Predominantly Catholic for centuries, Latin America is still largely Catholic today, but the religious continuity in the region masks great changes that have taken place in the past five decades. In fact, it would be fair to say that Latin American Christianity has been transformed definitively in the years since the Second Vatican Council. Religious change has not been obvious because its transformation has not been the sudden and massive growth of a new religion, as in Africa and Asia. It has been rather a simultaneous revitalization and fragmentation that threatened, awakened, and ultimately brought to a greater maturity a dormant and parochial Christianity. New challenges from modernity, especially in the form of Protestantism and Marxism, ultimately brought forth new life. In The Rebirth of Latin American Christianity, Todd Hartch examines the changes that have swept across Latin America in the last fifty years, and situates them in the context of the growth of Christianity in the global South.

Winner of the 2013 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award Christianity in Latin America provides a complete overview of more than 500 years of the history of Christianity in the ‘New World’. This book specifically focuses on conquest, exploitation of slave- and forced labor, mission, the formation of the Catholic Church after the council of Trent, Inquisition, popular religiosity, and postcolonial state formation. Attention is also given to the emergence of Protestant immigrant and mission churches, modern forms of exploitation of indigenous and Afro-American workers, Catholic-Protestant antagonisms from the beginning of ecumenism, liberation theology, the proliferation of Pentecostal churches, and the military dictatorships in the second half of the 20th Century. The inclusion of German research in this book is an important asset to the Anglo-American research area, in which information is disclosed that was previously unavailable in English. This book will present the reader with required handbook material on the history of Christianity on the South American continent, based on a tremendous breadth of literature. During his years as Technical Director in Central America, the author studied Mesoamerican Indian Cultures as well as the social conditions of the impoverished sectors of the population. This book is a compilation of the author’s extensive research while a lecturer of church history at the Theological Faculty of São Leopoldo (Brazil), as well as during visits to nearly all countries of Latin America, and as a visiting professor in Portugal, Brazil, Nicaragua, Cuba, Argentine and Peru. Thorough research was also completed while lecturing at the University of Cologne (Germany) on Iberian and Latin American History, as well as during his term as professorial chair of Richard Konetzke and Günter Kahle. This publication is an amalgamation of the knowledge and expertise the author gained during research from his entire career.

This series offers a comparative perspective on a critical issue - the often combustible interaction of resurgent religion and the developing world's unstable politics. This volume considers the case of Latin America, where evengelical Protestantism is increasingly challenging the historical Catholic hegemony.

This volume examines the lives of more than thirty-five key personalities in Latin American law with a focus on how their Christian faith was a factor in molding the evolution of law in their countries and the region. The book is a significant contribution to our ability to understand the work and perspectives of jurists and their effect on legal development in Latin America. The individuals selected for study exhibit wide-ranging areas of expertise from private law and codification, through national public law and constitutional law, to international developments that left their mark on the region and the world. The chapters discuss the jurists within their historical, intellectual, and political context. The editors selected jurists after extensive consultation with legal historians in various countries of the region looking at the jurist’s particular merits, contributions to law in general, religious perspective, and importance within the specific country and period under consideration. Giving the work a diversity of international and methodological perspectives, the chapters have been written by distinguished legal scholars and historians from Latin America and around the world. The collection will appeal to scholars, lawyers, and students interested in the interplay between law and religion. Political, social, legal, and religious historians among other readers will find, for the first time in English, authoritative treatments of the region’s essential legal thinkers and authors. Students and other who may not read Spanish will appreciate these clear, accessible, and engaging English studies of the region’s great jurists.

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.

This extraordinary book encompasses the time period from the first Christian evangelists' arrival in Latin America to the dictators of the late twentieth century. With unsurpassed knowledge of Latin American history, John Lynch sets out to explore the reception of Christianity by native peoples and how it influenced their social and religious lives as the centuries passed. As attentive to modern times as to the colonial period, Lynch also explores the extent to which Indian religion and ancestral ways survived within the new Christian culture.The book follows the development of religious culture over time by focusing on peak periods of change: the response of religion to the Enlightenment, the emergence of the Church from the wars of independence, the Romanization of Latin American religion as the papacy overtook the Spanish crown in effective control of the Church, the growing challenge of liberalism and the secular state, and in the twentieth century, military dictators' assaults on human rights. Throughout the narrative, Lynch develops a number of special themes and topics. Among these are the Spanish struggle for justice for Indians, the Church's position on slavery, the concept of popular religion as distinct from official religion, and the development of liberation theology.

From conquistadores and explorers to Protestants, peasants and priests, eyewitnesses give narrative to the triumphs and tragedies of Latin America's religious development.

The expanded, updated edition of a classic reference source--the comprehensive survey of the status of thje world's largest religion in 238 countries. Many tables, charts, diagrams, maps, photographs, and a rich text present a unmatched look at 33,800 Christian denominations, 12,000 dioceses, 5,000 missions, and other groups--all -set against a detailed historical, political, social, cultural, demographic, background.

A comprehensive introduction to the history and theory behind the study of Pentecostalism, the fastest growing religious movement worldwide.

This landmark work constitutes a complete historical, sociological, and political view of religion as a cultural expression in Latin America. Parker shows how, beginning with the arrival of the conquistadors, religion has played a transcendent role in shaping the national cultures of the region, particularly its popular cultures, and continues to do so. Parker argues that while capitalistic modernization and urbanization do lead to secularization, this process is not linear or progressive. Secularization in Latin America does not destroy its religious fabric but rather transforms it, accentuating its pluralistic character. Christianity, and particularly Roman Catholicism, has influenced Latin American identity and culture most profoundly. But it has by no means been the sole influence, nor has Christianity itself remained unchanged in the process. As a product of history and capitalistic modernization, the trait of religion that emerges most clearly is that of cultural and religious pluralism.