Individuals and institutions: a view from lived religiosity

Abstract

This article presents the advance of an international research project entitled Living Religion in Latin America, restricted to this work only in the case of Uruguay. It is a qualitative research that puts the emphasis on trying to understand how individuals live religiosity in Latin America from the perspective of the people and not of the institutions or religious leaders. For this purpose, we made one hundred and sixty interviews with 80 people. For the purposes of this publication, the work focuses on the tension between the individual and the institutions. The links, the autonomy of individuals, distances and the way of being interpreted by the people, are expressed in terms of how Catholics, evangelicals, participants in African-American religions, believers without affiliation and atheists live religiosity.