Popular religion, catholicism and socioreligious dissent in Latin America - Facing the modernity paradigm

Popular religion, Catholicism and religious dissent are part of the same tr iangle, unavoidable in any analysis of the religious life of Latin America. A conceptual frame has not yet been established, however, to explain, from the point of view of the region's own religious experience, the specific f orms taken by this religious Life and how they relate to other similar expr essions worldwide, as well as to general processes, such as secularization. The paradigm of modernity seems to resist as long as it follows the guidel ines of the gestation of a secularization process which translates into the strengthening of individual conscience, the debilitation of ecclesiastical control and the formation of freedom spaces for those who do not think Lik e the group of believers. However, the paradigm does not find its parallel in the European model of Protestantism in the consolidation of a class or s ocial group that feeds and explains this dissenting religious thought. Cons equently, it is necessary, from our point of view, to question the centrali ty or pertinence of the modernity paradigm. Most of all, because the modern ity paradigm results in an Eurocentrist paradigm, too oriented towards a se t concept of socioeconomic development and, therefore, of religious 'evolut ion'.