Dr. Hoenes at Personally Speaking

One of two Religious Studies faculty scheduled to present in this decade-long college series

From College publicity:

Fragmenting churches and ‘switching’ of religious alliances is a phenomenon that is not only timeless, but one that is increasing here in the US and in communities abroad. The University of North Carolina at Charlotte Associate Professor Eric Hoenes del Pinal illustrates the cultural factors that may contribute, by focusing on a Catholic parish in Cobán, Guatemala. A serious social rift emerged as some of its Q’eqchi’-Maya members began to identify with the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, and members of both the mainstream and charismatic congregations began to view each other as religiously distinct and problematic “others.”

In “Guarded by Two Jaguars,” Eric Hoenes del Pinal tells the story of this dramatic split and in so doing addresses the role that language and gesture have played in the construction of religious identity. Although members of these two congregations are otherwise socially similar, their distinct interpretations of how to be a “good Catholic” led them to adopt significantly different norms of verbal and nonverbal communication. These differences became the idiom through which the two groups contested the meaning of being Catholic and Indigenous in contemporary Guatemala, addressing larger questions about social and religious change.