Latin America remains, much more than any other region in the world, dominated by a single religion: Catholicism. But in the second half of the twentieth century, a so-called “Protestant wave” spread across the region increasing religious diversity. This wave was spurred on by Pentecostal and other evangelical Protestant churches, denominations that challenge the religious syncretism, state-church relationships, and many of the institutions and relationships that structure social and cultural life in Latin America. These changes can bring tensions, conflicts, or abuses that can have a socially disintegrating effect. This paper uses “religious fragmentation” as a lens to examine this process in rural highland Bolivia. Drawing upon qualitative fieldwork in two communities, this paper first examines the motivations for and contestations surrounding increasing Protestant affiliation and second asks how religious fragmentation interacts with existing social networks and relationships. Paying special attention to reciprocity networks, which are culturally and economically significant in these indigenous communities, this paper argues that non-religious social relationships and activities can act as intervening variables that overcome the social fragmentations of religious change.

中文翻译：

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宗教分裂，社会解体？农村安第斯玻利维亚的社交网络和福音派新教

与世界上任何其他地区相比，拉丁美洲仍然受到单一宗教的支配：天主教。但在 20 世纪下半叶，一场所谓的“新教浪潮”席卷该地区，增加了宗教多样性。这一浪潮是由五旬节派和其他福音派新教教会、挑战宗教融合的教派、国家教会关系以及许多构成拉丁美洲社会和文化生活的机构和关系所激发的。这些变化可能会带来紧张、冲突或虐待，从而对社会造成瓦解。本文以“宗教分裂”为镜头，考察了玻利维亚农村高地的这一过程。借鉴两个社区的定性实地调查，本文首先研究了围绕增加新教信仰的动机和争论，其次询问宗教分裂如何与现有的社会网络和关系相互作用。本文特别关注互惠网络，它们在这些土著社区中具有重要的文化和经济意义，并认为非宗教社会关系和活动可以作为干预变量，克服宗教变革的社会分裂。