The authors, a niece and uncle team, separated by over a generation of historical training and experience, combined their skills to produce this remarkably comprehensive history of Christianity in Latin America.

Most traditional church histories are precisely that—ecclesiastical history. Modern and indeed postmodern approaches have questioned the assumed distinction between “church” and “society,” and the result has been a far richer picture of the church in its actual local, national, or international presence. The authors take this approach a further step by pointing out at the outset that while the Spanish and Portuguese conquests changed Latin America, they also changed Europe and the church itself. Thus, though the focus in this work is on Latin America, the interactions between two worlds is also noted, no doubt to be explored by enterprising students and scholars.

The approach is basically chronological, beginning with concise descriptions of Latin American societies, Iberian society, and then African societies from which slaves were brought. Each of these discrete and diverse societies had customs, rituals, and beliefs, all of which, in varying degrees in differing contexts, were to contribute to one another and to the formation of the Church in Latin America. The second chapter proceeds to describe the arrival of the Europeans and the practices, institutions, and methods employed in the Christianization of the inhabitants. The third chapter outlines how Christianity developed as the Spanish and Portuguese empires consolidated and expanded. The fourth chapter deals with reform movements in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that led to national independence for most of the former Spanish colonies and Portuguese Brazil. The fifth chapter focuses on the disruptions and changes that occurred in the now national Roman Catholic churches—churches that now had to deal with a centralizing papacy and the demands of often hostile states. The sixth chapter continues this narrative right through the nineteenth century to the second Vatican Council. The sixth, like the third, chapter describes in broad strokes how the Church and people adapted to a new situation, first one of conquest, then one of national independence. The seventh and eighth chapters focus attention away from the Roman Catholic Church to the coming and growth of Protestantism, particularly in its pentecostal and independent forms during the last forty years. This is not to obscure the deliberate governmental policy (for example in Brazil) of encouraging Protestants as immigrants in order to limit the power of the Roman Catholic Church. The ninth chapter continues the history of the Roman Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council, a period from 1965 onward marked by the CELAM regional Episcopal meetings in Medellin and Puebla. This period was marked not only by conciliar ecclesiastical reforms, but also by new forms of theology such as liberation theology, new forms of being the church in base ecclesial communities, and by papal and national reactions to both the emerging theologies and the increasing repressive power of military regimes across Latin America. Chapter 10 focuses on the remarkable growth and prominence of pentecostal and independent churches, noting the specifically Latin American contributions and transformations in these originally North American movements.

In an introductory survey, of which this must rank as one of the most current and comprehensive, it is difficult, if not churlish, to comment on any omission, since a survey by definition is selective. However, given the importance in recent Latin American history of civil wars, race issues (as in Brazil, for example), and the role of churches in numerous truth and reconciliation commissions, these could be developed into a significant thematic chapter. The eleventh and final chapter draws together the recurring themes of the earlier chapters, highlighting how Latin America has modified inherited Christianity and, in turn, influenced those originating traditions. These themes, particularly ecumenism, relations between Roman Catholics, Protestants, pentecostals, and indigenous religions, the limits of inculturation, and the challenges of globalization and postmodernism, are all in fact challenges facing not only the continent, but the North and West as well. Christianity in Latin America is an excellent introduction for those wishing to study the impact of Christianity on a continent and its impact beyond.