Christianity in Latin America provides a complete overview of over 500 years of the history of Christianity in the ‘New World’. The inclusion of German research in this book is an important asset to the Anglo-American research area, in disclosing information that was hitherto not available in English. This work will present the reader with a very good survey into the history of Christianity on the South American continent, based on a tremendous breadth of literature.

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.

In his introduction, Paul Sigmund states that the growing religious pluralism in Latin America is one of several reasons why the trend toward democracy that has marked the last two decades may endure. Nevertheless, Sigmund notes that this new pluralism, particularly the growth of Protestantism, has led to tensions that must be resolved. Religious Freedom and Evangelization in Latin America provides an indispensable resource for understanding the range of issues confronting the continent, offering Catholic as well as Protestant perspectives, and trenchant analyses of the situation in different countries, including Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Cuba.