Protestantism

For much of its history, Protestantism, long associated with the people and society of North America and northern Europe, has been a foreign religion in Latin America. In colonial times, Protestants (called evangélicos or "evangelicals," regardless of denomination) in Spanish America were subject to prosecution by the Spanish Inquisition. Long after the Inquisition was abolished, Latin Americans continued to think of Protestantism as alien and hostile to their own faith and culture. It is only in recent decades that this perception has ceased to be a factor in Protestant church growth in the region.

After most of Latin America gained its independence in the 1820s, the liberal leadership of the new nations legalized religious pluralism, but most nations retained Roman Catholicism as the state religion. In the early years of the nineteenth century, Protestantism in Latin America remained confined to the foreign population. The Anglican church established a stronghold along the Atlantic ("Mosquito") coast of Central America, from what was then British Honduras to Costa Rica. With its diocesan seat in Jamaica, the Anglican church served British Protestants who lived and worked in the Mosquito area and in Belize, which were both claimed by Britain at that time. The Anglican church was also established in Argentina, Chile, and Brazil during this period for British subjects who were engaged in commercial and consular activities in these countries. Likewise, the Prussian Evangelical church was established in Brazil and Chile for German immigrants to those nations. Neither the Anglican church nor the German churches proselytized the native Roman Catholics, and their influence was little felt outside the foreign communities.

Spurred by the growth of the Methodist movement, a new spirit of evangelism spread through Britain and the United States in the last years of the eighteenth century. By the early 1800s, this enthusiasm had translated into mission work. The British and Foreign Bible Society and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, two English agencies, first sent Bible sellers, known as colporteurs, to Latin America to evangelize actively in the 1820s. The first agent was a Scot named James Thompson, who in 1821 went to Argentina, where he established a school. Thompson was invited to Chile by Bernardo O'Higgins, and he eventually also worked in Peru. Thompson was succeeded by another agent of the society, Allan Gardiner, who attempted without success to convert the Indians living in Argentina's Patagonia.

In northern Latin America, Francisco Penzotti, an agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society, sold Bibles throughout the Central American isthmus from 1839 until the mid-1840s. Another of the society's agents, Frederick Crowe, was active in British Honduras and Guatemala until his efforts attracted the attention of the pro-Catholic Conservative leader of Guatemala, Rafael Carrera, who expelled Crowe from the country in 1846. Due to private and public opposition to their work, the impact of these early colporteurs was minimal.

It was not until the last decades of the nineteenth century that foreign missionaries came to Latin America on a permanent basis. Some of the earliest missionaries to the region were members of the German Pietist sect, the Church of the United Brethren (Moravians), who came to the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua in 1849 to evangelize the non-Christian Miskito Indians. Elsewhere, traditional denominations in the United States such as the Methodists, the Presbyterians, and the Congregationalists sent missionaries to work among Spanish-speaking Catholics and, less commonly, among non-Spanish-speaking indigenous groups. They were later joined by non-denominational mission agencies such as the Central American Mission, which was active primarily in Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua, and the Christian Missionary Alliance, which worked in the Southern Cone. In addition to founding churches, the missionaries established schools, hospitals, vocational training institutes, and translation projects. The impact of these efforts was most apparent in those countries where the missionaries worked with the tacit approval of the nation's government, such as in Guatemala, Chile, and Brazil.

In many countries, the liberal governments that came to power in the 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s generally endorsed Protestant work. Liberal leaders such as Guatemala's Justo Rufino Barrios encouraged Presbyterian missions in that country in the hope that they would engender a work ethic in the nation's people, inspire economic development, and act as a political counterweight to the Catholic majority, which generally opposed liberal reforms. Nowhere was the political link between Protestantism and liberalism so apparent as in Mexico, where Benito Juárez endorsed the creation of a Mexican innovation known as the Church of Jesus. This was a "reformed" Catholic Church, where supporters of Juárez's Reforma could seek a spiritual home outside of the conservative Roman Catholic Church.

Despite the government support that Protestant work received in some countries of Latin America, Protestantism remained on the fringe of Latin American society and attracted relatively few native converts until the 1960s. As recently as 1970, the Latin American nation with the largest Protestant population was Uruguay, which then claimed an evangelical population of slightly less than 6 percent.

Beginning in the early 1960s, Latin perceptions of Protestantism changed, and the conversion rate in the region increased dramatically. This stemmed in part from the emergence of "national" denominations, which had no ties to the old mission system. Protestant churches also benefited from changes within the Catholic Church resulting from the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), which precipitated the exodus of many Latin Americans from the Church. Scholars suggest that social and economic factors, including urban migration, civil strife, unemployment, the decline of the traditional peasant community, and the breakdown of customary kinship networks in Latin America have all been influential in turning Latin Americans toward Protestant churches.

By far, the greatest trend in Protestant growth has been the rise of Pentecostal denominations, which emphasize the manifestations of the "gifts of the Holy Spirit," such as faith healing and speaking in tongues. In virtually all countries with a sizable Protestant population (including Guatemala, where Protestants count for an estimated one-third of the national population), the vast majority of churches are Pentecostal. Between 1960 and 1990, Protestant membership doubled in Chile, Paraguay, Venezuela, Panama, and Haiti. In the same time period, the evangelical population tripled in Argentina, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic, and quadrupled in Brazil and Puerto Rico. The most significant growth has been in El Salvador, Costa Rica, Peru, and Bolivia, where the percentage of Protestants has quintupled since 1960, and in Ecuador, Colombia, and Honduras, where the converted population in 1990 was six times what it was in 1960.

See alsoCatholic Church: The Colonial Period; Moravian Church.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Emilio Willems, Followers of the New Faith (1967).

Christian Lalive D'epinay, The Refuge of the Masses (1969).

Wilton M. Nelson, El Protestantismo en Centro América (1982).

David Stoll, Fishers of Men or Founders of Empire? The Wycliffe Bible Translators in Latin America (1982).

Jean-Pierre Bastian, Breve historia del protestantismo en América Latina (1986).

Sheldon Annis, God and Production in a Guatemalan Town (1987).

Deborah J. Baldwin, Protestants and the Mexican Revolution (1990).

David Martin, Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America (1990).

David Stoll, Is Latin America Turning Protestant? (1990).

Additional Bibliography

Bastian, Jean Pierre. Protestantismos y modernidad latinoamericana: Historia de unas minorías religiosas activas en América Latina. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1994.

Bowen, Kurt. Evangelism and Apostasy: The Evolution and Impact of Evangelicals in Modern Mexico. Montréal; Buffalo, NY: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1996.

Brusco, Elizabeth. The Reformation of Machismo: Evangelical Conversion and Gender in Colombia. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995.

Chesnut, R. Andrew. Born Again in Brazil: The Pentecostal Boom and the Pathogens of Poverty. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997.

Garrard-Burnett, Virginia. Protestantism in Guatemala: Living in the New Jerusalem. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998.

Garrard-Burnett, Virginia. On Earth as It Is in Heaven: Religion in Modern Latin America. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2000.

Martínez-Fernández, Luis. Protestantism and Political Conflict in the Nineteenth-century Hispanic Caribbean. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002.

Mondragón, Carlos. Leudar la masa: El pensamiento social de los protestantes en América Latina, 1920–1950. Buenos Aires: Kairos Editiones, 2005.

Rivera, Paulo Barrera. Tradição, transmissão e emoção religiosa: Sociologia do protestantismo contemporâneo na América Latina. São Paulo: Olho d'Água, 2001.

Steigenga, Timothy J. The Politics of the Spirit: The Political Implications of Pentecostalized Religion in Costa Rica and Guatemala. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2001.

Yaremko, Jason M. U.S. Protestant Missions in Cuba: From Independence to Castro. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2000.

                             Virginia Garrard-Burnett