Religion and Politics in Latin America: The Catholic Church in Venezuela & Colombia

by Daniel H. Levine

Overview

This book explores the transformations in religion in conjunction with political change. Professor Levine suggests, highlights the dynamic and dialectical interaction between religion and politics in general, and addresses the more universal problem of relating thought to action.

Originally published in 1981.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691615349
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	07/14/2014
Series:	Princeton Legacy Library , #52
Pages:	358
Product dimensions:	10.00(w) x 7.00(h) x 0.80(d)

Read an Excerpt

Religion and Politics in Latin America

The Catholic Church in Venezuela and Colombia

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By Daniel H. Levine

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1981 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-07624-9

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CHAPTER 1

Religion and Politics: The Nature of the Problem

Religion and politics grow and change together in all societies and cultures. Common structures of meaning and action knit the two domains into one, as notions of authority, hierarchy, and community (to name only a few points of contact) bring religious and political activists together — often in mutual support, often in conflict. This general phenomenon has peculiarly Latin American aspects as well; for in Latin America, religion and politics have been closely intertwined since the Conquest, providing ideological, material, and institutional support and legitimation to one another. But this relation, so central to the historical ethos of Latin American institutions and social processes, is now undergoing profound transformation. Sharp and often bitter conflict has become visible throughout the region. Changes in both religion and politics have led to a struggle to control the direction and to shape the meaning of an emerging new relation between religious and political beliefs, attitudes, and actions.

In this book we shall examine these general processes in their particular Latin American context, through an analysis of changes in the relation of the Catholic Church, and of Catholicism in general, to politics in Venezuela and Colombia. Before going into the origins and structure of this book, however, it may be well to reverse the normal order of things and begin with a broad statement of conclusions; for many readers will wonder why religion deserves the attention of students of politics in the first place. Consciously or unconsciously, we often remain wedded to the nineteenth-century liberal view that, with scientific, technological, and economic progress, religion inevitably loses its popular influence. Moreover, with the spread of Marxist categories of thought, social scientists have searched for the "roots" of political phenomena in social and particularly in economic processes, taking attitudes, values, and belief structures as products of other, more concrete activities. Liberal evolutionism and the Marxist stress on economics as somehow more "real," more dynamic, together lead to the view that older, supposedly more "traditional" institutions, and especially religious ones, are survivors — static, unchanging structures held over from the past, whose day is rapidly drawing to a close.

But clearly, this view will not do. In theoretical terms, it ignores the fact that religion, like all human institutions, grows and changes, transforming its doctrines, structures, and styles of action in response both to new inner understandings and to challenges and changed conditions in society as a whole. To treat religious institutions as mere survivors is to miss completely their dynamic growth and transformation, and their continuing vitality everywhere. Moreover, as an empirical matter such views gloss over the enormous changes in Catholicism over the last few decades, particularly in Latin America. Few institutions in all of Latin America have changed as rapidly and profoundly as the Catholic Church has; and the intensity, scope, and meaning of this change demand careful and systematic attention.

The "problem" of religion and politics is thus both universal and particular — visible in all cultures, and of special importance in Latin America. Given the dual nature of our subject matter, the conclusions advanced in this book are also both general and particular. Stated briefly, and in general terms, people who are religious place the activities of daily life (be they economic, cultural, social, or political) in a far-reaching context of transcendental significance. The activities of daily life are thus infused with meanings deeply rooted in religious belief and experience, and in the felt nature of the religious community to which believers belong. As an intimate part of everyday life, both in conscious and in subtle and elusive ways, religion thus motivates believers to particular areas and styles of action, generating deep and long-lasting commitments.

Of course, no person, group, culture, or institution is religious, sacred, secular, or political purely in the abstract. These types of relationships are indeed universal, but it is precisely the richness of human variation which gives direction and meaning to the general patterns. Analysis and understanding must therefore shuttle continuously between the general and the specific, rooting universal processes in particular cultural, historical, and social contexts. Only in this way is it possible to assess the sources and meanings of the patterns which emerge, and to chart their likely future paths with some accuracy. For these reasons, a major conclusion of this book is that, as we move from the general to the particular (that is, from abstract formulae to orientations which guide behavior in the concrete situations of everyday life), national and contextual differences become ever more prominent. The Venezuelans and Colombians studied here profess a common faith and belong to the same Church; but they do this in notably different ways, and their specific orientations reflect the kind of institution and the sort of society in which they were raised and now live.

In working through the theoretical, methodological, and empirical bases of these conclusions, I hope in this chapter to give the reader a sense of the origins and the structure of this book. In my case, this is perhaps more important than usual; for to me religion presents a personal and intellectual problem of considerable dimensions. After all, this is a study of Catholicism and politics in Latin America by a Jewish, North American professor of political science. The obvious and somewhat jarring incongruities visible here demand more than the normal perfunctory introduction. Hence, an intellectual and personal history of this project is in order, to clarify the kind of problem that the study of religion poses for any secular social scientist.

Origins And Orientations

This book grew out of my general concern with problems of ideology, social structure, and institutions — their dynamic interrelations, and the implications of the entire process for action. Two key questions underlie the whole approach: first, How do ideas take form, or crystallize, in regular patterns of action? and second, How do institutions develop characteristic styles of action, which spill over from within the institutions to shape the activities of members in their more general social relations? Looked at in this way, religion and politics each constitutes, in Berger's terms, a "package ... an empirically given combination of institutional processes and clusters of consciousness" which fit together and influence one another continuously.

Religion and politics are useful and important examples of this general process; for each, in a different way, deals with broad questions of the meaning of life, offering symbolic models and organizational structures to articulate and shape it. Politics, after all, deals at the most general level with the organizing principles and symbols of the entire society, giving form to the human community here and now. Religion, in turn, provides values and symbols giving general meaning to human existence, placing any given set of social or political arrangements in broader frameworks of significance. Religion and politics thus necessarily impinge on one another; their goals and structures overlap and run together as a matter of course.

Specifically, this book grew out of my own dissatisfaction with the rather simple-minded evolutionism of much contemporary work on "modernization." My earlier research on Venezuela suggested that attempts to build simple scales of attitudes, behavior, or institutions running from "traditional" to "modern" were unsatisfactory. They ignored the dynamics of the process of change itself and glossed over the rich possibilities for accommodation, change, and conflict it contains. Thus, quite apart from the obvious difficulty of locating any particular behavior on such a scale, the theory of modernization as commonly used was itself inadequate as a model for understanding change.

Furthermore, my initial look at the Catholic Church in Venezuela, in the context of conflicts over educational policy, showed me that Venezuelan political parties and groups had changed profoundly; but, more surprising, I found that the same was true of the Church. Moreover, it was apparent that such changes could not be dismissed as mere short-term tactical readjustments. Rather, they grew out of the complex process of transformation then underway in the Catholic Church worldwide. The Church's changing style of relating to politics in Venezuela could thus be traced to a more general redefinition of the Church's own sense of self, a reorientation which led Catholic leaders to try to redefine the proper relation between the Church and society at large, and to explore new areas of concern and innovative styles of action for Catholic groups involved in social and political affairs.

After completing my initial work on Venezuelan politics, I began to consider research specifically concerned with the social and political role of the Church. Since I already knew Venezuela well, I decided to begin there. But as we shall see, the Venezuelan Church is poor and weak; it plays only a minor role in a highly secular and pluralistic society. To get a better view of the sources, processes, and meanings of change in the Catholic Church, I needed a comparative frame of reference. Comparative study protects against the possibility that findings are idiosyncratic in ways that would not be apparent were analysis to remain within the bounds of a single culture or political system. It thus provides a more complete test of any propositions or conclusions advanced. Ideally, one would want to match the poor and weak Church of Venezuela with one more rich, powerful, and socially prominent. The neighboring republic of Colombia, famous throughout Latin America for its powerful Catholic Church and its pervasive religiosity, admirably filled the bill. Moreover, aside from these differences on religious measures, Venezuela and Colombia also diverge widely on a broad range of social, economic, and political dimensions. Hence, research in these two countries promised to provide a solid basis for comparative analysis.

Despite the many differences between Venezuela and Colombia (to be explored in detail in chapter 3), it is important to realize that these two nations share one trait which makes them special in Latin America today: they are the only consistent electoral democracies in South America. The recent surge of authoritarianism in the region and the growing conflict of such regimes with the Church in nations as varied as Chile, Brazil, El Salvador, or Nicaragua have led many observers to center their attention on the Church's present and future role under authoritarian regimes, and particularly on the development of its "prophetic" stance as a critic of injustice and a defender of human rights. The difficulties involved in charting a course between revolutionary violence and the growing pressures of military governments have thus absorbed much of the attention and energies of Church leaders and scholarly observers of the region.

But Venezuela and Colombia, albeit for different reasons, have resisted the general trend to authoritarian rule. There, political openness survives, and the Church (along with most other groups) retains considerable room to maneuver, with extensive freedom of speech and action. Thus, for all their marked differences from one another, Venezuela and Colombia comprise together a unique example of the potential role of the Latin American Church in an open, pluralistic political system. The Church in these nations has a special opportunity to contribute to change in the framework of an open society — a possibility increasingly denied it in the bleak political landscape of today's Latin America.

The choice of nations as units of analysis deserves a word here. The Catholic Church's popular image of monolithic unity masks its great heterogeneity and its decentralized structure. Until recently, the relevant social unit for most Church operations was the diocese, each governed independently by a bishop who was subject only to the authority of the pope. While dioceses remain important, in recent years the nation-state has become a major focus of Church life. The Second Vatican Council recognized the need for greater communication among bishops and for more elaborate planning at the national level, and it encouraged the formation of national episcopal conferences to achieve this end. Although these conferences have little formal authority, they do facilitate contact and collaboration among bishops and enhance the national development of each Church organization. The growing national identity of each Church thus compels those interested in the relation of religion to society and politics to examine the impact of national differences in a systematic fashion. The logic and the structure of this book both respond to this need.

Having decided to explore the relation of religion, the Catholic Church, and politics, I still faced many basic theoretical and methodological questions. It is no easy task for the secular social scientist to study religion with anything approaching objectivity and understanding. As Clifford Geertz has pointed out, "One of the major methodological problems in writing about religion scientifically is to put aside at once the tone of the village atheist and that of the village preacher, as well as their more sophisticated equivalents, so that the social and psychological implications of particular religious beliefs can emerge in a clear and neutral light."

As Geertz here suggests, many studies of religion betray the lingering effects of positivism in the social sciences. A positivist approach brings the observer close to the position of the "village atheist" to the extent that it predisposes one to concentrate on the externals of behavior, fitting these into the observer's own categories of analysis with little or no attention to the meaning or signification of action to those involved. In the case of the Catholic Church, a positivist approach is very tempting. The extremely visible structures of the Church — its complex and many-tiered bureaucracy, its highly specific codes of law and regulation, and the like — have predisposed numerous scholars and observers to treat the Church as simply another institution, albeit a uniquely widespread and long-lived example of its genre.

Although my own research began with a dissatisfaction with evolutionism and a desire to explore the processes of change within "established" institutions, it remained initially within a positivist frame of reference. Thus the Church was seen as reacting to changes in the surrounding society, and the attitudes and values of Church elites, which I derived from their responses to questions on social and political issues, were taken as valid measures of the Church's disposition to act in society. But as my research progressed, this positivism became increasingly untenable: Catholic elites (most notably bishops) simply do not consider issues in strictly social or political terms. Instead, their answers are couched in religious concepts and metaphors, which flow from their understanding of the requirements of religious faith, their view of the Church as an institution, and their conclusions about its proper relation to society at large — not from purely social analysis alone. At the very least, then, one needs to know the language of Catholicism in order to make sense of its references to society and politics. Yet knowledge of the language alone is not enough; for, as we shall see, an increasing number of Catholic leaders and activists use a "sociological" vocabulary to describe society, employing terms and concepts which at times give their social views a surprisingly "radical" look, at least in the abstract. But this interpretation is misleading, for there is a wide gap between general attitudes and particular actions. Thus, only weak and ambiguous connections emerge between the social views of Catholic leaders and the kinds of roles and actions to which they are willing to commit the Church.

Perhaps this is not a fruitful way to approach the problem in the first place. To get inside the minds of Catholic leaders, to see the world with their eyes, it is clearly not enough to look at behavior and attitudes only on dimensions of interest to social scientists. Rather, as already mentioned, one must learn and appreciate the categories that religious leaders themselves use for sorting out reality; moreover, one must distinguish between the different kinds of concepts they use and the roles they see as appropriate to particular fields of action. This is a complex task because bishops are complex men. They are fully capable of seeing the world in secular terms, of using the current sociological jargon, and in general of displaying an up-to-date awareness of trends in social and political analysis. But in the last analysis their views in these areas are grounded not in sociological analysis or in political opinion, but rather in a deeper commitment to religious world views which set society (the "temporal world") in a transhistorical perspective.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Religion and Politics in Latin America by Daniel H. Levine. Copyright © 1981 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents

• FrontMatter, pg. i
• Contents, pg. vii
• List of Tables and Figures, pg. ix
• Acknowledgments, pg. xi
• 1. Religion and Politics: The Nature of the Problem, pg. 3
• 2. Religion and Politics, Politics and Religion: General Perspectives, pg. 18
• 3. Settings for Change: Venezuela and Colombia, pg. 56
• 4. The Bishops: A Collective Portrait, pg. 99
• 5. Visions of the Church: Authority and Its Problems, pg. 142
• 6. The Church and the World: Perception and Action, pg. 171
• 7. Structure and Style: National Organizations, pg. 213
• 8. Structure and Style: Two Case Studies, pg. 240
• 9. Structure and Style: Six Dioceses, pg. 255
• 10. Further Reflections, pg. 289
• Bibliography, pg. 317
• Index, pg. 337