Ritualizing Orientalism and Philo-Semitism: the Task of Making God Exist in Puerto Rico

Abstract

Two complementing but not identical phenomena have resurfaced lately in the Christian world: philo-semitism and orientalism. Most growth has been among the evangelical forms of Christianity mushrooming in much of Latin America. In its simplest form, philo-semitism is “support or admiration for the Jewish people by non-Jews” (Rubinstein and Rubinstein), while orientalism (Said) serves as a colonial framework that is used to understand the unfamiliar and the strange in order to make the people of the Middle East appear different and threatening. This general process of stereotyping is one that, according to Said, serves as a tool for colonialism. In time, however, this colonial stance has not only impacted the regional territories, but transpired to other—more distant—colonial subjects, who adopt it as a self-redeeming narrative. Both philo-semitism and orientalism appear to have diverse motivations, especially when straddling global north and south. While studies in the USA and Europe have been numerous, it has become increasingly obvious that these phenomena are much more widespread and diverse, and cannot be interpreted purely in North American nor European terms. To this end, this fieldwork-based research note focuses on the orientalist and philo-semitic hermeneutics that have jointly flourished in Puerto Rico, a growing tendency among some evangelical congregations in this still colonial Latin American island.