Latin America, the United States, religion and politics are ingredients in a beverage of explosive power. The four terms also denote a close entanglement. Historically, this relationship has been shaped primarily by the Protestant mission in Latin America and its Pan-American objectives. But mission was yesterday. Today, under the conflictive conditions of life in Latin America, a new religious style has been molded and, with the Latin migration, the religious field in the United States is changing considerably. The present book, with reference to the Weberian distinction between “sects” and institutionalized religion, renders visible the logic of inter-American entanglements by tracing and interpreting exemplary developments and conflicts. The narrative is framed between two important religious events in 1916 and 2016.


Table of Contents

Preface ........................................................................................ 1

1. Introduction ......................................................................... 3

2. Panama 1916 and What Happened Before ......................... 23
2.1 Panama 1916 ....................................................................... 23
2.2 Puritan Perfectionism: Law, Expansion, and “Liberty” ..... 32
2.3 Puritan Perfectionism: Emotion, Charisma and Power ...... 46

3. Entanglement of Religious Dispositions ............................ 50
3.1 Conditions of Religious Entanglement ............................... 50
3.2 Religious Dispositions:
Transformation through Entanglement ............................... 63

4. The Social Question “from Below” .................................... 89
4.1 Brazil: Society and Church ................................................. 90
4.2 Cochabamba: Church and Society ...................................... 94

5. Wars: Military and Spiritual ............................................... 100
5.1 Spiritual Warfare ................................................................. 100
5.2 Guatemala: City upon a Hill ............................................... 102
5.3 USA: Ideological Battlefield .............................................. 121

6. New Millennium: Prosperity and Migration ...................... 145
6.1 Neo-Liberalism and Prosperity ........................................... 145
6.2 Everyday Border Crossings ................................................ 149
6.3 Promised Land? .................................................................. 161

7 Panama 2016 and the Social Context ................................. 181
7.1 Misunderstanding ................................................................ 181
7.2 Colonization and Refeudalization ....................................... 185
7.3 Panama 2016 ....................................................................... 193

Epilogue: Dynamics of Entanglement ....................................... 207

Works cited ................................................................................ 210

Virtual Interview ........................................................................ 226