Item Detail
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22814
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0
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0
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English
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On the Road to Damascus : Pentecostals, Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses in Mexico
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London, England
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University College, London
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Ph.D. diss.
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"Although the data obtained from 1988 to 1992 were collected on the basis of the theoretical propositions outlined above, they were later reinterpreted in a different theoretical framework. Without totally contradicting the initial propositions, this framework contributes new and more complex ways of approaching and explaining the Protestant phenomenon. This new approach made explicit in the final section of Chapter I analyzes the religious institutions and the converts in relationship to each other. In this relationship the converts gradually internalize the doctrine and norms, thus actualizing their habitus (Bordieu 1977). This analysis integrates the subjective or experiential factors of conversion into the framework of a more general objective social structural factors. It is also central to my work to make a comparative analysis of the three churches under discussion, but at the same time including the Catholic Church. This I do by examining some of their institutional aspects such as doctrine, norms, proselytism, rituals, and how those elements are reinterpreted by converts of each church. The thesis is composed of seven chapters. In Chapter I, I focus on the various methodological and theoretical approaches that have been used to study Protestantism in Mexico. I discuss and comment on those perspectives, having in mind my own approach, which I set for at the end. In Chapter II, I examine the relationship between the Mexican State and religious institutions throughout the history of the country. In Chapter III, I provide a more specific historical context for the religious phenomena. Here I analyze the factors which fostered and discouraged the development of Protestantism in the cultural regions to which Merida and Guadalajara belong. In Chapter IV, V and VI, I discuss each of the three Churches separately, looking at their institutional elements and at the believers in their interaction with the institution. In the first section of Chapter VII I bring out another two case studies, but of members of two contrasting Protestant Churches in relation to the previous three. In the last section of this chapter I concentrate on an analysis of patterns of conversion. Here I use all the case studies of the thesis, as well as many others of my research field. Finally in Chapter VIII I compare the three Churches studied with the Catholic church, looking at their internal elements and at their relationship with society at large." [Author's abstract]