A Latin American Critical Sociology Perspective on Religion

Studying the interaction of modernity and religion has been at the heart of the sociology of religion. This chapter explores one of the most important explanations of this tension: secularization theory. Even when criticized, this theoretical perspective is present in debates and embedded in different methodologies in use to study religion. This chapter presents an alternative explanation of the Latin American religious landscape, inspired by the American-born religious-economy paradigm. Then the chapter considers the popular-religion approach, a model inspired by the Latin American cultural experience, which focuses on people’s practices. Finally, the chapter proposes a lived-religion approach to studying Latin American religiosity.

Saints, Sacred Trees, and Snakes: Popular Religion, Hierotopy, Byzantine Culture, and Insularity in Cyprus during the Long Middle Ages

The holiness of sacred spaces is expressed through the creative synthesis and performance of different symbolic or iconic elements. This article concentrates on the medieval church of Ayios Iakovos in Nicosia, Cyprus. Dedicated to Saint James the Persian, the church became, by the 1600s, a shared shrine for Christians of different denominations (Orthodox, Maronites, and Latins) and Muslims. The aim of this article is to investigate in an interdisciplinary way the formation, adaptation, and negotiation of insular religious identities in relation to Ayios Iakovos’ hierotopy, official and popular religious practices, and the appropriation of Byzantine culture. The components in the creation of this sacred space reflect long-term contact between Cyprus and Greater Syria, constructing an inclusive religious environment with its own insular characteristics. It will be argued that these characteristics were shaped by global, regional, and local developments, including trade, pilgrimage, war, and environmental changes. Being in dialogue with recent scholarship on mixed sacred sites, this case study stresses the importance of interconnectivity and mobility in the creation of shared places of worship. It also shows that phenomena of religious co-existence and syncretism do not always result in homogenisation but maintain distinct group identities.

The NN’s souls-cult: a case study of catholicism and popular religion in Colombia

This article analyzes the cult of the souls in Purgatory in Puerto Berrío, Colombia, and its relationship with the Catholic Church. Through empirical evidence, it identifies three characteristics of this cult, namely, its relative independence from the Catholic Church, its heterogeneity and its utilitarian character, and compares them with other cases of Latin American popular Catholicism. The particularities of the cult enable an analysis of how popular religion, rather than generating a conflict with the Catholic Church, maintains an ambiguous relationship with it. The case shows that popular religion not only incorporates the symbolic structure of the Catholic Church to legitimize itself, but also that the church tolerates it, contributing to the peaceful coexistence of the popular and the institutionalized. Consequently, this leads believers, instead of adhering to a supposed binary opposition, to shift between popular and institutionalized religion.

Fashion and Faith: Girls and First Holy Communion in Twentieth-Century Ireland (c. 1920–1970)

With a focus on clothing, bodies, and emotions, this article examines girls’ First Holy Communions in twentieth-century Ireland (c. 1920–1970), demonstrating that Irish girls, even at an early age, embraced opportunities to become both the center of attention and central faith actors in their religious communities through the ritual of Communion. A careful study of First Holy Communion, including clothing, reveals the importance of the ritual. The occasion was indicative of much related to Catholic devotional life from independence through Vatican II, including the intersections of popular religion and consumerism, the feminization of devotion, the centrality of the body in Catholicism, and the role that religion played in forming and maintaining family ties, including cross-generational links. First Communion, and especially the material items that accompanied it, initiated Irish girls into a feminized devotional world managed by women and especially mothers. It taught them that purchasing, hospitality, and gift-giving were central responsibilities of adult Catholic women even as it affirmed the bonds between women family members who helped girls prepare for the occasion.

Symbolic Interactions in Popular Religion According to Dimensions of Religiosity: A Qualitative Study

The purpose of this paper was to interpret the usage of symbols in popular religion based on contemporary symbolic interactionism using the reference framework of the symbolic community. The strength of the chosen symbolic interactionist approach is primarily in the research of the role of different dimensions of the religious in understanding the meaning of popular religion in the symbolic community. The qualitative approach and the method of in-depth semi-structured interviews were employed in the research, which responded to the main goal of the research on the meanings the participants of the popular religion attach to the symbolic interactions. A deliberate sample was used for the selection of participants in the popular forms of celebrating the days of Our Lady of Vrpolje, Our Lady of Sinj, and Our Lady of Karavaj as well as the Guardians of Christ’s grave in Vodice, Croatia. According to the results, popular religion, transmitted through visible signs, places believers in a position of physical contact with the supernatural world within a symbolic environment. To achieve this, popular religion displays a need for sacred images, words, sounds, signs, movements, smells. Believers in popular religion seek to establish as simple, intimate, and direct relationship with a deity as possible. The respondents’ answers confirm that the experiential dimension of religiosity is lived primarily on a personal level that precedes the social dimension. For the participants, the religious community has a symbolic character in terms of creating strong bonds between members of society or a social group, especially within the symbolic meaning of a feast day.