Latin American Evangelicalism Research Articles

Latin American Megachurches in a Changing Culture: An Integrative Review and an Exploration of Future Research Directions

Several review articles about megachurch studies have been published recently concentrating their work on USA, Europe, and other parts of the world, with just a few references about Latin American megachurches. For that reason, this article aims to identify some of the characteristics of Latin American Evangelical megachurches by looking at relevant literature, especially that produced in the region, in Spanish and Portuguese, which is usually overlooked by researchers in the Global North. Since this research field is still limited in Latin America, areas where further work is necessary are identified. Three general catalysts for the emergence of megachurches in the region, church growth methodologies, Pentecostalization, and theologies of growth, serve as guides to organize the review process. The discussion shows that several potential areas of research in a variety of fields such as theology, ecclesiology, organizational theory, leadership, gender studies, and ethics, are proposed from the review.

A Gospel for the Poor: Global Social Christianity and the Latin American Evangelical Left

A Gospel for the Poor: Global Social Christianity and the Latin American Evangelical Left

Guatemala's Catholic Revolution: A History of Religious and Social Reform, 1920–1968 by Bonar L. Hernández Sandoval, and : A Gospel for the Poor: Global Social Christianity and the Latin American Evangelical Left by David C. Kirkpatrick

Guatemala's Catholic Revolution: A History of Religious and Social Reform, 1920–1968 by Bonar L. Hernández Sandoval, and : A Gospel for the Poor: Global Social Christianity and the Latin American Evangelical Left by David C. Kirkpatrick

A gospel for the poor. Global social Christianity and the Latin American Evangelical left. By David C. Kirkpatrick. Pp. x + 244 incl. 10 figs. Philadelphia, Pa: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. £45. 978 081 225094 7

A gospel for the poor. Global social Christianity and the Latin American Evangelical left. By David C. Kirkpatrick. Pp. x + 244 incl. 10 figs. Philadelphia, <scp>Pa</scp>: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. £45. 978 081 225094 7

A Gospel for the Poor. Global Social Christianity and the Latin American Evangelical left, by David Kirkpatrick

A Gospel for the Poor. Global Social Christianity and the Latin American Evangelical left, by David Kirkpatrick

A few ruminations about the status of the church in Latin America

Evangelicals have been present in Latin America for more than a century. The article describes some historical developments as well as current challenges and opportunities evangelicals are facing in Latin America. The article explores some inherited traits of Latin American evangelical churches and the received theology. The narrative includes details about the process toward a more indigenous leadership of the churches, and explanations for the more recent growth. Latin American evangelicals have to decide how to live out the Gospel in the twenty-first century in ways that will increase not only their numbers but also their relevance.

:Reason to Believe: Cultural Agency in Latin American Evangelicalism. Smilde David. The Anthropology of Christianity, No. 3. Berkeley, CA, and London, UK: University of California Press, 2007. xv + 262 pp. (Cloth US$85.00; Paper US$34.95; EBook US$34.95)

:<i>Reason to Believe: Cultural Agency in Latin American Evangelicalism</i>. Smilde David. The Anthropology of Christianity, No. 3. Berkeley, CA, and London, UK: University of California Press, 2007. xv + 262 pp. (Cloth US$85.00; Paper US$34.95; EBook US$34.95)

From Wrestling with Monsters to Wrestling with God: Masculinities, "Spirituality," and the Group-ization of Religious Life in Northern Costa Rica

This piece explores support group movement's role in restructuring Latin American and contributing to trans-denominational and trans-secular spread of reformation of machismo—Elizabeth Brusco's (2010) name for Latin American evangelicalism's focus on transforming men and masculinity. Using ethnographic data from two years of fieldwork in an urbanizing area of northern Costa Rica and life history interviews with men from three churches and three men's groups there, this article argues that a region-wide popular discourse about a crisis of masculinity/machismo and a crisis of family has broadened appeal of efforts to transform men and masculinity—not only among most churches, but especially among a proliferating number of trans-denominational and non-religious men's groups that are modeled implicitly on all-male Alcoholics Anonymous groups, which are extraordinarily popular throughout Latin America. This essay's argument borrows from Wuthnow's analysis of the restructuring of [North] American religion under influence of support group movement (1988, 1994a, 1994b, 1998), but it also employs an historiographic approach, exploring origins of this restructuring of Latin American in same Methodist model of social organization that has driven evangelical growth throughout Americas (and men's conversions especially) during times of social change and male social dislocation (Martin 1990). The conversion histories of two Catholic men are used to illustrate how it is participation in these groups, rather than formal conversion, that transforms many men's lives, their gender identities, and their relationships with others. Finally, possible contributions of this research to anthropological studies of religion, ethics, and morality are explored, in particular role that models of social organization might play in spread of new ethical practices, discourses, or identity models.

‘Freedom from Fundamentalism’: Christian Brethrenism and the Rise of Latin American Protestant Evangelical Social Christianity

ABSTRACT This article sheds light on the issue of agency in the making of world Christianity at the level of theological discourses. Within a wider context of persistent paternalism, British Brethren missionaries progressively released leadership to local Latin Americans, in large part due to their congregational polity, which lacked paid clergy and hierarchy. The Brethren tradition of pioneering publishing projects created channels through which Latin American evangelicals wrote their own theologies and developed a new brand of Protestant social Christianity. This allowed Latin American Protestant evangelicals to diffuse social Christian ideas to a wider constituency. Thus, while Christian Brethrenism provided raw ingredients for the fundamentalist movement in the north, it should also be credited with providing a perceived escape hatch from it in the south. This article breaks fresh ground by paying particular attention to unstudied personal papers, archival documents, and bilingual interviews with many of the main players.

Latin American Migration, Evangelical Christianity and Gender in Italy

Protestant Evangelical churches are expanding in the global South. In Europe too, while Christian confessions such as Catholicism and ‘mainline’ Protestant churches are losing worshippers, migration-driven Evangelical churches, especially Pentecostals, are growing. This paper investigates the role of faith and Evangelical churches in helping migrants to negotiate class demotion and integration, attain respectability and resist racialization. The paper applies a gender perspective to the study of the narratives and practices of Latin American men and women who are members of an Evangelical church in Italy. It finds that the church provides its members with gendered norms, enabling men and women to identify with valued models of feminine/masculine Christian morality and respectability. Through religious participation, migrants members may dissociate from dominant stigmatising representations of Latin American drunkards, ‘gangs’, ‘broken families’ and ‘bad mothers’ as well as from Pentecostal religious practices, which are regarded as ‘unorthodox’ in Italy. The paper also identifies generational differences in the way in which migrants make use of Evangelical religion to resist racism. Finally, the analysis points to ambivalent processes of ‘domestication’ of migrant men and of migrant women’s agency, which combine with an overall resilient gendered asymmetry in the distribution of power in the church.

Latin American Evangelical Theology in the 1970’s: The Golden Decade, written by Daniel Salinas

Latin American Evangelical Theology in the 1970’s: The Golden Decade, written by Daniel Salinas

South American Evangelicals’ Re-conquest of Europe

This article focuses on networks of South-American preachers, led by charismatic characters such as the Argentinean pastor Carlos Annacondia, who export themselves not only to countries within the Americas but also to Europe. The prevailing justification among Latin-American Evangelicals for undertaking this ‘reverse mission’ (Freston) is in the view that especially the ‘old’ Roman Catholic Europe is spiritually ‘cooled down’ and that the time is ripe for re-evangelizing it. This study analyzes the way in which network-based charismatic entrepreneurship has encouraged transnational imaginaries of re-conquering Europe spiritually, more specifically in terms of the meanings the members of these networks attribute to the ‘spiritual re-conquest’. I conclude by suggesting that, similar to flows from other regions in the global South, such as Africa, the much vaunted ‘reverse mission’ to Europe is vested with meanings that transcend the spiritual re-conquest as such. In the case of Latin America, this article argues, the chief motivation is symbolic: to strengthen the status of local churches and their leaders against the backdrop of a highly competitive religious market on the Latin-American sub-continent.

Misión Integral and Progressive Evangelicalism: The Latin American Influence on the North American Emerging Church

Though commonly identified with the conservative politics of the Christian Right, over the past decade evangelicals in the United States have increasingly embraced a more politically progressive range of social concerns. Often treated as something wholly new, this trend actually has roots in Latin American evangelicalism from the 1970s. Latin American theologian/practitioners like C. René Padilla and Samuel Escobar of the Latin American Theological Fellowship, promoted a holistic vision of the church’s mission, what they called misión integral, seeking to integrate both evangelism and socio-political involvement on behalf of the poor and oppressed. These Latin American thinkers played a direct role in the rise of progressive evangelicalism in the United States in the 1970s. While overshadowed for a time by the Christian Right, the concept of misión integral and its Latin American exponents has continued to influence the resurgence of progressive social concerns among North American evangelicals in the first decade of the 21st century, and especially those associated with the emerging church movement.

Book Review: Reason to Believe: Cultural Agency in Latin American Evangelicalism

Book Review: Reason to Believe: Cultural Agency in Latin American Evangelicalism

Book Review: Latin American Evangelical Theology in the 1970s: The Golden Decade

Book Review: Latin American Evangelical Theology in the 1970s: The Golden Decade

Reason to Believe: Cultural Agency in Latin American Evangelicalism

Numerous studies have examined the explosive growth of Evangelicalism in parts of Latin America. David Smilde's book—grounded in several years of ethnographic field work in Venezuela—adds to our growing knowledge of this phenomenon by focusing on the practical reasons for conversion among impoverished men in Caracas. He documents how many of his respondents turned to Evangelicalism to cope with substance abuse, marital conflicts, and economic difficulties. Since drinking, drug use, and gambling are forbidden among Evangelicals, new converts find themselves in a social context where there is strong support for refraining from these activities. Moreover, their sense of masculinity is undercut by economic marginalization, which is compounded by Venezuela's macho culture. Evangelicalism, therefore, may be particularly appealing, since its emphasis on male headship in the family offers an alternative masculinity that reinforces men's authority. Perhaps most interesting is the author's discussion of how Evangelical men are able to absolve themselves from neighborhood vendettas since Evangelicals are not permitted to engage in violence and, therefore, they are no longer perceived as threats to their rivals. This religious identity even appears to deter street muggings since Venezuelan popular Catholicism grants respect to sacred items such as the Bibles Evangelicals often carry with them. Thus, the author notes, “a Bible-toting Evangelical is an image that frequently instills enough insecurity in would-be attackers to prevent an assault” (71).

Reason to Believe: Cultural Agency in Latin American Evangelicalism ‐ by Smilde, David

Reason to Believe: Cultural Agency in Latin American Evangelicalism ‐ by Smilde, David

Reason to Believe: Cultural Agency in Latin American Evangelicalism By David Smilde University of California Press. 2007. 262 pages. $55 cloth, $21.95 paper

Reason to Believe: Cultural Agency in Latin American Evangelicalism By David Smilde University of California Press. 2007. 262 pages. $55 cloth, $21.95 paper

Reason to Believe: Cultural Agency in Latin American Evangelicalism byDavid Smilde

Reason to Believe: Cultural Agency in Latin American Evangelicalism by<i>David Smilde</i>

Latin American Evangelicals' Attitudes about the United States' Role in the World

Public opinion studies in the United States reveal significant evangelical Protestant support for many U.S. foreign policies. Evangelical Protestantism is growing at a rapid pace in Latin America. Given the historical and contemporary influence of U.S. evangelical Protestants in Latin America (via missionary efforts, denominational ties, etc.), some scholars presume a uniformity of outlook on U.S. policy among evangelicals in the two regions. A broad-based analysis of public opinion in Latin America evaluating links between religious affiliation and support for the U.S. role in the world reveals that, as indicated by recent groundbreaking scholarship, Latin American evangelicals are not more inclined than others to support U.S. foreign policy.