The Oxford Handbook of Latin American Christianity

By 2025, Latin America's population of observant Christians will be the largest in the world. Nonetheless, studies examining the exponential growth of global Christianity tend to overlook this region, focusing instead on Africa and Asia. Research on Christianity in Latin America provides a core point of departure for understanding the growth and development of Christianity in the "Global South."

In The Oxford Handbook of Latin American Christianity an interdisciplinary contingent of scholars examines Latin American Christianity in all of its manifestations from the colonial to the contemporary period. The essays here provide an accessible background to understanding Christianity in Latin America. Spanning the era from indigenous and African-descendant people's conversion to and transformation of Catholicism during the colonial period through the advent of Liberation Theology in the 1960s and conversion to Pentecostalism and Charismatic Catholicism, The Oxford Handbook of Latin American Christianity is the most complete introduction to the history and trajectory of this important area of modern Christianity.

Susan Fitzpatrick-Behrens is Professor of Latin American History and Chair of the History Department at California State University, Northridge. Her publications include The Maryknoll Catholic Mission in Peru (2012).

David Thomas Orique, O.P., is Associate Professor of Colonial and Modern Latin American History, Iberian Atlantic World History, and the Director of Latina/o and Latin American Studies at Providence College. His publications include To Heaven or Hell: An Introduction to the Soteriology of Bartolome de Las Casas (2016).

Virginia Garrard is a faculty member at Tulane University. Her most recent book, co-authored with Peter Henderson and Bryan McCann, is History of Modern Latin America in the Modern World (OUP, 2018).

List of Contributors

Introduction
Susan Fitzpatrick-Behrens, Virginia Garrard, and David T. Orique

Section I: Christianity Comes to the New World
1. Making of Colonial Christianity
John F. Schwaller

2. Time and Christianity in Early Latin America
Matthew O'Hara

3. Tridentine Theology and its Contact with the New World
David M. Lantigua

4. The Sacred Art of Counter-Conquest: Material Christianity in Latin America
Jennifer Scheper Hughes

5. Indigenous Christianities: Commensuration, (De)Colonization, and Cultural Production in Latin America
Andrew Orta

6. (Un)Making Christianity: The African Diaspora in Slavery and Freedom
Rachel Sarah O'Toole

7. Millenarian Movements
Carole A. Myscofski

8. The Course of Catholic History in Latin America
Fernando Cervantes


Section II: The Church Militant: Catholic Political Activism
9. Liberation Theology: History and Trends
Phillip Berryman

10. Catholicism, Revolution, and Counter-Revolution in Twentieth-Century Latin America
Stephen J. C. Andes

11. Bishops, Priests, and CELAM
Erika Helgen

12. Activist Christians, the Human Rights Movement and Democratization in Latin America
Nick Rowell

13. Prophetic Martyrdom in Modern Latin America
Edward T. Brett

14. The Ambivalence of Catholic Politics in Latin America: Ideology, Interests, and Institutions
Amy Edmonds

15. Rights, Religion, and Violence at Mexico's Borders
Christine Kovic

Section III: A Transnational Spirit: Missionaries and Charism
16. Pentecostalism and Neopentecostalism in Latin America: Two Case Studies
Virginia Garrard and Justin M. Doran

17. Conversion Processes and Social Networks in Latin America
Henri Gooren

18. A New Pentecost: Conversion in the Caribbean
Luis N. Rivera-Pagán

19. Protestant Innovative Evangelizing to Oral Cultures in Guatemala
Rachel M. McCleary

20. Liberation Theology's Spiritual Legacy for the Latin American Church
Harold Segura

21. Preferential Option for the Spirit: The Catholic Charismatic Renewal
Brenda Carranza

22. Alternative Christianities: Mormons, Seventh-day Adventists, and Jehovah's Witnesses
Ronald Lawson, Kenneth Xydias, Ryan T. Cragun

23. Mainline Protestantism in Latin America
Joel Morales Cruz

Section IV: Contemporary Christianity in Latin America
24. Christianity and Ecology in Latin America
Lois Ann Lorentzen

25. Mary, Mother of Jesus: Consolatrice of the Americas
Jeanette Rodriguez

26. Marshalling the Faithful: Popular Religiosity and Institutional Life in Modernizing Mexico
Edward Wright-Ríos

27. Catholic Laity in the Latin American Church
Robert S. Pelton, C.S.C.

Complete Bibliography
Index