All Religions Are Good in Tzintzuntzan: Evangelicals in Catholic Mexico

Conclusion: Mobilizing Religion

C O N C L U S I O N Mobilizing Religion The communities around Lake Pátzcuaro, much like the rest of Latin America , are experiencing an explosion of religious diversity. Evangelical Christian churches have arisen in the past thirty years to challenge the Catholic Church’s centuries-old monopoly on Tzintzuntzeño spirituality. At the same time that international migration and economic integration with global capitalism have accelerated in Tzintzuntzan, its residents have embraced a wider range of religious identities. In other parts of Mexico and the world, the sharing of space between members of different faiths has occasioned outbreaks of violence. My ethnographic account of Tzintzuntzan examines an instance where the peaceful coexistence of two religious groups has been possible through a willingness to disobey doctrinal exclusivity and to share beliefs and practices. Evangelical churches, particularly the more expressive and scripturally insistent denominations, have gained adherents from families in crisis. The call to a more ordered life, free from destructive behavior and pleasing to God, appeals to women who suffer the effects of alcoholic husbands. So pervasive is drinking in Tzintzuntzan that, when I first arrived, the community of three thousand people sponsored four chapters of Alcoholics Anonymous, with additional branches in La Colonia and Ichupio. Men drink publicly without any social sanction, and in most cases drink responsibly. However, alcohol abuse occurs and can bruise marriages. Since it is still unusual in Tzintzuntzan for a woman to leave her husband except under the most extreme circumstances, many wives appreciate the strong anti-alcohol message 1 6 6 All Religions Are Good in Tzintzuntzan evangelical churches preach. Conversion narratives consistently describe a transformation from chaotic lives to more stable ones. Most ethnographic accounts of how non-Catholic churches gain adherents assume that conversion entails a conscious decision to leave an outmoded faith and align oneself with a religion more relevant to modern life (Boudewijnse, Kamsteeg, and Droogers 1991; Chesnut 1997; Earle 1992; Lewis 1964; Roberts 1968). They envision a religious bazaar where converts are finicky consumers searching for the best possible product to meet their needs and discarding what no longer works. Some theorists refer to this method as a bricolage, or ‘‘spiritual toolbox,’’ in which believers select the faith most appropriate for their present circumstances (Hervieu-Léger 1996; Willaime 1996).1 What appears as the secularization of modern society, they say, is in reality the restructuring of religious life to fit a more individualized culture. They apply the economic concepts of ‘‘market’’ and ‘‘deregulation’’ to the religious field, where individuals have the power to choose between competing brands of faith. This model does not adequately describe the people I spoke with in Michoac án. The concept of the spiritual toolbox suffers from two weaknesses. First, it depends on an overly functionalist interpretation of religion. In this view, people mobilize religion to serve specific needs at certain times, often during crisis. So, if a child is sick, his parents will take him to a medical doctor, make a vow to a patron saint, and visit an indigenous healer. Sometimes the problem is a general state of anomie that leaves a person uncertain and disconnected from a supportive community. Religion becomes just one of many wrenches that parents take out of their toolbox, hoping it will be the right size to fit the loose bolt. But religious faith is never so limited to a single problem, even in the cases of evangelical converts with alcoholic husbands . Nor is it something external to the individual, to be picked up and used at appropriate moments, then put away at other times. For the Catholics and evangelicals around Lake Pátzcuaro, faith is omnipresent, marking the sale of the first freshly squeezed juice in the morning and blessing the grandchildren before they go to bed at night. Its presence is not always as a benign protector; at times Catholics assume expensive ritual obligations that increase their debt, and evangelicals follow strict rules of conduct that deny them many physical pleasures. The model of a toolbox captures the multiplicity of influences that shape faith, but in privileging the selection of the most appropriate tool, it underestimates the pervasiveness of religious faith. My other objection to a consumer model of faith is the implied fragmentation of the resulting identity. Each spiritual tool remains discrete and Conclusion 1 6 7 separate, incapable of producing a...