by Ruth Melkonian-Hoover and Dennis R. Hoover
Evangelical Christianity in Latin America has grown exponentially in recent years. But how well do North American evangelicals really know their neighbors?
What do Latin American evangelicals think of the United States and its policies? Some
American evangelicals presume their southern neighbors are just like themselves when it
comes to politics. Many critics presume the same and worry that these southern neighbors
are pawns of the north. Some scholars of global evangelicalism, however, see an
increasingly indigenous evangelicalism in the Global South.
Studies of public opinion in the United States show significant evangelical Protestant
support for many U.S. foreign policies. For instance, a University of Akron/Pew Forum poll
in 2004 found that among traditional evangelicals 76 percent approved of President Bush's
foreign policy; 87 percent thought the Iraq war was justified; 82 percent thought
preemptive war is justifiable; 74 percent believed the U.S. has a special role in the
world. But are these kinds of findings any indication of how evangelicals in Latin America
view the U.S. and its contemporary role in the world?
Since colonization Latin American countries have remained majority Catholic. However, the
proportion of Protestants in the region has begun to rise; evangelical Protestants in
particular now comprise approximately 12-15 percent of the population, and approximately
two-thirds of them are Pentecostals. Given the influence of U.S. evangelical Protestants
in Latin America through missionary efforts and denominational ties, some have presumed
not only theological but cultural and political affinity between conservative Protestant
groups in Latin America and conservative Protestant churches and parachurch organizations
in the United States.
The theory of an "invasion of the sects" facilitated by U.S. interests intent on
building allies in Latin America, particularly during the Cold War, is put forward by
scholars such as Brian Smith. He documents the U.S. government's support of missionaries
in Latin America in the 1950s as a bulwark against communism; the use of missionaries by
the CIA in Chile, Ecuador and Bolivia; and the channeling of U.S.AID funds to
church-sponsored projects in the region. However, Smith also acknowledges that this is
"insufficient to explain its strong drawing power throughout Latin America,
especially among the poor." 1
Others presume that the growth of evangelicalism in the region is a function of American
manipulation and (neo)imperialism. In their work bemoaning the role of the U.S. church in
the developing world-aptly entitled Exporting the American Gospel: Global Christian
Fundamentalism 2 -Steve Brouwer and his colleagues allege that
"Christian fundamentalists in other countries find common cause with American
evangelists because the United States is the wellspring of anticommunism and a host of
other cultural ideologies and values that have become transnational. Halfway around the
world, religious leaders have managed to link the destinies of their countries to that of
the United States." Even while they acknowledge that many of the Christian
missionaries of today are from the developing world (indeed, Latin America may well export
more missionaries than it receives), they assert that such transnational agents still tend
to export an American-formulated gospel linked with capitalism, democracy, anticommunism,
and, more recently, antiIslamic fervor.
Likewise many of the new Pentecostal churches in Latin America are presumed by some in the
north to be American progeny. But Paul Freston, a leading sociologist of global
Christianity, maintains that "Most Pentecostal churches (unlike their historical
counterparts) were founded either by Latin Americans who broke with an existing Protestant
denomination or by independent missionaries, and only rarely by a foreign Pentecostal
denomination." 3 For example, in the case of Brazil, most faith missions
are nonPentecostal, and yet most growth is occurring among Pentecostals. "The
churches which grow most owe little to missions," Freston concludes. 4
Some have found the social and political values of Latin American evangelicals to be more
diverse than those of evangelicals in the U.S. Timothy Shah, in his article "The
Bible and the Ballot Box: Evangelicals and Democracy in the Global South," contends
that "though evangelicals [in the south] are assumed to be agents of the American
religious right and purveyors of militant 'fundamentalism,' their lower socioeconomic
status often leads them to consider economics at least as important as 'morality' and
consequently to align with left-wing political movements perceived to be pro-poor." 5
Similarly, Joel Carpenter maintains that "on abortion or gay marriage, they sound
like American conservatives. But on war and peace or economic justice, they sound like the
Democratic Party." 6
What's been missing in this debate is broad-based analysis of survey data collected in
Latin America. Are evangelicals in Latin America more supportive than their fellow
citizens of U.S. foreign policies, its war on terror, its influence on economic
globalization, and its ideas about global democracy? Our recent analysis of survey data
from the 2002 Pew Global Attitudes Survey sheds light on these questions. We pooled data
from Bolivia, Brazil, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela, distinguishing
evangelicals from nonevangelicals. We then examined seven diverse indicators of opinion
about the U.S. and its role in the world. Respondents were asked to rate their opinions of
the U.S.: if they think the U.S. takes into account the interests of countries like
theirs; and how U.S. policies affect the gap between rich and poor countries. In addition
they were asked whether or not they approve of American ideas about democracy; American
ideas and customs spreading into their country; American ways of doing business; and U.S.
efforts to fight terrorism.
We found that, contrary to any expectations derived from the Cold War history of American
involvement in Latin American affairs, or from more recent theories of American
neo-imperialism via globalization, evangelical identity is not a significant factor in
pro-America attitudes in Latin America. Indeed, it is an almost entirely irrelevant factor
across all seven of the indicators in our study. Five of these indicators were related to
policy/issue areas (terrorism, business, democracy, economic inequality, and national
interests), and two were more generic in nature (general opinion of the U.S., and opinion
of the spread of "American ideas"). On only the latter of the generic indicators
was evangelicalism a statistically significant factor. Thus to the very modest extent that
evangelicalism plays a role, it is limited to attitudes that are not policy- or
issue-specific.
Indeed, the slightly greater openness that Latin American evangelicals show towards the
spread of American ideas may be due in part to the breadth of the question posed.
Certainly Latin American evangelicals could be thinking that "American ideas" is
a category that includes general religious and cultural norms of American Protestantism as
opposed to specifically political ideas, and therefore feel slightly more openness than do
Latin American Catholics.
On the whole, that Latin American evangelicals are made in the image of U.S. evangelicals
and that the former are unduly influenced by the latter is a theory that has run its
course. The idea of evangelical imperialism as the handmaiden of U.S. imperialism may be
perpetuated by some in the media and by some who are threatened by the upsurge of
evangelicalism in Latin America, but recent international survey data simply do not
support it.
Endnotes
1 Religious Politics in Latin America: Pentecostal vs. Catholic,
1998:26
2 Exporting the American Gospel: Global Christian Fundamentalism,
1996:19
3 Evangelicals and Politics in Asia, Africa and Latin America,
2001:194-195
4 Evangelicals, 283.
5 SAIS Review of International Affairs, 2004:117
6 Philadelphia Inquirer, February 20, 2006
Ruth Melkonian-Hoover, Ph.D., is assistant professor of political studies. She
is cochair of the international affairs major and recently completed "Gendered
Pathways to the Political: The Political Participation of Women Factory Workers in
Mexico," which will be published this June in Social Science Quarterly.
ruth.melkonian
gordon.edu
Dennis R. Hoover, D.Phil., is executive director of the Council on Faith &
International Affairs (www.cfia.org) at the Institute for Global Engagement. He is also
editor of The Review of Faith & International Affairs and co-editor, with
Ambassador Robert A. Seiple, of Religion and Security: The New Nexus in International
Relations.
dhooverglobalengage.org