Sacrifice and Regeneration

Sacrifice and Regeneration analyzes the surprising success of Seventh-day Adventism in the Andean highlands, focusing especially on Peru. Between 1890 and 1930, the Seventh-day Adventist mission started churches, schools, hospitals, and clinics, recruiting many Indigenous people and mestizos (but few people from the elite). Conversion from Catholicism to Adventism had a huge impact on the functioning of socioeconomic, political, and social institutions, often leading to conflict and violence. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of the early converts to Seventh-day Adventism were army veterans from the War of the Pacific (1879–83) and countless civil wars (p. 204).Few occupations were open to landless veterans returning to civilian life, except mercenary, bandit, schoolteacher, and church or village leader (p. 204). Some Indigenous community members “feared former soldiers, who were not always shy about using force. In fact, even the Seventh-day Adventists, a minority and supposedly part of a movement that preached pacifism, implemented violent methods when deemed necessary. They actively burned Catholic churches, did not hesitate to smash Catholic icons, and were willing to humiliate adversaries or men who stood in their way” (p. 205). The early decades of the twentieth century were violent times in the Andes, with local leaders, law enforcement, political movements, and bandits all routinely resorting to violence and intimidation.The root cause of much violence was clear: “What [Seventh-day Adventist] missionaries overlooked, or simply did not understand, was that the Indians’ place in society turned their quest for education into a struggle over rights and access to power. From the geographical periphery and the bottom of the Andean racial hierarchy, they had limited means to seek better opportunities or acquire new skills” (p. 208). Getting an education was as much a political act of defiance for Indigenous people as demanding their rights was.Hence, Mabat concludes that “conversion was, in and of itself, an act of political defiance carried out against local community authorities” and local strongmen (caudillos) (p. 201). Moreover, “conversion to Seventh-day Adventism put indigenista ideas into practice: here was the clean and educated Indian that intellectuals in Lima had been waiting for. These future citizens would be able to carry the nation forward” (p. 201). “Nevertheless,” Mabat continues, “converts differed from indigenistas on one important issue: for indigenistas, regeneration was mainly social, while for converts, it was profoundly religious. Reading the Bible was a direct pathway to the sacred, hygiene was about purity, and becoming a ‘good citizen’ was also about choosing the ‘true’ form of Christianity” (pp. 201–2). Mabat lists multiple instances of active Protestant involvement in Latin American politics, from the Mexican Revolution to the forced assimilation of Indigenous populations under Paraguayan dictator Alfredo Stroessner in the 1960s and 1970s (pp. 202–3).Mabat explicitly reflects on her methodology, her main sources, and their limitations (pp. xxi–xxv). She was unable to gain access to the Seventh-day Adventist Church's archive in Lima, while the Puno archives contained no documents from the early mission years (p. xxi). Mabat used whatever archival materials she could from regional and archbishopric archives in Puno combined with old newspaper articles, letters from Seventh-day Adventist leaders to the Washington, DC, headquarters, and several Adventist publications in English. She created two main databases: one with the names of over 280 Indigenous converts to Seventh-day Adventism connected to the mission, and one with “a comprehensive catalog of just about eight hundred documents categorized according to place, date, subject, and the names of the Indians who appear in each document” (p. xxii). Mabat admits that the main limitation of the “fragmented nature of my databases” was that she does “not know when exactly each convert decided to convert, if that person stayed within the Seventh-day Adventist mission, and if not, when they left” (p. xxiii). But she adds confidently that “even so, the contours of the picture are clear and it is possible to make sound deductions about the missing pieces” (p. xxiii).The book is very well written and meticulous in its use of archival sources, piecing together fascinating family histories from 1890 to 1930 and explaining why many early Seventh-day Adventist leaders were at the forefront of the political struggle for emancipation and the Indigenous population's increased freedom. By the 1970s, anthropologist Ted Lewellen “found that Adventists were more educated than Catholics and that they were disproportionally represented in communal politics” in Soqa, Peru, on Lake Titicaca (p. 199). Seventh-day Adventists there had benefited from their church's emphasis on education, which meant access to Seventh-day Adventist schools, and were thus in a good position to take advantage of new business and political opportunities.Three of the book's chapters analyze the motivations, struggles, and class aspirations of the Seventh-day Adventist missionaries, who often came from rural small-town America. Mabat carefully puts Seventh-day Adventist growth in the wider context of Andean religions, including other Protestant mission churches and, of course, Catholicism. Every university library should have Sacrifice and Regeneration, and every Andes expert should buy it

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