Evangelicals in the Latin American political arena: the cases of Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay

Abstract

The advance of evangelical congregations in the Latin American religious scene is one of the most significant cultural transformations of the last decades. It is so because of the speed with which it has occurred, because of the important number of people involved and because of the depth with which it challenges the Catholic Church, one of the most emblematic institutions of the continent since the conquest. In this paper, we analyze one of the areas in which this religious revolution is manifesting itself in three different countries. We address the changing relationships between evangelicals and politics in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay and prove that, despite the enormous differences among these three countries, there are clear similarities in the political agendas that evangelicals support. Nevertheless, we also show the different articulations that Evangelicals have carried out in the political arena in each case. The Evangelical churches in Brazil have advanced much more in this sense than in Argentina, with Uruguay being the intermediate situation. For this, we will base ourselves on a bibliographic review of research, in statistical data from the Latinobarometer, together with specific in-depth interviews.