These are interesting times for the Catholic Church in Latin America. It faces multiple challenges, including reduced loyalty among nominal Catholics, a softening of its religious hegemony in the face of secularization and Protestant evangelizing, and, in many countries, threats to its privileged relationship to the state. But at the same time, the church remains one of the most widely respected and trusted institutions, it retains an overwhelming majority of the “market share” of believers, and it wields strong influence in politics and policy debates throughout the region. Understanding the role of the Catholic Church in Latin American politics is as important as ever, but doing so has become more challenging because of the rapid pace of change. This new volume edited by Frances Hagopian pulls together work from a strong and diverse set of scholars and offers several important contributions that help us to make sense of the contemporary relationships among the church, states, and societies in Latin America.

The book's stated aim is to provide answers to three main questions: “how the Catholic Church … responds to the challenges of secularism and eroding religious hegemony in a context of religious and political pluralism, how democracy has changed the church, and how religious change has impacted democratic politics in Latin America” (p. 4). These goals roughly match the organization of the book, which has three substantive parts (in addition to a preface and an introduction by Hagopian, and two concluding chapters, by Daniel Levine and by Hagopian).

Part I includes three chapters that study mass attitudes toward religion, with a particular focus on secularizing and pluralist trends in the region. Some of Ronald Inglehart's chapter will look familiar to those who have read his recent work on modernization and cultural change. But his analysis of World Values Survey (WVS) data produces several interesting nuggets to consider. For example, his measure of “subjective well-being” shows citizens of Latin American countries to be happier than we would predict from levels of development. This pattern apparently has a religious component to it since it is most pronounced in the most religious countries of the region, and because there is a significant individual-level correlation between religiosity and happiness (in Latin America, but not, for example, in many Eastern European countries). Inglehart breaks no new ground on his evolving theoretical explanation for such patterns, but overall the chapter provides a useful snapshot of Latin American cultural attitudes across countries and in a global comparative context.

Subsequent chapters by Soledad Loaeza and Cristián Parker Gumucio then take a more focused look at secularism and pluralism in the specific cases of Mexico and Chile, respectively. Loaeza's chapter persuasively argues that secularization in Mexico today is different from and more profound than past episodes because the current trend is rooted in fundamental economic and political transformations. This has led to a profound change in religious attitudes, particularly among women. For example, Loaeza presents data showing a steady increase in the use of contraception, indicating that more and more Mexican women are willing to ignore church teachings on (some) particular issues, even if they still consider themselves to be Catholic. Parker's chapter on Chile introduces a useful term for this phenomenon, which other contributors also adopt: “Catholic in my own way.” His discussion offers a sophisticated understanding of the challenges to the church's religious hegemony, which is threatened not only by secularization and competition from Protestant sects but also by a diversification in the degree of loyalty shown to the church by nominal Catholics. This pluralism, which Parker attributes to educational trends in Chile, exists both within the church and in the non-Catholic segments of Latin American societies, and captures the attention of several of the contributors to this volume.

Part II focuses on how the church has responded to democratic and religious pluralism. Roberto Blancarte's chapter argues that Mexico's particular history of secularism shaped the interaction between church and state during the transition to democracy. While organized religion as such played a limited role, religiously inspired movements and individuals contributed to the process in important ways. Patricia Rodriguez's chapter compares the church's response to land conflicts in Chile and Brazil, and she argues that the Brazilian church has been more progressive because its grassroots pastoral commissions have more autonomy than their Chilean counterparts (p. 209). This is an important chapter because it reminds us of cross-country variation in church behavior, which is a central puzzle for any scholar of the church in Latin America. In the most ambitious and systematic chapter in the book, Hagopian takes the cross-country comparison to a new level. Building on rationalist and institutional approaches, she elaborates a theoretical explanation of the church's varied responses to “the challenge of secularism” across the region, providing an interesting discussion of the “bishop's dilemma” (p. 320), in which church leadership needs to balance the church's institutional interests against its social program (which is conservative) and its economic program (which is liberal). Along with the introductory and concluding chapters, Hagopian's impressive contributions to this volume practically comprise a book on their own.

Part III contains two chapters that analyze the church's influence on public policy in Latin America. Mala Htun focuses on contentious social issues (mainly abortion), in which the church's position is clearly more conservative than that of the median citizen in most countries. She argues that the church has been influential in preventing the liberalization of laws governing abortion, divorce, and gay rights. But the church has not been able to stem changes in public debate. Where once these issues were taboo, they are now debated in public spheres that have been opened up by democratic transitions. Catalina Romero's chapter also highlights the importance of public spaces, focusing on the openings that civil society provides for grassroots mobilization. Like Blancarte, Romero finds a religious motivation for much of the activity she observes in Peruvian civil society. But she also focuses on the effect that new democratic public spaces have on the church. She argues that the church can organize the faithful to participate in civil society “only when a public space is developed within the ecclesial organization itself” (p. 369). In Peru, she argues, the challenge of democratic pluralism may ultimately make “possible a slow transformation toward a modern public and dynamic church” that is more receptive to the input of its lay membership (p. 393).

This theme is echoed in the two concluding chapters. In the first, Levine argues that pluralism—that is, the diversity of religious groups and denominations, and their incorporation “as legitimate participants in an open social process” (p. 407)—is a fact of history to which the church will be forced to adapt, and which will influence the relations among church, state, and society for the foreseeable future. But Levine also views pluralism as an opportunity for the Catholic Church to adapt to the realities of modern Latin America. In addition to summarizing, Hagopian's concluding chapter looks to the future and outlines an ambitious research agenda that builds on some of this volume's main contributions. This chapter should not be missed by any scholar who plans to conduct research in this field.

Space prohibits a full accounting of this volume's strengths, but a few points must be mentioned. Several chapters contribute to a sophisticated discussion of Latin America's religious diversity. Pluralism means much more than religious competition, and I am persuaded that secularization, diminished loyalty among the nominally faithful, and internal diversity will be more fundamental challenges for the Latin American church than the rise of Protestantism. Secondly, the volume is replete with surprising evidence of the church's strength and resilience in the face of secularizing trends. To name just a few examples: The number of priests per capita has remained steady or increased in most Latin American countries in recent decades; the church continues to wield influence in politics and policy formation; and public opinion (of the church itself, and on some social issues) is strongly favorable toward the church and its positions. Thirdly, several of the chapters, most notably Hagopian's Chapter 7, offer an ambitious and thoughtful attempt to explain variation in church behavior across countries. The synthetic explanation is one that other scholars in this field would be wise to take notice of and incorporate into their own research agendas.