ABSTRACT
Most organizations can be classified by their stated goals: those focused primarily on the internal needs of religion are pastoralist; and those that give priority to the social and material needs of a community are liberationist. This chapter analysis of the different currents, groups, and theologies in Latino religion is not meant to divorce them from each other. They function organically as interacting parts of a single body. The chapter agrees with Casanova's summary analysis that Christianity before the Reformation had constructed a sacramental dimension for religion that mediated between secular and profane aspects of life. Ana Maria Diaz-Stevens has called this buffer zone between the officially sacred and the daily experience of the mundane the place for "communitarian spirituality". Casanova has summarized the basic tenets of secularization theory: A religion in retreat from public life becomes "invisible" and explains the fallacies in both.
