Co-existing through Opposition

Abstract Beyond ethnographic portrayals of religious competition as conducive to rupture and separation, this article shows forms intradenominational competitive coexistence that allow for both the social reproduction community faith change innovation. In a Spanish village, Catholic congregants compete not only secure worldly resources such priestly time or church-owned spaces, but also over legitimacy differing understandings human–divine relationships role religion in postsecular society. Here, involves epistemic posturing, denial priest's power arbiter, appeal state facilitator. Intradenominational between iconoclasts ‘traditional’ Catholics redefines complex competing theologies, even it courts schism difference.