We think that religious intolerance is a thing of the past, that it no longer happens, and that it is unthinkable that there is persecution in a continent where the majority of the population is Christian. Sometimes we believe that religious intolerance only exists in countries with other religious or political systems, where faith as a witness is bothersome and even uncomfortable. However, there is something that many of us overlook, but which is actually quite scandalous and surprising: the intolerance among Christian denominations themselves, where there should be true unity and true charity, as stated in the maxim of Augustine of Hippo: “unity in essentials, and charity in differences.”
Throughout the history of Christianity, we have realized that Christian spirituality is always in constant evolution, its sole objective being to seek coherence between what we believe and what we do. It is a constant desire to maintain the original essence of what Christianity truly was in its beginnings, even more so by drawing from the original source of the Messiah’s teachings. This makes Christianity rich and diverse, always based on two foundations: its origin and its evolution.
That is why, at first glance and in the most basic study, this should not surprise us; on the contrary, it should fill us with joy because it proves that the Holy Spirit is the one who illuminates and makes the Church fruitful with a diversity of ministries and gives it the capacity to harmonize differences. Each difference is an expression of its stages and contexts in history, without straying from the initial essence and not with the aim of creating anything new, but rather to always provide a response in the different contexts of humanity. This is why we can find a church united in diversity, yet transcending denominational structures and consciously acknowledging its confessional roots, which originated in the region of Caesarea Philippi.
And after all this, what began as a simple confession gradually transformed into a monopolistic system of faith, forgetting that the confession of that Apostle would be the key that unlocks what would truly be the redeemed universal Church, with its arms open to the world and to humanity, and not a monopolistic institution that stifles the inspiration of the Holy Spirit where it arises. Thus, our true stumbling block lies in falling into the arrogance of believing that by confessing the manifestation of God in his Son as the fruit of the promise to our ancestors, and that in him all things were fulfilled, we think we are a select and exclusive group, rather than truly experiencing God’s salvific action on creation, not just for a select few.
How did we get to this point? We have forgotten that God is sovereign, generous, and above all, just—so much so that He willed that none should be lost; this is the very reason for Christianity’s existence.
After all this contextual reflection, which situates us within our origins and our particularity, I will address the reality of what constitutes “THE MONOPOLY OF FAITH.” After so many centuries of cultural and even ideological differences and divisions, we find ourselves once again in the Latin American reality, which, while predominantly Christian, is shamefully intolerant, arrogant, and exclusionary, to the point of creating a scandalous and decadent testimony to Christian values among Christians in this part of the world.
We are in the information age where everything goes viral, everything is social media, and everything is driven by mass media, and where we all have free and immediate access to that information. Despite this, we can barely grasp the extent of religious intolerance in Latin America, perpetrated by institutions that believe they have dominion over faith and promote the idea that the truth was only revealed to a select few, not to everyone. This “everyone” is part of the transformative testimony I mentioned at the beginning, part of the action of the Holy Spirit assisting His Church scattered throughout the world, making its way to every corner of the globe.
It is quite disconcerting that in Latin America we still feel echoes of the old Inquisition, which executed so many for not conforming to the prevailing ideas and institutional interests. This remains quite prevalent when we find ourselves in different parts of Latin America, where one Christian defames another based more on lineage or historical context than on their faith, ignoring the fundamental issues: faith and witness. There are places in Latin America where anything that doesn’t align with the dominant or historical religious institutions is subject to exclusion, seclusion, and even confinement. Is this from God? Is this the testimony the Savior wanted from us? Where is the highest teaching of Christianity: “Love one another as I have loved you, and by this you will see that you are my disciples”?
These are the questions that reveal how far we are from embodying the Gospel, and that we are more legalistic and enslaved to canon law than anything else. We have placed more emphasis on the human condition based on “natural selection” than on welcoming and respecting others out of love, because we all deserve to be respected and treated with dignity. Given all this, something even more scandalous emerges: migration because of the faith, defamation, and even fratricidal annihilation for not being part of, or not belonging to, the monopoly of faith.
This same monopoly creates a hierarchy of believers, some considered first-class citizens, while others simply fall outside the dominant institutional framework. Consequently, there is talk of “excommunications and invalidations,” and for these reasons, so many have died or been ostracized for wanting to be consistent with their faith. For many years in Latin America, professing a faith different from the dominant belief has meant going against the grain, even losing the right to freedom of expression and the enjoyment of a good name and honor. This is because, in the name of canonization and supposed validity, they only foster a confused hatred among people, making them believe they are defending their faith, when in reality they are only turning them into executioners of their own brothers and sisters.
Latin America is always caught between persecuting and being persecuted, all because of a majority faith that, rather than being transformative, is alienated by political power, thus generating dominance over the masses who claim to be believers, but are merely statistics in a parish baptismal register where the presence of a human God who saved humanity and whose law is love, engraved in the heart of each one of us, is blurred.
This is why religious intolerance in Latin America has led many expressions of faith to seek more protection in civil laws than in the law of God, demonstrating an arrogance in believing that having power and possessing God is a privilege and not humanity’s greatest treasure: recognizing its creator, presenting it as a statutory body and not as a transformative reality.
Large and historic religious institutions have seized and usurped the right to grant “the right to be a child of God,” not according to God’s conditions, but according to the convenient conditions of human beings, disguised as God’s.
What a great responsibility lies in the segregation, systematic persecution, and immigration of many whose professing their faith is inconvenient for some institutions, which disapprove because perhaps they are not in communion with them. But at its core, these individuals share the greatest of all communions: communion with God. As the saying goes, “They have the temples, and we have the faith.” And as long as this continues, more people will find God outside the established and the conventional, demonstrating that no matter how many monopolies there are on faith, faith is free, like the water of the sea: unstoppable and, even more so, immeasurable. We renounce having the right or the validity, but we do have the legitimacy of God that He gives us when we preach with conversion and with anointing, therefore as long as this exists we will be able to confront such monopolies
