Spiritual Encounters: Interactions between Christianity and Native Religions in Colonial America

Marc Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index. Biographical Note: Nicholas Griffiths is the deputy department head of Hispanic studies at the University of Birmingham. He is the author of "The Cross and the Serpent: Religious Repression and Resurgence in Colonial Peru." Fernando Cervantes is a lecturer in the department of Hispanic, Portuguese, and Latin American studies at the University of Bristol. He is the author of "The Devil in the New World: The Impact of Diabolism in New Spain."Publisher Marketing: Encounters between religions and the resulting questions pertaining to belief and faith are among the most intriguing subjects with which scholars grapple. How do people adjust, accommodate, resist, reinterpret and harmonize different systems of belief? Do religious conversions often mask more worldly concerns such as political power, economic well being, and the ability to control one's destiny? Specifically adopting a cross-hemispheric approach, this volume draws on experiences of religious change principally in hispanophone America, but also in anglophone and francophone America, in order to transcend cultural frontiers, illuminate the circumstances and conditions which determined the form that spiritual encounters took across the hemisphere, and encourage a comparative approach. Publisher Marketing: Spiritual Encounters is a comparative and theoretically informed look at the religious interactions between Native and colonial European cultures throughout the Americas. Religion was one of the most contentious, dramatic, and complex arenas of confrontation between Natives and Europeans during the colonial era. This volume fully explores the significance of colonial religious encounters. Case studies, organized by theme, showcase previously unexamined sources and offer interpretations that shed new light on Native-European religious encounters in the New World. One group of studies examines the extent to which Native peoples internalized Christianity and the cultural mechanisms that enabled them to do so. Other chapters assess in detail the often uneasy relationship between Christianity and coexisting indigenous religious practices involving sorcery and healing. A third set of essays looks at the broader political and economic forces underlying Native-colonial religious encounters. An introduction and epilogue by the editors provide valuable summaries of the broad patterns characterizing the religious interactions between the West and the Other in the colonial Americas. Nicholas Griffiths is the deputy department head of Hispanic studies at the University of Birmingham. He is the author of The Cross and the Serpent: Religious Repression and Resurgence in Colonial Peru. Fernando Cervantes is a lecturer in the department of Hispanic, Portuguese, and Latin American studies at the University of Bristol. He is the author of The Devil in the New World: The Impact of Diabolism in New Spain.

Contributor Bio:  Cervantes, Fernando Fernando Cervantes is Reader in History at the University of Bristol. He is the author of The Devil in the New World: The Impact of Diabolism in New Spain (1994).