The Politics of Religion in an Age of Revival: Studies in Nineteenth Century Europe and Latin America (review)

The Politics of Religion in an Age of Revival: Studies in Nineteenth-Century Europe and Latin America. Edited by AUSTEN IVEREIGH. Nineteenth-Century Latin America Series. London: Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London, 2000. Table Appendix. Notes. viii, 223 pp. Paper.

This brief volume is a welcome challenge to the traditional interpretation of Catholic Church politics in nineteenth-century Europe and Latin America. The traditional view has liberals espousing rationality, modernity and progress in opposition to the church and its conservative allies, opposing the creation of a modern state. The authors of this work see a Catholic revival that frequently embraced Liberal goals of democracy and scientific progress rather than an obscurantist church.

Margaret Lavinia Anderson finds the Catholic revival most prominent in Germany, Belgium, England, and Ireland. As evidence, she cites increased religious vocations, growth of religious congregations and celebrity converts, such as John Henry Newman. As a result, a revived ultramontane church was prepared to mobilize political parties. Yet she acknowledges that in the end, it became the "handmaiden of reaction" in France.

James F. McMillan picks up the story of Catholics and republicans, who became sworn enemies during the French Reaction. Their fundamental disagreement centered on the role of religion in developing nationhood. The anticlerical republicans wanted the church to be just another belief system in a pluralistic society.

Spain was no exception to the Catholic revival. According to Frances Lannon, the most controversial aspect of the revival was the rapid growth of religious congregations. Compromises temporarily sidelined church-state conflicts but with the resurgence of anticlericalism and the search for hispanidad after the disastrous defeat of 1898, the debate over modernity vs. anti-modernity led to clashes with the church.

The final chapters treat the Catholic revival and liberalism in Latin America. Eric Van Young starts with the analysis of popular religion during the Mexican insurgency, 1810-21. He concludes that Indian Mexico was first and foremost committed to the preservation of the community rather than the broader concept of statehood as envisioned by the creole leaders.

Next David Brading studies the ultramontane instringence of Bishop Clemente Jesús Munguía (1810-68) of Michoacán. Influenced by French reactionary thinking, the prelate found Mexican liberalism threatening. He rejected the state's claim to the patronato and insisted on a sovereign church. For the Liberals, it was imperative that the clergy be removed from politics. The conflict made for strange bedfellows in that it promoted separation of church and state--a situation far more beneficial to the church than the older close union of church and state.

The Catholic revival in Antioquia, Colombia, 1850-1900, as described by Patricia Landoño Vegas, suggests the church's considerable influence in philanthropic associations. This influence increased the presence of the institution in the lives of the people and prepared them for the modernization needs of the next century.

In studying Argentina, Austen Ivereigh looks at the Catholic and liberal clash over the educational law of 1820. Instead of seeking the customary pragmatic compromise, the Liberals argued for state autonomy with unlimited influence. The Catholic deputies saw the state as governing corporate entities, which became a reality under Juan Domingo Perón.

The work concludes with an analysis of religion of politics in Chile, 1850-1925, by J. Samuel Valenzuela and Erika May Valenzuela. Here Catholics were on both sides of the fence in church-state conflicts. The authors find continuity between the conservative Catholics in their social justice commitments and the subsequent rise of the Christian Democratic Party.

This study of Catholic revivals mobilizing society for democracy points to many similarities in both Europe and Latin America, with the exception of Mexico. Van Young's treatise of popular religion during the insurgency does not fit the theme of the work. Mungu&iacute...