Publication Date

7-29-1993

Abstract

The worldwide Catholic Traditionalist sectarian movement has nurtured various independent colonies of prophetic origin emphasizing Marian apocalypticism and ongoing charismatic revelation. This study presents findings from ethnological research focusing on the recruitment paths of peasants into a charismatic-led, Marian millenarian colony of Catholic Traditionalist origin, Nueva Jerusalén, in rural west Mexico. A microsociological framework emphasizing cognitive variables, and rooted in the work of cultural anthropologists and sociologists of new religious movement, is employed in order to study religious decision making. Life history data from Mexican peasant recruits and peasant control cases are analyzed chiefly in terms of the experiential dimensions of network, pilgrimage, religious knowledge, and socioeconomic backgrounds. The colony's millenarian ideology and Catholic Traditionalism are found to have played minimal roles in most peasant decisions to join the colony, while personal reform emerges as the key factor promoting peasant recruitment. Folk Catholic conceptions of the economy of pilgrimage shrines, and countervailing religious knowledge and institutional commitments significantly distinguish controls from recruits, and played dominant roles in encouraging control disengagement or rejection of the colony. This study demonstrates the importance of research on sectarian recruitment, as distinct from conversion, through a study of the microdynamics of sect membership change. In particular, it advocates a microsociology of religious knowledge in research on religious movement recruitment.

Project Sponsors

Mellon Field Research Grants administered through the Latin American Institute of the University of New Mexico, the Student Research Allocations Committee of the Graduate Student Association of the University of New Mexico, Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society, Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant No. BNS-9020338 from the National Science Foundation

Document Type

Dissertation

Language

English

Degree Name

Anthropology

Level of Degree

Doctoral

Department Name

Anthropology

First Committee Member (Chair)

Karl H. Schwerin

Second Committee Member

Mari Lyn Salvador

Third Committee Member

Sylvia Rodriguez

Fourth Committee Member

Patrick McNamara

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