Laicidad and religious diversity: Themes in the debates on the regulation of religion in Latin America

Abstract

The transformations in the Latin American religious field are multiple and present diverse analytic challenges for academia, including those linked to the regulation of religions in contemporary societies. In particular two principal types of challenges can be identified. On one hand, the strong public presence of the Catholic Church, in addition to translating itself into a marked identity in the Latin American population, has also implied an important incidence of Catholicism in the political sphere. Faced with this phenomenon, societies have sought diverse ways to regulate this religious interference in politics and the state, and academic agendas have not stayed away from this search. Whether based on empirical or normative approaches, multiple investigations have delved into the ways in which states, principally through law and formal institutions, regulate (or not) the public presence of Catholicism as well as other religions (particularly the evangelical churches) that began to acquire strength in the region. On the other hand, the diversification and pluralization of the religious field, thanks to the emergence and growth of alternative ways of believing and practicing that challenge the Catholic hegemony, imply the negotiation of the boundaries between religion and politics in renewed manners. Thinking about regulation, in this sense, implies thinking about how religions themselves compete among each other, generating mechanisms for challenging or maintaining the old hegemonies, which creates forms of regulation among belief systems.