Proselytizing in Central America as an Instrument for Elite Social Control
The wealthy elites of Central America had been devoutly Roman Catholic for centuries. Their religious affiliation was almost has important to who they were as was their wealth and power. Almost, but not quite.
As soon as their class interests were feared at stake, four hundred years of ‘deeply ingrained’ allegiance to the Pope proved to be no match for their desire for money and power.[1]
As the twentieth century neared its conclusion, the Catholic clergy began siding with the oppressed. Wealthy Christian elites in Nicaragua and elsewhere throughout the region “discarded their Catholicism and joined Protestant fundamentalist denominations that espoused a more comfortably reactionary line.”[2]
Political scientist Michael Parenti writes in his book, The Culture Struggle:
“Not only the social elites, but also the impoverished populations underwent conversions to Protestant fundamentalism. For instance, in Guatemala, in an attempt to crush the popular insurgency of the 1960s and 1970s, the military destroyed hundreds of Mayan villages and deliberately targeted Mayan spirituality, including sacred sites and priests. Meanwhile, numerous well-financed politically conservative Protestant sects moved in. They divided community members into competing denominations, and distanced them from both the cohesive Mayan culture and Catholicism’s liberation theology.
Traumatized by war and stripped of all that was viable in their lives, many people embraced the new proselytizers, hoping to find an understanding of what had happened to them. Some evangelical preachers declared that Guatemalans suffered so much in the war because they had been living in sin or following the wrong religion. Protestant fundamentalism ‘encourages people to accept their lot in life without protest and to focus instead on the afterlife.’[3]
Many of the poor Guatemalans feared that if they remained Catholic they would be suspected of being sympathetic to the guerillas, so they converted to the new Protestant sects. A once unified insurgent population was now preoccupied with sectarian divisions, while denouncing ‘sinful’ personal indulgences and dreaming of reward in the afterlife. If any component of culture has proven useful as an instrument of elite social control in Central America and elsewhere, it is this fundamentalist religious proselytizing.”
The elites in Guatemala were neither the first nor last to exploit religion as a tool for class control. Such has been a nearly universal function of religion. Parenti writes:
“We cannot reduce all religious experience to its social base. But it is important to point out—and this is often conveniently overlooked—that religious attachment can be strongly linked to material concerns.”
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[1] See “Church and Revolution in Nicaragua, An Interview with Peter Marchetti,” Monthly Review, July/August 1982.
[2] Michael Parenti. 2006. The Culture Struggle (New York: Seven Stories Press: 2006).
[3] Shannon Lockhart and Olivia Recondo, “Crisis of Identity among Ixil Youth,” Report on Guatemala (Washington D.C.), Winter 2001.
Tags: Catholicism, catholics, Central America, christianity, christians, church, economics, Evangelicals, fundamentalist, Guatemalan, history, inequality, Ixil, Mayans, Michael Parenti, money, Nicaragua, oppression, Peter Marchetti, politics, proselytizing, Protestant, religion, social control
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