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. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1990. 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 reinterpret

Although church historians often call the 19th century the Great Century of Protestant mission, for Latin America it was the 20th century that was the great century of Protestant growth and expansion. The 20th century witnessed vast societal changes and the realization of systemic poverty and injustice as well as the exponential growth, pentecostalization, and diversification of Latin American Protestantism. Latin American Protestant Theology emerged during this century of change. This text provides an introduction to Latin American Protestant Theology by engaging its dominant theological streams (Liberal, Evangelical, and Pentecostal) and how they understand themselves through the lens of mission. The text offers both a critique of the Christendom cartography that is dominant in Latin American Protestant Theology as well as suggestions for how to move towards a transformative theology of mission. The primary intention of this text is to offer an informed outline and analysis of the theological landscape of Latin American Protestantism. The secondary intention of this book is to note the contributions as well as deficiencies of the streams of LAPT in the hope to signal a possible path towards the development of an integral, transformative, contextual, and decolonial theological voice.

Latin America, where 90% of the population is Christian and where nearly 40% of the world's Catholics reside, has its own unique brand of Christianity. The Oxford Handbook of Latin American Christianity offers a survey of Latin American Christianity from thirty-three leading scholars. The volume systematically introduces and examines dramatic shifts in Catholic and Protestant Christianity over the course of several centuries. Its four sections explore the emergence of colonial Christianity, its institutional and popular evolution, and its dynamic role the region's contemporary developments.

Guatemala has undergone an unprecedented conversion to Protestantism since the 1970s, so that thirty percent of its people now belong to Protestant churches, more than in any other Latin American nation. To illuminate some of the causes of this phenomenon, Virginia Garrard-Burnett here offers the first history of Protestantism in a Latin American country, focusing specifically on the rise of Protestantism within the ethnic and political history of Guatemala. Garrard-Burnett finds that while Protestant missionaries were early valued for their medical clinics, schools, translation projects, and especially for the counterbalance they provided against Roman Catholicism, Protestantism itself attracted few converts in Guatemala until the 1960s. Since then, however, the militarization of the state, increasing public violence, and the "globalization" of Guatemalan national politics have undermined the traditional ties of kinship, custom, and belief that gave Guatemalans a sense of identity, and many are turning to Protestantism to recreate a sense of order, identity, and belonging.

The Cambridge History of Religions in Latin America covers religious history in Latin America from pre-Conquest times until the present. This publication is important; first, because of the historical and contemporary centrality of religion in the life of Latin America; second, for the rapid process of religious change which the region is undergoing; and third, for the region's religious distinctiveness in global comparative terms, which contributes to its importance for debates over religion, globalization, and modernity. Reflecting recent currents of scholarship, this volume addresses the breadth of Latin American religion, including religions of the African diaspora, indigenous spiritual expressions, non-Christian traditions, new religious movements, alternative spiritualities, and secularizing tendencies.

"Martin, a leading authority in the sociology of religion, here looks at a recent and largely unstudied phenomenon: the rapid growth of evangelicalism in Latin America, in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Central America, and the Caribbean. This growth is compared to similar growth in South Korea and Africa. Martin discusses spiritual gifts and conversions in terms of the changing socioeconomic situation, carefully analyzing the relationship of Anglo-American and Latin American cultures. He notes especially the appeal of Pentecostalism to the newly urbanized poor, to whom it provides a nonintellectual style and a protective network where skills in self-expression and leadership can be developed. An excellent scholarly analysis that is accessible to the average reader and provides a good bibliography as well ..."--C. Robert Nixon, M.L.S., Lafayette, Ind. Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

How do presidential candidates in new democracies choose their campaign strategies, and what strategies do they adopt? In contrast to the claim that campaigns around the world are becoming more similar to one another, Taylor Boas argues that new democracies are likely to develop nationally specific approaches to electioneering through a process called success contagion. The theory of success contagion holds that the first elected president to complete a successful term in office establishes a national model of campaign strategy that other candidates will adopt in the future. He develops this argument for the cases of Chile, Brazil, and Peru, drawing on interviews with campaign strategists and content analysis of candidates' television advertising from the 1980s through 2011. The author concludes by testing the argument in ten other new democracies around the world, demonstrating substantial support for the theory.