Religion in the Americas - Böcker

This volume explores the role of religion in the educational achievement of Hispanics. In particular, it assesses the influence of religion on parental involvement in children's educational experiences. The book compares Catholic and Protestant parents' opinions and practices against the backdrop of socio-economic factors, such as levels of income and schooling. In its examination of the relationships between family, church and school, the study explores how religion and other cultural traits such as family structure, language, and ethnic identity, interact and yield particular educational outcomes.The study shows that religion can make a positive difference in the education of Latinos. Religion is a resource that parents can tap into for the benefit of their children. Teachers, school administrators, policy makers and religious leaders will find this study useful as they strive to understand and change Latinos' educational status.

In Middle-Class Pentecostalism in Argentina: Inappropriate Spirits Jens Köhrsen offers an intriguing account of how the middle class relates to Latin America's most vibrant religious movement. Based on pervasive field research, this study suggests that Pentecostalism stands in tension with the social imaginary of the middle class and is perceived as an inappropriate lower class practice. As such, middle class Pentecostals negotiate the appropriateness of their religious belonging by demonstrating distinctive tastes and styles of Pentecostalism. Abstaining from the expressiveness, emotionality, and strong spiritual practice that have marked the movement, they create a milder and socially more acceptable form of Pentecostalism. Increasingly turning into a middle class movement, this style has the potential to embody the future shape of Pentecostalism.

This book is at the crossroads where a New Age sensibility, advancing like an ecumen of worldwide spirituality without national, cultural, or ecclesiastical frontiers, meets Latin America's syncretic religions, practiced by groups of people wiht African or indigenous roots or developed from the tradition of popular Catholicism. The Syncretic character of the two sensibilities makes both the New Age and popular religion behave like two, syncretizing and syncreticizable matrices of meaning. This book opens up a rich vein of debate with new dilemmas and discussions, that will provide a framework for a new field of study in anthropology. What new ways of signifying living and experiencing religion is the New Age generating in Latin America? What are its limits?Contributors are: Alejandra Aguilar Ros, Santiago Bastos, Lizette Campechano, Sylvie Pédron Colombani, Alejandro Frigerio, Jacques Galinier, Silas Guerriero, Cristina Gutiérrez Zúñiga,Nahayeilli B. Juárez Huet, José Guilherme C.Magnani, Antoinette Molinié, María Teresa Rodríguez, Deis Siqueira, Carlos Alberto Steil, Engel Tally, Renée de la Torre, and Marcelo Zamora.