Religion in Latin America’s Public Sphere
This chapter investigates the role of religion in Latin America’s public sphere. For respondents, religion and politics share the space where power is traded. The privileged position is to challenge the economic order and to generate peaceful relations among the peoples and defend human dignity. Respondents dislike the use of that power to pursue a partisan agenda and to have a privileged voice over other persons. At odds with the laïcité project, respondents welcome religion in the public sphere when it challenges modernity to include the poor, and advocates for human dignity. Religion is cheered as a countercultural force. However, this acceptance of religion’s presence in the public sphere does not mean a resacralization of it. Respondents prefer to keep the differentiation of social functions.