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Book Review: The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier

indigenous cultural memory” (17). With the colonization of Ecuador under Spanish and Roman Catholic hierarchies, the Quichuas of the Andean range became adept at adapting to the “evangelization” of the Roman Catholic Church. The saints of the Church became identified with their ancestral gods of the mountains and crossroads. Corr is good at depicting how intertextuality reveals the close relationship between the Salasacan, the earth, the afterlife, and the Roman Catholic religion. Intertextuality highlights repetition, a key component in oral societies. The comment, “people remember through ritual repetition” (103), could be applied to almost all cultures from the highly stylistic to the largely symbolic. Intertextuality also highlighted the holistic nature of the Salasacan. Prayers, combining Catholic elements with ancestral ritual prayers, fiestas, wakes, and playacting, serve to reinforce the Salasacan worldview. Chapter 5 , “Life Lessons at a Time of Death,” was a notably revealing window into the view of death and how it is handled by combining religious elements of both their ancestors and the more recent Catholic religion. The second section (chapters 6-8) relates how, “people continually sustain and re-create religion through private ritual practices. . . ” (17). Interestingly enough, this section reveals the symbiotic relationship between the Andean Quichua, the Lowland Quichua (the section of Ecuador from the coast to the foothills of the Andes), and the Amazonian Quichua who are considered to have ancient knowledge long forgotten by the Andeans. Chapter 7 was particularly excellent on the role of shamans in the life of the Salasacan. Chapters 5 and 7 are alone worth the price of the book! The book does not claim to be anything other than ethnography of the lives of a few Salasacans who represent the wider community. I found it easy to read, understand, and relate to (having lived in the central Andes of Peru and costal Ecuador). Its value can be found in the insights as to the role an indigenous religion plays and how it interacts with a dominant religion. The study focused only on the symbiotic nature of the Salasacan religion with the Roman Catholic Church. Including other religions beside the dominant Roman Catholicism would have greatly complicated the task and definitely enlarged the volume but also would have given a more complete picture of the value of rituals in maintaining one’s identity in such a pluralistic context. With the exception of two or three passing references, Protestantism is all but dismissed mainly because of its small footprint. Another reason for not reviewing the impact of other religions could well be the note of discord the influence of a third or fourth religion would place in the narrative of the book. While the book focused on a mostly harmonious relationship with the Roman Catholic Church it did, in one case, state that Protestants would not participate in certain syncretistic rituals adapted by the Salasacans (83). A fuller study is merited to see what affect the small footprint of Protestantism actually does have on the wider community. Rachel Corr has done a good job in understanding and relating the daily struggles of an autochthonous people living amongst a culture and religion imposed upon by superior martial forces. In describing how an indigenous religion adapted to an imposed religion she speaks for many such similar situations around the world. There are lessons herein for the missiologist who is seeking to introduce the God of gods into a religion of many gods. Corr offers no solutions, nor was that her objective; she does, however, highlight the syncretism that can so easily arise from such a situation.