Abstract. – In this article I consider the intersection between ethnic politics and religion through an examination of the life history of Padre Tomas Garcia, an important, if overlooked, voice in Maya activism and religious culture. Prior to his death in 2009, Padre Tomas pioneered the theology of inculturation in Guatemala, seeking to “Mayanise” Catholicism at both the level of community and, in certain respects, the hierarchy as well. From the early 1970s, he combined a culturalist outlook (novel at the time) with a more class-based critique of ethnic oppression
in Guatemala (inspired by liberation theology), and was a sharp critic of the state’s genocidal counter-insurgency. Since the 1990s, however, Padre Tomas found himself isolated from both his own increasingly conservative Church hierarchy and from some prominent Maya ethnic and religious leaders, who have found a “hybrid” Maya-Catholic identity difficult to reconcile with their vision of ethnicity and politics. His experience, especially when compared to that of some of his contemporaries, highlights the ambiguous place of religion, purity, and hybridity in projects of modernity and secularism, which I analyse drawing on models developed by Talal Asad. [Guatemala, Maya, inculturation, ethnic politics, hybridity, modernity]