TY - JOUR
AU - Romero, Catalina
AB - Abstract This work explores the phenomenon of the “nonaffiliated” in Latin America and presents partial results of a qualitative research project that included in-depth interviews with fifty-eight nonaffiliated in Cordoba (Argentina), Lima (Peru), and Montevideo (Uruguay). After analyzing the main differences between nonbelievers and believers who have no religious affiliation, we propose a typology for understanding these two groups, which display great diversity within themselves while adopting characteristics of the cultures of their own countries. Three large groups are identified: atheists, nonconfessional, and indifferent. Among the atheists, we find two emphases: militant and indifferent. Among the nonconfessional believers, three groups are identified: those who engage in individual practices related to transcendence, those who engage in collective practices, and those who abandoned Christianity yet express their religiosity in the same keys. The indifferent are those to whom religion deserves no attention. INTRODUCTION WITH THE COMING of the twenty-first century, studies about religion have begun to account for the phenomenon of religious nonaffiliation, which includes individuals who express their conviction regarding the existence of God or transcendence but do not do so through identification with a religious institution, as well as individuals who consider themselves atheists. Although “nonaffiliated believers” in Latin America were previously taken into account by means of quantitative data, they have not received attention in the last few years in research on religion. Nevertheless, past studies have used categories such as “Catholic in my own way,” “believer in my own way,” “churchless believers,” “non-practicing believers” (Parker 1993), “non-religious” (Marzal 2000), or “religious self-accounting” (Mallimaci 1999). There is also the challenge that these and other religious categories are expressed differently in each culture. Whereas in some places defining oneself as Catholic marks a clear limit in terms of self-identification, in other places, such as Peru, Catholicism is more a part of the culture rather than just one of the many religious options available. For instance, on being asked whether she was affiliated with a particular religion, a woman answered, “No. I’m Catholic by tradition, so to speak” (Doré 2012, 35). The study of the nonaffiliated as a field is under construction given that the actual way of defining relevant categories remains contested. In regional literature, one finds various approximations and issues in reference to the categories used. Manuel Marzal mentions that the “non-religious” category that appeared in some national censuses “is not subject to enough research by religious scholars, which might be, in part, due to the ambiguity of the term, which includes atheists, agnostics, and even eclectics . . . and, on the other hand, it could be due to the scarce representation of said category in Latin America” (2000, 8). The most recent quantitative studies have begun to highlight the growing representativeness of this category. Some national censuses, such as those of Brazil or Mexico, and the surveys of the Latinobarómetro and the Pew Forum, reveal that, for the whole of Latin America, the representation of the nonaffiliated category has increased from almost zero in 1970 to 8 percent in 2014 (Latinobarómetro 2014), even when the identification as Catholic still predominates in many countries. Similarly, it is worth mentioning that, after the Evangelical Christians, this category makes up the second largest minority group in terms of self-identification in the region, with the exception of Uruguay, where it makes up the largest minority group (Pew Forum 2014). In work that advances research on this topic, Latin American scholars create categories for those who express their beliefs in diverse ways and without religious institutional affiliation. Some researchers refer to them as “indifferent towards religion” (Esquivel 2013; Mallimaci, Esquivel, Irrazábal 2017), whereas others focus more on the processes that lead to “exiting religion” (Gimenez-Beliveau 2012), perhaps from an institutional perspective. In other cases, these groups are defined by the negation of any type of religious belonging (Fernandes 2013). Many appeal plainly to the “nonreligious” or the “belonging to no religion” categories while still emphasizing the limitations of these categories in the quest for understanding the phenomenon (Da Costa 2017; Fernandes 2006; Fernandes 2009; Fernandes 2013; Novaes 2004; Rabbia 2017; Romero and Lecaros 2017). This problem of categorization is not restricted to South America but is an ongoing debate in Europe and North America, where the categories in use—such as nonaffiliated, unaffiliated, disaffiliated, nonreligious, or secular (e.g., Cragun 2016; Lee 2012; Portier 2012; Thiesen and Wolkins-Laflame 2017; Woodhead 2016; Zuckerman, Galen, and Pasquale 2016)—are problematized. Wade Clark Roof also contributes with a useful characterization for part of this group: the “spiritual seekers” category Roof (2000). We acknowledge that defining and categorizing nonreligious communities remains a work in progress, yet people’s identification with contested categories can be detected insofar as they select them from among the options used in quantitative studies. Given that, this article seeks to further our understanding of the characteristics of the nonreligious in Latin America—as well as to explore the categories that emerge from local research—by comparing the nonreligious in three South American cities: Cordoba (Argentina), Lima (Peru), and Montevideo (Uruguay). CONTEXTS The three countries involved in this study show clear cultural differences as well as differences regarding the place religion occupies in their societies. Uruguay is the only South American country where a political project seeking to eradicate religion from society—on the basis of its association with the Dark Ages and ignorance—was implemented. That project was inspired by the French model of laicism and can be identified with José Casanova’s definition of secularism as that which “also refers to different normative-ideological state projects, as well as to different legal-constitutional frameworks of separation of state and religion, and to different models of differentiation of religion, ethics, morality, and law” (2011, 66). In 1919, Uruguay established a sociopolitical model that strictly separates church from state, a model in which the Catholic Church has no privileges. After a long conflict, religion was displaced from public space to the private and intimate sphere in the two first decades of the twentieth century. As examples, we could mention the changing of the names of several communities, causing them to lose any religious references in favor of secular names. For example, “Saint Ferdinand” became “Maldonado,” and “Saint Elizabeth” became “Passage of the Bulls.” The names of the national holidays related to religion were also changed. To this day, December 25 is legally known as “Family Day” and Easter week is known as “Tourism Week” (Da Costa 2003, 2006, 2011). The National Constitution of Uruguay establishes freedom of worship throughout the country, and the Uruguayan State does not support any particular form of worship. In Argentina, the National Constitution consecrates freedom of worship, yet it simultaneously decrees, in its second article, that the federal government supports the apostolic Roman Catholic religion, which grants the Catholic Church a particular statute of privilege compared to other religious institutions. Nevertheless, the relationships between the Catholic Church, the government, and Argentinian society at large have had several ups and downs. After Argentinian independence in the nineteenth century, the Catholic Church remained isolated from Rome, which led to a low level of domestic institutionalization. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the intensification of secular and anticlerical discourse and movements (Morello 2017) gave rise to acts such as the “Common Teaching Law” of 1884, which prohibited the teaching of religion in public schools; the creation of the Civil Registry (1886); and the compulsory nature of civil marriage (1888), which brought forth a moderate and incomplete process of secularization (Rodríguez, Di Stefano, and Zanca 2013). From the first third of the twentieth century to its end, the Catholic Church and the armed forces constituted themselves as main actors in the political and social life of the country (Morello 2015). In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the adoption of laws and politics regarding sexual and reproductive rights, such as the marriage equality law, intensified new tensions between the political system, society, and the stances of the Catholic hierarchy (Rabbia, Losa, and Viaggione 2010). Despite the constitutional bonds, Argentina has neither a secularist culture, such as that of Uruguay, nor a Catholic culture that is so deeply rooted in the population, such as that of Peru, at least in the most densely populated areas. When it comes to Peru, we must mention the historic role of its capital, Lima, as the center of the Viceroyalty of Peru, where the political and religious power bonded by the Patronato Real was concentrated until 1821. The Catholic Church maintained its monopoly status until the end of the twentieth century but failed to restore the number of clerics it had during the colony (except in Lima and the main cities). Religious life was maintained by tradition in different types of associations, such as guilds and brotherhoods, with ritual contacts with the local church, which resulted in a widely spread popular religiosity (Romero 1987, 35; Marzal 2002, 315). This began to change in the first decades of the twentieth century, when liberalism and the left asserted themselves in political sectors with critical stances regarding the Catholic Church, reinforced by the influence of French laicism, Freemasonry, and the rights of man, which include religious freedom (Cotler 1978; Klaiber 2000, 87; Ruda 2002, 59). Aside from the political arena, however, everyday life continues to be heavily influenced by the religious calendar and popular Catholicism. In 1978, a constitutional reform consecrated the separation of the Catholic Church from the state while acknowledging its privileged position in the country (Constitución Política del Perú 1993, art. 50). Quantitative studies about religion in the continent reveal diverse situations in each country. With regard to the belief in God, Peru and Argentina both score at over 90 percent (at 98 percent and 93 percent, respectively), whereas Uruguay scores at closer to 80 percent (Pew Forum 2014). The countries also differ in terms of the distribution values of religious identifications. Those who define themselves as Catholic represent 76 percent of the population in Peru, 71 percent in Argentina, and 42 percent in Uruguay. The differences are even greater regarding atheists, agnostics, and those who express their religion outside of religious institutions, all of which, when combined, represent 37 percent of the population in Uruguay, 11 percent in Argentina, and 4 percent in Peru (Pew Forum 2014). The “nonaffiliation” or “no particular religion” category, as used in the 2014 Pew Forum survey, includes a diversity of religious communities within it. In the first place, it includes those who claim to believe in God but do not identify themselves with a particular religion; secondly, it includes those who claim to not believe in the existence of God; lastly, it includes those who identify themselves as agnostics (i.e., those who express not being able to affirm that God exists or does not exist). The distribution among those categories is also different in each country, Uruguay being the country with the largest percentage of representation of all of them. The data represented below (Tables 1 and 2) provide more details regarding each of the countries under analysis and the place religion occupies. Table 1. Distribution of the belief in God . Belief in God . Uruguay 81 Argentina 93 Peru 98 . Belief in God . Uruguay 81 Argentina 93 Peru 98 Table 1. Source: Based on the 2014 Pew Forum survey. Numbers expressed in percentages. Open in new tab Table 1. Distribution of the belief in God . Belief in God . Uruguay 81 Argentina 93 Peru 98 . Belief in God . Uruguay 81 Argentina 93 Peru 98 Table 1. Source: Based on the 2014 Pew Forum survey. Numbers expressed in percentages. Open in new tab Table 2. Distribution of the population by religious self-definition . Catholics . Protestants . Other religions . No particular religion . Atheists . Agnostics . Uruguay 42 15 6 24 10 3 Argentina 71 15 3 6 4 1 Peru 76 17 3 3 1 0 . Catholics . Protestants . Other religions . No particular religion . Atheists . Agnostics . Uruguay 42 15 6 24 10 3 Argentina 71 15 3 6 4 1 Peru 76 17 3 3 1 0 Table 2. Source: Based on the 2014 Pew Forum survey. Numbers expressed in percentages. Open in new tab Table 2. Distribution of the population by religious self-definition . Catholics . Protestants . Other religions . No particular religion . Atheists . Agnostics . Uruguay 42 15 6 24 10 3 Argentina 71 15 3 6 4 1 Peru 76 17 3 3 1 0 . Catholics . Protestants . Other religions . No particular religion . Atheists . Agnostics . Uruguay 42 15 6 24 10 3 Argentina 71 15 3 6 4 1 Peru 76 17 3 3 1 0 Table 2. Source: Based on the 2014 Pew Forum survey. Numbers expressed in percentages. Open in new tab In this article, we (1) describe and analyze the main characteristics found in the nonaffiliated and atheists of the three cities, (2) explore the emerging categories, and (3) draw conclusions about them, proposing a basic typology for the nonaffiliated in South America. METHODS AND SAMPLE The work adopted an exploratory design from qualitative methodologies and from the perspective of “lived religion” (Ammerman 2007, 2014, 2016; Orsi 2002; McGuire 2008). Lived religion is not a theoretical paradigm but an operational outlook that allows us to approach the study of religious phenomena with an emphasis on everyday people and their various perspectives and not on the religious institutions or their leaders. The goal here is to explore how religious nonaffiliation is “lived” by individuals in their everyday lives and decision-making; we analyze how their nonaffiliation serves as something through which they interpret and make meaning of their lives. We interviewed fifty-eight people who defined themselves as “belonging to no religion” or “nonaffiliated”: twenty-nine cases in Montevideo, eighteen in Cordoba, and eleven in Lima. The differences in the number of cases reflect the distribution of the categories of believers and nonbelievers contributed by qualitative studies in each country. In Cordoba, seven interviewees were male and eleven were female. In addition, eleven of these people were of medium-high socioeconomic status (SES). In Lima, six interviewees were male and five were female. Six were of medium-high SES, and five were of low SES. In Montevideo, thirteen interviewees were female and sixteen were male. Fourteen of the interviewees were of medium-high SES, and fifteen were of low SES. Given the qualitative nature of this work, we do not intend to provide a statistical representation but rather an approximation of the awareness of the phenomena from the voices of the people and the meaning they give to their belief or nonbelief options in their everyday lives. The interviewees were selected using the snowball system.1 There were two one-on-one interviews with each participant and one meeting between interviews. The sample excluded religious leaders, journalists, and scholars given that the focus of interest was placed on people and their everyday experiences, and not on the perspectives of institutions, religious leaders, or qualified informants. When recruiting, the interviewees were asked about their religious definition by means of a basic preliminary questionnaire in which they defined their own religious categories. In many cases, the religious self-definition provided on said occasion did not appear as such during the interview. During the meetings, reflexivity processes were developed on the part of the interviewees who were expressing changes of positions in relation to the initial contact. This has given us clues to visualize religious definitions as “in motion”: they are not static and immobile definitions but full of dynamism. FINDINGS The Nonreligious in the Three Cities In the case of Montevideo, it is relatively easy to distinguish between atheists and agnostics on one hand and nonaffiliated believers on the other. The atheist group is easy to define (i.e., those who do not believe in God) unlike the nonaffiliated believers, whose boundaries are not as clearly delineated. Nonaffiliated believers are those who define themselves as believers in God or some object of superhuman transcendence but do not do so through any religious institutions. In the past, the label of “churchless believers” was used in some local quantitative studies (Da Costa et al. 1996). In the city of Cordoba, people who do not belong to any religion or who have no religious affiliation have been subclassified into different categories. Thus the “atheists” were clearly identified, and the rest of the interviewees were differentiated in the following categories: “disaffiliated believers,” “indifferent,” and “spiritual seekers.” In Lima, the nonaffiliated believers we interviewed came mostly from the Evangelical or Post-Protestant world and not from the Catholic one, perhaps due to the fact that Catholicism is a ubiquitous cultural phenomenon in said city. In this case we find three types of people belonging to no religion. The first type corresponds to the one that is best known and most widespread in countries where the experience of secularization and secularism has been established in the local culture. In this group we find both atheists and agnostics. The second type corresponds to those who do not belong to a religion: disaffiliates who continue to be believers. The third type is made up of those who are believers and are seeking new forms of Christian communities. It makes sense to wonder whether the cultural weight of Catholicism in Lima makes it unnecessary to stop identifying oneself with Catholicism despite keeping distance from it, whereas in Cordoba or Montevideo a part of said population, or the whole of it, could fall under the category of “belonging to no religion” or “nonaffiliated.” In the next section, we focus on those who claim not to believe in God in the three cities. The Atheists In Uruguay, atheism presents itself as a long-lasting tendency. The presence of this group has been detected since 1962, when the first survey that included said category among the possible answers was conducted (Da Costa et al. 1993). The Uruguayan atheists in this research sample come from two different life experiences: (1) those who at some point of their lives had a connection, regardless of its intensity, with a religious institution, and (2) those who never had that kind of experience and had no religious socialization. For those in the first group, the religious institution and beliefs stopped making sense at some point in their lives, which led them to becoming atheists; to those in the second group, in contrast, all that is related to religion sounds foreign, because it is not a part of their life experiences. In the words of one interviewee from Montevideo, Matías: “My mother is very, very atheist. I think she’s never been to Mass. She was raised like that, and my grandfather wasn’t Catholic, either. And that’s how they raised us, too.”2 Those who converted to atheism underwent processes of distancing and “unlearning,” as mentioned by Rodrigo, from Montevideo: “I had to progressively unlearn those codes of official religions, of Catholicism, because my family is Catholic.” The transition to atheism is not related to a particular event but to diverse factors—from painful experiences to criticism of the institutional rigidity and social criticism—as well as to processes of broadening the socialization universe in the formative stages, mostly during adolescence and early youth. Among the atheists interviewed three emphases can be identified that mark different ways of living their atheism. First, those who reject the rigidity of religious institutions, understanding rigidity as the stance by which there is only one way to live up to the ideals of the institution; in the words of Juan, from Montevideo: “I started to question their ideas, which seemed very rigid.” Or as Agustina put it: “They gave you a prayer book and taught you, and I was never able to learn anything beyond the Hail Mary and the Our Father. It was all very ritualistic and I didn’t like it, so I left.” A second emphasis is found in the impact that losing loved ones made in their lives, which led them to question the existence of God, as stated by Agustina from Montevideo: “When I was eleven years old, my six-month-old sister died. I think that was the detonator. It was that combined with other things, and I said, ‘That’s that.’” In the case of Marcia, losing her grandmother, who had cared for her and lived with her during her childhood in risky environments, caused her to ask herself, at age twelve, “Where is God?” A third emphasis can be identified in the criticism of the stances taken by churches in matters of social justice, in their societal roles in relation to the less privileged, and in the contradictions perceived within them; in the words of Ramiro, from Montevideo: “What happened to me was the realization of the great contradiction in societal and socioeconomic matters and social classes. The churches pretend to stand in the middle, but they lean toward the powerful.” Atheists can also be classified according to their stance in relation to believers or religious institutions. In the first case, two emphases can be found: an atheism of rejection and an atheism of disregard. The first group includes those who clearly state their position against religious beliefs and express their rejection of religious institutions. This group includes clear anticlerical stances. In contrast, the atheism of disregard is characterized by not seeing religious institutions or others’ beliefs as something to reject or fight. In the case of the city of Cordoba, people who identify themselves as atheists tend to associate religion with “magical thought” as opposed to “rational thought,” which is identified with modern science. Similarly, another emphasis can be found by Ezequiel, who identifies himself as part of the “new atheism” and clearly distinguishes it from what he considers “classic atheism”: “Classic atheism was simply not believing in God . . . and the new atheism makes reference not only to not believing in God and basing one’s life on that, but also to being militant about it.” Some atheists usually identify themselves as “spiritual,” although they tend to reaffirm a conception of non-supernatural spirituality that is unrelated to the magical, as Antonio, from Cordoba, mentions: I just played guitar and when I played that song I feel it . . . I feel every note and I enjoy it. It is a joy, a harmony; it is many things. It’s something a little bit more elevated. . . . Art seems a little elevated to me. So it seems to me like, yes, it has to do with spirituality. Even though atheists, by definition, reject the existence of God or a divinity, their narrative often betrays conceptions of transcendence associated with nature and human finitude against the magnitude of the universe. As Antonio explains, To me, transcendence is the universe itself; the universe itself is transcendent. Not man, no. . . . What is life? Well, according to science it was generated in a soup and it just so happened that there were some proteins that were able to copy themselves. Then there were mutations, Darwin’s law and all that. If one took that into account, life would be nothing but one molecule being able to copy another one. Anyway, here we are and, well, we call ourselves “humans.” Many atheists usually develop practices associated with their own conception of transcendence: contemplation, reading scientific or atheist texts, producing and consuming art, and, in some cases, meditation and introspection exercises. In the words of Ezequiel, from Cordoba: I really like to understand the activity of the mind. . . . I’m of the philosophical line of materialism . . . I don’t consider mind if there’s no brain. . . . I make a weekly reflection or when the year ends. . . . I take many days to be alone. . . . I go to the mountain by myself and I sit to think about what I did, what I didn’t do, what I liked, what I didn’t like, what I would change . . . what I want for what’s coming. . . . I get really contemplative. When it comes to atheists in the city of Lima, all of the interviewees come from families of believers—with varying degrees of conviction and intensity in their practices—and perceive their decision of being atheists as an individual one. For them, defining themselves as atheists or agnostics can imply a form of marginalization in relation to their surroundings that could result in a form of conflict. In general, they criticize the religious inconsistencies they observe in others (e.g., relatives, grandmothers, catechists, etc.). For all the interviewees, however, this consideration does not represent the deeper reason for their disbelief. Their atheism corresponds to a rational conclusion in combination with a lived experience that adds emotion and feeling to it. Sol and Juan observe contradictions in their grandmothers, Rosa and Leo in the clergy and catechists, and Víctor in his Evangelical family. Some of them—like Víctor, Leo, or Juan—conduct a critical reading about certain religious beliefs, deeming them incoherent and inconsistent. According to Víctor, from Lima: I realized it made no sense, and the only way out of that was to say, “No, but God doesn’t have to make sense: He’s above the rules of reason”; then, if He is above the rules of reason, then it made no sense for Him to try to convince me of something. . . . That’s when I simply stopped believing, in my head; obviously, as I was a child who was not yet independent, I still continued to go to meetings and all those things, but no, I no longer had any conviction. Until then, in high school, one gains more freedom, right? And one is able to express those things. Even though the atheists interviewed have particular individual journeys that set them apart from their environment and display a certain degree of pride due to this situation, their narrative is impregnated with Peruvian religious culture. They are children of what Marzal called the “enchanted land” (2002) and what Morello, Romero, Rabbia, and Da Costa called “an enchanted modernity” (2017). For the interviewees, atheism represents not only a stance in regard to beliefs but also a way of existing and of defining themselves in contrast to their families. In a country like Peru, so saturated with religious imagery and constant references to the divine, faith represents the norm, and atheism tends to be lived in an individual, almost solitary way. Thus Rosa, Víctor, and Carlos mention the consolidation of their atheism as a relief—a “liberation.” It is a stance that orients a big part of their lives, particularly their relationships with their families and with the inherited traditions from which they break away. In other cases, atheism corresponds to an intimate conviction that can be traced back to childhood. As Carlos, from Lima, explains: I grew up always between contradictions: a very Catholic grandmother, for example, but racist, right? . . . The Church has no respect for, say, the topic of sexual diversity. . . . There comes a time when you say, “Enough of this.” Some sort of liberation, right? For me, being an atheist is a sort of liberation. The transition to disbelief can range from active militancy to passive affirmation of disbelief or to experiencing the absence of God, which leads to the search for ethics and good behavior in an autonomous way, without having to answer to anyone, including God. The Nonaffiliated The nonaffiliated believers in Montevideo are a heterogenous group, and they give special relevance to the quest for a personal spiritual journey—personal quests in which answers are not clearly defined in advance by religious institutions or groups. The group presents itself as a space to seek inwardness and transcendence. Those quests require spaces of individual freedom, rejecting the imposition of rules, norms, obligations, or predefined truths (Da Costa 2017). The emphasis is placed on individual freedom and on that which each person experiences in this quest, even when many of them participate in different collectives. One of the interviewees, Manuel, from Montevideo, expressed it as follows: “I like, let’s say, to foster my spirituality in a freer way. I mean, whenever I need to, in the moment I need to, and however I want to, not in the way others impose on me.” His claim for autonomy does not necessarily imply a path of solitude. It is more of a path of individuality that crosses those of others who also participate in ceremonies or celebrations, attend (non-Christian) “spiritual retreats,” or become involved in spiritual or psychological centers. This involvement does not assume permanence. An individual appeals to it when they deem it necessary. Many go to or circulate around diverse experiences, from celebrations to rites or practices, like Noelia from Montevideo, who, in addition to Reiki, claims to have undergone “two Brian Weiss regressions. Prior to these regressions, I opened my Akashic Records.” In other words, they do not remain anchored to one particular experience. Some of them have a more stable involvement. Roberto from Montevideo has been following an international spiritual leader for decades and still practices his teachings: When it started, the basic approach was to teach you an introspection technique that goes beyond thought, which consists on trying to feel. They teach you this technique and there’s even a special session to teach you that, which is what these mahatmas did in the beginning. In any case, there seems to be a searching space with multiple entrances and exits, and plenty of mobility. That is how Ignacio, from Montevideo, describes it: After a certain stage of rejection, being almost an atheist and all, my re-encounter with a spirituality that was free of orthodoxies is what was, in my opinion, like a process of unlearning both the dogmatic and the atheist prejudices, and having a more questioning outlook, which is what I’m doing now. They perceive that religious institutions restrict their quests and experiences by trying to make them follow the recommendations of the institution, not just in terms of faith contents but in terms of rules and obligations they furnish for their members. In the words of Paula, from Montevideo, “All they want is for you to go to their church and think the same things they think.” There are also those who express a clearly anticlerical stance. According to Ramiro, from Montevideo: I’m very anticlerical. In my opinion, the Catholic Church has been shitting on our lives throughout history. Let’s say: the missions, the Inquisition, everything. All wrong. They sort of ask for forgiveness every now and then and they keep going. And now the pedophilia.” Eclecticism is a characteristic of this group. These people construct their universe of meaning with elements taken from diverse religious or spiritual traditions. As Paula, from Montevideo, mentions, “Perhaps I could feel more identified with some religions than with others, not 100 percent [identified] with any of them, but, rather, taking from each of them what I feel like, what I like.” The interviewees mentioned practices associated with meditation, Buddhism, yoga, Taoism, Akashic Records, self-help, chakras, Bach Flower Remedies or Californian Flower Essences, Brian Weiss regressions, God, and the universe. The term “energy” is mentioned very frequently. For example, according to Paula, from Montevideo: Without associating it to any religion, I began to believe in the topic of energies, and in everything that changes them, that everything is transformed, like believing in a divine presence but without assigning it a name or anything, or associating it with a particular branch of spirituality, but rather a combination of all of them, which would come to be the same thing, but with different names. I’m now in that—in the spiritual world. I don’t assign it a name but just try to always do the right things because I believe that what I give will come back to me. They make a clear distinction between religion and spirituality, accentuating the latter as something personal and free of all kinds of institutionalization, and the former as following externally fixed norms. In the words of Julio, from Montevideo: They are two completely different things. One thing is spirituality and the other one is religiosity, aside from them having some commonalities. . . . A religious person can also be spiritual, but not all spiritual persons are religious. Both the heart and the mind of a spiritual person are more open than those of a religious person. They see religion or the people involved in religious institutions as closed-minded and precept-following, as Noelia, from Montevideo, states: “I associate it with a herd of people following one who preaches something that was instilled in him by who-knows-who. I associate it with manipulation.” Simultaneously, they see spirituality as being free of those “ties.” For some interviewees, the Gestalt therapeutic current has played an important role because it gives way to the spiritual—whereas the psychoanalytical approaches do not—and also because Gestalt facilitated their openness to other spiritual currents and quests. In the case of Cordoba, the term “disaffiliated believers” is used when referring to those who account for a process of disaffiliation and religious de-identification in order to object to a self-identification with a traditional religion (Rabbia 2017). Many times they are disaffiliated Catholics. On the other hand, we have the “indifferent,” who are those who display disinterest or detachment with regard to religious or spiritual matters. Lastly, we have the “spiritual seekers,” who remit to the negation of a collective identification that entails some sort of stable loyalty to a religious/spiritual community or institution but who hold diverse spiritual beliefs and practices. The Cordoba interviewees make clear distinctions between the concepts of spirituality and religion, in a very similar way to those of Montevideo. The religious is characterized as the realm of that which is regulated, connected to institutional mandates and practices, to obligations, rituals, traditional religious leaders, and the lack of authenticity. In contrast, spirituality is located in the intimate realm of each person and refers to a freer space, both autonomous and subjective, that remits to quests or expressions associated with the idea of what is true, full-fledged consciousness, and authenticity. Spirituality seems to be valued as something positive, whereas religion is largely despised. Disaffiliated believers tend to strongly claim a spirituality associated with a Christian and theistic matrix. Among these marginal Christians, the idea of spirituality does not appear with the same intensity as in the spiritual seekers. They mainly claim a belief in God, and in some cases in saints and the Virgin, and many of them tend to account for beliefs that fall under the category of the models promoted by Christian traditions, as Caro, from Cordoba, mentioned: I always believed more or less the same things, and I can question some matters, but God continues to be God for me. I can question it, I can question the Bible, and I don’t question God . . . I can question what they tell me about God, but not God. In the case of spiritual seekers, spirituality is defined in broader terms and is configured as a central aspect in their everyday lives. It is presented as something that impregnates their symbolic approximations to the world. According to Julieta, from Cordoba: The spiritual is . . . each thing that happens to us, each conflict that we have, each person that crosses our path, or what happens to us in life, which has to do with the fact that it happens for a reason and it’s something that we have to figure out, and that’s why it’s given to us; I believe it is a movement of the universe, that everything is related to everything, that things happen in the most perfect way they can happen and that they happen because they have to happen. Spiritual seekers possess a broader universe of beliefs and they recover elements from very different traditions (e.g., Christian, Eastern, esoteric, metaphysical, psychological, etc.) and make reference to beliefs such as “beings of light,” “spiritual guides,” the “Pachamama,” “the power of nature,” “good and bad spirits,” or the reciprocal interactions and influences between people and between people and other beings and things. They are certain that “there is something else” in this world while transcendence coexists with the immanent, and they believe that seeking it is a necessity. The idea of “energy” presents itself as a convergence point in terms of how the transcendent is manifested, and this energy can be observed through the senses. Among spiritual seekers, practices are multiplied, and diverse everyday experiences can acquire a spiritual sense and a sense of connection with transcendence. Meditation is often privileged as a practice aimed toward individual self-knowledge; for some, being “aware” or reaching an elevated state of consciousness requires personal reflection. For most of them, it is more of an experience of “sensory” imprinting, which involves “letting oneself go,” “elevating oneself,” or “flowing.” They also consider contemplation and admiring nature important. Despite the emphasis on autonomy and individuality, spiritual seekers are not alone, undertaking their journey with varying degrees of intensity in common spaces with other seekers, as is also the case in Uruguay. Their quests can stem from participating in groups devoted to yoga, Reiki, meditation, and contemplation; therapeutic, psychological, and corporal practices, either individually or collectively (e.g., biodecoding, family constellations, systemic body therapy, and biodance); producing or consuming art; numerology; Ruins; I Ching; invoking spirits; or performing energy cleansings. The quest requires experimentation, according to Nika, from Cordoba: When you do Ashtanga on your own, you’re alone, and you can observe yourself. There are not so many distractions. . . . When I go to do Zazen, for example, or when I go to Ashtanga at the university, we are a group, and it’s really crazy how the group pulls you to follow. . . . So. . . it’s another consciousness that you have to have. For the indifferent, the existence of God is irrelevant. Their conception of transcendence, unlike that of atheists, draws less from elements of scientific discourse and more from experience For example, Silvia, from Cordoba, explains: I’m not distanced from the idea that there is a transcendence beyond the physical in terms of, I don’t know, energy . . . but I do feel like I’m in close company of these beings that have died; I still feel them, or I want to feel them, [but] I’m not certain of anything. The indifferent do not conceive of themselves in spiritual terms. It is hard for them to define the concept. They do not engage in any practices they identify as religious or spiritual. Unlike atheists, they seem more in favor of holding a stance that acknowledges religious and spiritual experiences as arising from profound and intimate personal needs and fulfilling a role for those who live them. In many cases, they mention that religious or spiritual matters are not “necessary” or “important” to them or “play no particular role” in their lives, which leads them to a clear disinterest in these matters, much like the atheism of disregard in Montevideo. That said, in many cases, the state of indifference is transient. Many of the nonaffiliated believers interviewed in Lima come from Evangelical families, and only one of them comes from a Catholic family that journeyed through the Jehovah’s Witnesses in his adolescence. Through their nonaffiliation, they seek a way to continue to nourish their faith by means of diverse practices and even to share it with others. One of the interviewees finds many positive things in his life thanks to this new situation, particularly in terms of freedom. In the words of Blanco, “If they make you a member of a Church, it’s because you’re definitely going to obey all the way, so if I get involved, I’m going to have to obey, and I think that right now I have a freedom that I wouldn’t be able to change [for something else].” The same interviewee finds in his situation of nonaffiliation other ways of “evangelizing” without having to answer to anyone: “For example, just a little while ago I was at the university and I had two guys working at the university copy room; I got together with God in the copy room and we talked about God, just for a little while. . . . We shared the Word.” This clearly expresses that nonaffiliation does not mean leaving aside all sorts of religious experiences. As mentioned before, three types of people who belong to no religion can be identified in Lima, which gives rise to new questions about this heterogenous population in the process of or in the quest to define themselves socially and to be recognized by others, as they are a minority (Romero and Gauthier 2017). The first group is that of atheists. The second type includes those who do not belong to a religion yet who continue to be believers. Having a direct relationship with God and occasionally engaging in practices on important occassions is sufficient for them. The third type are those who are believers and are seeking new forms of Christian communities. Those coming from the Evangelical world do not congregate (i.e., they neither participate in community celebrations nor listen to the pastors’ sermons routinely, and they do not make monetary contributions to their community), but they claim to engage in talking with God, reading the Bible, and following the main commandments. People coming from the Catholic world use the term “nonpracticing” much more frequently. That is, they do not participate in parish life; what Evangelicals call “not congregating” or “not affiliating,” Catholics call “not practicing” or even “not belonging,” but they might believe and occasionally attend the rites as a spectacle. Those who come from the Catholic world most often use the term “non-practicing.” That is, they do not participate in the life of the parish, what Evangelicals call not to congregate, not to affiliate. The third group is that of believers who seek new forms of Christian community. These can be ecumenical, intercultural, and open to dialogue with and the nonhierarchical participation of those in attendance. This includes open communities, without defined borders, in which religious identities may be strong but not closed. They claim not to belong, given that as believers they continue to have their original churches as references, or they have incorporated religious elements or elements that give meaning from the faith of other religions in which they have participated. The case of Flor, who has been a Mormon for six years (and was Catholic before that), could be an example, but let us think of other cases among those who identified themselves as Catholics and Evangelicals and who seek another way to live their religion in relation to current challenges and demands as well as the historic practices of the believer. DISCUSSION In order to answer the initial question regarding the characteristics of the nonaffiliated in three Latin American cities—Cordoba (Argentina), Lima, (Peru) and Montevideo, (Uruguay) —some similarities and differences can be identified that still allow for a typological approximation, taking into account that the self-definitions of the “nonaffiliated” represent a field in constant motion. As previously mentioned, the research performed in each city reveals similarities and differences among them; in some aspects, more similarities can be found between interviewees from Cordoba and Montevideo, probably due to a certain cultural proximity, as opposed to those from Peru, where the weight of Catholicism as the culture and history of national identity imprints other ways of expressing religion. Among the three cities, there is one category that appears to be the most clearly defined of all: the atheists. They exhibit, in their own narratives, more clearly defined edges and concepts, which allow for the visualization of more precise delimitations. It is worth noting that the social meaning of being an atheist can be different according to the city. For example, atheism in Lima represents not only a stance in regard to beliefs but also a way of existing and of defining oneself in contrast to one’s family. In a country such as Peru, so saturated with religious imagery and constant references to the divine, faith represents the norm, and atheism tends to be lived in an individual, almost solitary way. The Uruguayan reality is practically the opposite. As a country with a secularist model and antireligious/anticlerical stance, the definition of atheism is culturally expected, mainly among highly-educated elites. Among the nonaffiliated interviewees in Lima, spiritual quests related to New Age terminology did not appear very compelling. These quests are quite evident in Cordoba and Montevideo in the same line as what María J. Carozzi (2000) and Pablo Semán and Nicolás Viotti (2015) pointed out after conducting research in Buenos Aires. Even taking into account the differences found in each city, one category stands out: the atheists (including both atheists and agnostics). The rest of the universe we studied could be denominated as “nonaffiliated,” given that they express a belief in God or in transcendence, but without being affiliated with any churches or religious institutions. We are aware that said category has its limitations, but, at the same time, it has potential and allows for the advancement of the knowledge of these groups of people and of the characteristics of the current religious universe in the region. We have proposed the classification of the “nonaffiliated” into three main groups: “atheists,” “indifferent,” and “nonconfessional.” In turn, within these categories can be found various accentuations as mentioned below. Atheists can be more militant and institutionalized into diverse groups, from classic antireligious/anticlerical atheism to the new atheism, which is more related to apostasy movements and to new scientific currents, for example. We can also identify a second group, whose most clear characteristic is that of being atheist and not caring about the beliefs of others. The indifferent (i.e., those who precisely express indifference towards religion) can also be cataloged into two tendencies. On the one hand, there are those who acknowledge religion but choose not to be a part of it. This category is close to that of atheists who do not care about religion; both are indifferent, some from a non-believing conviction and others without it. On the other hand, there are those who show a complete disinterest and a clear apathy towards religion because it is a matter that is not part of their concerns or interests. Unlike atheists, answering the question about the existence of God is irrelevant to them in their everyday life. Among the non-confessional believers, we can make at least three large distinctions. First are those who live their beliefs through individual practices. Then there are those who, when expressing their beliefs, attend to diverse collective instances, whether these are fundamental, varied, of low institutionalization, or with lax or nonmandatory belonging. In both cases, we encounter spiritual quests and multiple beliefs, even though the ways of practicing are different. Thirdly, we find people who have left Catholicism or Evangelism but continue to keep their Catholic or Evangelical beliefs and certain private practices and do so without any connection to churches. This typological elaboration must be understood from one of its key characteristics, as it emerges from research, which is that of the fluidity found in the field of religious self-denomination. In the interview process, we were able to observe that the self-definition of the interviewees was impregnated with much dynamism. In some cases, it was clearly expressed in their narratives, and in others it was observed in the variation of narratives throughout the interview process—from the first encounter in which they were asked about their religious self-definition, to the first and second interview, in which many interviewees defined themselves in a different sense compared to that of their original self-definition. What was narrated and what occurred leads us to conclude that the quest for transcendence and the definitions of religious identification are “fluid” and “in motion.” They cannot be considered in static terms, in fixed forms, or as anchored and acquired from here onwards. Everything indicates that it is not possible to understand the current reality with closed/fixed categories or with precise delimitations and that we stand before identifications in motion, even in relation to categories that are more clearly self-defined, such as atheism. CONCLUSION Many of the categories currently used in the social sciences originated in censuses or surveys. Thinking about religious identification exclusively from the logical standpoint of quantitative instruments, which are forced to predefine in categories that reflect synchronicity, limits our understanding of the dynamism of interviewees’ lives in relation to their own definitions about religion. The quantitative research instruments are limited by their inability to contribute knowledge about previous events in their lives, and they are at risk of being interpreted as firm and fixed data. In turn, studies usually infer people’s worldviews or social/political stances according to these identifications, which—given their transience and dynamism—can result in frequent exceptions. This reflection does not affect the validity of quantitative studies that have so contributed—and will probably continue to do so—to the understanding of a reality that is always broader than what we can understand and reflect about it. Instead, it only points to its limitations in relation to understanding the dynamism regarding the religious or nonreligious. The proposed categories can only be understood from the convergence of three aspects: the individual autonomy claimed by the individuals, the exclusive traits of modernity, and the mutability of identifications and affiliations. Individuals are the high priests of their own lives, constructing their universes of meaning in everyday life, with elements they articulate and conjugate themselves, to which they assign new meaning in the daily situations they encounter, and where they understand that no one can establish those definitions for them. Religious institutions propose universes of meaning, order, beliefs, etc., but it is the individuals who turn those into their everyday lives through their decisions, which—judging from the differences found in every city analyzed—can be endorsed, or even fostered, by their social context. The responses given by the nonaffiliated believers add to the current debate on what can be considered “spiritual but not religious” (i.e., an alternative to organized religion). Nevertheless, it is necessary to point out that this acceptation of spirituality is also under discussion, and that other types of spirituality, which are not necessarily lived outside of religious institutions, have also been found (Ammerman 2013). This research provides clues about the transformations of the Latin American religious field with special attention to those who express their beliefs in transcendence but do not do so through religious institutions as well as by those who define themselves as nonbelievers in God. As mentioned earlier, this is a topic of recent consideration in Latin America, therefore this research contributes to initial efforts at a comparative approach. The way in which the groups studied appear and express themselves is certainly diverse. In the city of Montevideo there is a long atheistic tradition, so much so that atheism has become an institution of society insofar as it socializes new generations and reproduces atheism in time. In the city of Lima there is no such tradition, and atheism is more an expression of rupture of family traditions than a phenomenon of response to religion. Latin America is usually spoken of as a unit, but it reflects a wide cultural diversity and diverse historical trajectories according to each country. At least three different contexts can be identified as linked to the three research cities, Lima, Montevideo, and Cordoba. First, those places with a strong secularist model. Second, places with a strong presence of social secularization, that is, societies with a high level of secularization but not of secularism. Finally, societies with a strong religious presence in the public sphere. The “nonaffiliated” category has different meaning in each of the above contexts. It is in contexts of secularism that anticlerical and anti-religious nonaffiliated positions are most emphatically presented. In contexts of strong public presence of the religious and of great weight of Catholic identity, nonaffiliated with anticlerical or anti-religious positions are of little significance. Something similar happens with the phenomenon of atheism. The types of atheism found in this research are closely linked to the cultural developments in each country and to the place occupied by religion in each society. In places with a strong Catholic cultural presence, such as Peru, atheism is practically marginal, as a social phenomenon, while in places with a long secular tradition, atheism is a structurally stronger phenomenon. For instance, in the case of Uruguay, atheists are successful in the intergenerational transmission of atheism, which, as indicated, has had a strong and continuous presence for more than a century. In addition to the variation of the types of atheism referred to in each context, it is possible to identify varieties within atheism. Some atheists have positions that are against any religious institution. Others, that can be named as indifferent, do not really care about the existence of religious institutions. There are atheists who could be catalogued as rational/scientists (followers of science). Others may be called “cultural” (they grew up in an atheistic culture), just as others may be called “emotional” atheists (they fight against the existence of God or churches). Something similar happens with the believers without affiliation, who, in places of strong Catholic stamp are scarce and express their searches for transcendence in codes proper to Christianity. In places with a strong anticlerical and anti-religious imprint, one finds a wide expansion of believers without affiliation who explore very diverse experiences in the search for transcendence. In other words, the place that the religious occupy in a society strongly influences the forms people’s transcendental searches take, and it could even be said that it channels them. Where there are strong cultural patterns of censorship of religion is where it is possible to find more people expressing their search for transcendence outside of religious institutions and through new spiritual paths. The specificity of this work centered on “nonaffiliated” and the findings of this research in Latin America call into question some aspects of the academic conversation about the “nonaffiliated.” First of all, it is necessary to insist that the use of categories of analysis cannot occur outside of the specific contexts in which the subjects are socialized and live. As noted above, each context produces diverse forms of nonaffiliates, whether believers or atheists. Secondly, the difference between “nonaffiliated” and “atheist” is clear enough to demand a differentiation of categories, that is, the “atheist” category has a density and specificity that claims to be differentiated from “nonaffiliated.” Some implications arise from the foregoing. For those who dedicate themselves to the study of “atheists,” it is necessary to take into account the existence, according to diverse cultures, of an atheism that achieves degrees of autonomy and presence that is transmitted from one generation to another and places where this kind of atheism practically does not exist as a strong cultural phenomena. On the other hand, there are also implications for those who are interested in interreligious dialogue since there are “nonaffiliated,” those who are interested in dialogue with other religious experiences, but there are those who have anti-religious or anti-clerical positions, just as there are “indifferent” people, those to whom interreligious dialogue is not an issue. Are nonaffiliates in Latin America very different from North Americans or Europeans? In the first instance and considering the material emerging from this research, the answer is yes. It will be necessary to continue researching and generating instances of comparison in order to better understand this phenomenon and its ongoing development in different parts of the world. This article attempted to characterize the phenomenon in Latin America in its variety and vastness and to open spaces for future comparison with other places in the world. This work is part of a major research project titled, “The Transformation of Lived Religion in Urban Latin America: A Study of Contemporary Latin Americans’ Experience of the Transcendent,” with the participation of Boston College and the Catholic Universities of Cordoba, Uruguay, and Peru, and with the support of the John Templeton Foundation. Grant ID 58079. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation. Footnotes 1 “Snowball sampling” is a nonprobability sampling system whereby existing subjects recruit additional subjects from among their acquaintances. 2 The names of the interviewees have been changed to ensure confidentiality. REFERENCES Ammerman , N. T . 2007 . “Introduction: Observing Religious Modern Lives.” In Everyday Religion: Observing Modern Religious Lives , 3 – 18 . New York : Oxford University Press . 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TI - Exploring the Nonaffiliated in South America
JO - Journal of the American Academy of Religion
DO - 10.1093/jaarel/lfab045
DA - 2021-06-03
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/exploring-the-nonaffiliated-in-south-america-0BMFKpxiTb
SP - 1
EP - 1
VL - Advance Article
IS - 
DP - DeepDyve
ER -