Introduction: Laicidad and Religious Diversity: Themes in the Debates on the Regulation of Religion in Latin America

• Autores: Vaggione, Juan Marco; Morán Faúndes, José Manuel
• Año de publicación: 2017
• Idioma: inglés
• Tipo de recurso: parte de libro
• Materia: Religiosn; Secularism; Latin America; Laicism
• Institución: Universidad Nacional de Córdoba

Fil: Vaggione, Juan Marco. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Derecho; Argentina.
Fil: Morán Faúndes, José Manuel. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Derecho; Argentina.
Both the theoretical proposals and the empirical approaches prioritized for considering the relation between politics and religion respond to a complex alchemy between localized temporalities and experiences with transnational infl uences. While the nation state continues to be the privileged context in debates about the political role of religions (and their diverse regulations), circumstances that transcend these limits have had a growing impact on academic agendas. In the case of Latin America, the debates about the regulation of religion reflect the particularities of each country, as well as regional processes, and the forms in which diverse international situations impact the region. The cumbersome historical connection between religion and politics, which recognizes as antecedents the Spanish colonization built on the image of the sword and the cross and the decisive role of the Catholic Church in the processes of conformation of Latin American nations, has stamped a particular logic on the region. Catholicism formed a cultural and social fabric (a matrix of meanings) that, beyond the differences among the countries, permeates discussions and public decision-making. Latin America is therefore a region that is heir to a decisive religious tradition, in which confessional beliefs, discourses, and practices continue to play an important role in public life.The transformations in the Latin American religious field are numerous and present diverse analytic challenges for academia, including those linked to the regulation of religions in contemporary societies. In particular, two principal types of challenges can be identifi ed. On one hand, the strong public presence of the Catholic Church , in addition to its translation into a marked identity in the Latin American population, has also imparted a strong presence of Catholicism in the political sphere. Faced with this phenomenon, societies have sought diverse ways to regulate this religious interference in politics and in the state, and academic agendas have not stayed away from this search. Whether based on empirical or normative approaches, multiple investigations have delved into the ways in which states, principally through law and formal institutions, regulate (or not) the public presence of Catholicism as well as other religions (particularly the evangelical churches) that began to acquire strength in the region. On the other hand, the diversifi cation and pluralization of the religious fi eld, thanks to the emergence and growth of alternative ways of believing and practicing that challenge the Catholic hegemony, suggest negotiation of the boundaries between religion and politics in renewed manners. Thinking about regulation, in this sense, implies thinking about how religions themselves compete with each other, generating mechanisms for challenging or maintaining the old hegemonies, which create forms of regulation among belief systems.
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Fil: Vaggione, Juan Marco. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Derecho; Argentina.
Fil: Morán Faúndes, José Manuel. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Derecho; Argentina.
Sociología