the Catholic
church with established power created a space and opportunity for new movements and
alternative positions. In the 1950s Christian Democracy emerged to challenge integralist
and conservative parties and twenty years later liberation theology and associated
movements appeared to challenge both politics and
the church
in the name of a
thoroughgoing transformation of politics and culture. It is no exaggeration to state that
movements otherwise as different from one another as the landless movement in Brazil,
the unemployed and piqueteros of Argentina, survival organizations in Peru and human
rights and neighborhood movements everywhere owe much of their initial impulse to the
efforts and resources invested by churches and religious activists and to the institutional
protection that churches have provided to individuals and groups.
10
The particular form in which the process played out, and the specific career and
fate of particular groups varied from country to country as the political context and
opportunity structure created or closed off possibilities. Despite these differences, the
basic fact of pluralization and plurality, and the common task of learning to navigate a
plural political world, creates important shared elements and underscores the continuous
interchange and mutual influence of religious pluralism on politics, and
the impact of
renewed or restored political pluralism has on religion
Plurality and pluralism in religion challenge a pattern of public life accustomed
for many years to seeing an official or semi official church (Roman Catholic) which
customarily had a recognizably authorized spokesperson.
For new actors, growing
pluralism leads to efforts to achieve a legitimate role in public life and a place (alongside
the Catholic church ) on public and ceremonial platforms. This has its symbolic side,
legitimating new churches as appropriate representatives of religion and morality. It also
has a very concrete side, in terms of equal access to official subsidies. As noted,
Casanova locates this process as part of the shift of the church from its status as church,
that is, a religious institution with an official or semi official monopoly in a given
territory) to one actor among many in an open civil society. He also suggests that in a
public sphere open to all, it is in the interests of all to keep it open. In the long run, this
can reinforce the commitment of any group to maintaining an open political life.
Political changes have had important and often unexpected impacts on religion.
With the restoration of democratic politics across the continent, churches and religious
leaders have lost (and sometimes abandoned) their openly political roles. To the extent to
which political parties and a “normal political life” have regained strength and presence,
new social movements, and in general the range of groups in civil society with some link
to the churches have lost resources, members, and effectiveness. It has been common to
see activists either withdraw or move into specifically political groups or government
positions, and for groups to divide on partisan political grounds.
At the same time,
specifically religious political parties or voting blocs have had limited success. Christian
democrats remain strong only in Chile, and efforts to create explicitly Protestant parties
11
have had only very
limited success. The very idea of a confessional state, which
resonates strongly in some fundamentalist circles around the world, finds little echo in
Latin American Protestantism.
(Freston, López)
New leadership groups and utterly
new leadership styles have emerged in the churches. Media skills are notable and careers
in religious or other broadcasting are increasingly common stepping stones to political
candidacies. In some Protestant groups in Brazil, there is the beginning edge of what
looks like dynasties with sons of church leaders or founders assuming a directing and
leading role in the next phase of church expansion. (Freston).
The end of the cold war had a powerful effect on all the churches. Along with the
electoral defeat of the Sandinista party in Nicaragua, the global problems of socialism
and communism left progressives and liberationists facing a totally new political
panorama. Earlier confidence in the power of “the people” to re create society and
politics gave way, slowly, to realization of the need for greater pragmatism. It is ironic
that this new awareness should emerge more or less simultaneously with the explosive
growth of Protestantism, which has captured a growing share of loyalties among the poor,
the preferential base for liberation theology. As one friend commented to me, “while the
Catholic church was opting for the poor, the poor themselves were opting for the
Protestants.” Note that option was not for Protestantism in the abstract, but rather for
specific forms of Protestantism that
rather than
stressed an intense spiritual and community life
a program for long term political transformation. As for the Protestants
themselves, the end of the cold war liberated them not only from the obsessive anti
communism of the past, but also from close dependence on foreign (mostly North
American ) leadership and resources, now directed in growing measure to capture souls
in the former socialist bloc.
The new opening to politics along with growing pluralism within the Protestant
community has brought several important elements to the scene. There is a notable
revaluation of politics itself: once seen as the realm of corruption and evil, it is now
presented as a possible, legitimate, and even necessary field of action for believers.
Where once the children of light were enjoined to concentrate above all on personal
12
salvation and building a community of the elect, they now visualize politics, despite the
dangers it holds, as
a central part of their identity and responsibility. Explicitly
evangelical political parties have had little success as such. They have not been able to
mobilize or guarantee a bloc vote of the faithful, nor have they attracted masses of voters
of any kind. (Freston) One finds instead a growing
plurality of political positions,
under girded in part by the fact that the explosive growth of the churches has, not
surprisingly, drawn in new members with a wide variety of experiences, careers and
orientations. The experience of Brazil is notable, with self identified evangelicals (many
of them adult converts) present in parties and movements all across the ideological
spectrum from the PT on the left to the far right .
As they engage the political world, groups and actors of religious inspiration
have not been exempt from the temptations of the old politics, including corruption and
the abuse of power, Evangelical leaders (like Christian Democrats a generation earlier)
may have expected their presence to carry with it a cleansing and moralization of politics,
but this has not been the case. The experience of the evangelical politicians who rose to
power in Peru with Alberto Fujimori, is instructive, as is the fall of Guatemala’s
evangelical President, Elías Serrrano. Dario López documents the sad experience of
Peru’s evangelicals who swept into office with Fujimori in 1990 and remained bound to
the regime until its ignominious collapse a decade later. López distinguishes between
the small group of evangelical politicians, totally compromised by the corruption of the
Fujimori-Montesinos regime, and the rich experience of activists and ordinary people in
civil society, above all in urban survival movements, human rights organizations and in
the Rondas Campesinas. He argues forcefully that the new civic capacities and social
capital created at the base have a greater chance of nurturing and sustaining democracy in
the long run.
Those evangelicals who supported the regime contributed neither to the
articulation of alternative spaces for participation in formal politics nor to the
creation of a distinct political ethos. Instead, the experience of the past decade,
following the only democratic period of Fujimori’s Presidency (1990-92) shows
that those evangelicals who served in the Congress during the Fujimori years
(1990-2000), all closely tied to the regime, reinforced
traditional political
13
practices, adopting with ease all the vices of the old political class, most notably
corruption and nepotism. (124)
The presence of evangelical believers in social movements presents a very
different image. As part of these citizen movements, sharing in the dynamic of
civil society, and working collectively with the poor in the settlements that
encircle our great cities as well as with peasant communities suffering directly
from the violence of those years, evangelicals crafted new forms of “doing
politics” which in the long run helped keep democracy from collapsing
completely (125)
The effort to create an effective and effectively democratic political presence has
been a continuing thread in the recent public presence of religion in Latin America. The
process has a different meaning for elites and the institutions they direct than for grass
roots activists and group members.
Elites and institutions
face the challenge of
maintaining a critical presence in a very different political arena. In the 1970s and 1980s,
religion was pushed and pulled on to
center stage by a powerful combination of new
ideas, effective leaders, and populations eager to make sense of their situation, and find
moral sanction and allies in their search for solutions.
As circumstances changed,
religion in that form moved off center stage. This is no surprise, but we should be clear
that moving off center stage does not mean moving out of the public sphere. Why expect
religion to be depoliticized in Latin America, when religious issues and groups flourish in
politics all around the world, not least in the United States? At issue is not
depoliticization or abandonment of the public sphere, but rather a shift in who speaks,
where voices are heard, and what
they say. Religious spokespersons no longer
command immediate attention; religious discourse no longer occupies center stage. Even
if it did, there is no longer a single voice. For their part, activists and especially grass
roots members face a more elemental challenge: how to hold members and keep
organizations alive in the teeth of hard times and a state that is at best indifferent.
Everywhere in Latin America, transitions to democracy have been accompanied by
demobilization and marginalization of popular movements. By now it is clear that early
hopes for a new politics will not be fulfilled. With only scattered exceptions, the social
power and new identities put together in the struggles of preceding decades proved
unreliable bases for organization and action in the new politics of the 1990s. By the
14
early 1990s, many groups had burned out: the struggle had been exhausting,
organizations divided on partisan political grounds, members lost interest, drifted away, or
moved into government or politics, leaders were not
replaced, and severe economic
decline meant that for numbers of grass roots followers, the struggle to survive took
precedence over the political struggle. 3
The impacts of political change on religion clearly come from sources that go
well beyond the bounds of formal politics. Great hopes were placed in civil society as
the seedbed of a new and more democratic political life. But the new ground of
democratic politics proved all too often stony and difficult, when not wholly sterile. In
the recent experience of Latin America, as in many other historical and contemporary
cases, churches and religiously linked or inspired movements have been among the most
important venues in which civic capital has been created and nurtured. Together with a
broad spectrum of groups (commonly referred to as civil society) they have played a
particularly prominent role in recent years. They open public life to hitherto excluded
groups and silent voices, and together represent the creation of a series of spaces for
public life which in many instances simply did not exist before. These are the
neighborhood associations, human rights organizations, women’s groups, survival
organizations like the communal kitchens of Peru, cooperatives, cultural groups, new
unions, micro businesses, piqueteros, and so on.
That many of these groups ultimately fail should not surprise us, nor does it mean
that they leave no trace in the personal life of activists or in society at large. (Drogus and
Stewart-Gambino, Levine and Romero, Tarrow). The key question may not be the group
itself but rather the possibility of creating capacities in one arena and transferring them to
3 Recent work has underscored the importance of gender in this process. Throughout the region, women
have been a significant part (commonly a majority) of the members and activists of grass roots groups of
religious inspiration. Such activism is costly and difficult, and often runs afoul of felt obligations to family
not to mention open pressure from male relatives. Women also encounter a glass ceiling in many churches
with positions of influence and authority effectively closed to them. The situation is marginally better in
some Pentecostal groups, who believe that gifts of the spirit are open to men and women alike, but here, as
in the Catholic Church, Max Weber’s general point holds: as religions institutionalize and
consolidate,
patriarchal views and male domination become more pronounced .
15
other fields of action. Indeed, from one point of view, the most densely structured and
provisioned groups may well be less apt venues for the creation of civic capacities and
social capital than those with less exclusive and exhaustive internal ties. Granovetter’s
notion of the ‘strength of weak ties” is relevant here. He stresses that when the ties within
a group are wholly exclusive and demanding, and the group in effect is shut off from
others, there are significant problems of survival. In contrast, weaker internal ties
facilitate
alliances between groups and the group keeps itself open to the flow of
information.
The Language of Rights: Vocabularies, Organizations, Impacts
Consideration of religious transformations and the language of rights in Latin
America includes but is not limited to issues of human rights in the classic sense of civil
liberties and the protection of the person, but extends to more general matters of equality,
voice, participation and access. Throughout Latin America in
the 1970s and 1980s
there was a huge expansion in the number of human rights organizations, in their national
and local presence and in the scale and effectiveness of their international connections.
(Sikkink, 1996) This phenomenon is related to (although analytically distinct from) the
more general expansion of social movements and popular organizations described earlier.
Support from the churches, both within nations and localities and importantly, at a
transnational level, was critical in the initiation, financing, and sustaining of these groups.
In the 1990s, these same institutions and groups played an important role in negotiating
the end to civil wars, and in the preparation, staffing, and activities of truth and
reconciliation commissions and in negotiations leading to truces and stand downs from
armed conflict. (Sikkink, Wechsler)
Why did churches take up rights as a cause in this way and in this time, not only
human rights in the classic sense but a more expanded and agent defined sense of rights?
Why now and in this way and not before? Over the past four decades, political violence
in Latin America—targeted assassinations, death squads, tortures disappearances, and
internal conflicts and open civil wars— claimed many victims. Religious figures-bishops,
16
priests, nuns, lay activists and educators, and ordinary men and women associated in
some way with them—have a prominent place on this long and painful list.
But
reference to violence, even violence on this scale, is insufficient to account for the new
commitment to rights that made so many into targets and martyrs.4 It is also essential to
acknowledge the impact –within religious institutions and among
religiously inspired
activists—of changes in theology and in the understanding of what faith means and
requires. The views that evolved could not be subsumed under the rubric of conventional
models of charity and melioration, because a key component was to empower the victims,
identify with them act alongside them, Central to this development is insistence on the
image of an autonomous subject, with capabilities, rights, and legitimate claims as a
result of being human.
This means that as a practical matter, the creation and use of a language of rights is
difficult to disentangle from the development of associations and networks. Words focus
attention, channel energies, and inspire those who use them to see and evaluate reality in
specific ways, and to seek allies, connections, and means with which to work on the
world as they see and judge it. This is the case with the transformation of rights in
religious discourse in Latin America.
These changes are most notable and have been
most commented upon in the case of liberation theology, which had the effect in many
cases of leading key figures in the hierarchy, clergy, and lay population to identify with
victims of poverty and repression and to reread their religious mission as requiring action
to change the circumstances that created abuse. Central to this development is insistence
on the figure of an autonomous subject, with capabilities, rights (including a right to
legitimate voice and participation) in the public sphere) and legitimate claims as a result
of being human. The ideas crystallized in liberation theology did much to shape the
positions taken by the region’s Catholic bishops at Medellín (1968) and Puebla (1979),
and served as a generative base for the actions of many individuals, groups, and church
sponsored or linked networks in defense of rights and democracy throughout the region.
4 A classic early statement is Lernoux. See also Berryman, Brett and Brett, Carrigan, and Peterson.
17
Three
concepts lie at the heart of liberation theology and together provide a
foundation for thinking about rights in a new way : 1) emphasis on God as the God of
Life; 2) insistence on the unity of sacred and human history; and 3) stress on seeing
poverty as a social and historical condition, one that is deeply contrary to God’s desires.
These three elements are knit together by a concern with poverty that is also a
commitment to the poor to side—to take a “preferential option” for the poor (to use the
phrase made famous at the 1979 meeting of the region’s Catholic Bishops in Puebla.
God gives abundant life and values the life of all beings. This life involves more than
simply survival over a determined number of years: the life envisioned by the God of
Life requires adequate
health, fulfilling education, family, nutrition, and so forth.
Throughout his work, the theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez refers to poverty as “early
death”—a condition that creates limited, truncated and often painful lives. In the final
analysis, he writes, the decision to side with the poor is a decision
For the God of life., for the “friend of life, as it says in the book of Wisdom
(11,25). In these expressions we find a way of speaking about faith and hope that
animate a Christian commitment. Our daily experience of violence and unjust
death will not permit us to engage evasions or abstract reflections on the
resurrection of Jesus without which our faith would be in vain, as Paul says. The
repercussions on the weak give us a criterion for judging the justice in place in
any society. (Gutiérrez, 1996: 57)
In the final analysis, poverty means death. The lack of food and housing, the
impossibility of providing adequate health and education, exploitation and
permanent unemployment, lack of respect for human dignity and unjust
limitations on personal liberty in expression, in politics, and in religious life, daily
suffering (Gutiérrez, 2004 : 563)
To insist that there is only one history--that human and sacred history are joined-means, in a concrete sense, that one does not wait for salvation or begin building the
kingdom of God after death, The kingdom of God begins here and now, and being true to
God’s plan also must begin in this life. [.Luke 17:20-21 “The Kingdom of God is not
coming with signs to be observed, nor will they say, “Lo, here it is… For behold, the
kingdom of God is in the midst of you”]
Gutiérrez makes an explicit connection
between commitment to the God of Life, and hence, commitment to the poor, and
concern for human rights.
18
As I stated earlier, in the final analysis, poverty means death: the physical death of
many as well as cultural death from the disregard in which many others live. A
few decades ago, our perception of this situation lead to preoccupation with the
them of life as a gift from the God of our faith. The assassination of Christians,
victims of their testimony to the Gospel, made this concern all the more urgent.
Reflection on this experience of persecution and martyrdom has given strength
and breadth to a theology of life that helps us see that the option for the poor is, at
root, an option for life. (Gutiérrez, 1996:56)
A vision of God as the God of Life and insistence that there is only one history
acquire
practical focus through the analysis and understanding of poverty.
Acknowledging the social and historical character of poverty has several consequences.
All social orders are created by human beings acting under particular historical
circumstances. No divine approval attaches to any social or political order, much less one
that creates and sustains massive and de humanizing poverty. Because poverty is a
historical product, constructed and maintained over time by relations of power, poverty
can be challenged and changed using the same methods of organization, collective action,
and the exercise of power. This outlook on poverty drives the recourse to the social
sciences that has been such a central (and misunderstood) component of liberation
theology. Social science does not replace theological reflection, but rather complements it.
The evolution of social scientific understanding of poverty in Latin America provided
liberation theology with both an explanation of reality and an action program. The
explanation finds the roots of poverty in exploitation and class division; the action
program is
popular organization. Gutiérrez underscores how important structural
analysis has been to liberation theology, and acknowledges the political problems this
has entailed:
It is a foundational point of view, above all if we take into account that these same
victims are also the victims of an economic and social system. Latin American
experience made us understand some time ago that in the final analysis, poverty
means death. Early and unjust death. (Gutiérrez, 1996: 27)
Structural analysis has been an element of the theology of liberation. This has not
been without costs, because although it is true that the privileged of this world
easily accept hearing about the existence of massive poverty (there is no way to
19
hide it in our times) problems begin when one points to the causes of this poverty.
Searching for causes inevitably leads to the topic of social injustice and this is
when one finds resistance. Above all if to structural analysis one adds a concrete
historical perspective, one that points up personal responsibilities. But the greatest
resistance and fear appear when the poor take stock of their own situation and
organize. (Gutiérrez, 2004: 566)
Gutiérrez is fully aware of the continuing evolution of the social sciences, and
points to the corresponding evolution of analytical tools for theological reflection: early
reliance on dependency theory has yielded to a broader, more interdisciplinary, and
culturally nuanced set of references.5 The conceptualization of poverty that under girds
liberation theology is simultaneously material and concrete, spiritual, and a matter of
commitment. Gutiérrez states the matter clearly in a text that explores the new context of
poverty in the world economy ¿Donde Dormiraán los Pobres? (Where will the poor
sleep?)
We live in a continent that is both Christian and overwhelmingly poor. The
presence of this massive and inhumane poverty drove us to reflect on the biblical
meaning of poverty. Towards the middle of the 1960s, three understandings of
the term “poverty” were formulated among theologians: a) real (often called
“material”) poverty, as a scandalous state, not desired by God; b) spiritual
poverty , in the sense of a child like spirituality one of whose expressions is
indifference to the goods of this world; and c) poverty as commitment : solidarity
with the poor and protest against poverty. (Gutiérrez, 1996: 7-8)
Liberation theology advanced a utopian position to the extent theologians and
those inspired by them refuse to accept that what exists defines the boundaries of the
possible. They look beyond the parameters of the present to the possibility of something
better, something that does now exist. (Levine, 1990) The power of this formulation lies
in how it combines an understanding of poverty and injustice with a commitment to
action, rooting both in a biblical vision of the God of life. From this perspective, a phrase
like “the right to life” so central in many recent North American debates, extends well
beyond issues of conception, contraception and abortion on which these debates have
5 This has lead to the incorporation of new and valuable perspectives from the human sciences (psychology,
ethnology, anthropology) which help address an intricate and dynamic situation. Incorporate means more
than just add on; it means meshing wit h. Attention to cultural factors helps us penetrate into mentalities
and attitudes and in this way to explain important aspects of reality. Economic aspects no longer look the
same once we give adequate weight to culture, and vice versa. (567)
20
centered. They share in a concept often referred to as a “consistent ethic of life” which
folds consideration of reproductive issues and abortion into a broad set of positions on
health, poverty, capital punishment, war, and care of the terminally ill.6 The kind of
action enjoined is also very specific: there is great stress on solidarity and
accompaniment (sharing the lives and conditions of the poor) and working with them to
empower change. This whole position was summed up
by the late Archbishop Oscar
Romero of San Salvador in a speech delivered just a month before he was shot down
while celebrating mass. Romero called for recognizing the poor—seeing them as they
really are--and acknowledging their centrality to a proper understanding of the church’s
mission. 7
“Our Salvadoran world is no abstraction. It is not another example of what is
understood by “world‘ in developed countries such as yours. It is a world made up
mostly of men and women who are poor and oppressed. And we say of that world of
the poor that it is the key to understanding the Christian faith, to understanding the
activity of the church and the political dimension of that faith and that ecclesial
activity. It is the poor who tell us what the world is, and what the church’s service to
the world should be. It is the poor who tell us what the polis is, what the city is and
what it means for the church really to live in that world….The church’s option for
the poor explains the political dimension of the faith in its fundamentals and in its
basic outline. Because the church has opted for the truly poor, and not for the
fictitiously poor, because it has opted for those who are really oppressed and
repressed, the church lives in a political world, and it fulfills itself as church also
through politics. It cannot be otherwise if the church, like Jesus, is to turn itself
toward the poor. (Romero, 1985: 179, 182-83)
Romero underscored the sinfulness of inequality “I insist once again”, he wrote, on
the existence in our country of structures of sin. They are sin because they produce the
fruits of sin: the deaths of Salvadorans—the swift death brought by repression or the long,
6 This is a position often associated in the United States with the late Cardinal Archbishop Joseph
Bernardin of Chicago, who also used the term “ a seamless garment” to denote a broad agenda of life. This
position clearly has much in common with that articulated in liberation theology. Cf Boyer, 2005 for an
account of current Vatican politics and their influence in the United States which situates this concept
within North American Catholicism.
7 The quotations that follow are from “ The Political Dimension of the Faith from the Perspective of the
Option for the Poor” an address delivered on the his being awarded a doctorate honoris causa by the
University of Louvain, Belgium Feburary 2, 1980. Reprinted in Voice of the Voicelsss. The Four Pastoral
Letters and Other Statements. Orbis, (1985)
21
drawn out, but no less real, death from structural oppression….. No matter how tragic it may
appear, the church through its entrance into the real socio-political world has learned how
to recognize, and how to deepen its understanding of, the essence of sin. The fundamental
essence of sin, in our world, is revealed in the death of Salvadorans.” (Romero, 1985, 18384)
Critics often question this stated preference for the poor. Is it not too exclusive,
partial, or excessively politicized? Those working within this perspective insist, to the
contrary, that their stance is deeply biblical, an essential element of any authentic faith.
Gutiérrez puts the matter boldly:
The root motive for commitment with the poor and the oppressed does not come
from the social analysis we use, nor from our human compassion, or even from
direct experience we may have of poverty. All of these are valid reasons that
doubtless play an important role, but for Christians this commitment is based
fundamentally in the God of our faith. It is a theocentric and prophetic choice
rooted in God’s freely given love and demanded by it. .In other words, the poor
are preferred not because they are morally or religiously better than others, but
because God is God, He for whom ‘the last shall be first”. This assertion clashes
with our narrow understanding of justice, but it is precisely this preference for the
poor that reminds us that God’s ways are not our own. (Gutiérrez ,2004: 571)
Solidarity with the poor and oppressed requires commitments of a kind that place
individuals and groups directly at the center of conflicts. Accompanying the poor and
oppressed entails the risk of sharing their fate and so it has been. Gutiérrez underscores
the deep Biblical roots of this commitment to action. He insists that the poor and
oppressed are themselves key protagonists of the process.
In numerous and varied ways the Bible teaches us that putting God’s will into
practice is the most important requirement of faith. ..The theology of liberation,
takes on this traditional referent of Christian revelation moved by the witness of
those who have commit themselves ever more deeply to the process of liberation
from the various servitudes from which the poor suffer.
This commitment draws from the experience of the oppressed themselves as they
began turning themselves into agents of their own destiny. In effect, in the 1950s
and 1960s, we witnessed the first steps in consciousness and organizing by
22
popular sectors in defense of the right to life, in struggle to defend their own
dignity, for social justice, and in a commitment to liberation. Here one could see
the outlines of a kind of popular protagonist (an actor) which would consolidate in
the coming years and which, with advances and retreats, remains a presence in
our lives. .Many Christians from these sectors have been present in this
process…their experience has nurtured theological reflection. It is therefore false
to argue that theological reflection (la inteligencia de la fe, the intelligence of faith)
arose from middle classes, only later extending to the experience of the poor
themselves. The truth is that their own commitments, their efforts to organize and
their living experience of the faith have been present from the very beginning. To
ignore this is to mis understand what happened in these times or to misrepresent it
explicitly: the facts themselves belie such an interpretation. (Gutiérrez, 2004:574)
Gutiérrez acknowledges that many have questioned whether the church may be
losing its religious identity through such deep involvement in politics. Others, he notes,
have gone further. “From positions of power they have openly violated the human rights
defended in church documents and struck blows against those Christians who gave voice
to their solidarity with the poor and oppressed “ Echoing Archbishop Romero, he
responds that “a correct insertion into the world of the poor does not distort the mission
of the church. The truth is that this is where the church finds her fullest identity as a sign
of the Kingdom of God to which we are all called and in which the poor and insignificant
have a privileged place. The church does not lose its identity in solidarity with the poor, it
strengthens it (Gutiérrez: 2004:592)
The conceptualization of poverty in liberation theology provides a ground for an
expanding concept of rights, and a moral vocabulary that legitimized organizations and
action in defense of these rights. The demand for solidarity with the poor and the
oppressed means active efforts to defend them along with a commitment to put
institutions at their service. It goes beyond the economics of poverty to address broader
issues of inequality and injustice. It goes beyond acting for the poor to accompanying
them and putting institutions and resources at their disposal. From this starting point, the
transition to support of movements by landless peasants, urban squatter settlement
dwellers, political prisoners, the unemployed and similar groups is straightforward. In
Peru and other cases,
grass roots ecumenical coalitions worked to defend
rights
(López). . In key cases like Brazil and Chile, the Catholic church with support from
23
others and access to important transnational networks, put resources at the service of the
defense of human rights and of the victims of repression. (Wechsler, Sikkink). In these
and other cases, the defense of classic human rights was accompanied by promotion of
organizing efforts and of the right to participation by those without resources. A close
examination of the origins of many grass roots movements (peasant and urban squatter
settlements, local health committees or cooperatives) one finds a coalition of religiously
inspired activists with communities in with specific needs. One case in point is what has
become the biggest single social movement in Latin America, Brazil’s organization of
landless peasants, the MST (Movimento Sem Terra). (Carter, Wolford) 8
The transformation of religious language paralleled the evolution of organizations
addressing rights. The two developments are closely related. Kathryn Sikkink (1996)
distinguishes three moments in the development of
human rights organizations and
networks in Latin America.: creation (1973-81), consolidation (1982-90) and refocusing
and retrenchment (1991 onwards. In the first period, “human rights” was put on the
agenda of national and transnational institutions for the first time. North American, and
particularly European church groups played a key role in setting up and financing groups
in Latin America. Key institutions were created, including specifically for the Americas,
America’s Watch, the Inter American Committee for Human Rights, the Washington
Office on Latin America (formed by a coalition of church groups) and in Latin America,
SERPAJ, the Service for Peace and Justice, an outgrowth of organizing efforts by the
Quaker based Fellowship for Reconciliation (Sikkink, 1996, Pagnucco and McCarthy)
Ron Kraybill’s comment on the role of and religious actors in Rodesia/ Zimbabwe’s war
of independence is apt:
At the heart of the Catholic contribution lay a value system in which survival
and power were not the ultimate goal, but rather faithfulness to transcendent
values that included peace, truthfulness, and service to others. These values led
Catholic workers to enter into engagement with the victims of the war, and only
8 That this movement contimues to draw church commitment and continues to entail risk was brought
home by the recent murder of Sister Dorothy Stang, a north American nun who had worked for thirty years
with peasant groups in Brazil’s north east. Johnson, 2005)
24
as a result of this engagement were Catholic workers able to see and act on the
issues destroying the people of Rhodesia. But Catholics did not merely see the
issues; their far-flung church system provided an unparalleled information
gathering network, making it possible to compile information essential for
mobilizing domestic and world opinion. When it came to influencing decision
makers, the Catholic efforts depended on an international structure for collecting,
analyzing and disseminating information and a ready entrée to political figures
and media channels, domestically and abroad. (Kraybill,1994:221)
In the first period, most national and trans national groups centered their attention
on massive violations of rights by military dictatorships and so focused on rights of the
person, freedom from execution, torture, arbitrary imprisonment. As groups became more
established and transnational networks consolidated, “they now began to address the
human rights issues in transitional regimes, increasingly stressing the role of democracy,
political rights, and justice for victims of past human rights abuses. The groups began to
stress the “quality” and “content” of democracy rather than the mere existence of
elections; this allowed them to incorporate many of their basic human rights concerns
within the debate about democracy (Sikkink, 1996,155)
Sikkink dates reorientation and retrenchment from 1991 onwards, a point in time
that coincides more or less with transitions to democracy in major countries and the end
of civil conflict and internal war in such notable cases as Guatemala, El Salvador, or Peru.
These developments drew many militants into “ordinary politics”, and coincided with
accumulating changes in the Catholic Church under the Papacy of the late John Paul II
that lead to a withdrawal from activism and the closing of such well known institutions as
Chile’s Vicaría of Solidaridad.9 Human rights groups of course remain
active, but their
own agenda has also changed, moving beyond torture to impunity, rights violations,
electoral rights, and rights of vulnerable groups such as women, children, homosexuals,
indigenous peoples. Some groups founded in earlier periods, such as the Mothers of the
Plaza de Mayo, who began in 1977 with strong support from SERPAJ, continue to the
present day with a broader agenda.
9 Similar issues have arisen in Peru, along with controversies concerning the role of Opus Dei, and the
human rights positions taken by Cardenal Cipriani. Rohter, 2005.
25
In Latin America, as in cases like South Africa or the Philippines,
groups of
religious inspiration (occasionally but not always joined by leaders of the institutional
churches) played a key role brokering an end to dictatorship, and negotiating an end to
civil war and in the preparation and legitimation of truth and reconciliation commissions.
Those opposed to such a role often argue that such efforts simply stir up the past, and
some—like the Argentine Catholic bishops (Mallimaci 2004) call for a “balanced”
history.. one that legitimizes
role of military and police institutions in combating
subversion. But on the whole religious language and organizations have been deployed
in support of these efforts. In a commentary on the Report of the Peruvian Commission
on Truth and Reconciliation, Gutiérrez notes that ignoring the past means refusing to
face a present that has deep roots in that very past, and thus making a repetition all the
more likely. He rejects the notion that such a report is simply nosing around the past and
that it is time to move on.
Some have objected that the commission is simply digging I the past, re opening
old wounds and that this serves no purpose and in fact is dangerous for the
country. Those who hold this view lack respect for the dead. They forget that for
those who directly suffered harm and loss from the violence, for those who do not
know if their loved ones are dead or where their bodies may be, all that happened
is not another time for them, it is a lacerating present. (Gutiérrez, 2004:461)
.
Gutiérrez insists that pardon (a totally free act taken from a perspective of faith)
be distinguished clearly from a just sanction for crimes committed. Citing the Biblical
injunction (Matthew) “ Blessed are those who weep those who feel compassion, those
who feel as their own the sufferings of others” he continues
There is a gesture that the prophet Isaiah presents us with in beautiful and moving
terms: “The Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces and remove the
condemnation of the people from the earth. Blessed , happy are those who act in
this way. In the words of Luke, we can say, “Woe to them who present
themselves before the God of justice and mercy with dry eyes. Because they did
not know how to share their time, their concern and their feelings with those
whose dignity as human beings, as daughters and sons of God was trampled
upon, those who have suffered forgotten and in silence. (Gutiérrez, 2004:464)
26
The Bible calls this ‘consolation. But let us be precise. This consolation has the
sense not only of welcoming and listening, but also, and above all, of liberating
from all that creates an inhuman situation…. Will we let this opportunity pass?
The opportunity for reconciliation. We cannot allow truth to remain hidden under
ground, in one of these unmarked graves that hold so many dead. (Gutiérrez, 2004:
465)
It is fair to ask what impact words, in this case the transformation of a language of
rights, can have in the long run. Do not actions count more than words? The preceding
discussion underscores how closely related words are to actions. The transformations in
religion in Latin America outlined here, and the creation of a new moral vocabulary of
rights has had tangible consequences and long lasting impact in the region. Human rights
is now firmly on the agenda of all major institutions. Networks of local groups of all
kinds (including those dedicated to human rights) now exist, often with extensive
transnational connections. This is not to say that abuses no longer exist. But there is now
an organized and vocal constituency that monitors and denounces such abuse. The link
of religious change to expanded understandings of rights that is expressed in language is
manifest in collective social action through a broad network of social movements—a civil
society--
that in most cases simply did not exist twenty years ago. Despite the many
difficulties such movements have encountered, and the exaggerated expectations and
hopes placed in them, their presence does change the social and political landscape,
providing new venues for action and sources of new leadership that are only now
beginning to make themselves felt.
Conclusions: Pluralism and future of rights
The dynamic and conflict charged character of the transformations that constitute
our story make it difficult to draw a balance. The reality sketched out here is constantly
changing. The pluralism that is so visible now was predicted by very few: the continued
energy and creativity of those on the ground will surely produce as yet unanticipated
patterns. Drawing a balance is further complicated by contextual variation. The common
thread of pluralism and plurality shapes the actors at play and the resources and
orientations at their disposal, but what they do with these varies greatly depending on the
structure of opportunity in any specific time and place.
27
One way to get at possible futures is to think about how institutional churches and
religiously inspired groups and activists reposition themselves to cope with the new
realities of plurality and pluralism in religion and politics. The active involvement of
church people and networks in the promotion and defense of human rights is testimony
to the introduction of a vocabulary of rights into religious discourse which has had
important legitimating effects on the discourse of rights and equality in social and
political life more broadly. For the Protestant community in particular, as we have seen
repositioning means revaluing politics as a proper and legitimate arena for action while
leaving behind the ferocious and obsessive anti leftism that constrained political options
in the past.
The transformations described -mean that as we look into the future we must pay
attention not to one but to
multiple agendas. Any effort to construct agendas has to
acknowledge the legitimate presence of multiple actors not only in politics and society,
but within religion itself. Building up civil society presents the long dominant Catholic
church—and other churches competing with it for members, resources, and a public
presence, with a range of groups and voices that escape control and must be recognized as
autonomous if they are to be real, rather than paper organizations.
Lehmann puts the
matter in terms of citizenship. ”Even if the ‘Church of the Poor inhabits a different world
from the popular religion it has optimistically come to invoke”, he writes
this does not necessarily mean that it holds no appeal for the rank and file; it
simply means that the rank and file will look to it as much for practical advice and
leadership as for religious succour, even while the theologians try to break down
the barriers between the two. One consequence has been to place the theme of
citizenship--that is, of the human and civil rights of persons--at the forefront of
popular movements, avoiding the assumption of earlier radicalisms that there
could be no citizenship without a total transformation of society. The result may
finally, be effective pressure from below for that modernization of the state and of
institutions of political representation is so conspicuously lacking in the region..”
(Lehmann, 1986: 147)
28
A review of the recent history of religion, politics, and of the relation between
them shows lots
of change in little time. Contrary to what classic theories of
secularization and modernization lead many to anticipate, the space where religion,
society and politics come together has remained a dynamic source of innovation and
continuing transformation with consequences that reach far beyond the confines of any
particular institutional sphere. With roots in these continuing transformations, the new
language of rights reaches out to shape the agenda of institutions, as it gives voice and a
legitimate place in public life to hitherto silent, marginal, and ignored groups. Among the
most urgent tasks any agenda for the future must take up will be finding ways to make
sense of the multiple consequences of religious pluralism as much for religion as for
politics, democratic politics above all.
The erosion of Catholicism’s religious and
cultural monopoly in Latin America and the coming of real pluralism impacts the public
image of religion and has a clear feedback effect on the internal life of the community of
faith, whatever its particular social and political interest or commitments.
29
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Uruguay has been the notable exception to this pervasive civic religious fusion .
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