First Steps Toward a Pentecostal Political Theology

Abstract

It seems as if it was just a few years ago that Pope John Paul II was warning the Catholic leadership of Latin America of an“invasion of sects” within their borders. The pontiff was reacting to the tens of millions who have left the Catholic Church and the Catholic identity of their ancestors and converted to evangelical Protestantism since the 1970s. The breadth of this change throughout the region is incredible. A generation ago professing Catholics made up 95–98 percent of all citizens in Latin America. Today, pentecostalized Protestants, or better“evangélicos” as they often call themselves, make up 20–30 percent of the population in a number of Latin American countries.1 Studies also indicate that the vast majority of new Protestants are pen-tecostal or charismatic in denomination and/or in practice, making this a theologically distinct group from the Catholic majority.2