Abstract
The role that deviant religions can play in the processes of cultural evolution has been largely overlooked by anthropologists. Among the Aymara Indians of Peru, a once ostricized and persecuted group of Seventh Day Adventists has assumed leadership as the community system is transformed from a subsistence agriculture economy to a money economy. To explain this emergence of a Protestant elite in a predominantly Catholic society, a Weberian hypothesis, based on a causal relation between Protestantism and capitalism, is tested and rejected. An alternative hypothesis, based on the adaptive value of deviance in the evolutionary process, proves more in accord with the data. It is shown that deviant religion, while not a primary cause of cultural evolution, may be a powerful directive force.
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