Have Mercy on Us: Inca Heritage, Christianity, and Salvation in Colonial Cuzco

The coming of the gospel to America with the Spaniard conquistadors meant the launch of the most important salvation of souls campaign ever seen. The knowledge of the written Law and the administration of the sacraments, such as the sacrament of baptism, allowed the “Indians” to be redeemed from original sin and access, at least, Purgatory. While the colonial church promised salvation to the Andeans, it faced the problem of “deciding” the eschatological destiny awaiting the ancestors of the “Indians” (new Christians), especially the Inca rulers. After an inevitable condemnation of the Incas by the early colonial catechisms, new discursive channels appeared suggesting a possible redemption of the Incas, with arguments that evoked the principle of natural law and the acquisition of natural enlightenment. The redemption and salvation of the monarchs of Tawantinsuyu would reach various discursive spaces. It is found subtly in the field of visual representations, especially in a group of canvases produced during the period commonly called the Inca Renaissance, and in performative acts where the evocation of the Inca past acquires an important eschatological dimension.

Manguni and Christian Nationalism (in) Minahasa

This article describes the process and meaning of the reconstruction of Manguni, as the sacred bird in the old Minahasa religion which became a symbol of Gereja Masehi Injili in Minahasa (GMIM) in the context of colonialism. In particular, that thing to be discussed is the reconstruction of meaning, from Manguni as a mythological belief to Manguni as an ecclesiastical symbolic motive that carries a message of nationalism. Since the early of 20th century, the historical context and discourse of the Minahasa Christian intellectuals have been the subject of research to trace the development of Christian nationalism (in) Minahasa. In the context of GMIM, the interesting things are constituted as the dialogues and debates in colonial church forums, namely the Indische Kerk delivered by Christian leaders. This articles shows that, as a reaction to colonialism whic has changed many things predominantly in Christan Minahasa society, nationalism has grown and developed uniquely through discourse of community elites and church leaders. The expression of nationalism is through political and ecclesiastical path, which both of them use the legacy of religious tradition as tool of negotiation, namely the symbol of the institution with the motive of Manguni bird.

Dissenting Religion

This chapter traces the trajectory of two major dissenting movements in Latin America and the Caribbean in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. The first is the transition of the Anglican Church in the Caribbean from a colonial church closely linked to England to a denomination that is now mainly attended by African-descendant people; this section also explores Anglicanism’s breakaway churches that promote African and black identity and empowerment. The second half of the article examines the rise of Pentecostalism in Latin America, with particular attention to dynamic and dissenting characteristics, most notably its plastic theology, organic approach to church planting and leadership, and its obverse relationships with Catholic Liberation Theology.

Language Barriers under Siege

The program and techniques of language acquisition undertaken by the colonial church relied mainly on the missionary linguists and the young Indian tutors they recruited. Together they devised orthographies in the Latin alphabet for hundreds of indigenous languages, an alphabet that gradually replaced the native systems of glyphs for recording information. Within decades, well in advance of European grammarians and lexicographers, they had also produced dictionaries and grammars for all the major and many of the minor vernacular languages, along with catechisms and other devotional literature. Generations of clergy would depend on these written aids, which continue to serve as landmarks in the history of linguistics.

Los últimos de Filipinas: The Spatio-temporal Coordinates of Francoism

Los últimos de Filipinas (Last Stand in the Philippines, Antonio Román, 1945) is one of the most popular Spanish films of all times. Drawing from Henri Bergson’s notion of temporality, this chapter argues that the film revolves around a politics of time both informing and informed by totalitarian kitsch aesthetics. The film’s portrayal of a besieged colonial church standing defiantly against a Tagalog rebellion in the small town of Baler during the Spanish-American War in1898 transformed the colonial reality of the Philippines into political myth; a myth which, I argue, condensed to perfection Francoist kitsch ideology.

Australia and New Zealand

The Church of England was present at the founding of European Australia. Richard Johnson, an Evangelical chaplain, accompanied the First Fleet in 1788, and one of his successors, Samuel Marsden, would help establish an Anglican mission in New Zealand in the 1810s. Chaplains were not the only vectors through which the Anglican faith was exported to Australasia. Convicts and free migrants carried their own understandings of Anglicanism overseas, and prayer books and other religious literature arrived in the colonies through a range of official and unofficial channels. This chapter shows how the early colonial Church of England cannot be considered as a monolithic institution: convicts, emancipated felons, free settlers, colonial officials, clergy, and indigenous communities all held different views on what a colonial Church should look like, and what its role and purpose should be. The tensions between these contested understandings of colonial Anglicanism are examined in this chapter.