Spiritual Encounters: Interactions between Christianity and Native Religions in Colonial America

ISBN 10: 080327081X / ISBN 13: 9780803270817

Published by University of Nebraska Press, 1999

About this Item

Seller Inventory # I-9780803270817

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Spiritual Encounters: Interactions between Christianity and Native Religions in Colonial America
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Publication Date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 080327081X
• ISBN 13: 9780803270817
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Spiritual Encounters is a comparative and theoretically informed look at the religious interactions between Native and colonial European cultures throughout the Americas. Religion was one of the most contentious, dramatic, and complex arenas of confrontation between Natives and Europeans during the colonial era. This volume fully explores the significance of colonial religious encounters.

 

Case studies, organized by theme, showcase previously unexamined sources and offer interpretations that shed new light on Native-European religious encounters in the New World. One group of studies examines the extent to which Native peoples internalized Christianity and the cultural mechanisms that enabled them to do so. Other chapters assess in detail the often uneasy relationship between Christianity and coexisting indigenous religious practices involving sorcery and healing. A third set of essays looks at the broader political and economic forces underlying Native-colonial religious encounters. An introduction and epilogue by the editors provide valuable summaries of the broad patterns characterizing the religious interactions between the West and the Other in the colonial Americas.

About the Author

Nicholas Griffiths is the deputy department head of Hispanic studies at the University of Birmingham. He is the author of The Cross and the Serpent: Religious Repression and Resurgence in Colonial Peru. Fernando Cervantes is a lecturer in the department of Hispanic, Portuguese, and Latin American studies at the University of Bristol. He is the author of The Devil in the New World: The Impact of Diabolism in New Spain.