Local Church, Global Church

As a universal religion, Catholicism is inherently transnational. Yet beliefs and practices also arise from regional histories. This volume seeks to apprehend this dual quality with chapters that examine how Catholic activists addressed local and national problems by drawing on theological tenets and church networks. Substituting nuance for simplifying dichotomies and surprisingly durable caricatures, Local Church, Global Church moves forward the field of religious history in Latin America by exploring a variety of ideological, theological, and practical approaches that informed activism. Although not all chapters privilege the transnational, they do explore, at least implicitly, the tension between universal teachings and particular political and social dynamics.Organized into thematic sections (on Vatican policies and local actions, church-state conflict in Mexico, student movements, and efforts to ameliorate poverty and disempowerment among workers and peasants), the chapters cover Mexico, Brazil, Guatemala, and Colombia and concentrate on the decades between 1920 and 1970. Activists are most frequently seen engaging with state institutions such as armies, universities, and official ideologies, although communists, atheists, and Protestants make brief cameos. Among the title's stated themes of the global, the local, and activism, the chapters most consistently cover the last. Lisa Edwards's indispensable overview of papal encyclicals and their varied receptions reveals that local clergy and lay organizations held a much looser and more dynamic relationship with the Vatican directives than is commonly assumed. Examining this relationship in Brazil, Dain Borges traces the independent paths that church authorities charted to combat secularization, Afro-Brazilian practices, and Protestantism during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Brazilian church's ambivalence on slavery and its legacy derived in part, Borges argues, from the Vatican's more urgent, and Eurocentric, call to address class conflict caused by urbanization and industrialization. “Brazilian lay action,” he writes, “was limited by the transnational content that gave it impetus” (p. 49).Jaime Pensado, Colin Snider, and Catherine LeGrand trace the role of Catholic activism in creating grassroots movements during the early Cold War—a role that is often overlooked amid the subsequent polarization and violence. LeGrand's study of how a community solidarity movement spread from a Nova Scotia town to several Latin American countries perhaps best encapsulates the simultaneously local and global aspect. The chapters by Mary Roldán and Susan Fitzpatrick-Behrens are similarly transnational in their examinations of church-led approaches to poverty, development, and liberation. In Colombia and Guatemala, respectively, missionaries collaborated and clashed with state actors, impoverished communities, and local authorities as they developed radio stations, credit unions, and catechism programs that highlighted Catholic activists' visions of social justice.The religious conflict that sprang from the Mexican Revolution and its aftermath also lends itself well to demonstrating the duality of Catholic activism. Although the 1926–1929 Cristero Rebellion in Mexico was acutely local, the broad interpretations of secularization and freedom of religion that fueled the conflict attracted intervention from several foreign actors. Robert Curley's provocative analysis of transnational figures such as Francis Kelley, whose widely disseminated writings in English publicized atrocities that revolutionaries allegedly committed against nuns and other women, opens up new ground for analyzing the overwrought partisan texts that shaped how Catholic activists interpreted the revolution as well as their own sense of righteous outrage. Stephen Andes's contribution shows how the Mexican Catholics' sense of besiegement led activists such as the peripatetic and multilingual Sofía del Valle to forge ties with the “expanding Catholic international society” (p. 161). Matthew Butler's nuanced analysis of Catholic activists' efforts to reclaim masculinity focuses on a particular case, but one that hints at the shifting gender norms that emerged from male devotion to sacrificial religiosity on a broader scale.For the insights and new research perspectives it offers, the book will be an important reference for specialists. However, as a measure of the state of the field, it is a rather subdued read. For over a decade Latin Americanists, including some featured here, have examined Catholic activism as a means to approach the intersection of beliefs, practice, and politics. Yet the editors' opening and closing remarks do little to lift religious activism from its parochialism in order to suggest why a wider readership should take note of this subfield. Moreover, several pieces are either highly tentative or burdened with excessive description. Perhaps due to the breadth of their topics, the chapters overall do not invite much dialogue among themselves or engage cohesively with the concepts and controversies that gave rise to the study of Catholic activism. Though the editors could have showcased the fruits of accumulated scholarship more effectively, the volume does point to quality work to come and the depths still to plumb within religious activism

Christianity · Church History · Ideology · Latin Americans · Local church · Political science · Politics · Protestantism · Secularization · Sociology · State (computer science) · Classics · History · Law · Religion, Society, and Development · Religious studies

• A Vanguard for the Counterrevolution

  Open Access•Luis Herrán Ávila•EIAL - Estudios Interdisciplinarios…•2020

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