Redefining Primitive: Mayan Interpretations of Early Christianity, 1900–44

The word primitive commonly conjures up archaic and offensive descriptions of indigenous societies living at the edges of modern society.  In the early twentieth century, however, members of several indigenous groups in the Guatemalan highlands latched on to a different, religious meaning of the word primitive and claimed that term as central part of their individual and corporate identities.  This paper uses archival sources in Guatemala and the United States to examine how these indigenous converts to Protestantism understood primitive Christianity and what practices they considered authentic and non-negotiable aspects of their new faith.  In this context, primitive refers to the beliefs and practices of Christians in the first centuries of the Church’s existence.  The concept of returning to New Testament practices became popular during late-nineteenth-century revivals in the United States, and several interpretations of primitive Christianity emerged as part of movements like Fundamentalism and Pentecostalism.  Missionaries brought several of these ideas with them to Guatemala in the early years of the twentieth-century.  However, these missionaries quickly lost control of how their indigenous converts chose to interpret and apply these concepts.  Instead, converts selectively applied imported religious ideas to fit their cultural and material needs.  Often these new practices and beliefs represented a break with converts’ pasts, such as substituting the spontaneity of Pentecostal worship for the scripted rituals of either orthodox or folk Catholicism.  In other cases, however, the new religion offered a level of cultural continuity between pre- and post-conversion life by incorporating traditional indigenous practices like native dance.  While these movements were statistically small in the period in question, their innovative use of primitivism laid a foundation for the future development of the Evangelical movement that now includes as much as one-third of the Guatemala’s population.