Political Violence and Religious Change in Ayacucho, Peru

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During the Peruvian civil war in the 1980s and 1990s, evangelical and predominantly Pentecostal churches experienced enormous growth in the Andean regions highly affected by the violence. Drawing on field research, this chapter sheds light on the role these churches played and still play in the aftermath of the conflict in Ayacucho (Perú), where survivors until today do not only have to deal with economic devastation and the loss of tens of thousands of human lives but are also confronted with a complex social landscape where lines between victims, perpetrators, and bystanders have often been blurred. Although evangelical churches did not establish any institutional mechanisms regarding the violence and its effects, they provided their adherents with ways to deal with their experiences and to work on local processes of reconciliation: conversion gave former perpetrators a chance to repent credibly. For victims, evangelical belief and theology, especially the practice of forgiveness, allowed them to explore alternative pathways to justice and to manage to cope with daily life in a complex and unsafe environment. As evangelical churches seem to offer people in difficult life situations something they cannot find in existing institutions, parallels can be drawn to developments in Colombia and Central America, giving a broader picture of these cultural transitions in the region.