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Imagined Pasts, Identity, and Ethnicity in Religious Change

This chapter explains why this community’s attempts at Christian reformation have taken them down to the path of Judaism. By exploring themes related to imagined pasts, identity, and ethnicity, it investigates the sociocultural logics and historical arguments that support the community’s connection with Judaism. For instance, the chapter analyzes how the community mobilizes a Jewish ethnic identity, as descendants of the Bnei Anussim—Iberian Sephardi Jews forced to convert to Christianity during the Inquisition, who migrated to Latin America in the seventeenth century. It is argued that the allusion to a hidden “Jewish” collective memory—either imagined or real—plays an important role in this community’s dramatic Judaizing Evangelical process. The chapter ends by problematizing the utilitarian reasons for this community’s identification with Judaism and Jewishness.