Localizing and globalizing processes in Brazilian Catholicism: Comparing inculturation in liberationist and charismatic Catholic cultures

Abstract

The authors discuss the various ways in which liberationist Catholicism and the Catholic charismatic movement in Brazil take positions in the overall globalizing and homogenizing cultural forces in universal Catholicism and wider society. They argue that in their discourses and practices, these two contemporary Catholic movements refer to notions of both local and global and identify with specific parts of global Catholicism by confronting processes of syncretism, acculturation, and inculturation. Through an analysis of the meaning of tradition and roots, the use of, music, and the practice of pilgrimage, the authors show how both movements manage the construction of distinctive religious cultures and forms of inculturation in the context of tension between the local and the global. © 2008 by the Latin American Studies Association.