In this well-researched and engaging book, Carol Ann Drogus analyzes women's participation in the CEBs of Brazil's popular church with the intention of addressing two theoretical concerns. The first is the extent to which gender acts as a filter for religious experience and interpretation of liberation theology. Can the failure of CEBs to make a more radical contribution to Brazilian politics be attributable to the fact that they are comprised largely of women? The second question focuses on how women's participation in the popular church has affected their attitudes toward gender. Have CEBs empowered women, and if so, has this led to development of a gender consciousness among them? Drogus's findings are based on extensive fieldwork that consists of interviews and participant observation in seven CEBs in Santo Antônio, a low-income parish on the outskirts of São Paulo. The book contains rich descriptions of the daily lives of the women and their families (interviews with a core sample of 30 women who are CEB participants provide most of the data) and of the development of the popular church in Brazil.

Drogus found that, although the women face similar challenges in daily life and share a history of “long, intimate identification with the Church” (p. 78), they interpret the messages and symbols of liberation theology quite differently. Identifying at least three distinct religious personality types (liberationists, traditionalists, and Samaritans), Drogus argues that women as a group have neither “energized nor stymied” the liberationist project (pp. 81–107). Their political attitudes also vary. Liberationists are prone to link their personal struggles for survival with the status of the working class in general, and traditionalists are more likely to accept being poor as part of the natural order of things and to perceive strategies for upward mobility in individualistic terms. Despite their differential acceptance of liberation theology and class consciousness, however, the women share a positive response to the social movements endorsed by the church. They mobilize to participate in day care, sanitation, and land movements, which they see as mothers' movements that enable them to work on behalf of children—“their own and all poor children more generally” (p. 142).

To what extent do the CEBs empower women and promote gender consciousness? To be sure, CEBs are not hotbeds of feminist activism. The popular church conforms to traditional Catholic doctrine in condemning civil divorce, abortion, and birth control. Virtually every woman in the study endorses these traditional views.

Liberation theology, moreover, tends to subordinate gender to class oppression (p. 157). Yet, CEBs encourage women's active participation in the public sphere and offer opportunities for women to assume new religious and political roles. In some cases, the fact that their domestic gender roles and family lives almost never change in parallel to their changing public role plants a seed of gender consciousness. Frustrated with the lack of change in men's attitudes and behavior, some of the liberationist women in the study want more help around the house and also argue “for real equality and a division of labor that allows women to assume what they see as their right to participate” (p. 172).

The strength of the study lies in the compelling narratives about religion, politics, and daily lives. The fact that Drogus elicited this level of candor from her subjects is a testament to her skills. Yet, the research design permits the author to address only the second of the two questions posed at the beginning of the book. The data allow Drogus to advance claims about women's reception of liberation theology but not the analytical significance of gender. An understanding of how gender filters religious messages requires a control group—in this case, men.

I also have some concerns about generalizeability. The author claims to have chosen Santo Antônio as a “critical case” region, the idea being that if “liberation theology does not flourish in the conditions its proponents have deemed most hospitable, it is unlikely to do so elsewhere” (p. 20). The area had a “famously liberationist bishop” and “pastoral workers with a clear liberationist agenda” (p. 21), which created a particularly “propitious context” for CEB development. The parish participated in some of the major civil uprisings of the late 1970s that weakened Brazil's military government. Because CEBs had only a limited effect on these women, I have the impression that in the rest of Brazil the effects of CEBs are small to nonexistent.

It may be significant that only liberationist women demonstrated a class consciousness and a desire to change gender roles. Given their underlying activist predispositions, one wonders whether they would have found modes of public participation—in neighborhood movements, for example—in the absence of CEBs. After all, women's changing attitudes toward gender “have been largely an inadvertent byproduct of their participation rather than something with which the CEBs should be directly credited” (p. 179). This implies that the effects of CEBs on the attitudes of even liberationist women may have been largely epiphenomenal, a possibility that should be considered more seriously in the book. Incidentally, Drogus is too quick to endorse the proposition that gender characteristics account for women's rejection of party politics (pp. 138, 184). When political parties fail to offer equal opportunities to women to participate as militants, to rise in the party ranks, and to stand for office, it is quite rational for women to avoid them.

The book should be of interest to scholars of religion and politics, Latin American politics, and gender and politics.