Religious Transformations in the Early Modern Americas

Bibliographic Data

ID7528574
AuthorsStephanie Kirk (0000-0002-9312-5552, corresponding author), Sarah Rivett
Year2010
Volume45
Issue1
Pages61-91
Publication date2010-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEarly American literature (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0012-8163 • E-ISSN: 1534-147X
PublisherUniversity of North Carolina Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/eal.0.0096
OpenAlexW2005989065
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited27

Religious Transformations in the Early Modern Americas Stephanie Kirk (bio) and Sarah Rivett (bio) The fields and disciplines organized under the general rubrics of early American studies and colonial Latin American studies have been reshaped and redefined in recent years by comparative, hemispheric, and transatlantic approaches. The topic of religion provides a pivotal axis of methodological analysis, for religion has long been central to how people have understood the origins and development of the Americas on each side of the hemispheric divide. Protestantism has, of course, long been central to the field of early American studies traditionally conceived, just as the study of Catholicism has shaped and defined the field of colonial Latin American studies. It is therefore somewhat surprising that despite advances in hemispheric and transnational approaches, disciplines and fields still perpetuate a notion of the hegemonic imposition of Christianity (Protestant vs. Catholic) along linguistic and national boundaries (Iberian vs. Anglo-Saxon). This fosters a sociocultural and historical disciplinary division that is neither accurate nor productive as a model for advancing the field of religion in early American studies.1 This division has perpetuated cultural stereotypes and scholarly paradigms of Anglo-Protestantism as bringing modernity to the New World, while Iberian-Catholicisms promoted monolithic Christian conversion and repressive Catholic regimes. Part of our methodological aim in this essay is to revise this historical and cross-cultural inaccuracy. We contend that religion offers a key rubric of comparative analysis, for it provides a common basis of discussion across boundaries of discipline, field, language, and nation. The primary purpose of this essay is to address the issue of trans-American crossings and foster cross-cultural dialogue in order to shed further light on religious systems and their relationship to the social structures of New World communities. However, we also feel that there is historical significance to this conversation that extends beyond the need to produce [End Page 61] new comparisons or to try to anticipate the future directions of our respective fields. There has been a broader resurgence of interest in religion in recent years not only among Americanists and Latin Americanists across various disciplines but also among philosophers and historians who write for a broader public. A long-standing narrative of secularization—particularly in the United States and increasingly in Latin America—has been a topic of much reflection and contestation across disparate audiences of scholars as well as public intellectuals.2 Anglo American literary historians have increasingly turned attention to the methodological shortcomings of reading practices that are rooted in a secular perspective. This is in part due to the fact that literary criticism, and the general culture of the secular academy in which it is practiced, still has difficulty escaping the binary logic of a secular discourse that pits reason against revelation, knowledge against belief, and the natural against the supernatural, rather than becoming more adept at discerning the interwoven layers of reciprocity and continuity between these seemingly disparate domains.3 Focusing on the early modern period, early Americanists and colonial Latin Americanists are uniquely positioned to begin to address these methodological lacunae, for these distinctions—the binary logic of a secular perspective—did not hold up in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and early eighteenth centuries. This period was one of epistemological as well as ontological continuity, particularly in terms of the history of religion. It was a period in which the intellectual divisions between secular and religious learning, church and state, political and pious subjectivity were not yet so firmly ingrained. The continuities forming a worldview in which religion was not supplemental or oppositional but rather integral to daily life presents an opportunity for early modern Americanists and Latin Americanists to speak directly and powerfully to the future of religious studies, while providing a methodological solution to the limitations of an analytic frame largely organized by a secular academy. We might ask, for example, what do cultural crossings and comparative religions in the early modern period teach us about religion in our present-day neocolonialist globalized society? How did religion maintain a stronghold throughout the Americas, even as secular ideals challenged narratives of providential design or political theology? Hemispheric perspectives are integral to understanding larger patterns within religious

Archaeology · Colonialism · Discipline · Field (mathematics · Hegemony · Modernity · Political science · Politics · Protestantism · Rubric · Social science · Sociocultural evolution · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Anthropology · Early Modern Women Writers · History · Latin American history and culture · Law

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