A missionary in the face of the Faith and Culture in the South Peruvian Andes
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12775/TiCz.2014.035Keywords
Peru, evangelization, inculturation, religious syncretism, Quechua religionAbstract
Just after the first evangelization was carried out in Peru, differences in faith and culture divided people into several groups. In one of them, there were Indians, who would not be baptized, and continued practicing their indigenous religion. The other category included those who were baptized and thus opened themselves to the Christian faith and cultural practices brought by the Spaniards. However, they are characterized by the fact that they have not completely abandoned their native beliefs and traditional culture. Consequently, the situation provoked various reactions, and one of them was religious syncretism. The Peruvian Indians themselves, in the first period of evangelization, were probably the ones who unconsciously became the protagonists of the syncretic religion, because since the missionaries did not enter into compromises with the local religion, and did not try to use inculturation in the modern sense of the word, it fell upon the Indians to accept the new forms of faith, yet at the same time, keep the old ones. In this way, they contributed to instill the first grains of syncretism in religion, which has a huge impact on the lives of people in the south of Peru; in other words – is constitutive of the local culture. Missionary ministry, therefore, carried out in an environment permeated by indigenous Quechua religion and, at the same time, filled with threads of Christianity leads a missionary to seek answers to issues related to the inculturation and religious syncretism. A missionary sent to Peru, especially to the Andean part in the south of the country, must certainly familiarize himself with the local traditions, beliefs, and ways of understanding the world, in order to express the Gospel in the cloak of local culture and, at the same time, transform this culture, imbuing it with values coming from the Good News. Simultaneously, the task of the missionary is to treat syncretic forms of Indian folk beliefs in such a manner that they can become a transient form leading to inculturation.
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