The exploding growth of Protestantism in Latin America has been old news for some time. But even for those who have stayed in touch with recent developments, the news item in the June 22 Miami Herald was a stunner. Although traffic jams are a daily staple in and around Guatemala City, this one in the community of Mixco was special. The cars, backed up for miles, were headed for the inaugural sermon at Mega Frater, Central America’s biggest church building. The new worship center of the Neo-Pentecostal Fraternidad Cristiana “includes an auditorium that seats 12,500, a seven-story parking tower topped with a helipad and a day-care center for 3,000 kids.” It is surely of no small significance that the heads of all three branches of government, as well as the mayors of Guatemala City and Mixco, found it propitious to grace the occasion with their presence. [1]
Re-Enchanting the World: Maya Protestantism in the Guatemalan Highlands (Contemporary American Indian Studies)
University Alabama Press
256 pages
$29.95
With the shift in global Christianity—away from the North Atlantic quadrant to the new center of gravity in the South and East—the news item might just as well have been about Seoul or Nairobi or Rio de Janiero. But it’s not just Christianity on the upswing. Other religions are experiencing phenomenal growth as well. “What is important in history,” wrote British historian Paul Johnson in 1983, “is not only the events that occur but the events that obstinately do not occur. The outstanding non-event of modern times was the failure of religious belief to disappear.” [2]
Responsibility for predicting the demise of religion has inevitably become part of sociologist Max Weber’s legacy. It was he who in 1918 used a particular locution that has come reverberating down through the years. “The fate of our times,” Weber said, “is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the disenchantment of the world” (emphasis added).
Given that turn of phrase for the anticipated hegemony of secularization, acknowledgment of religion’s continued effectual presence in the human family has often jettisoned the word disenchantment and substituted reenchantment. Some recent examples range from New Age guru Thomas Moore through an array of scholars from various disciplines and countries including Peter Berger, Alister McGrath, Marcel Gauchet, and Avihu Zakai. Add to the list Roger Lundin’s latest book, reviewed recently in these pages, which draws on the reenchantment theme to explicate Emerson. [3] Perhaps most revealing is the April 2007 meeting of the Society for the Anthropology of Religion, in Phoenix, Arizona. Under the theme “The Reenchantment of the World?”, anthropologists spent two days exploring the contours of contemporary religious landscapes around the globe.
Davidson College anthropologist C. Mathews Samson, one of the participants in that conference, uses the disenchantment/reenchantment theme to shed light on the experience of Maya Protestants in the Guatemalan highlands. He has impressive qualifications to tackle the subject. When scholars who have no personal background in religion are faced with the necessity of processing religious data in the subject under examination, readers can pretty easily detect a hesitancy—or worse, a heavy-footed dismissive tone—especially when dealing with experiences and ideas with evangelical or Pentecostal overtones. Not so with the author of this work. An anthropologist with a Ph.D. earned at the University at Albany under Professor Robert Carmack, along with years of field work in Guatemala, Samson is also an ordained Presbyterian clergyman who clearly has a more than professional interest in the matters he discusses. By focusing on a Central American nation, he adds significantly to the literature on Christianity’s continuing vitality. Philip Jenkins’ recent book, The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South, confines its attention to Africa and Asia. [4] While it would be a stretch to call Guatemala typical of all Latin America, the encounter of the Gospel with the customs and beliefs of traditional Maya religion foregrounds a number of fundamental questions.
The question that comes most immediately to mind is this: If a meaningful response to Weber’s disenchantment is the reenchantment supplied by the religious impulse, how should we understand “reenchanting the world” in Guatemala, a country that has been saturated with religions for centuries on all levels of society? As the abstract for one of the panels at the anthropologists’ Phoenix conference pointed out, “It should come as no surprise that religious reenchantment is on the rise. In many parts of the world it never went away.” On an even more basic level, in this realm of discourse what is reenchantment anyway? Samson does not evade these questions. But they are not simple ones, and it takes the entire book to examine the layers of complexity and bring everything into focus.
 A working definition doesn’t sort out all the subtleties, but it’s a necessary start. Disenchantment, as Samson treats it, “connotes the sense of a loss of mystery as human life becomes more rationalized through the application of a scientific worldview and technological innovation.” Reenchantment, then, refers to the recovery of that sense of mystery in one’s relationship to the world. As will become apparent, in the Guatemalan indigenous context it will involve revindication (revindicacion) of the Maya worldview.
It is necessary as well to give readers a modicum of information about Guatemala’s culture and history. Samson meets that demand with several introductory chapters in which he lays out an admirably clear and concise background not only for the focused subject of the book but for a better understanding of the violent warp and woof of Guatemalan life.
 The burden of national history is at the root of the problem: a European invasion that forcefully imposed Christianity on the native population and declared the practice of their traditional religion illegal; centuries in which that Maya religion survived either through clandestine ceremonies deep inside mountain caves or in a syncretistic melding with Christian ritual winked at by the Church; the official welcoming of Protestant missionaries late in the 19th century as a counterbalance to Catholic power; the inevitable overlap of Christianity, civilization, and commercialization; systematic oppression of the Maya population whose cheap labor was essential but whose numerical majority created a perpetual fear of revolt; vacillation of dominant Catholicism between support for the oligarchy and protest on behalf of the poor in the name of liberation theology; a 36-year civil war in which one’s religious allegiance was often a life or death matter; and a postwar decade in which the hope for a “multiethnic, pluricultural, and multilingual” country is still only a distant dream.
Add to that the fragmentation of both Protestantism and Catholicism. Samson sees four kinds of Catholicism in Guatemala—indigenous, orthodox, charismatic, and activist—with the possible addition of a “folk Catholic category for those places where the indigenous component is not as strong.” On the Protestant side, it is said that there are more than 300 evangelical groups in the country, leading Presbyterian mission co-worker Dennis Smith to postulate an “Amoeba School of Church Growth.” Smith adds that “where there is one Evangelical congregation, within six months there will probably be three.” [5] Protestant groups, Samson says, can be loosely categorized as “evangelical (Bible-believing non-Pentecostal), Pentecostal (focused on experiences of the Holy Spirit in the person’s life, including through divine healing), and neo-Pentecostal (usually based in the elite sectors of society and proclaiming some version of dominion or health-and-wealth theology that justifies their place in the upper crust of society).” The huge Mega Frater church, whose opening was covered in the Miami Herald, would be in this last category. And when you include in the mix the Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other groups usually identified as sects, plus a revitalized traditional Maya spirituality with its own special appeal, one is tempted to say that no place on earth is more deserving of the ubiquitous postmodern label, “religious marketplace.”
To sort out the cultural and theological diversity, Samson uses a comparative method, looking ethnographically at two Maya presbyteries that are part of the National Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Guatemala. The very existence of these separate presbyteries is part of an involved history. Early Presbyterian missionary efforts were not directed primarily toward the indigenous. According to Virginia Garrard-Burnett, denominational mission strategy was to focus first on the urban population, even among the very poor, “in anticipation of expanding their work into the middle and upper classes from this established base.” [6] As part of that strategy, Presbyterians built hospitals and started schools, but with the western highlands and its indigenous population beckoning, the more adventurous missionaries soon broke out of the geographical confines and began also the formidable task of translating the Bible into the multiple native languages. The separate Maya presbyteries emerged in mid-century as part of a continuing process of adjusting power relations in the denomination and achieving a more equitable distribution of resources.
Samson succinctly summarizes the difference between the two presbyteries in this way:
If the Mam Presbytery represents a Maya evangelical identity rooted in the symbolics of a historical Protestant theological tradition, and even a sometimes tenuous union of those symbolics with Mam cultural identity and cosmology, then the Kaqchikel Presbytery represents an activist evangelical identity. This activism is a direct challenge to notions of evangelicals as apolitical and inattentive to social issues. Simultaneously, it cultivates a challenge to state power and the political, social, and economic structure of Guatemalan society from a stance shaped by direct political and social involvement.
But even a cursory reading of Samson’s account makes it clear that the contrast is subtle rather than stark. We should not be surprised, in other words, to discover that the Mam approach has political dimensions as well, or that the politically volatile Kaqchikel world has concerns arising from the juxtaposition of Protestant theology and Maya cosmology.
Protestants in the Mam group define themselves as being separate from two inescapable and forceful presences: one is Roman Catholicism, so completely identified with Latin American culture for centures; the other is costumbre, the system of native customs that is tainted with “paganism” and “idolatry” and whose public rituals are associated with excessive use of alcohol. While a stress on personal and communal behavior effectively demonstrates a separation from costumbre, the symbolism of sacred space, both exterior and interior, of Mam templos (places of worship) sets them apart from Catholicism. For one thing, unlike the imposing Catholic cathedrals in cities and town squares, the simple, small, and colorful Protestant churches are everywhere. In place of Catholic iconography and in accord with the Reformation doctrine of sola scriptura, decorations concentrate on Bible verses and occasional visualizations of biblical scenes. On the platform, the pulpit (i.e., the sermon) is central, rather than the altar (the Eucharist). Normally the chairs are arranged in rows, as in a lecture hall.
The Kaqchikel are different in their worship practices in almost every way. For one thing, they place a low priority on the place where worship occurs: “Actual templos or church buildings do not typically serve as gathering places, and the discourse maintained by the presbytery is of work done in communities instead of in congregations as such.” Several years ago, on one of my trips to Guatemala, having attended a relatively conventional worship service in a Mam templo, I was caught up short by the differences when I attended a Sunday morning service at a Kaqchikel Presbyterian congregation in an urban neighborhood in the city of Chimaltenango. Inside the nondescript meeting room, entered off a dirt path, the chairs were arranged in a circle instead of in rows. We joined the few people who were already there and waited quietly as others came in, one woman carrying a chicken in a cage. Clearly there was no hard and fast starting time and no set order of service. I don’t offer these recollections as a criticism; we sang some hymns, read the Scriptures, and then listened respectfully to thoughtful comments that could have been used as illustrations in Philip Jenkins’ book on reading the Bible in the global South. It reminded me of a Christian base community gathering I had attended in Nicaragua.
With regard to how the Mam deal with weightier matters of theological belief, Samson cites illustrations that tend in opposite directions. The more or less official position is that conversion should be a break with the past—meaning particularly the traditions of the ancestors. But the break is not always a clean one. His summary of a series of interviews with a Mam Presbyterian minister poignantly underscores the problem. Representing “a strongly biblical and Calvinistic approach to evangelicalism,” the interviewee was usually reluctant to discuss Maya spirituality and its relation to his theology. When he did finally agree to talk about the subject, his deeply personal response, which Samson reproduces at length, clearly revealed the ambivalence at the heart of the matter. The issue hinged on the eternal destiny of a great-great-grandmother whose influence, though she was not a Christian, had played an important part in his life. It was an emotionally wrenching question: Was she in heaven or hell? Raising the possibility of a faith in God “like that in the time of Abraham,” the minister eventually found a resolution in which he could take comfort: “I came to believe that, yes, she also died, but she was not lost.”
To stress these matters as of primary importance to the Protestant faith of the Mam is not to say that they are apolitical in the practical outworking of their Christian commitment: “Mam leadership has promoted a teologica integral (integral theology) that emphasizes holistic approaches to development concerns such as agriculture and health care within the larger community.” On my first trip to Guatemala in the summer of 1987, our Presbyterian delegation had a briefing with Don Jose Romero, the superintendent of the Mam Center in San Juan Ostuncalco. He told us of a recent official visit by a colonel from the nearby military base. The officer wanted a full report on what was going on there. Romero did a rundown of the center’s many activities: agriculture, water projects, health clinic, weaving classes, worship services. That was permissible, said the colonel grudgingly, “But if I ever hear that there’s any of that liberation theology going on, we’ll burn your place down and kill everyone.” Obviously, liberation theology and what was “going on” at the Mam Center shared a good deal of common ground, but given the level of theological sophistication in the Guatemalan military, that visit passed without repercussions.
Political involvement among the Kaqchikel, on the other hand, has consistently gone far beyond “teologica integral.” Their leaders were not only deeply and directly involved, at considerable personal risk, in efforts to bring about an end to the 36-year civil war; one of their number ran (unsuccessfully) as a vice-presidential candidate in a postwar national election. Even something as basic as location within the country played a part in the differing approach of these two groups. The Mam area is farther away from the capital, beyond Quetzaltenango, the country’s second-largest city, and closer to the border with Mexico. Today the distance between those two major cities can be traversed with relative ease—though no one will mistake the Pan-American Highway for I-80 across Nebraska. But in earlier years the greater distance from the center of power meant a degree of isolation. The Kaqchikel people clustered around Chimaltenango, which even in the days of more primitive travel was within the aura of governmental influence. More to the point, during the civil war they were located in a geographic axis that tied together the different fronts of the war, connecting them to the strategic Guatemala City region. Their greater political involvement has a religious counterpart in a much greater experience of and commitment to ecumenicity than the Mam have, not only within Guatemala but in important transnational liaisons that have played a supportive role in the struggle for human rights.
In the book’s penultimate chapter, Samson takes a different tack: an analysis of a single act of violence and the response it triggered in the Kaqchikel Presbytery. In June 1995, Manuel Saquic, a minister on his way home from his work at the human rights office in Chimaltenango, was brutally stabbed to death, his body thrown into a cornfield. Hardly an unusual event for Guatemala. But a year later, through a series of events set in motion by the presbytery leaders—a memorial service and skillfully orchestrated protest marches and demonstrations—the assassination took on a transcendent significance. Saquic was declared a “triple martyr”: “a martyr for human rights, a Christian martyr, and a Maya martyr.” With this proclamation, says Samson, “a new coyuntura (historical moment) came into being in the nexus of evangelical identity, the struggle against impunity in the area of human and civil rights, and the struggle for ethnic renewal by the Maya in Guatemala.”
If I read Samson correctly, the reenchanting process among Maya Protestants in the Guatemalan highlands—understood as revitalization, the restoration of a sense of mystery at the heart of existence—is proceeding on two tracks, in the same direction but not exactly parallel. Both the Mam and Kaqchikel presbyteries “represent the most rational wing of Protestantism—ascetic Calvinists with connections to a long missionary history in Guatemala.” As such, both are vulnerable to “the reworking of religious meaning” taking place on many levels: “this can be seen not only in the Protestant presence but also in the midst of the revindicacion of Maya culture and Maya spirituality that challenges at every turn the tenets of both Roman Catholic and Protestant manifestations of Christianity.”
It is easy to detect the warning bells in those sentences. This “reworking of religious meaning” is taking place in a country trying to become “multiethnic, pluricultural, multilingual.” Pluralism may seem innocuous at first, a sort of democratic breadth of tolerance. But Samson quotes Diana Eck, director of Harvard’s Pluralism Project, to the effect that pluralism is “the language not just of difference but of engagement, involvement, and participation. It is the language of traffic, dialogue and debate.” While such problems are hardly new in the history of the church, they have taken on a new magnitude with reenchantment in the saddle. And they are not open to simplistic resolution.
The ambiguities are many. But I will take leave of the subject by using an epigraph that Samson puts at the head of his first chapter. It’s a pithy saying by Vitalino Similox, a Presbyterian Kaqchikel minister: “God was here before Columbus came.”
Rudy Nelson, associate professor of English, emeritus, University at Albany, is co-producer/director (with Shirley Nelson) of the documentary film Precarious Peace: God and Guatemala.
1. MiamiHerald.com, June 22, 2007
2. Paul Johnson, Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Eighties (Harper & Row, 1983), p. 698.
3. Thomas Moore, The Re-enchantment of Everyday Life (Harper Collins, 1996); Peter Berger, ed., The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics (Eerdmans, 1999); Alister McGrath, The Reenchantment of Nature: The Denial of Religion and the Ecological Crisis (Doubleday, 2002); Marcel Gauchet, The Disenchantment of the World: A Political History of Religion (Princeton Univ. Press, 1997); Avihu Zakai, Jonathan Edwards’s Philosophy of History: The Reenchantment of the World in the Age of Enlightenment (Princeton Univ. Press, 2003); Roger Lundin, From Nature to Experience: The American Search for Cultural Authority (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006).
4. Philip Jenkins, The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South (Oxford Univ. Press, 2006).
5. Dennis Smith, “Coming of Age: A Reflection on Pentecostal, Politics and Popular Religion in Guatemala,” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies, Vol.13, No. 2 (Fall 1991), p. 131.
6. Virginia Garrard-Burnett, Protestantism in Guatemala: Living in the New Jerusalem (Univ. of Texas Press, 1998), p. 40.
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