In recent decades, one of the most central challenges for elected governments and civil society in Latin America has been how to best deal with the horrors of past state violence and repression. Different national processes across the region reveal multiple approaches to addressing issues of justice, truth and reconciliation. These vary across time and national boundaries to include truth commissions, amnesty laws and, in a few notable cases, limited prosecutions. A critical scholarship has emerged which interrogates different approaches and conceptualisations of how best to understand and confront these historic abuses. Important discussions over issues such as (post) transitional justice, truth, memory and reconciliation both enrich and problematise these debates. Religious groups and church organisations have played an important role in promoting human rights, reconciliation and the search for truth in the region. In this vein, the volume Reconciliation: Nations and Churches in Latin America edited by Iain S. Maclean interrogates the role of churches and religion in promoting national Truth and Reconciliation Commissions in Latin America. The essays in this volume seek to explore the contested meanings and practices of truth, forgiveness and reconciliation from a theological perspective. The collection is organised into three thematic sections: Nations and Reconciliation; Churches and Religious Reconciliation; and Nations and Churches in the Future.

In the first section, Nations and Reconciliation, Iain Maclean introduces the volume with a chronological overview of the different political processes of truth and reconciliation that have taken place in the region. Central to his discussion is the role played by national churches in challenging – or, in some cases, supporting – state terror in the region. Maclean's account undermines any notion of singularity in the churches' response to human rights violations by addressing issues of internal divisions within church hierarchies with regards to authoritarian regimes. This foregrounds the multiple responses to and interpretations of truth, justice and reconciliation that have shaped societies' responses to human rights abuses in the region. Maclean's overview is followed by a series of chapters that offer specific examples of truth and reconciliation processes.

Among these, two very different chapters stand out. Firstly, David Tombs challenges the limitations of ‘truth’ in the Salvadorean and Guatemalan processes through an exploration of the omission of sexual violence from the final report of the Salvadorean Truth Commission. This omission, Tombs argues, is notable on a number of levels. Not only is it indicative of a process of silencing and denial in the wake of terror in which the population knows ‘what not to know’ (p. 77), but also indicates the limits of particular conceptualisations of ‘truth’, particularly from a gendered perspective. For Tombs the ‘denial’ of sexual violence constitutes a challenge to Christian interpretations and practices of reconciliation to recognise ‘the full range and interpretation of suffering and shame’. Secondly, Brett Greider offers the only chapter in the collection that moves beyond Christian orthodoxy to explore the resurgence of Mayan cultural activism. Greider locates emerging ‘PanMayan’ networks within a broader critique of the oppression of the Mayan people by colonial powers and, latterly, processes of globalisation. He argues that these renewed spiritual networks provide a counter-hegemonic response to processes of uneven development or what Margaret R. Pfeil, in her chapter on Peru terms ‘social sin’. Pfeil explores how Peruvians have faced the task of naming ‘social sin’ through the vehicle of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and concludes with the warning that the ‘language of reconciliation can be used as an ideological tool to evade the demands of truth, namely structural reform and resistance against evil’ (p. 188).

The potency of ideological symbolism is a recurring theme in the collection. In her chapter on the opposing roles played by religious leaders in Brazil's Nunca Mais, Margaret Guider argues that ‘in the aftermath of torture and terror there need to be as many ways to truth and reconciliation as there are obstacles and desires’ (p. 112). Indeed, one strength of this collection lies in its broad scope and range, as well as its critical tone on the limitations of reconciliation processes. Ironically, the major weakness of the book also lies in this broad approach. While each chapter offers challenging discussions, there is a sense that the collection offers disparate analyses. Each chapter appears to address a different range of questions from a variety of contextual and theoretical perspectives. This disunites the collection and important threads are drawn across a limited selection of chapters. Indeed, in the concluding chapter, Nelson Maldonado-Torres claims that a key theme of the collection is a critique of colonialism and neo-liberal governance. Yet, while this was a strength of various chapters (particularly those by Comblin, Greider, Pfeil and Villa Vicencio), it was not explicit in others.

The volume not only examines the role of national churches in addressing human rights abuses in various countries throughout Latin America, but in the final section Charles Villa-Vicencio offers a raw and honest reflection on South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Of particular note is his discussion of the widespread ambivalence that many South Africans felt towards the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Indeed, ambivalence has proved a central obstacle to the realisation of justice in Latin America, particularly on the part of elites who have preferred to ignore and ‘deny’ abuses in both past and present contexts. Contemporary levels of violence and inequality in Latin America (and South Africa) suggest that, in many cases, these limited attempts at reconciliation have served to deepen rather than remedy historic political and social polarisation. To echo Margaret Greider's argument on Brazil: ‘competing ideological claims’ continue to contribute ‘to the legacy and justification of violent torture and terror’ (p. 118). Indeed, as José Comblin argues: ‘reconciliation in Latin America presumes a total inversion of whole civilizational and cultural process. The ruling elites deny this situation. They proclaim that their country is a model of harmonious community life (p. 169)’. As this collection argues, reconciliation and justice in Latin America still appear to be a contested future.