Indigenous Apostles: Maya Catholic Catechists Working the Word in Highland Chiapas (Studies in World Christianity and Interreligious Relations, 46)

Chojnacki, Ruth J.

ISBN 10: 9042028726 / ISBN 13: 9789042028722

Published by Brill, 2010

About this Item

Seller Inventory # I-9789042028722

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Indigenous Apostles: Maya Catholic Catechists Working the Word in Highland Chiapas (Studies in World Christianity and Interreligious Relations, 46)
• Publisher: Brill
• Publication Date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9042028726
• ISBN 13: 9789042028722
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Indigenous Apostles tells the story of conversion to Catholicism and birth of new ecclesial community with the arrival of Vatican II mission in Santa Maria Magdalenas, a Tzotzil-speaking village in Mexico’s Maya highlands. In the state of Chiapas, the nation’s erratic advance into the global market beginning in the 1970s drove landless young Magdaleneros to search for alternatives to peasant peonage. A few became catechists in the Diocese of San Cristóbal de Las Casas. Cognitive entailments of newly-acquired biblical literacy warranted the subsequent critique of local Tzotzil tradition – costumbre – through which they reclaimed their ancestral land. This ethnographic account of their dialectical passage from the way of the ancestors to communion with the world Catholic Church demonstrates local constraints on liberation mission strategy and the power of indigenous agency in their own evangelization. It also points to the salience of place and everyday productive practice for native construction of local theology in the context of the new globalization.

About the Author

Ruth J. Chojnacki received the M.Div. from The Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley and Ph.D. from The University of Chicago. She has directed research and task forces for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, WI, and the Diocese of Oakland, CA, U.S.A. Her principal field study of Mexico’s Highland Maya took place from 1993-1995; she visited most recently in August, 2008. While working in the Diocese of San Cristobal de Las Casas during a period which spanned the Zapatista uprising, she collaborated with the diocesan Human Rights Center, “Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas,” and taught fundamental theology in the Conciliar Seminary. She currently teaches ethics and ecclesiology for the Instituto de Liderazgo Pastoral, University of St. Mary of the Lake, Chicago and Mundelein IL, and is Director of Development Communications and Outreach at DePaul University in Chicago.