In the waning years of Latin America's longest and bloodiest civil war, the rise of an unlikely duo is transforming Colombia: Christianity and access to credit. In her exciting new book, Rebecca C. Bartel details how surging evangelical conversions and widespread access to credit cards, microfinance programs, and mortgages are changing how millions of Colombians envision a more prosperous future. Yet programs of financialization propel new modes of violence. As prosperity becomes conflated with peace, and debt with devotion, survival only becomes possible through credit and its accompanying forms of indebtedness. A new future is on the horizon, but it will come at a price.
Rebecca C. Bartel is Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies and Associate Director for the Center for Latin American Studies at San Diego State University.
"Card Carrying Christians is a creative contribution to understanding how finance capitalism and Christianity combine in an assemblage that is both fanned by and fuels aspirations for a more prosperous and peaceful life and country. But beyond the Colombian case it is an invitation to think about how religion, financialization, and politics interconnect and remake one another and a challenge to do it with the level of verve and smarts that Bartel brings to her prose."––Alexander L. Fattal, Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of California, San Diego, and author of Guerrilla Marketing: Counterinsurgency and Capitalism in Colombia
"Intimately researched and lucidly argued, Card Carrying Christians demonstrates that every account of financial capitalism must acknowledge how Christianity serves as an alibi for the burden of obligation. Bartel authors a wrenching portrait of individuals becoming instruments of incarcerating debt. Considerate, unsentimental, and insightful scholarship."––Kathryn Lofton, Lex Hixon Professor of Religious Studies and American Studies, Yale University, and author of Consuming Religion
312 pp.6 x 9Illus: 18 b/w illustrations
9780520380028$29.95|£25.00Paper
May 2021