Description
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewFor God and Liberty definitively and artfully overturns the secularization thesis with respect to Latin America's great Independence movements. At the heart of the nineteenth-century wars of Independence was a sprawling, transatlantic religious conflict that pitted two different visions for the future of the church: one imperial, papal, and monarchical and the other regional, democratically governed, and laicized. Pamela Voekel expounds this grand thesis with unrivaled archival acuity and skill. Historians of religion, politics, democracy, and secularism will be reckoning with Voekel's magnum opus for decades to come. * Jennifer Scheper Hughes, author of The Church of the Dead: The Epidemic of 1576 and the Birth of Christianity in the Americas *
A riveting, argumentative account of subversive Catholic thought and action as the vital clue to understanding Latin American independence and early republicanism. With particularly illuminating research on Central America, it invites consequential debate regarding politics on the cusp of transcendence. * Brian Connaughton, author of The Guadalajara Church and the Idea of the Mexican Nation, 1788-1853 *
For God and Liberty provides a fascinating read, and is worthy of intense study. * Susan Fitzpatrick-Behrens, Professor of Latin American history at California State University, Northridge *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: Empire of Faith Chapter 1: Drawing the Religious Battle Lines Chapter 2: The Rivals Muster Chapter 3: The Sacred Polity Chapter 4: The View from the Vatican Chapter 5: Escalation and Confrontation Chapter 6: The Literary Barricades Chapter 7: "Religious Passion Tore Us Apart" Chapter 8: The Long Shadow: Mexico's Reforma Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index
