This is an interesting and substantial study of how the Catholic Church positions and repositions itself in social and political life. The case in point is the Dominican Republic, relatively understudied but with a history of great interest in these areas. The author brings a wealth of historical and contemporary detail to bear on how the Catholic Church carved out a new role for itself in the aftermath of the Trujillo dictatorship. The long historical portrait shows a weak institution moving from dependent accommodation to an overwhelmingly powerful dictatorship to a search for a new role, which the author sees as part outreach to hitherto ignored sectors like the poor (through social programmes) and part turning itself into a mediator viewed as acceptable by all sides.

Mediation is the central organising concept the author deploys to describe what Catholic leaders wanted and achieved in the decades following Trujillo, civil war, the Balaguer regime, and the slow emergence of political democracy. In his view, after its long period of dependent accommodation with Trujillo, the church ‘reinserts’ itself or ‘reincorporates’ itself into the political process. Was the church not incorporated into politics with Trujillo, albeit in a dependent and subservient manner? The relation of mutual support with Trujillo was highly political not to say valuable. Over the period of his rule, he gave the Church more than US$ 26 billion, a huge sum even then, and helped them build churches and expand parishes. They gave him support and praise until, under Vatican pressure, a slow distancing began in the early 1960s and the bishops refused an official request to name Trujillo Benefactor of the Church, as he was already of the nation as a whole. If this is not a political relation, one wonders what does qualify.

The author argues that mediation becomes a role for the church as a result of social and political pressures (p. 46). In this light, mediation is a survival strategy undertaken as a means of ensuring a continued role by becoming acceptable to all major players. Only in this way, Betances argues, can the Church manage a reincorporation and reinsertion of the kind that new times require – non partisan, socially concerned but not giving up state support and subsidies. What the author appears to mean by ‘political reincorporation or re insertion’ is that beginning in the late 1970s, church leaders specifically avoided partisan or radical positions of any kind, and offered themselves as brokers or mediators, for example, in arranging terms of participation in the 1974 elections. They maintain, longer than in many other cases, a conservative mix of neo Christendom orientations (which rely on the notion of the church being official and officially backed) with a powerful anti-leftism. The defeat of revolution in 1965 (by US occupation) squelched not only the political Left, but also the ecclesial Left, the same groups that elsewhere in the region advanced ideas of liberation, the ‘popular church’, and alliances with the Left. What emerges following the mid 1970s is a Catholic hierarchy that is conservative, non partisan, generally supportive of elections and political democracy, available to broker disputes and increasingly involved in social outreach. Although mediation is nowhere defined explicitly, this appears to be the core of what the author means by the concept.

The author identifies four major schools of thought that orient work on Catholicism, society and politics in Latin America: the institutionalist paradigm (the church is out to preserve its influence); Bourdieu's analysis of the religious field; Bastian's ideas about the mutation of the religious field, and Marxist world systems theory. He states that ‘these approaches have helped me develop a cohesive approach to understand the relation between organized religion and politics’ (p. 6). An elaborate review of these theories follows, but does little to clarify the conceptual base of this book. In reality, Betances' work is something one does not see much of lately – a highly detailed institutional history of the Church in one country. This can be a very valuable approach and in this case the author's close attention to detail illuminates the experience of a hierarchy struggling to deal with a very rapidly changing environment.

The political transformations are stark and wrenching: dictatorship, aborted revolution, occupation, the electoral authoritarianism of Balaguer, and the slow growth of democracy. But political change and conflict is only part of the evolution of this country. Massive emigration, urbanisation and cultural changes including the emergence of a substantial sector of evangelical churches, which now occupy a legitimate and recognised position in national life, make the Dominican Republic of 2008 a very different world from the country Trujillo ruled for so long. These transformations are comparable to those in much of Latin America, and Betances extends the comparison with case studies of Bolivia, Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador. The reasons for choosing these particular cases is not clear but the analysis does underscore the difference that aborted revolution and continued conservative domination in the church made for the Dominican Republic.

Although the author devotes most of his attention to the Catholic Church and its leaders at the national level, he also provides valuable sub national studies especially in chapter five which details how a social pastoral programme was developed and nurtured following the fall of Trujillo. Chapter six is an informative analysis of the growth and diversification of Protestantism, and of its emerging role as a political actor. The evolution of the Protestant sector in this small country is broadly comparable to what one can see elsewhere in the region, most notably Brazil, Peru, or at higher numerical levels, Guatemala.

This is a valuable addition to the literature on religion and politics in Latin America. Single country studies have fallen out of favour in the recent literature on religion and politics, but this book shows their potential value. Returning to relatively traditional topics of church state relations and the resurgence of limited, mediating roles the author sheds light on an important and little studied case, and shows its relevance to broader processes in the region. This perspective can be refreshingly realistic, particularly given the oversold expectations presented by an earlier generation of work.