Institutionalization of Religion

NICOLÁS VIOTTI

Encyclopedia of Latin American Religions

Springer International Publishing

Año: 2015; p. 1 - 5

Religious deinstitutionalization in Latin America has been generally defined taking the Catholic monopoly breakdown as its starting point. Shaped during colonial times, this monopoly enjoyed a hypothetical continuity that has been challenged with different degrees of success by secularizing liberalism since the beginning of the independence processes in the region. Moreover, deinstitutionalization has been analyzed mainly by means of analytical categories that conceive what is religious as a synonym for ecclesiastical organization. From this point of view, there exist contemporary processes related to the spiritual turn in religiousness, which specifically linked to the so-called New Age. Characterized by the lack of central organization, these processes would account for a deinstitutionalization movement.