Maya Christians and Their Churches in Sixteenth-Century Belize (review)

This study in historical archaeology uses ethnohistory, anthropology, religious studies, and church history to reinterpret the religious experience of the Maya in sixteenth-century Belize. The Spaniards maintained loose control over the region, which meant that the people were not subject to the same level of forced cultural change as experienced elsewhere in Mesoamerica. Graham argues that the Maya in Belize accepted Christianity on their own terms and remained Christian even though their contact with priests was sporadic.

To the author’s credit, the book makes a serious attempt to address anthropological theory, which is sometimes underutilized in historical archaeology. She also breaks with the traditional effort to achieve complete objectivity by revealing that her understanding of Christianity is affected by her own experience as a youth growing up Catholic in an Italian-American parish in New Jersey.

Because of her childhood religious experience, Graham reaches the conclusion that one does not have to know much about Christianity to be a Christian. After all, the people in her parish seemed to be more interested in collecting holy cards and in the cult of the saints than in understanding the significance of Christ. This allows her to define Christianity so broadly that it leaves out Christ altogether; if one claims to be a Christian, then that is what one is, regardless of what one believes. A Christ-centered Catholicism, in Graham’s opinion, is a theology of bishops and priests (p. 102). She apparently believes that the adults in her childhood parish were clueless about the centrality of Christ to their religion. Given the importance of Lent and Holy Week in American Catholicism, it is hard to give this credence.

The author’s broad definition of Christianity allows her to argue a thesis that many scholars would have difficulty accepting. The core of her research is presented in a fifty-page summary of her archaeological work. This reveals that sixteenth-century Maya burials at the sites of Tipú and Lamanai were usually arranged in a Christian manner—head to the west—and that church buildings were in use even in the absence of Catholic priests. Some of those rituals carried out, however, were of pre-Christian origin. Graham somehow thinks this supports her basic thesis that the Maya considered themselves to be Christians. The opposite would seem to be indicated. The author’s insistence that “if the Tipú Maya buried their dead according to Christian rules” then “there is no necessary reason . . . to question their adherence to Christianity” (p. 18) ignores other possible explanations that question that conclusion. Graham also undermines her thesis regarding the differences between areas of strong and weak Spanish control by pointing out that many of the people living in Belize (weakly controlled) were originally from northern Yucatan (strongly controlled).

The chapters not based on archaeology consist of theoretical exposition, historical summaries of European church history, demonology, and ethnohistory, based on secondary sources, especially in the case of Belize on the work of Grant Jones. As a historian, this reviewer has to question the value of lengthy summaries of other people’s work. Her admitted failure to find the term Belize in Spanish sources (p. 110) suggests that she should have talked to some historians from Yucatan or looked at the façade of the church of Santa Ana in Mérida.

Graham may be correct in arguing that the Maya in sixteenth-century Belize were Christians. However, the evidence supports only an “anything goes” interpretation of Christianity. It does not even prove that the Maya claimed to be Christian.