An enchanted modernity: Making sense of Latin America’s religious landscape

This is an interpretative, critical, and selective review of scholarly contributions that explore Latin America’s religious landscape. We present data, both qualitative and quantitative, from Latin America and analyze the explanations given to make sense of it. After assessing the literature that uses either secularization theory or the “religious economy” approach, we study explanations that highlight a Latin American style of “popular religiosity.” These three models, in different ways, put the emphasis on religious institutions—their vitality, commands, competition, and authority. We propose, instead, a focus on the religious practices of regular believers. We speculate that embarking from that focus, the idea of an “enchanted modernity” will help make sense of Latin America’s religious landscape. Nuanced elucidation of Latin America’s religious particularities will situate them in dialogue with other regions of the world, like western Europe and the United States, while also acknowledging the fact that Latin America is experiencing a modernization process distinct from the North Atlantic one.


Introduction
In recent decades, Latin America's religious landscape has been transformed. In 1995, 80% of Latin Americans identified as Catholic, a number that has dropped to 69% today (Latinbarometro, 2014;Pew Research Center, 2014). Pew and Latinbarometro's surveys show that many believers are becoming Protestant (19%, most of them Pentecostals) or "Unaffiliated" (8%), although they are not necessarily non-believers. The number of believers in Latin America who identify as "spiritual" or even religious "in my own way" is growing (Keller et al., 2013;Levine, 2012). Latin Americans insist on searching for meaning beyond the empirical world. Spirituality and religiosity are present in unexpected places, making the Latin American religious landscape more vibrant and plural than ever (Ameigeiras, 2010;Bermudez, 2003;Cleary, 2006;Da Costa, 2008;Fernandes, 2009;Freston, 2008;Hagopian, 2009;Herna´ndez and Rivera, 2009;Jenkins, 2013;Mallimaci, 2013;Parker Gumucio, 2009).
To make sense of the transformation in the Latin American religious landscape, we propose an interpretative, critical, and selective review of scholarly contributions that explore the religious complexities of Latin America. Our review closes one gap in the field by creating dialogue between Spanish-and English-written articles, as the two spheres rarely engage. We explore the "lived religion" approach and propose the construct of "enchanted modernity" to conceptualize the Latin American religious landscape. We understand Latin America's modernity is mostly open to religiosity and we consider its religiosity has been shaped by modernity. The religious particularities of Latin America can be explained in dialogue with other regions of the world that are experiencing a modernization process different than the ones developed in the North Atlantic region.
Rather than a full review of the Secularization and Religious Economy theories, here we recount some recent developments of those models when applied to the Latin American religious scenario. We analyze the articles that focus on the Latin American religious landscape. We critique the current theories, including Secularization Theory, Religious Economies and Popular Religiosity on their ability to accurately explain the current Latin American religious situation. We engage in a reading of these theories from a regional perspective. We do not pretend to be exhaustive in the evaluation of these theories. There are other readings and critical evaluations of them (Goldstein, 2016;Gorski and Altmordu, 2008). We only stress the topics that have been discussed in relation to Latin American religiosity.

The North Atlantic explanations
Traditional sociological explanations about religion are based on the secularization theory. This theory formed the discussion about religion in the social sciences. Secularization theorists set the dichotomies we use to discuss the experience of the divine (religious/profane, public/private, spiritual/material), as well as determine what counts as a religion, who belongs to a religious group and how to measure such belonging. Although widely challenged, it is an unavoidable perspective.
Born in western Europe, secularization theory argues that religious change primarily signifies religious diminishment, including decline in memberships and general weakening of religious institutions' influence in the public sphere. Economic development, democratic governments, and a growing middle class are all "secularization" forces that privatize religion. In short, the theory states that "the more modernization, the less religion" (Berger, 2014;Bruce, 2011;Gorski and Altmordu, 2008).
The main criticisms to the secularization theory, relevant to the Latin American situation, are two folded. On the one hand, many criticize it because it is a normative view of the society more than based on empirical data (Swatos and Christiano, 1999). On the other hand, some will emphasize the institutional differentiation, the separation of religion from other secular spheres (Casanova, 1994;Dobbelaere, 1999), and as a consequence a diminishment of the religious authority (Chavez and Cavendish, 1994), a decline in the value of religious capital (McKinnon, 2017) or the de-Christianization of the world (Swatos and Christiano, 1999). Bruce (2011) is one of the few authors who still use it in the traditional way. Other authors emphasize only some aspects of it, like the differentiation (Casanova, 1994), the rationalization of religion (Goldstein, 2016), the deregulation of the religious field (Hervieu-Leger, 2007), or the individualization of the belief (Parker Gumucio, 2008a). The multiple uses of the term, its ideological and cultural bias, have made it insufficient to explain Latin American religious situation.
In Latin America, secularization theory struggles to explain that religious quests have not diminished. In 1910, 95% of the population believed in God and identified as members of a religious institution. A century later, this percentage has only dropped 3 points to 92% (Pew Research Center, 2014). Modernization transformed the Latin American spiritual realm (the idea of God, the rituals, the moral deeds, the role and structure of the community) rather than privatizing or suppressing it (Deneulin and Rakodi, 2011;Inglehart, 2009;Levine, 2012;Parker Gumucio, 1999).
Some scholars indicate that secularization was part of a broader cultural phenomenon, highlighting the differentiation of specific "spheres of values" for science, economy, polity and religion, and that each has its own rules and authorities (Casanova, 1994;Calhoum et al., 2011;Martı´, 2015). Differentiation denotes reduction of the scope of religious authority (Chaves, 1994) and redefinition of the role of religious institutions (Davie, 2002).
From 1910 to 2014, Latin American societies experienced an increasing differentiation of secular spheres and a growing presence of secular institutions that curbed the power of the Catholic Church. Democracy has been achieved in most countries, and subsequent transformation of the social, economic, and political systems has impacted social life. As far as secularization is understood as the separation of the religious from the political system (laı¨cite´), Latin America is secular. It is the popular will that legitimizes Latin America's political system and not a consecration from the Church (Blancarte, 2007;Da Costa, 2011;Morello, 2015;Oro, 2006). The political system has been differentiated from the religious one.
However, in Latin America, differentiation did not mean separation (Giumbelli, 2008;Inglehart, 2009;Programa Feminista La Corriente, 2013;Sch€ afer et al., 2013). The authority of religious professionals has diminished, but in some cases, religion is still a source of legitimation in secular "spheres of values" like politics, economy, civil society, migration, human rights, and environmental issues (Levine, 1992;Morello, 2013;Oro, 2006;Pattnayak, 2008;Romero, 2000;Wilde, 2016). Spheres of values and their respective institutions are different, but they coexist in the same society and within the same individual. For example, the medical and religious spheres often overlap as people go to the doctor and simultaneously pray for their health. The same happens with the social sphere. Often to contest or support an economic policy, people rely on religious institutions or symbols to legitimize a social public action (Zalpa and Offerdal, 2008). Usually, in Latin America, the secular and religious institutions have not clear borders.
The principal Latin American critique of secularization theory is that it assumes the Western European ways of being religious and modern are universal forms. Secularization theory's main concerns have been the strength of religious institutions and the methodology employed to measure it. Here, what counts as a religious institution and what counts as membership are defined by western European standards of Christianity (Hervieu-Le´ger, 1999;Sema´n, 2001). Some scholarship understands the quest for the divine in the terms and categories set by religious institutions. Thus, the closer the adherence to a dogma, the more religious a group is. This perspective leaves unstudied much of the ways in which Latin Americans experience transcendence in everyday life (Sema´n, 1997(Sema´n, , 2001. The concept of one single process of modernity is also contested. Many authors argue that there are multiple modernities, not just one normative process. Latin American societies have different histories and therefore different manifestations of modernity and therefore, different religious responses to it (Casanova, 1994;Eisenstadt, 2000;Garrard-Burnett, Freston and Dove, 2016;Inglehart, 2009;Morello, 2015;Ravagli Cardona, 2013;Sema´n, 1997;Serrano, 2006).
While most of the authors mentioned before use ST in their analysis, they keep signaling the limitations it has. Secularization theory has mostly been a dialectical partner among Latin American scholars, but it has not taken force as a prevalent explanatory tool among academics. Latin American scholarship finds secularization theory's conceptual tools limited by its European origin and difficult to apply to Latin American cultural contexts.
In the 1990s, a new paradigm emerged. Scholars observed that the national religious situation in the United States was not well explained with the European toolbox. Instead, US religious history posed a challenge to secularization theory because increased modernization paralleled religious vitality. The Religious Economy model (RE) based on the rational choice theory attempts to explain the vitality of religious institutions that operate in an open religious market that is pluralistic and flexible, rather than the European market characterized by monopolistic national churches (Chestnut, 2003b;Finke and Stark 1992;Warner, 1993;Williams et al., 2009). The RE explanation highlights discussions that were not present in secularization theory, like the distinction between monopolistic and pluralistic religious societies and divergent models of church-state relations.
This scholarship has been associated with neo-liberalism and its emphasis on the virtues of the free market. It considers the religious system works similar to the secular economy. From this perspective, religious markets that are "free" (not regulated by the state) have "suppliers" (organizations) that offer "products" (practices and doctrines) to "consumers" (followers). Because consumers invest in what is reasonable for them, organizations adapt and compete for their preferences. The most significant explanatory feature of an economic market is if it is unregulated, and therefore a free one, or regulated by the state in favor of a monopolistic "supplier" (Stark and Finke, 1999). Therefore, free and pluralized markets increase religious activity. Since this theory focuses on the "supply" side (the organizations), it has some limitations to explain the rise of the unaffiliated, a change in the "demand" side of the market.
In an open religious market, entrepreneurs of a divine economy compete with each other and are not understood vis-a`-vis the State (Hatch, 1989). This is how RE explains the persistence of religion in the United States (Greeley, 1989) and the history of the religious institutions in it (Finke and Stark, 1992). For these theorists, an open market is conducive to religious vitality. If the motto of secularization was "the more modernity, the less religion," the motto for the RE explanation might be "the more pluralization, the more religiosity" (Sherkat and Ellison, 1999;Warner, 1993).
When RE theory was used to explain Latin American religiosity (Chestnut, 2003a;Garrard-Burnett, 2008;Gill, 1998;Neuhouser, 1989), the focus was on the position of the official religious organizations. However, this was based on the model of congregations in the United States. Therein lies the primary critique of RE. The composition and function of religious institutions not only differs between the United States and Latin America but also between Anglo and Latinos in the U.S (Williams et al., 2009).
The key to understanding the RE approach is the disestablishment of churches and the rise of an open market for religion in the United States (Chestnut, 2003a;Warner, 1993).
The First Amendment of the United States Constitution, which disestablished churches at a federal level, had two implications: protection for the individual freedom of religion and no protection for any specific institution. In Latin America, religious institutions have not been disestablished in the American sense of the term. In many countries, the Catholic Church keeps a status of "official," "historical," or a de facto "national" church; however, it is not a "state religion" as in many European countries (Casanova, 2008;Eastwood, 2011;Garrard-Burnett, 2008;Go´mez, 2015;Lecaros, 2016;Levit, 2001;Navarro Floria, 2010;Oro, 2006;Thurston, 2000). The first non-Catholic Christians who officially came to Latin America in the 19th century did so as citizens of a country that had signed a treaty with the local nations (Di Stefano and Zanatta, 2009;Freston, 2001;Navarro Floria, 2010;Negrão, 2008), and they built their institutional identity and social role vis-a`-vis the state, not the civil society. A similar process defined secularism, or laicidad, a philosophy imposed by the state (Blancarte, 2007;Da Costa, 2011).
Another difference with the US religious landscape overlooked when RE is applied to Latin America is that Catholicism has always encouraged internal diversity. Gill (1998) and Neuhouser (1989), for example, assumed that, by paying attention to the hierarchy, they were looking at the whole of Catholicism. However, although Catholics are members of a single confession, they are highly diversified in practice. One does not need to leave Catholicism altogether to "chose" a different religious experience; a believer may find the desired experience inside the Catholic world (Garrard-Burnett et al., 2016;Mallimaci, 1996;Morello, 2015;Romero, 2009;Sanchis, 1997). Additionally, emphasizing the rational aspects of religious choice might not be useful to understand Latin Americans' religious practices that also include material, corporeal, and emotional components (Ameigeiras, 2008;Blancarte, 2007;Mallimaci, 2013;Parker Gumucio, 2006;Romero, 2008Romero, , 2014b. Whereas believers in the United States more fluidly move between religious denominations, religious options and mobility are more limited in Latin America (Frigerio and Wynarczyk, 2008). Switching from being a Baptist to being a non-denominational Christian in Kentucky is not like converting from Catholicism to Pentecostalism in Lima. Yet, among Latin Americans, practices from other traditions often are incorporated without signifying a change in affiliation (De la Torre and Martı´n, 2016;Lecaros, 2016;Negrão, 2008).

Latin American explanations
Many Latin American scholars of religion describe the particularities of Latin American religiosity with the concept of "popular religiosity," although this concept is applied to other regions as well (Possamai, 2015). Local scholars prefer "popular" rather than "folk" religion because, in the Latin American context, "folk" religiosity is not reducible to one type of religious identification. It includes a wide range of devotions, from indigenous peoples' spiritualities to the popular culture of Catholic traditions (Korstanje, 2007;Mariz and Campos, 2011;Melia´, 1993;Romero, 2014a;Sanchis, 1997).
Popular religiosity emphasizes the tension between the believer and the institution and highlights the existence of a "communal" dimension between the person and the institution. Its origin is linked to the colonial era. The Catholic Church has never been able to reach populations living in the countryside or the urban outskirts. The lack of priests and, therefore, the inability to cover territory and to impose doctrine left local communities in charge of their own faith and churches (Garrard-Burnett et al., 2016;Lynch, 2012). This institutional weakness gave way to an a-clerical form of Catholicism, far from the regulations of the elites (Blancarte, 2000(Blancarte, , 2007Da Costa, 2003;De la Torre, 2012;Hughes, 2009;Linkogle, 1998;Mallimaci and Gime´nez Be´liveau, 2007;Negrão, 2008;Romero, 2009). Popular religiosity is neither official nor individualistic, but a communal religiosity (Marzal, 2002) in which religious "tribes" create a "community of conversation" (Ammerman, 2014) that allows people to talk about the presence of the spiritual in daily life and to identify with each other (Romero, 2009).
Most of the authors who use the concept of popular religiosity emphasize the anti-elitist, "of the people" component of the construct. Popular religiosity is the way in which lower classes contest the dominant religious culture (Melia´, 1993;Possamai, 2015;Sema´n, 1994Sema´n, , 2001. It is "the process, whereby the poor assume interpretations and meanings or religion from their own point of view, distinct from the elites with whom they share a general system of meaning" (Lancaster, 1988: 31). Scholars assume that elites adhere to traditional, conservative, urban, heavily institutionalized religion. In their view, elite religiosity is the result of specialization of knowledge-rationalized, systematized, modern religiosity (Ameigeiras, 2008;Blancarte, 2007;Martı´n, 2009;Parker Gumucio, 1999).
A consequence of this association of elites with religion "by the book" is that some scholars assume popular religion is a "heterodox," "syncretic" form of religiosity (Ameigeiras, 2008;Freston, 2008;Lancaster, 1988;Pe´dron Colombani, 2008;Possamai, 2015;Sanchis, 1997). For them, popular religiosity names the beliefs, practices, and concerns of uneducated people-a sort of "practical magic" rather than "ethical, rational religion" in the Weberian sense (Fernandes, 2009;Parker Gumucio, 2006). Labeling popular religion "syncretic" implies it does not comply with orthodox standards of religion (De la Torre and Martı´n, 2016).
Uncritically, this scholarship follows the rules established by religious institutions, resulting in a normative perspective of what religion should be. For that reason, other academics prefer "hybrid," "mestiza" (mixed), or even "located" religion (Camurca, 2009;Hughes, 2009;Linkogle, 1998;Sema´n, 2001). For them, popular religion is a concrete answer that exists between assimilation and reaction to modernity, between adaptation and creativity. It is a universal religion tied to local culture and concrete historical dynamics (De la Torre, 2012). These scholars argue that Catholicism has always been syncretic and there is not such a thing as "pure" Catholicism.
Because of its association with social strata, ethnicity, and location (land, region, country), "popular Catholicism" is often seen as a marker of social identity, which characterizes a national, or even the Latin American, culture in opposition to foreign cultural influence. Therefore, for some scholars, popular religiosity became the religious expression of the cultural nativism and political populist movements. It is conceived as the religious result of the ethnic blend, which gave birth to national imagined communities that overcame the differences between whites, natives, and blacks (Ameigeiras, 2008;Blancarte, 2000;Camurca, 2009;Cuda, 2016;De la Torre, 2012;Engelke, 2011;Forni, 1986;Linkogle, 1998;Mariz and Campos, 2011;Melia´, 1993;Parker Gumucio, 1999).
"Popular religiosity" contributes a very modern feature of the religious subject: agency, as opposed to an institutional situation prized by secularization and RE theories. However, "popular religion" does encounter limitations in attempting to make sense of Latin America's religious landscape. In Latin American scholarship, "popular" is usually an adjective for the noun "Catholicism" (De la Torre and Martı´n, 2016). Therefore, this conceptualization has left aside Pentecostals, other religious minorities, and the unaffiliated (Da Costa, 2011). Scholars such as Ameigeiras (2008), Blancarte (2000), and Sema´n (1994) apply it to Pentecostals, identifying them as "Popular Protestants," echoing the theological Protestant tradition. The problem with this position is that Pentecostalism is a different religion, not a way of practicing Lutheranism or Calvinism (Hall, 1997;Sharot, 2001;Williams et al., 2009). Moreover, "popular" emphasizes the lower classes' religiosity. Yet, Latin American Pentecostals are not just poor; they are also middle class, actively participating in business and politics (Freston, 2001;Stark and Smith, 2010). If Pentecostalism started in Latin America as a religion of the poor, in the last two decades, it has moved in many countries from the margins toward the center of society, permeating the media and the mainstream culture and gaining political power (Cleary, 2006;Freston, 2001;Valenzuela et al., 2013;Wynarczyk, 2009).
Popular religion also presents obstacles to engaging in a South-North dialogue. Some social scientists from the North use the concept like some Latin American scholars-to name the religion that the masses practice, in tension with what the institutions teach (Hall, 1997;Hervieu-Leger, 1997;Orsi, 1997;Sharot, 2001). However, other scholars use this concept to designate beliefs in superstitions, natural religiosity, paganism, aliens, UFOs, ghosts, and other encounters with the supernatural (Roof, 1999) that sometimes find a following among adolescents (Clark, 2003). In other cases, "popular religion" appropriates narratives from popular culture (like singers, movie characters, and film sagas) for religious use. In the US academy, "popular religion" names the combination of religious and commercial sensibilities through the veneration of pop icons usually using the framework of an established, traditional religion (Doss, 2002). As Pace (1987) points out, while the concept highlights a "relatively autonomous form of [religious] production" (p. 12), the problem is that it is "structurally polyvalent" (p. 8).
Our task is to build a conceptual outline to understand Latin America's religious life, which is in dialogue with the broader field, and at the same time critical of traditional academic categories that fail to grasp Latin American religious history and its particularities (Blancarte, 2007;Casanova, 1994;De la Torre, 2012;Garrard-Burnett, 2008;Levine, 2012).

Lived religion as a path to explore what's going on in Latin America
Modernity has transformed Latin American life not only through its achievements but also through its failure to emancipate and elevate Latin American people (Echeverrı´a, 2000;Morello, 2008). It has, of course, affected religion.
Contemporary religiosity has transformed in character and has shifted to a location inconvenient for both religious and secular elites. There is differentiation of spheres, but interaction between them as well (Levine, 2012;Rubin et al., 2014). The religious realm is more "diverse" (Frigerio and Wynarczyk, 2008) than before, such that there are religious alternatives to the Catholic hegemony, as well as options within Catholicism (Sanchis, 1997). Mallimaci's (1996: 75) analysis of Argentina, that "people still believe as much as fifty or one hundred years ago, but in different things and in different ways," might be applied to the broader region.
Many scholars address these transformations shifting the focus of their research from the institutions to the individuals. Parker (2006) recommends that subjects should be treated not just as followers of a religion but also as religious actors that produce symbols and rituals. Mallimaci (2008) suggests a move toward interpretative and constructionist paradigms, putting aside "essentialist" paradigms that focus on simply defining religion. Martı´n (2009) proposes to focus on the ways in which the subjects construct the sacred. Religious beliefs are personalized convictions or constructions that help people to make sense of daily life not just dogmas that are institutionally imposed. Sua´rez (2015) argues that these convictions are built from elements taken from other traditions, modified and re-signified by the actors, and related to other choices in the political and economic realm. Fernandes (2009) points out that to understand new ways in which religion is practiced, relations that the believers have with theirs beliefs must be investigated. Other scholars suggest that in times of transformation, it is key to look at the experience, motivations, and commitments of the regular people-the ones who don't make a living around religion (Hagopian, 2009;Irwin, 2008;Morello, 2015;Sch€ afer et al., 2013). Believers are not passive recipients of religious traditions, but creators and agents of them. Therefore, they deserve to be understood according to their own terms of religiosity instead of being measured according to a standard imposed by religious leaders or scholars.
This scholarship suggests that paying attention to daily life is a path to explore Latin America's religious transformation. It is in everyday life and not necessarily inside religious spaces, where contemporary Latin Americans negotiate their religious identities, their personal boundaries, and reconstruct their religious orientation to make sense of the multiple challenges they face in urban societies. People select and adapt religious traditions for use in their complex societies to make sense of what is going on with their lives (Ameigeiras, 2008;Berger, 2014;Herna´ndez and Rivera, 2009;Martı´, 2015;Sema´n, 2001;Sua´rez, 2015;Yang, 1999).
In daily life, believers mark the sacred through "sacralization practices" (Martı´n, 2009), inscribing regular persons, objects, moments, and locations in a different dimension. Sacred realities are those identified as not negotiable, with a value beyond human transactions (Knott, 2005). Nothing is inherently sacred, but places, objects, persons, and memories become so when individuals sacralize them in their own cultural context. Latin Americans sacralize and make sense of their lives using both religious and secular narratives (Sema´n, 1997). Focusing on religion as lived by individuals transcends the distinction between religious and secular, because it attends to "meaning" given by the actors.
Some scholars outside Latin America are using the concept of "lived religion." Religiosidad vivida shifts focus from the institutional to the individual level (Ammerman, 2014;McGuire, 2008). The "lived religion" approach acknowledges the creativity of the believers, the particularities of the religious context, and at the same time permits a dialogue with scholars focused on other cultural regions (Williams et al., 2009). "Lived" emphasizes that religiosity is historical, contextual, provisional, mobile, and in a constant flux (Fernandes, 2009). It is a negotiation between formal and informal religion-something that occurs in relation with, but with autonomy from, the institution. "Religion" points toward the activities that people recognize as linked to transcendence and beyond empirical explanations, while still connected to ordinary life (Ammerman, 2014;Orsi, 2003;Roof, 1999). Lived religion is more an operative dimension than a paradigm.
Religiosidad vivida focuses on religion in action, as experienced and expressed by ordinary people in the context of their everyday lives. It emphasizes the characteristic of being a religiosity "in-between" (De la Torre, 2012), practiced either in private or public spaces, involving bodily and emotional experiences (Ammerman, 2014) in a particular cultural setting. Lived religiosity is not a fixed unit of coherent beliefs or practices; it is a mixture of changing, complex and diverse beliefs, practices, relations, experiences, and communities (Berger, 2014;Blancarte, 2000;Mallimaci, 2008;Martin, 2010).
Most authors who use the concept of lived religion highlight that religious activities are a reality beyond any given individual. Lived religion, even if personal, is not privatized or isolated from the community (Ammerman, 2007a;Hervieu-Leger, 1997;McGuire, 2008;Roof, 1999). Aforementioned in relation to the popular religion paradigm, communal religious settings shape the spiritual experience of Latin Americans. Even if the Latin American religious landscape is less institutionalized than before (De la Torre and Martı´n, 2016), it is not individualized. Religious institutions play an important role in the daily life of Latin American people (Levine, 1992;Romero, 2000Romero, , 2009Sema´n, 1997). For example, religious communities produce or legitimize a set of symbols or "scripts" that are meaningful to explain life and human agency in the world. In everyday religion, both the ability of the individual to make creative choices and the ability of the religious communities to provide meaning and practices are important (Neitz, 2011).
Finally, the lived religion approach considers the material aspects of religion an important feature of the Latin American way of relating to transcendence (Ammerman, 2014, McDannell, 1995, McGuire, 2008. We cannot explain what religiosity is for Latin Americans by neglecting human materiality (Ameigeiras, 2008;Sema´n, 2001;Sua´rez, 2015;Va´squez, 2011). Latin Americans' quest for transcendence involves peoples' bodies (Neitz, 2011;Sema´n, 1994Sema´n, , 1997 and different kinds of objects that hold important meanings for those who use them in rituals and practices. Therefore, many Latin American scholars have focused on the material aspects of local religiosity. Algranti (2014), for example, observes and analyzes the creation, distribution, and use of religious objects. Linkogle (1998) and Pe´dron Colombani (2008) explore how religious objects are displayed in different popular feasts and the complexity of the social relations beneath them. Ameigeiras (2008), Hughes (2009), andPodhajcer (2007) study the devotion to images of Christ by composing a biography of the images and the social tensions that shaped the role of those religious images across time and space.
In sum, the lived religion approach avoids dichotomies like public/private, sacred/profane, body/spirit, reason/emotion (Engelke, 2011) to focus on the "in-between" nature of Latin American religiosity (De la Torre, 2012) and allows comparative studies between the south and the north (Smith, 2008).

Conclusion: An "Enchanted" modernity
Looking at Latin American's lived religiosity in the midst of modernization and its inequalities requires a new paradigmatic approach to studying religion (Deneulin and Rakodi, 2011;Martin, 2010;Steigenga and Cleary, 2007). Despite many similarities, Latin America hasn't experienced the same process of modernity as the United States, Europe, or the rest of the world. Most scholars accept that modernity has transformed Latin America, and most also agree this process does not mirror the North Atlantic model (Ribeiro, 1997). The contact and conflict among different Latin American cultures have generated a particular way of being modern that has been called "baroque" (Echeverrı´a, 2000), "hybrid" (Garcı´a Canclini, 2001), and "late" (Larraı´n, 1997).
Latin Americans' concrete experience of modernity has developed a particular style of religiosity that neither ST, RE, or PR can explain. (Levine, 2012;Mallimaci, 1996;Morello, 2015;Parker Gumucio, 1999;Romero, 2000;Sua´rez, 2015). Explanations of Latin American religiosity must pay attention to daily sacralization practices that involve emotional, material, and embodied experiences. Explanations should also make sense of the end of the Catholic monopoly, the relative pluralization of the religious realm, and the variety within religious orientations. Building upon the secularization, religious economy, and popular religiosity explanations, we need a new way to make sense of what we observe.
Scholarship engaged here points toward a persistent supra-empirical quest in the midst of modern political, social, and economic transformations. We propose the concept of "Enchanted Modernity" that acknowledges Latin America's history, the influence of global trends of modernization, and interest in the transcendent in Latin Americans' daily life. The construct of enchanted modernity also connects Latin American scholars with the global discussion on modernities and religiosities. It is not proposed as an alternative to ST, but as a way of naming what the scholarship observes in Latin America: a symbiotic conjunction of modernity and religiosity.
Latin American religious vitality is not a reaction towards secularization, but a way of dealing with daily life. An enchanted modernity recognizes the separation of economic, scientific, and political spheres, each with its specific logic and authorities. This differentiation is a reality in the region. In this sense, the social space of religion has been limited, but the arrangement in Latin America doesn't resemble Europe or the United States. While it is the popular will and not a sacred power that legitimizes the political system, religion is still a social force in Latin American public sphere and religion influences (and is influenced by) the political system. The separation looks different at different levels (national, regional, and local) and in different spheres (education, public health, and social welfare).
Another characteristic of Latin American religious transformation has been the diversification of the religious sphere. There are more options including a variety of Catholic choices, a wide range of Evangelical and Pentecostal churches and a growing diversity of African Diasporic and other religions. People are freer to choose their way of believing or not believing. This "diversification" is a religious pluralization from within, not like in Europe, where the "religious other" is usually also a migrant from a different ethnic background.
Latin American religiosity, as highlighted by the PR paradigm, developed at the margins of the society in tension with institutional control. For that reason, PR was simultaneously a genuine manifestation of Catholicism and a relative free space for blacks and indigenous Americans to keep their traditions alive. The development of a religiosity at the margins was also a characteristic of Pentecostalism, which is now moving into the mainstream. Yet, Latin American believers are modern, autonomous subjects who craft their religiosity in dialogue with different traditions. Latin Americans have a history of recreating symbols and re-narrating religious stories in a creative tension with the established institutions. That is also true for the non-affiliated. Many non-affiliated are believers, perhaps on route to atheism or to a different religious orientation, that craft their own religious path and communities with resources they get from different spiritual and religious orientations. They look for enchantment outside the Catholic and Pentecostal traditions, and they find it.
The religiosidad vivida approach, looking for the beyond-this-world dimension of Latin American lives, meets in the idea of "enchanted modernity," a conceptual tool without the limitations of theoretical constructs designed for other religious realities. Studying religion in Latin America from the believers' point-of-view may help us to understand this process of modernization, its achievements and failures and how Latin Americans find meaning in it.