1 World Christianity: A Demographic Movement and a Field of Study

‘World Christianity’ has become a buzz word in the past few decades, contrasting Eurocentric perspectives that portray Christianity as a ‘Western’ religion.¹ As a world religion, Christianity presents itself as border-crossing, finding a home equally within multiple cultures, and between them. World Christianity refers, then, to both a field of study and a movement.² As a field of study, it explores the ‘worldwide’ nature of Christianity, paying attention to both the distinctiveness of Christian experiences in different cultural contexts and the relationships among them. Since the beginning of the twentieth century scholars noticed that the presence of Christianity in all six continents granted it the de facto status of a world religion.³ That global presence, however, should not be understood as a static phenomenon. In the past century, and more emphatically in the past fifty years, World Christianity experienced a drastic demographic shift, undergoing an astounding numeric growth in the global south, especially in Africa, in contrast with dwindling numbers and decreasing public influence in the North Atlantic, the cradle of modern Christianity (Sanneh 2005: 3–18).

Scholars such as Andrew Walls (2002) and Lamin Sanneh (2003), among others, noticed that this most recent drastic demographic shift was reshaping the manifestation of Christian faith in the contemporary world, noting that the “world-Christian turn” (Kollman 2014) had sweeping cultural implications. As a consequence, the reassessment of hegemonic historiographies, and a call for the enlargement of the Christian story which would include previously omitted, overlooked, and silenced narratives and experiences, became an important trend in the field (Shenk 2002). This ongoing ‘world Christian revolution’ is reshaping the way the history of Christianity, Christian theology, and other Christian disciplines are studied.

The past few decades have seen a number of methodological innovations in the study of Christianity worldwide. Andrew Walls, one of the pioneers and shapers of the field, for instance, challenged the common assumption of Christian advance as a linear progress (Walls 2002: 30). His work promoted renewed interest in cross-cultural approaches to the study of Christian history and experience (Bediako 2011: 7–10). Among other things, Walls noticed that since its colonial days Africa began to experience an expansion of Christianity without Christendom; something that became even more evident in the course of the twentieth-century. Postcolonial African Christianity, in particular, is a movement predominantly led by Africans, without state support or colonial apparatuses. This is the prevailing pattern of Christian expansion in contemporary World Christianity.

The late Lamin Sanneh, another key representative of the first-generation World Christianity scholars, emphasized indigeneity, local agency, and Bible translation as key elements freeing World Christianity from Western captivity and domestication (Sanneh 2003: 10–11).⁴ Sanneh’s work recovered the centrality of African agency in Christian narratives, re-centering African culture, values, and traditions. Although Sanneh himself does not make such connection, it is worth noting that the positive reassessment of indigenous culture, and the efforts to overcome 500 years of Eurocentric framework seen in many non-Western World Christianity scholars, including Sanneh himself, can be tracked back to the same spirit that fuelled the struggles for independence and autonomy in Africa and Asia since World War I, and liberationist aspirations in Latin America and the Caribbean. Likewise, the boom of African Christianity, particularly in the second half of the twentieth century, coincided with the African struggles for autonomy. One can say, therefore, that both the struggle for the decolonization of Africa and the de-Europeanization of African Christianity took place within the same broader postcolonial framework. Without emphasizing such connection, Sanneh (2003: 24) tacitly admits it when he affirms,

Under Christendom the basis and rationale for transmitting the gospel were colonial annexation and subjugation, with the church as an afterthought. Native lands and labor were expropriated, commercial and administrative agents appointed and deployed, mission stations set up, and church life and practice regulated. That way “Europeandom” as the faith and politics of early modern Europe spread abroad and was legitimized by the sacraments of the church. But with the shift into native languages, the logic of religious conversion assumed an internal dynamic, with a sharp turn away from external direction and control. Indigenizing the faith meant decolonizing Christian theology (italics mine RCB), and membership of the fellowship implied spiritual home rule. World Christianity was thereby weaned of the political habits of Christendom, even though the mental habits died hard.

Sanneh, and other scholars in the field of World Christianity, represent what Justo González called the new cartography and new topography of Christian history (González 2002).⁵ They advance a new Christian map, placing past and current continental and cultural shifts at the center stage of the retelling of the global Christian story. Changing the cartography and topography of Christianity entails, among other things, the replacement of hegemonic narratives with polycentric ones. The enlarged stories that emerge from the “world-Christian turn”, while inclusive of modern Western Christianity and the missionary movement, have for the most part placed a corrective emphasis on often neglected indigenous perspectives and marginalized narratives.

Dale Irvin, on the other hand, is representative of a concerted attempt to find a good balance between World Christianity’s worldwide concerns and the competing demands of local stories, narratives, experiences, and perspectives. Irvin defines World Christianity as a field of study that examines the history of Christianity in all six continents, stressing that it is primarily concerned “with both the diversity of local or indigenous expressions of Christian life and faith throughout the world, and the variety of ways these interact with one another critically and constructively across time and space” (Irvin 2016: 4).⁶ While trying to reach a more comprehensive understanding of World Christianity, Irvin points out that priority must be placed “with under-represented and marginalized communities of faith, resulting in a greater degree of attention being paid to Asian, African, and Latin American experiences; the experience of marginalized communities within the North Atlantic world; and the experiences of women throughout the world” (Irvin 2016: 4). In short, all these first-generation World Christianity scholars show in their work World Christianity’s bias toward untold stories and neglected perspectives.

Perhaps, Klaus Koschorke and the Münich school of World Christianity represent the most sustained and systematic attempt to examine the transnational and intercultural nature of World Christianity. Even this school, though, prioritizes—not exclusively but preferentially—Christian expansion beyond Western missionary agency (e.g. Burlacioiu 2016: 82–98). In spite of that, its methodological approach advances a historiography that focuses on World Christianity’s “polycentric structures, transcontinental links, and those changed maps in search of overarching themes and experiences cutting across different regions and cultures” (Hermann and Burlacioiu 2016: 4). While resisting imperial hegemonic narratives, this approach seeks to avoid a counter-productive atomization of Christian history that risks reducing World Christianity scholarship to a plethora of unconnected case studies (Koschorke 2014: 180). Among other things, the Münich school of World Christianity sheds new light on the multiplicity and complexity of north-south and south-south networks in World Christianity, opening new windows for intercultural explorations in the field.

The prioritization towards marginalized communities should not be considered a problem, but a constitutive characteristic of World Christianity historiography, which attempts to correct the colonial bias that has informed Western Christian historiographies and Christian studies for at least two centuries. There are limits, though, to all the efforts above. While seeking to enlarge the telling of the Christian story, expanding the numbers of perspectives from which that story is told, they still approach Christian narratives and experiences without full consideration of their surroundings. In other words, the histories of regional, national, and local experiments with Christianity must be placed within larger frameworks of cultural and geopolitical histories that inform and impact the diverse Christian experiences.

Not unrelatedly, with a few exceptions, there is very little engagement of Latin American historiography, theoretical tools and insights in the formulation of World Christianity as a field of study. This article seeks to offer a modest contribution to close that gap, by re-centering Latin America as a locus of enunciation in the formulation of World Christianity discourses. To reach that goal, it uncovers a little explored connection between the Münich school and the historiography of the Comisión para el Estudio de La Historia de las Iglesias en América Latina y el Caribe (CEHILA), mediated by Enrique Dussel and the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians (EATWOT). Then, it describes the movements of evolution and change in Latin American Christian historiography, as well as the dynamic development of liberationist thinking, and its recent transformation in connection with the rise of decoloniality and interculturality as new hermeneutical tools in the region. Attempting to correct a neglected relation in the theorization of the field of World Christianity, this chapter seeks to highlight possible epistemological contributions emerging in the Latin American context to World Christianity scholarship.

2 Latin America in World Christianity Scholarship

Klaus Koschorke developed his framework of a polycentric World Christianity as a scholar who became increasingly aware of the German academy’s limitations and biases. A number of cross-cultural encounters were key for his reinvention as a scholar. Koschorke’s evolution from a “typical patristic scholar” to a scholar of the global history of Christianity began as he spent time as a guest professor in Sri Lanka in 1982/83. His exposure, in particular, to Asian Christianity opened his eyes to new realities and perspectives (Hermann and Burlacioiu 2016: 5). In his interactions with Sri Lankan Christians, Koschorke realized that they “represented a world that at the time was beyond the awareness of most members of the European theological academia” (Hermann and Burlacioiu 2016: 8). Through his encounter with Asian Christian experiences and realities Koschorke was encouraged to turn his attention to the development of a historiography of Christianity which was mainly interested in unveiling broader inter-contextual connections and interactions.

Along with his relationships with Sri Lankan Christians, another encounter, which does not get the same kind of attention, also made an impact on Koschorke: his participation in “the 1983 meeting of the Working Commission on Church History of EATWOT in Geneva” (Hermann & Burlacioiu 2016: 9). One of the goals of the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians (EATWOT), formed in 1976 by a group of theologians from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, was to create a forum for dialogue between theologians mostly from Africa, Asia, and Latin America for an ongoing process of theological reflection, aimed at discerning which understandings of church and theology would have more meaning and be more operative in their own contexts (Torres and Fabella 1976: 2).⁷ Latin American theologians played an influential role in the formation of EATWOT, as participants in a “conversation among the margins.”⁸ That influence is undeniable, for instance, when one looks the number and significance of Latin American contributions to the EATWOT’s theological production.⁹

Argentinian scholar Enrique Dussel was one of the two conveners of the 1983 meeting of the Working Commission on Church History of EATWOT referred by Koschorke. The other convener was Swiss theologian Lukas Vischer (Hermann and Burlacioiu 2016: 6–7). The meeting’s main agenda was to revisit the periodization of a history of Christianity in a world perspective—an emphasis present in Dussel’s work at least since the late 1960s.

Enrique Dussel’s work spans a number of disciplines, including ethics, political economy, and history. Having doctorates in philosophy and history, Dussel has always fluctuated back and forth between these disciplines, venturing also into theological conversations. As a historian, from the inception of his career, he focused on rethinking periodization in history (Dussel 1967). A key influencer in the foundation of EATWOT,¹⁰ Dussel also played a crucial role in the formation of the Comisión para el Estudio de la Historia de las Iglesias en América Latina y el Caribe (CEHILA), in Quito, Ecuador, in 1973.

CEHILA, an autonomous organization of Latin American historians, has been the main powerhouse for the production of Latin American Christianity’s history as well as of a historiography of Christianity that is genuinely and unabashedly Latin American.¹¹ As a founder of CEHILA, and a strong proponent of such historiography, Dussel was a key figure in its development. CEHILA represented the first concerted effort to privilege the Latin American impoverished peoples as interpreters of the religious phenomenon in the region (Coutinho 1999). Starting with the theological category of the poor or the oppressed, CEHILA proposed a re-reading of the entire history of the Church in Latin America, creating its own periodization. That should be “a history from the people, for the people, and of the people” (Dussel 1992: 6). Brazilian historian Sérgio Ricardo Coutinho describes Dussel’s role in that meeting as follows:

As for the periodization proposal, it was formulated by Enrique Dussel still in the year of 1967, and refined later, in 1972, in his book Historia de la Iglesia en America Latina: Coloniaje y Liberación (1492–1972). Periodization was seen by Dussel as the great instrument of the history he wanted to do (…) This was not altogether distant from other proposals made by Latin American social scientists taking as their starting point the key of colonialism. Dussel [however] introduced, as his starting point, an interpretative key originated in the theological, or rather ecclesiological concept of Christianity. This concept was widely accepted by members of CEHILA, with Pablo Richard being one of its exponents. In the work Morte das Cristandades e Nascimento da Igreja, this author defines that concept as a historical model of “Church” that seeks to assure its presence and expand its power in society using the mediation of the State, the latter being considered an instrument of the interests of the dominant class. Thus, the institutional Church, under different forms, gives legitimacy to the system of domination and tends to organize itself internally according to this logic of domination. Historically speaking, the “death” of this concept, or rather of a Church modelled after Christendom, would occur when [the Church] committed itself to the poor, thus giving rise to a new ecclesiological model: the popular Church.¹²

Coutinho 1999

Anticipating by several years a language not so different from that found in World Christianity scholars such as Walls and Sanneh, Dussel contrasted Christendom with the idea of a popular church, a church spreading without the apparatus of the status quo. Dussel’s historiography influenced the work of CEHILA and the EATWOT conversations in Geneva, where he and Koschorke first met in 1983. It is worth noting that Koschorke initially described his project as a history of the non-Western Christianity. Later on, he admitted the limits of that expression, renaming his approach as a history of World Christianity. His focus, though, continued to privilege Asia, Africa, and Latin America (Coutinho 1999).¹³ Koschorke’s interest in the history of non-Western Christianity shows the significance of his dialogue with the project being carried by non-Western theologians and historians in the EATWOT. It also affirms a neglected connection, which places Latin American scholarship in relationship with the development of World Christianity as a field of study.

Although the EATWOT is primarily an association of scholars, over the years it has created and strengthened ecumenical forums, networks and social movements that bring scholars and non-scholars together as collaborative partners.¹⁴ The articulation of its initial dialogues in Dar es Salaam (1976) or in Accra (1977)¹⁵ involved the work of individuals (invited theologians), national and regional councils (of churches), and mission agencies, among others. In short, EATWOT’s scholarly production is representative of the variety of emerging (and established) theological voices in the World Christian movement.¹⁶ Furthermore, the scholarly production of EATWOT is fueled by grassroots movements and stands in an ongoing dialogue with them.¹⁷ Among other things, it has contributed to blurring the boundaries separating the academy and the broader society.

In spite of the important contributions Latin American Christians have made to theology, philosophy and history in the past fifty years, there has been little prominence of Latin American scholarship in the theoretical development of World Christianity.¹⁸ With most conversations happening in English, the initial breakthroughs in the field tended focus on anglophone perceptions of the African experiment with Christianity. It is worth noting, though, that Latin America does not lag behind in World Christianity scholarship. A growing number of historical resources and case studies focusing on Latin American experiences with Christianity are available in English.¹⁹ On top of that, the interest in the study of indigenous and African-derived religions in Latin America is on the rise, along with more detailed re-examination of interactions between missionary-oriented efforts and indigenous initiatives.²⁰ Finally, in the past couple of decades, an abundance of studies focusing on the boom of Pentecostalism and its impact on the transformation of the Latin American religious scene (e.g. Chesnut 2013; Freston 2008; Wingeier-Rayo 2011; Stoll 1990), the public significance of Christian faith in the region, and studies on Christianity and migration have appeared year after year (e.g. Medina and Alfaro 2015; Ramirez 2015). In other words, the timid interaction between the field of World Christianity and Latin American religious scholarship is not due the lack of production by the latter.²¹

3 Bringing Latin American Scholarship Back to the Table

Yet, the question about the Latin American contributions to method and theory in the field of World Christianity persists. As I noted earlier, World Christianity as a field of study emerged mainly in response to the boom of sub-Saharan African Christianity in the second half of the twentieth century (Hartch 2014: 1). The reflection on the characteristics of the African Christian boom, so central to the initial conceptualization of the field of World Christianity, cannot be simply replicated everywhere else, or universalized. Not everything in it is translatable. Latin America, for instance, blurs commonly assumed distinctions between Western and non-Western cultures. To complicate matters, the Latin American experience of colonization differs from that of Asian and African societies. The distinctive conjuncture of life in Latin America needs to be taken into account in any interpretive analysis of Latin American Christianity.

An emphasis on the specific conjuncture of Latin America does not entail the abandonment of transnational, intercultural, and inter-contextual analytical tools. For instance, the many migratory and transnational Christian experiences in the region cannot be fully understood without consideration of transnational networks. Of particular interest are south-south connections. Afe Adogame has pointed out that “One cannot fully understand Africa without its diaspora, neither can we understand the African diaspora in isolation” (Adogame 2016). If that is true, one cannot understand the religions of Brazil, Colombia, or Cuba without examining African religions. In the past couple of decades, a number of Brazilian universities have created departments and programs focusing on African and Afro-Brazilian cultures and traditions. In that same period, scholarly interaction on both sides of the Atlantic focusing on African religions and African-derived religions has significantly increased.²² New religious and scholarly networks have been formed as a result of those relations. In the case of Latin American indigenous or original peoples, they are also increasingly networking with other indigenous peoples around the world, forming important forums for self-understanding, mutual support, and advocacy.

These forms of human networking and mobility are setting the agenda for academic research on religion in Latin America and elsewhere in the twenty-first century. In Latin America, the past few decades have seen a profound transformation in the study of religion vis-à-vis the significant change in the region’s self-understanding. At the time CEHILA was created in the early 1970s, Latin America still saw itself as a Christian continent (Catholic for the most part). That conviction is noticed in the CEHILA’s name itself, ‘Commission for the Study of Church History in Latin America.’ In the course of the past forty-five years, although keeping the same name, CEHILA has changed significantly. On top of increasingly admitting Protestant historians in its membership,²³ it has decisively shifted its focus away from ecclesiastical history to the study of the history of religions in Latin America more generally (Bidegain 1996). These shifts reflect the growing awareness of the religious plurality and interreligious relations in Latin America. It is not only the Evangelical and Pentecostal boom in the region that deserves scholarly attention. The unsung phenomenon of the revitalization of indigenous traditions is also worth noting. The 500th anniversary of colonial Christianity in Latin America, in 1992, provided the occasion for Latin American indigenous peoples to speak up, using the commemoration as a platform for the public display of their memories. These indigenous narratives reminded both scholars of Latin American religion and Latin American political leaders that the first nations, the original or indigenous peoples of the continent, and their traditions remained alive and well (Barreto 2017: 111).

Likewise, a revitalization of African-derived cultures and religions is happening in different Latin American and Caribbean countries. Along with the re-emergence of African and indigenous traditions, the persistence of Latin American popular religion shows that the colonial project of Christianizing the continent was a two-way route. Colonial Christianity was subverted in the process, giving birth to popular Christian expressions, which continued to manifest important elements of indigenous and African-derived cultures. These cultural and political changes are reshaping the agenda for the study of Christianity in the region.

4 From Liberation to Decoloniality

Ghanaian theologian Kwame Bediako resisted the idea of adopting postcolonial theory as an analytical tool for the interpretation of African Christianity for two reasons: (1) The fear that a postcolonial framework would inhibit the “long pre-colonial history that continues to be part of African societies,” and (2) the suspicion that postcolonial studies in fact represent a postmodern and neoliberal Western agenda, intent on imposing its own values on formerly colonized societies, even if by other means (Dinkelaker 2017: 22). Whereas for scholars such as Bediako colonization should not be considered a defining moment in the construction of African identity, in the case of Latin America, the extreme violence of the conquest and colonization undeniably makes it a defining moment in the life of all peoples of Abya-Yala.²⁴ Most first nations or indigenous peoples in the region have faced physical and cultural genocide, which continues to impact their lives.

The survival of indigenous traditions in Latin America is an expression of resistance and resilience on the part of indigenous peoples and cultures, and a sign that the colonial project that aimed at eradicating indigenous cultures and ways of life failed to domesticate their will. Kuna theologian Aiban Wagua affirms that the retelling of “the marginalization, the violence, the genocide or ethnocide perpetrated against our indigenous communities of Abia Yala,” as painful as it is, is a remembrance of “our indomitable will” (Wagua 1990: 49).

From the perspective of both indigenous peoples and the descendants of enslaved Africans trafficked to Latin America and the Caribbean it is not possible to disassociate the violence of European colonization from the violence of evangelization (see e.g. Rivera-Pagan 1992). In the minds of both conquerors and conquered, the sword and the cross were intertwined. K’aqchiquel Maya theologian and Protestant minister Vitalino Similox Salazar has referred to the encounter of his Maya people with European Christianity as “the invasion of Christianity into the world of the Mayas” (Similox Salazar 1997: 35). For him, without understanding indigenous religion and theology, European missionaries wrote them off “as pagan, idolatrous and polytheistic” (Similox Salazar 1997: 36). Not only the European conquistadores undervalued Maya religion and spirituality, but, by systematically demeaning, marginalizing, and exploiting them, they also forced the Maya to relinquish their own culture and remain silent (Similox Salazar 1997: 37). Guillermo Cook referred to this process as a cultural genocide, based on underlying racism and the misconception of cultural superiority, connecting Christian evangelization with the colonial project aimed at erasing indigenous ways of life (Cook 1997: 15).²⁵ Colonial evangelization demanded a break with one’s indigenous past. As William Hanks (2010: 5) puts it, “For the missionaries … the focal object of conversion clearly was Indian behavior and beliefs, as is evident from their actions … By combining conviction with repentance, conversion designates a voluntary turning away from past and current ways, to take on different, better ways.”

Enslaved Africans transported to the Americas went through a similar process to separate them from their cultural and religious roots. In Portuguese territories, for instance, that process included the Christianization of enslaved Africans to de-socialize and culturally uproot them. As Moacir de Castro Maia notes,

The entrance of the enslaved Africans in the (…) Portuguese territories was made (…) through evangelization and the reception of baptism. They received a new name, the water of baptism and salt as a sign of liberation from original sin, while the baptismal minutes recorded their condition as captives and the name of their owner (…) The process of making the new slave included the individual’s de-socialization (…) In this long process of enslavement of Africans, baptism was a central criterion in the making of a new slave.

Castro Maia 2011:1 (translated from Portuguese, RCB)

The lasting impact of such experiences cannot be neglected and has not been forgotten. That is why it is difficult for indigenous peoples and Afro-descendants in Latin America not to treat the conquest and colonization as a defining moment in their history. On one hand, is no longer possible to move fully back to pre-Columbian forms of existence. On the other hand, pre-conquest ways of life have persisted and survived, even if many times combined with elements of other cultures and traditions.

In spite of centuries of subjugation and suppression, indigenous and African-derived religions not only found ways to survive, but they have also managed to rise again both in their own right and as constitutive of a popular Christianity practiced across the continent. As a result of the revitalization they have experienced in the past three decades, indigenous religions have begun to speak for and about themselves in ways not known earlier. Writing in the late 1990s, Similox Salazar (1997: 37) says, “The time has now come for my people to become aware of our own history, to be critical subjects of it; we need to practice a faith that is as free as possible from foreign influences.” This rise of indigenous spirituality and theology is key for the understanding of decoloniality in Latin America. Decoloniality is a theoretical approach deeply ingrained in indigenous, Afro, and other minoritized experiences and narratives.

Although for most countries in Latin America colonialism ended in the course of the nineteenth century, its impact and structural domination continue to be felt today. Neocolonialism is a concrete reality afflicting Latin American peoples, through the impact of U.S. political, economic, and military policies in the region since the end of the nineteenth century (González 2011: 3–4). Neocolonialism is an imperial strategy, and as such it has been resisted by a number of grassroots movements in the region.

The coming-of-age of Latin American Christianity, a time when it began to rise from the shadows of colonial Christendom to see itself primarily as Latin American, began to take shape in the early 1950s, through an incipient liberationist movement that would rise in the following decades to impact church and society in all countries in the region. The worldwide impact made by that incipient form of Christianity, which was just beginning to formulate its own voice, can be felt in the references made to it by liberationist theological movements in Africa, Asia, and in other parts of the world.²⁶ That impact, above all, has been strongly felt in the agenda of EATWOT.

Latin American liberation theology (as a distinct theological method) initially emerged in the late 1960s. Sensitized by the cry of a multitude of impoverished people in the continent, liberation theologians sought to speak about God in a way that made sense to contexts marked by colossal socioeconomic disparity. This response initially took the shape of Latin American political theologies. Trying to understand Latin American’s place in the global conjuncture, historians such as Dussel (1975: 24) asked the question: “What is the meaning of Latin America in world history?” For him, it was important to make clear that the history of Latin American Christianity could not be detached from the general history of Latin America, and such a connection was extremely significant for the emergence of a Christianity that could understand itself as, above all, Latin American. On the other hand, such approach allowed the entire history of the Latin American peoples to be interpreted theologically. Thus, while theology was historicized, history was theologized. According to Dussel, “The Christian historian, faced with the task of interpreting the event, does it inevitably in the light of faith … the historical-scientific interpretation is part of a unified theology as a methodical Christian interpretation of the history of the Christian people” (Dussel 1975: 24). This methodological Latin American contribution to Christian historiography deserves further attention—although I cannot do it in the scope of this chapter.

An aspect of Latin American liberation theologizing that is often overlooked is the dynamics of its changes and evolution. While it initially emerged as a response to the political and economic crisis that impacted the lives of most Latin Americans, its understanding of the poor (the impoverished person and community), for instance, evolved over the years to include other experiences of oppression, vulnerability, dispossession, and injustice. In its inception, liberation theology focused mostly on socio-economic injustice. Later on, other forms of oppression—based on race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality—were incorporated into Latin American theologizing. That process coincided with the rise of a number of popular movements and struggles, including women, indigenous, black, and LGBTQ+ movements, which complexified the binary oppression-liberation of the 1960s. Indigenous peoples, Afro-Latin Americans, and women, in special, began to find their own loci of enunciation as religious actors and their own theological voices, fulfilling in unanticipated ways Gustavo Gutierrez’s prophetic insight about the “irruption of the poor” in history.²⁷ In Latin America, even the Pentecostal boom among the poor in the last few decades has been read through such hermeneutical lenses (Shaull 1996: 48–50).

5 Decoloniality and Interculturality as Tools for the Study of Latin American Christianity

By engaging those multiple voices and experiences, Latin American scholars have identified a more nuanced matrix of power, knowing, and being that continues to inform not only social, political, and economic relations but all aspects of life.²⁸ In an important essay in 2000, Peruvian philosopher Anibal Quijano coined the term “coloniality of power” to describe that complex matrix of domination (Quijano 2000: 536ff).

Quijano uses the term “coloniality of power” to refer to the epistemological and cultural dimension of modern/colonial oppression, which outlives colonialism and very often goes unchecked. On top of the colonial power that continues to impact the political and economic spheres, there is an aspect of coloniality that affects knowledge production and forms of being in the world. While liberation operated on the political level, decoloniality presents an epistemological response to the coloniality of power, operating on the subjective level of knowledge production (Mignolo 2007: 451). Decoloniality denounces the complicity of modernity/rationality and an exclusionary notion of totality “that negates, excludes, occludes the difference and the possibilities of other totalities,” (Mignolo 2007: 451) uplifting alternative forms of knowledge and knowing—particularly those that have been previously suppressed and silenced, as in the case of the cosmologies of the various indigenous peoples in the Americas.

For most brown and black peoples in Latin America, the negation they have been subjected to, which Christian structures have been complicit with, is not a simple memory of the past. There are still visible marks of military, political, social and cultural domination which continue to inform their existence, codified in terms of gender, race, and ethnicity.²⁹ Quijano’s critique of this Eurocentric paradigm of modernity/rationality, and the language of decoloniality that he and other decolonial theorists have advanced, form a helpful framework for contributing to the revitalization of the suppressed knowledge of formerly colonized peoples.

Epistemological decolonization, or decoloniality, is also key “to clear the way for new intercultural communication, for an interchange of experiences and meanings, as the basis of another rationality which may legitimately pretend to some universality” (Quijano 2007: 177). In fact, the move from totalizing universality to intercultural universality (or pluri-versality) is not an easy one. Before making such a move, it is necessary to “liberate intercultural communication from the prison of coloniality,” freeing “all peoples to choose, individually or collectively, such relations” (Quijano 2007: 178). While interculturality is a concept used in different parts of the world, in Latin America, its use, in connection with decolonial thinking, has given birth to what I call a liberating decolonial interculturality, which takes power disparities—the coloniality of power, knowledge, and being—into account, thus turning intercultural relations into a liberating praxis.

Such liberating interculturality stems especially from the shift in Latin American studies of Christianity, as seen above in the case of CEHILA, from a historiography focused on Christianity—through its ecclesiastical structures—to an intercultural approach that cannot understand Christianity apart from the non-Christian religions/traditions in the continent; i.e., a shift from ecclesiastical history to a history of religions. Interculturality is not liberating in itself; that is, integrating religious and cultural difference is only part of the equation. On top of that, it is also crucial that different cultures become full participants in the production of intercultural knowledge.

The Christian story can be more fully appreciated if told from multiple perspectives. Princeton historian Afe Adogame uses Chinua Achebe’s analogy of the masquerades in the Igbo festivals in Nigeria to explain the importance of a multifaceted perspectiveness. According to Achebe,

there’s no way you can tell that story in one way and say, this is it. Always there will be someone who can tell it differently depending on where they are standing; the same person telling the story will tell it differently. I think of that masquerade in Igbo festivals that dance in the public arena. The Igbo people say: If you want to see it well, you must not stand in one place. The masquerade is moving through this big arena. Dancing. If you’re rooted to a spot, you miss a lot of the grace. So you keep moving, and this is the way I think the world’s stories, and the story of Christianity should be told—from many different perspectives.

cited as in Adogame 2016

While the message conveyed in this rich imagery speaks primarily to an African self-understanding, its lessons can apply to other contexts in World Christianity, reinforcing the idea that shifts in the theological loci of enunciation in World Christianity lead to its constant recreation (Aguilar 2007).

The relocation of previously ignored and sometimes suppressed theological voices to the centerstage in contemporary theological debates allows for what used to be the peripheries of Eurocentric modern Christianity not only to fuel fresh scholarly agendas but also to propose alternative ways of being Christian—and of being human—in the world (Aguilar 2007: 324). The polycentricity of World Christianity allows for an increasing number of subjects to speak in their own voices, sharing in the first person previously unheard, overlooked, unexplored Christian stories, narratives, and theological perspectives. Listening to and examining these multiple voices and the interactions among them is part of the task of World Christianity as a field of study. Although overlooked and under-explored, Latin American decolonial narratives not only contribute to challenge and deconstruct hegemonic dominant narratives, but also make room for creative reconstructions and reinventions of, among other things, Latin American religious identities. Moving beyond hegemonic perceptions of ‘Latin America’ constructed through Eurocentric scholarly eyes under the pretense of universal and scientific knowledge, decolonial thinking has shifted attention to the location of the subject that speaks from multiple locations in the territory called by many names, including Abya Yala. Such indispensable connection between subject and discourse, while rejecting homogenizing understandings of Latin America, legitimizes the otros saberes (alternative forms of knowledge) connected to the experiences and histories of subalternized peoples in the region.³⁰

The ‘discovery’ of the Americas—and the concurrent creation of a world system with Europe as its self-proclaimed center—is a foundational event in the formation of what we have come to know as modernity (Dussel 1993).³¹ While modern/colonial narratives have privileged Western thought and tradition as standard and central, relegating other rationalities and epistemologies to a secondary role, liberating interculturality privileges the interweaving of different rationalities and epistemologies, emphasizing respect, solidarity, conviviality, dialogue, and collaboration, without overlooking matters of cultural asymmetry and injustice (Zwetch 2013: 32–49, 2015: 18). The production of a liberative intercultural knowledge requires the retelling of collective stories and the subverting of hegemonic narratives. It is not enough for subalternized communities to relearn and retell their own stories. Of equal importance is the task of resituating themselves in the context of broader narratives, which, if unchecked, tend to reinforce epistemological and cultural disparities.

As part of this process, philosophers from the Global South must, as Dussel urges, claim a protagonist role in designing new methods and setting the agenda for an intercultural dialogue “that is critical of and goes beyond the European ‘I’ which, by virtue of its colonial history, has asserted itself as the universal standard of humanity and philosophy” (Dussel 2013a: 3). Such a dialogue has its starting point among the formerly colonized peoples, taking their traditions and stories as a starting point.

Likewise, theology must also be decolonized, as Dussel suggests, through the inversion of imperial inversions. He names two hegemonic inversions that have distorted the history of Christianity. The first one was the inversion from the Jewish messianic community formed around the life and story of the Nazarene Jesus, which appealed to subaltern peoples in the Hellenistic-Roman empire, to the religion of the empire. Dussel considers the inversion of this shift on the status of Christianity, from marginal to “triumphant Christianity,” in the course of the fourth century, key for a decolonial reinvention of Christianity (Dussel 2013b: 23).

The second important inversion that must be challenged was geopolitical, with direct consequences for Latin America. In the sixteenth century, the world underwent a shift from an interregional system that had the “west of China, in Hindustan and the Islamic world” as its center to a “world system” whose center moved to Western Europe. Prior to that, Latino-Germanic Europe was a peripheral world, “isolated from the Asiatic-Mediterranean system” (Dussel 2013b: 23). Columbus’ discovery of the Atlantic world created a “new geopolitical center of navigation and trade” that un-cloistered Europe, making it the center of “colonial Christendom” (Dussel 2013b: 23).³² Colonial Christendom, as Dussel (2013b: 23) states, rejected Inca, Maya, and Aztec cultures as inferior, claiming “a fetishized universality for modern European culture.”

Although different forms of Latin American Christianity existed under the shadow of colonial Christendom, only in the second half of the twentieth century, several people’s movements—some of which born within the ranks of the Christian churches—found room to rise back to the public sphere, showing visible signs of indigenous resistance and resilience, but also pointing to alternative ways of living in the world. In the 1960s, movements such as Iglesia y Sociedad en America Latina (ISAL)—among Protestants—and the Christian Base Communities (CEBs)—primarily among Catholics—emerged, proposing alternative Christian responses to the structural sins that put Latin American countries among the most unjust and violent economies in the world—especially for indigenous peoples, people of African descendance, women, and LGBTQ+ persons. In the 1980s and 1990s, decolonial faces began to resurface in the form of black, indigenous, and women movements. In the Christian communities, such responses took the form of the so-called ‘contextual’ theologies—women, black, indigenous, queer, and so forth. Whereas such theological reflection has not yet gotten much attention from World Christianity scholars, they are by no means insignificant to the understanding of Latin American Christianity.

Some of these theologies played a role in the formative experience of Latin American social movements such as the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) and the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem-Terra (MST) in Brazil. Others have impacted the societal structures of Latin America in different ways. For instance, insights from Brazilian black theology have encouraged a larger number of Afro-Brazilian Christians to work in collaboration with the Brazilian Unified Black Movement on actions for racial justice and reparation.³³

The recent development of teologia india (Latin American indigenous theology) has coincided with a growing awareness among indigenous Christians of who they are and of their struggle for the survival of their culture and way of life, both under continuous attack. Father Eleazar Lopez Hernandez, a Zapotec from Mexico, identified as the midwife of the current movement called teologia india, for instance, is a militant of the indigenous causes in a number of ecumenical indigenous organizations on the national, continental and international levels, including the EATWOT (Hernandez 2018: 65).

In Ecuador, the Consejo de Pueblos y Organizaciones Indigenas Evangelicas de Ecuador (FEINE), founded in 1980, has grown into a well-structured federation of Indigenous Evangelical organizations that has played in the past two decades a protagonist role in popular mobilizations—including the uprisings of 2001, against the dollarization of Ecuadorian economy, leading to the resignation of President Jamil Mahuad, and the protest of the 7th Summit of the Free Trade Areas of the Americas (FTAA), in 2002. FEINE sees itself as part of a broader emergent international indigenous movement, articulating, at the same time, its religious identity as a Christian Evangelical movement (Guaman 2006).

These few examples suffice to show an unfolding decolonial movement, which is growing not only in the academia, but also among different sectors of society, including a number of grassroots movements organized by those whose voices were silenced in the context of colonialism and coloniality. The picture painted above certainly does not represent the whole—or even of the majority—of Latin American Christianity. Instead, it seeks to unveil a perspective that remains marginal in the study of World Christianity. It is nonetheless one of key importance, particularly when one considers the increasing number of impoverished, discriminated against, marginalized, and oppressed peoples who are asking why they continue to be on the underside of highly unjust and hierarchical societies, after more than 500 years have passed since the original violence of the conquest. Latin American decolonial theory can be a helpful partner of conversation to bring the uniqueness of the Latin American experience in the World Christian milieu to the fore, modelling a way to enrich the tapestry of this still incipient field of study.

6 In Lieu of a Conclusion

A limited understanding of the complexity and varied expressions of Latin American liberationist movements has contributed to hasty criticism against them. The intellectual contributions highlighted in this chapter, along with their impact on grassroots movements, are yet to be fully engaged in the context of World Christianity scholarship. Although still young, World Christianity has in the past few decades established itself as a thriving field of study—something that can be attested by the numbers of chairs, departments, and centers of world Christianity that have been created over the past few decades with a focus on the study of the phenomenon of the worldwide presence of the Christian faith, its multiple forms, and the demographic and cultural shifts it has experienced (Cabrita and Maxwell 2017: 3). The field, however, is still burgeoning. New questions, tools of inquire, and perspectives continue to emerge as a result of increasingly sustained conversations among scholars of World Christianity from all six continents.

This chapter has argued that studies of World Christianity must pay closer attention to the 500 year history of the experiences with Christianity in Latin America, particularly the perspectives of those who have been pushed to “the underside of history” (Gutierrez 1996: 40). Furthermore, it has shown how new interpretative keys and frameworks for the study of Latin American Christianity are being forged (Lopez Hernandez 2018), suggesting that the engagement of Latin American decolonial thinking, and the interculturality that stems from collaborative efforts involving the academia, popular movements, religious actors, and indigenous perspectives can provide significant analytical tools, opening new windows for scholarship in the region, with implications for broader theoretical exchanges in the field of World Christianity.