New Worlds: A Religious History of Latin America
ISBN: 9780300183740
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / Yale University Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Latin America -- Church history; Latin America -- Religion -- History;

It is an ongoing concern of organized religion that the intellectual and cultural advancement of societies has made the laity more difficult to control, more resistant to direction from formal religious authorities. History shows that where religion has found a foothold among indigenous societies, it often comes at the price of violating the cultural and societal mores of those societies. Lynch's trenchant and mature study of the development of the Christian religion in Latin America is a wonderfully realized account of the political and social forces that affected the spiritual formation of these diverse and creative cultures. Catholicism naturally plays a large role in the story; its uneasy alliances with the sometimes coercive governments of Latin America constitute a large part of the tension and drama of this history. Although evangelicalism and Pentecostalism have arisen as competitors to the Catholic Church, radical leftist liberation theologies have posed an even greater challenge to Rome's authority. The quest for religious clarity in Latin America is far from over. This is a superb retelling of a story that needs to be studied. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

John Lynch is Emeritus Professor of Latin American History and former director of the Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London. He is the author of more than a dozen books on Latin American topics. He lives in London.

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