El ascenso confesional y político de los evangélicos en América Latina

The purpose of this article is to show the rise of Latin American evangelicalism, both in the confessional and political spheres. To this end, first of all, it deals with the challenge that the Catholic Church faced when confronted with the new evangelical churches that were emerging in all the countries of the region, after almost five centuries of religious monopoly. Subsequently, statistics are presented that confirm this sustained evangelical growth at the expense of the Catholic decline, especially over the last fifty years. Thirdly, it delves into the history of evangelicalism in the continent, underlining the important change that has taken place in its relationship with the world and its vision of politics, going from its customary ‘flight from the world’ to now trying to ‘conquer’ it, confessionally and politically. In this line, it describes how, after abandoning their historical apoliticism, the ‘political evangelicals’ led by the Neo-Pentecostals, have displaced the ‘evangelical politicians’, starting in the present century. Currently, evangelical political participation in the continent, for the most part, proposes its ‘moral agenda’ as the only ‘political agenda’, which manages to attract even conservative Catholic sectors, thus generating a new conservative ‘political ecumenism’.