In this book John Lynch sets out to narrate not the history of the Church in Latin America, but the continent's religious experience throughout more than five hundred years. Lynch does not intend to explore theological issues or inquire into the shaping of Latin American spirituality. His focus – he announces at the start of this ambitious work – is religious history and historical development. The twelve chapters into which the book is divided take the reader from pre-Columbian religion and Iberian Christianity during the reconquista to the story of Liberation Theology and the resurgence and strengthening of traditionalist and conservative trends within the Catholic Church in the twenty-first century. Lynch explores the many angles of the reception of Christianity in the New World among the indigenous people, and the shaping of a distinct form of Catholicism under Spanish colonial rule. The debates sparked by Bartolomé de Las Casas's denunciations of the mistreatment of the indigenous Americans and the decisive role played by the Jesuits in different parts of the continent as missionaries, politicians and educators also feature in this narrative. When the book moves into the period after independence from Spain and the creation of the new nation states, the narrative shifts into a country-by-country account where certain cases are studied in great detail in comparison with others, like Argentina in the nineteenth century or Mexico in the early twentieth century. Chapters are subdivided in small national sections where larger themes are no longer analysed. As the book progresses, the author moves away from his original project of a ‘religious history’ to a focus on Church-State relations, as is the case of the chapters on ‘The Church and the dictators’ and ‘Religion and revolution’. In the chapter ‘Between Liberation and tradition’ Lynch focuses on theology and theologians by closely discussing Liberation Theology and the trajectory of its principal exponents and opponents. Although the book contains a few references to Protestants, Jews and widespread non-institutionalised popular religious movements and practices, this informative book is above all a historical account of the Catholic Church in Latin America.