Popular religion as “in between” institutional religion and individual spirituality

Abstract

In this paper it is proposed that the study of popular religiosity is relevant to understanding new forms of contemporary religiosity as they emerge in Latin America. Whereas the theoretical positions held by sociologists of religion in Europe assume that the individual is the most suitable unit for analysis in order to understand the religious transformations of postmodern times, it is argued in this paper that popular religion, understood as being “in between” the traditional and the newly arising, between the local and the transnational, between the social and the individual and between the holiness of the worldly and the worldliness of the sacred, makes it possible to take into account the phenomena of religion practised on the margins of the institutions (as in its new age and neo-esoteric expressions); while attending to the processes by which the new de-institutionalised forms of religion legitimate themselves, seeking anchorages and lineages that would create a continuity with the weight of tradition provided by popular religion.