Is Latin America Turning Protestant

Protestants are making phenomenal gains in Latin America. This is the first general account of the evangelical challenge to Catholic predominance, with special attention to the collision with liberation theology in Central America. David Stoll reinterprets the "invasion of the sects" as an evangelical awakening, part of a wider religious reformation which could redefine the basis of Latin American politics.

The diverse case studies in this volume explore facets of the Protestant movement in Central and South America, such as the role of women, the connection with Catholic mysticism, the politics of supposedly conservative evangelical misssionaries, and the implications for existing patterns of authority.

The purpose of this study is to focus on the intersection of religion and politics. Do different religions result in different politics? More specifically, are there significant contrasts between the political attitudes and behavior of Catholics and Protestants in Latin America?

A thorough overview of Latin America's history, culture, social reality, & spiritual dynamics from an evangelical point of view. The challenges of post-conciliar Roman Catholicism, liberation theology, the charismatic movement contextualization, & social responsibility are explored. Taylor examines the implications of this information for missions in Latin America.

In Like Leaven in the Dough: Protestant Social Thought in Latin America, 1920-1950, Carlos Mondrag n offers an introduction to the ideas of notable Protestant writers in Latin America during the first half of the twentieth century. Despite their national and denominational differences, Mondrag n argues that Protestant intellectuals developed a coherent set of ideas about freedom of religion and thought, economic justice, militarism, and national identity. This was a period when Protestants comprised a very small proportion of Latin America's total population; their very marginality compelled them to think creatively about their identity and place in Latin American society. Accused of embracing a foreign faith, these Protestants struggled to define national identities that had room for religious diversity and liberty of conscience. Marginalized and persecuted themselves, Latin America's Protestants articulated a liberating message decades before the appearance of Catholic Liberation Theology.

Collects nine previously published essays that consider the entire region and so provide a more comparative view of the range of religious experience than studies that focus on a particular country. They also range widely across religion, covering not only the dominant Catholicism, but also popular Indian and African religious forms and new elements such as Protestantism and Mormonism. The collection is suitable for a course. It is not indexed. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

In Latin America, evangelical Protestantism poses an increasing challenge to Catholicism's long-established religious hegemony. At the same time, the region is among the most generally democratic outside the West, despite often being labeled as 'underdeveloped.' Scholars disagree whether Latin American Protestantism, as a fast-growing and predominantly lower-class phenomenon, will encourage a political culture that is repressive and authoritarian, or if it will have democratizing effects. Drawing from a range of sources, Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Latin America provides case studies of five countries: Brazil, Peru, Mexico, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. The contributors, mainly scholars based in Latin America, bring first hand-knowledge to their chapters. The result is a groundbreaking work that explores the relationship between Latin American evangelicalism and politics, its influences, manifestations, and prospects for the future. Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Latin America is one of four volumes in the series Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in the Global South, which seeks to answer the question: What happens when a revivalist religion based on scriptural orthodoxy participates in the volatile politics of the Third World? At a time when the global-political impact of another revivalist and scriptural religion - Islam - fuels vexed debate among analysts the world over, these volumes offer an unusual comparative perspective on a critical issue: the often combustible interaction of resurgent religion and the developing world's unstable politics.