Includes bibliographical references (pages 373-393) and index.
Summary:
Mayas, and indeed all Guatemalans, are currently experiencing the collapse of their way of life. This collapse is disrupting ideologies, symbols, life practices, and social structures that have undergirded their society for almost five hundred years, and it is causing rapid and massive religious transformation among the K'iche' Maya living in highland western Guatemala. Many Mayas are converting to Christian Pentecostal faiths in which adherents and leaders become bodily agitated during worship. Some may fall into trance, many speak in tongues, and any can be healed. In most congregational meetings, the output of electronic amplification is, literally, deafening. Why is this style of worship increasing, and why now? Drawing on over fifty years of research and data collected by field-school students, Hawkins argues that two factors--cultural collapse and systematic social and economic exclusion--explain the recent religious transformation of Maya Guatemala and the style and emotional intensity through which that transformation is expressed. Guatemala serves as a window on religious change around the world, and Hawkins examines the rapid pentecostalization of Christianity not only within Guatemala but also throughout the global South. The "pentecostal wail," as he describes in, is ultimately an acknowledgment of the angst and insecurity of contemporary Maya--back cover
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