New Worlds: A Religious History of Latin America

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)