Rethinking religious decision‐making in peasant millenarianism: The case of Nueva Jerusalén

Abstract

Most studies of religious movement expansion in Latin America have stressed the concept of conversion as the major focus of research. Very often, the proposed subject of study—why peasants join a new religion—has been the effects and satisfactions resulting from joining a movement, rather than the original motives for seeking to join. Employing ethnographic examples from peasant recruitment and life histories from a Mexican millenarian colony, I favour drawing a working distinction between ‘recruitment’ and ‘conversion’ as analytically separable phases of a seeker's involvement with a movement. Conversion refers to an ongoing process of identity transformation after joining a religious movement, while recruitment refers to the decision‐making process leading to membership in a movement. An analysis of peasant processes of affiliation at the Mexican colony shows that the millenarian doctrines of the colony have played a minimal or negligible cognitive role in peasants’ decisions to join. It is argued that apocalyptic doctrines may have been over‐emphasized as motivators of peasant recruitment to millenarian‐orientated groups in Latin America.