Religious literacy, racial literacy, and Latin America's overdue reckoning with deep diversity

Abstract

With a focus on the Brazilian religious landscape, this chapter asks what a cross-cultural religious literacy may look like in a society like Brazil. Paying special attention to African-derived and Indigenous religions and multiple streams of Brazilian Christianity, the chapter argues that religious literacy in Latin America generally, and Brazil specifically, must be accompanied by racial and intercultural literacy. Epistemological decoloniality is presented as a key to advance new forms of intercultural communication that take interchange of experiences and meanings seriously in the construction of rationality. The conclusion is that cross-cultural religious literacy must not only uplift intercultural communication, but it must also liberate it from the prison of coloniality. Appealing to a history of religious suppression and resilience among African-derived and Indigenous religions in Brazil, and to a recent intercultural dialogue between Catholic bishops and the peoples of the Amazon, this chapter calls for an understanding of interculturality that makes room for epistemic humility, allowing for the ancestral wisdom of the peoples of the Amazon and multiple Christian traditions to come together as collaborative partners in the creation of more equitable relations.