Project Faith: Christianity Around the World Session 1: Spanish Christianity
1) Question to a Presbyterian Pastor:
“Pastor, we’ve been discussing this matter, and we wanted to get your opinion. Can people who speak Spanish be Christians?”
2) The height of the Roman Empire 3) The Spread of Christianity in First three centuries 4) Christianity Comes to Spain - It was Paul’s intention to bring the Gospel to Spain. He have no evidence that he ever made it there. 5) Visogothic Spain (From Arianism [Unitarians] to Trinitarians) 5th to 8th centuries 6) The Visogoths (Western Goths – or Germanic tribes) were unpopular rulers in Spain. They did not mix with local Roman population, nor did they learn to speak their language. 7) Arianism - is a nontrinitarian Christological doctrine which asserts the belief that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who was begotten by God the Father at a point in time, a creature distinct from the Father and is therefore subordinate to him, but the Son is also God (i.e. God the Son).
8) Islamic Rule of Spain 710-1492 CE -Umayyad-backed Muslims swept across north Africa in the 7th century, eventually invading Spain in 711 CE, at the invitation one faction of Visogoths against another.
9) 1492 – Epoch-Changing Year a) The combined forces of Castille and Aragon (Isabella I and Ferdinand II – Catholic monarchs of Spain) make a final conquest of the Iberian peninsula – forcing all Muslims and Jews either to convert to Catholic Christianity or to flee the peninsula. Many of the Sephardic Jews convert (while secretly holding on to their Jewish faith) and many flee to North Africa. b) Ferdinand and Isabella fund Christopher Columbus’ voyage of discovery.
10) The Inquisition – 1478 and Beyond
As part of the Reconquest (Reconquista) the Iberian Peninsula, Isabella and Ferdinand set up an ecclesiastical tribunal, that had jurisdiction only over baptized Christians, some of whom also practiced other forms of faith and at the time were considered heretics according to the Catholic Church and recently formed kingdoms at the time. The Inquisition worked in large part to ensure the orthodoxy of recent converts from Judaism and Islam.
11) The Impact of Orthodoxy - The Spanish approach to Christianity emphasized high-level authority as a guarantee of orthodoxy, and led all Christendom in the 15th and 16th centuries in vigorously prosecuting this belief. The Inquisition had been founded in 1478-80, and in 1492 the extraordinary measure was taken of expelling all Jews from the Kingdom. Then in 1502, all practice of Islamic faith was abruptly banned, although it had been explicitly guaranteed in the terms of the Muslims’ surrender of Granada ten years before. There was a sense in the ruling circles of Spain that the truth was only to be found in inherited tradition; likewise the political ideal was for total unity of purpose between Pope and King, Church and State. ~ Empires of the Word – Nicholas Ostler, 2005, p. 333.
12) The New World – Conquest and Conversion (Militant Christianity)
13) El Cristo Pobre (The Poor Christ)
14) The Reformation and Counter-reformation & Music
15) Indigenization
16) Mary the Redemptrix & Pachamama
17) Protestantism In Latin America
18) Protestant Missions in Latin America - Protestantism has been a presence since the nineteenth century, as a minority, but has had a strong increase since the 1980s. The majority of Latin American Protestants in general are Pentecostal-Evangelicals.
19) Shift from Catholicism to Protestantism - Latin American Protestants shot up from 50,000 in 1900 to 64 million in 2000,
20) Pentacostalism
Nearly one-in-five Latin Americans now describe themselves as Protestant, and across the countries surveyed majorities of them self-identify as Pentecostal or belong to a Pentecostal denomination. Pentecostals share many beliefs with other evangelical Protestants, but they put more emphasis on the “gifts of the Holy Spirit,” such as speaking in tongues, faith healing and prophesying.
21) Liberation Theology
22) God’s Preferential Option for the Poor
23) Gustavo GutiÉrrez ~ A Theology of Liberation
“But the poor person does not exist as an inescapable fact of destiny. His or her existence is not politically neutral, and it is not ethically innocent. The poor are a by-product of the system in which we live and for which we are responsible. They are marginalized by our social and cultural world. They are the oppressed, exploited proletariat, robbed of the fruit of their labor and despoiled of their humanity. Hence the poverty of the poor is not a call to generous relief action, but a demand that we go and build a different social order.”
24) Pope Francis (Jesuit from Argentina)
25) Christology is inseparably linked to Christian Praxis