Aproximación al imaginario religioso del periodo independentista

Abstract

This article pretends to make an approach to the popular religious imaginary during the period of Independence, as a searching proposal about sermons and as an effort to sketch a history of the religious ideas, analyzing the sermons pronounced by the sector of the ecclesiastical clergy, which supported the patriotic cause. The article starts from the assumption that the religious discourse gets some functions very important in every historical juncture, they are the epistemic function, which refers the interpretation that it gives to the reality of the individuals, and the co-action function, which refers the motivation that it gives them to act. The value of the sermons in the analysis of the popular imaginary is based on the big influence of the church in the mentality of people after a long period of evangelizing during the colonial regime. Of course, it is impossible to ignore the function of the subjects as interpreters of the speeches and not only as passive receptors of them; however this aspect is not treated in this work, but that is part of the searching proposal.