Religion and Rights 2: Secularisation, Social Catholicism, Liberation Theology.

How has religious thinking on social issues, social justice and human rights changed over time? How did Liberation Theology contribute to the tradition of human rights in Latin America?

Primary Sources:

Documents of the Latin American Conference on Bishops CELAM: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (1955); Medellin, Colombia (1968); Puebla, México (1979); and Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic (1992). See especially:

Medellin Document CELAM II, 1968

CELAM III, Mexico, 1979

The Aparecida Document, 2007

Vatican Documents:

Rerum Novarum, 1891

Documents of the Second Vatican Council, 1962

Core Readings:

Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, 1974, 21-42. (Chapter 2 "Liberation and Development")

Paul Freston. Religious Pluralism, Democracy and Human Rights in Latin America. In Thomas Banchoff and Robert Wuthnow (eds.). Religion and the global politics of human rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. (See chapter scan)

Alexander Wilde. Religious Responses to Violence: Human Rights in Latin America Past and Present. University of Notre Dame Press: 2015.

Further Reading:

John Burdick, Blessed Anastacia: women, race, and popular Christianity in Brazil. 1998.

John Burdick, “What is the Colour of the Holy Spirit? Pentecostalism and Black Identity in Brazil,” Latin American Research Review, 34:2, 1999.

Burdick, John, Looking for God in Brazil: The Progressive Catholic Church in Urban Brazil’s Religious Arena. University of California Press, 1993.

________. Legacies of Liberation: The Progressive Catholic Church in Brazil at the start of a new millennium. Hampshire: Ashgate, 2004.

________. “Why is the Black Evangelical Movement Growing in Brazil?”, Journal of Latin American Studies, 37:2, May 2005, pp. 311-32.

Eduardo Batalha Viveiros de Castro. From the Enemy’s Point of View: humanity and divinity in an Amazonian society. 1992.

Andrew Chesnut, Born Again: The Pentecostal Boom and the Pathogens of Poverty. 1997.

Edward L. Cleary, Timothy J. Steigenga. Resurgent voices in Latin America: indigenous peoples, political mobilization, and religious change. New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 2004.

Edward L. Cleary and Steigenga, Timothy J. Steigenga (eds.), Conversion of a Continent : Contemporary Religious Change in Latin America,Rutgers University Press, 2007.

James W. Dow. “The Expansion of Protestantism in Mexico: An Anthropological View.” Anthropological Quarterly, vol. 78, no. 4, 2005

Hagopian, Frances (ed.). Religious Pluralism, Democracy, and the Catholic Church in Latin America, University of Notre Dame Press, 2009.

Kirkpatrick, David C. A Gospel for the Poor. Global Social Christianity and the Latin American Evangelical Left. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019.

Levine, Daniel H. Popular Voices in Latin American Catholicism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.

Lombera, Juan Manuel. “The Church of the Poor and Civil Society in Southern Mexico: Oaxaca: 1960s -2010” Journal of Contemporary History 2018.

Robin Nagle and Jill Nagle, Claiming the Virgin: The Broken Promise of Liberation Theology in Brazil. 1997.

David Stoll. Is Latin America Turning Protestant?: the politics of Evangelical growth. University of California Press, 1990.

Brian Tierney "Religious Rights an Historical Perspective." in John Witte, Jr., and Johan D. van der Vyver (eds.) Religious human rights in global perspective: religious perspectives. The Hague/ Boston: M. Nijhoff Publishers.1996. (See chapter scan)

Alexander Wilde. Religious Responses to Violence: Human Rights in Latin America Past and Present. University of Notre Dame Press: 2015.