Divisions and Conflicts
Violence and Torture in Religion and Human Rights in Mexico and El Salvador
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Gloria Velásquez, Alba Elizabeth Melgar
Violence, Torture and Human Rights are concepts intrinsically related. Violence and religion on the contrary are mutually exclusive given that Violence is "the intentional use of physical force against another person” and religion is based on respect and peace. Violence incited, perpetrated and justified in the name of religion is a shocking reality in different parts of the globe, and the brutality displayed in such acts frequently leaves observers speechless given that most Religions in one way or another are based on the Messianic principles of love, tolerance and mutual respect. Violence with religious undercurrents, moreover, is an extremely multifaceted phenomenon we will discuss in our presentation. It is known that Mexico and El Salvador are two of the most violent Countries in the Planet. In this work we will explore the causes and consequences of violence in those Countries. We will analyze if, in these countries Religion have been a cause or a deterrent of violence and torture. El Salvador offers a unique example in which the Catholic Church opposed violence to the point of sacrificing its priests defending the people against the violence committed by the governments against the citizens whose rights Government meant to safeguard. On the other hand, violence in Mexico also presents a unique case for its magnitude and the role of the Catholic Church.
The Politics of Latinx Evangelicals in the Age of Trump
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Liesl Haas
As a result of immigration, Latinx membership in Evangelical churches is skyrocketing, and they are now the fastest-growing demographic within American Evangelicalism. Together with the increasing political liberalization of young Evangelicals, members of many Evangelical churches are rethinking their church’s conservative position on immigration. The emergence of a new cohort of young Latinx leaders makes it increasingly likely that this change at the base will translate in the next years into an Evangelical challenge to the Republican Party on immigration. The anti-immigration stance of a number of highly visible Evangelical leaders, such as Jerry Falwell, Jr., and their support for the hard-line anti-immigration policies of the Trump Administration, belie a more complicated immigration debate taking place within the Evangelical community. Key sectors within Evangelical Christianity have begun calling for immigration reform, framing the need for reform in theological terms (“welcoming the stranger”). Once policy issues become theological issues, they become “sticky” and resistant to change. My research argues that if a more progressive position on immigration takes hold within American Evangelical Christianity, it will pose an existential challenge to the Republican Party. How both the Republican and Democratic parties respond to this challenge will not only impact the national debate on immigration but could fundamentally alter electoral politics in the United States. This research aims to highlight the ways that shifts in public opinion within religious groups in the US have profound impacts on state and national politics.
Cold War Evangelicalism’s Theology of Dissimulation
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Taylor West
The Cold War was a time in which religion, according to Hannah Arendt and Kevin M. Kruse, was thrust back into the realm of politics. At the forefront of this struggle were American evangelicals who began to vie for political power and who would eventually wield tremendous political influence. They navigated this shifting landscape with a theology of dissimulation. Through this developing theology, evangelicals could maintain the fiction that they were "in the world but not of the world," a notion that scholars have pointed to as irrefutable evidence of evangelical apoliticism—a consensus that has held sway until quite recently. The evangelical theology of dissimulation—of feigning holy remove yet engaging undeniably in politics—was communicated via concepts related to militarism, market capitalism, and organicism. The purpose of this paper is to explore what these concepts communicated, to whom they were directed, and how they made up an expanding constellation of politic discourse in the erupting tensions of the Cold War. Second, this paper means to demonstrate how evangelicals stepped away from merely spiritual notions of salvation and how they refashioned their faith into a theoretical avenue to various earthly ends: a way to save the nation, to destroy communism, to protect idealized notions of masculinity, to achieve worldly prosperity. Finally, this paper will demonstrate how evangelicalism qua political solution was used to thwart social movements and social change, which evangelicals believed threatened to blur the most deep-set contours of their identity.
