The fifteen chapters of Engaging Coloniality tell a complex and multifaceted story of Latin American Christianity. Latin America was the first region of the colonized world to be Christianized. As no form of Christianity preexisted the colonial invasion of Latin America, no Latin American Christian story can be told without reference to colonialism. Throughout its five-hundred-year history in Latin America, Christianity has taken multiple forms. This history is presented as in no other volume available in English. Primarily non-Eurocentric perspectives alternate between continuity and transformations. Rather than emphasizing denominational branches, this volume focuses on liberative, decolonial, and intercultural movements. This book is cutting-edge scholarship on Latin American religion and theology, and the featured contributors represent the extent of a continent where almost six hundred million Christians live today. Latin American Christian identity has never been homogeneous, and the volume describes countless Christian spiritualities and practices resulting from continuous encounters, tensions, and negotiations over five centuries. These encounters have not taken place in a historical vacuum but as part of a broader history in which visible and invisible power disparities still inform the limits, challenges, and promises of the Christian experiment in the region.
Industry Reviews
“Latin America is the part of the world where the highest proportion of the inhabitants identify themselves as Christians. This collection of up-to-date essays covers early colonial encounters, subsequent Christian experience, and twenty-first-century issues facing believers. From the appropriation of the faith by the Aztecs to the grand ambitions of the Neo-Pentecostals, the volume vividly illustrates the diversity of popular religion in the continent.”
—David Bebbington, Emeritus Professor of History, University of Stirling
“This book does justice to the complexity of Latin American Christianity by including the voices of women, Indigenous peoples, Afro-Latin Americans, and migrants. It showcases how Latin American Christians have transformed colonial Christianity into a life-giving faith to address contemporary issues. I highly recommend it.”
—Kwok Pui-lan, Distinguished Scholar, Episcopal Divinity School
“Bringing together senior and promising young scholars, Barreto and Lamport provide readers with an exciting intellectual journey through the developments, expressions, challenges, entanglements, and promises of Christianities in Latin America and the Caribbean. This volume is a valuable source for integrating decolonial theory with religious studies, providing rich resources for further exploration. I will certainly use it for my undergraduate and graduate courses. Engaging Coloniality is an urgent and necessary contribution that challenges the frequent intellectual indifference towards Latin America and Caribbean experience in World Christianity studies in the USA.”
—Carlos F. Cardoza Orlandi, Frederick E. Roach Chair in World Christianity, Baylor University
