ABSTRACT
Along with many other groups in the United States, Latinos have a rich heritage of religious traditions. But to understand how such traditions influence US religion, to avoid interpretations that either reduce traditions to celebratory "folklore" or suppose that they reflect an inability to "modernize". This chapter delves into the dynamics of tradition: to analyze what makes traditions expand or contract, perdure or wither, renew or retard religious experience. Edward Shils's treatment of tradition in his book Tradition is starting point, which seems more suited to application to religion than a book on the same topic edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger. The chapter focuses on the normative character of tradition that Shils has described because that is the intersection with Latino religion. It examines history of Latino traditions after 1950, but the body of Latino traditions that reigned from the sixteenth through the early twentieth century demonstrates a significant continuity with the religion of medieval Europe.
