Popular Religiosity As an Internal Dynamic for the Local Church: The Case of Suriname

AbstractThis essay reflects two aspects of being a local church. One regards the very way of life of a given people from a Christian perspective, a life being colored by what we call 'popular religiosity'. The fundamental question for this essay is to assess how popular religiosity shapes the existence of a local church. The other aspect considers an institutionalised form of a local church having notions, such as inculturation of the Gospel and the evangelization of cultures, as its hallmarks. At the end of this essay, it will be our contention that some forms of popular religiosity are imbued with an important internal dynamic which give meaning to the local church. This is interesting, because it creates the opportunity to be a local church in a way that goes against centralized and prescribed concepts of the church.