Catholicism in Latin America
The LA Times ran a good piece yesterday about the "turf war" in Latin America. LINK. A few excerpts:
Across Latin America, home to nearly half the world's Catholics, believers are increasingly abandoning the Vatican's brand of Christianity in favor of the evangelical variety, a trend that will pose one of the biggest challenges for the next pope.
Many converts are attracted to the pop-style music and dynamic liturgies, which are more suited to contemporary tastes than is the traditional Catholic Mass. Others cherish teachings that emphasize a direct, personal relationship with God and, sometimes, the promise of material reward for spiritual rectitude.
In countries where Catholics once accounted for more than 90% of the population, evangelicals now constitute a significant religious minority, sometimes with social and political clout beyond their numbers.
In Chile, Honduras and Brazil, for example, about 15% of the population describes itself as evangelical Protestant. The figure rises to 22% in El Salvador; in Guatemala, it's 25%. In Mexico's southern Chiapas state, local press reports estimate the evangelical population to be 36% of adults.
Paraguay, albeit still overwhelmingly Catholic, now has its first evangelical president, Nicanor Duarte Frutos. President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia made news when he tried reaching out to evangelicals, who now make up about 10% of the country's population.
Evangelical Christianity began making major inroads in Latin America during the 1970s and 1980s, a turbulent period of civil war and political polarization that affected the Catholic Church as well. The clergy was riven by political divisions, with some clerics supporting leftist rebels and others favoring right-wing governments.
"We can distribute food, but our objective is for people to get to know God. Both rich and poor need Christ," said Geovane Dias, first vice president of the First Baptist Church of Copacabana. "To take care of the poor is not our most important mission, like it is with the Catholic Church”¦. For us our No. 1 priority is to serve Christ."
