Christianity and Politics in Latin America and Africa: Cross-Regional Dialogue

Session Submission Type: Virtual Full Paper Panel

Session Description

This panel aims to facilitate dialogue among scholars of Christianity and politics in Latin America, on the one hand, and sub-Saharan Africa, on the other. Although such cross-regional dialogue and synthesis sorely lacking, it promises advance the study of religion and politics, in general, and research on the political implications of Christian movements, in particular. Why? Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are the two world regions where Renewalist (born again and spirit-centered) Christian movements, namely Pentecostalism and Charismaticism, have most profoundly transformed the religious landscape in recent decades. These regions also share some important demographic and political characteristics: Similarly populated by young, majority-Christian populations, these regions are generally characterized by poverty-impacted, developing economies and fragile “democratic” institutions increasingly beset by authoritarian challengers. Additionally, most states in these regions have deep histories of church involvement in politics. Since the 1980s, this involvement has frequently centered on church mobilization to support democratization. Yet, today these churches face dramatically heightened levels of ‘religious competition’ from new Pentecostal churches alongside the proliferation of born again Charismatic movements within their membership. To what extent does this competition correlate with renewed mobilization by the older churches for democracy? To what extent (if any) has the spread of born again Charismatic theology and worship divided Catholics’ political attitudes and behaviors towards democracy and electoral politics? More broadly, what other state-level or regional factors might influence relationships between religious affiliations and politics?

To advance understanding of these and related questions, two papers on this panel offer theory and original evidence concerning the conditions under which churches engage in protest and electoral politics. The other two papers tackle broader questions about how context may affect the relationship between individuals’ specific religious identities and their political beliefs and behaviors.

First, Sergio Cabrales Domínguez documents the understudied yet central role of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua’s 2018 “uprising” against Ortega’s repressive and antidemocratic government. Through a combination of analysis of original datasets, documents, and interviews, Domínguez shows how the present moment – characterized by democratic decline, shrinking space for civil society, and increasingly overt political engagement by the Catholic Church – affords a new opportunity to re-evaluate models of church-state relations and church-based political mobilization at the grass-roots.

Complimenting this focus on movements, Cammett, Novaes, and Tuñón advance new theory and evidence about how Christian organizations and parties relate in elections. Exogenous constraints placed on parties' ability to finance campaigns, the authors show, facilitates the political entry of religious organizations that provide low-cost mobilization. To evaluate this argument, they use data from Brazil, where evangelical parties’ electoral power has grown in decades. Leveraging a reform that imposed limits on campaign spending, they convincingly demonstrate that stricter limits increased the entry and victory of parties backed by religious actors.

The final two papers theorize more broadly about the ways in which regional and national-level context is likely to affect the relationship between different Christian affiliations (e.g., Pentecostal, Catholic, Charismatic Catholic) and political attitudes and behaviors. Building on prior research on Christianity in African politics, Sperber and Hern’s contribution uses a multilevel modelling strategy to evaluate regional, state- and religious-group-level variables that affect the degree to which members of different Christian groups: (1) support democracy, (2) engage electoral politics; and (3) accept or reject the notion of “separation of church and state.” Similarly, Djupe and Smith present new work that enlists nested modeling techniques to explore how different religious groups’ relative size and social status at the state-level affect how group members’ religiosity correlates with attitudes towards environmental protection – a topic of supernatural and earthly significance. With careful attention to sampling, modelling, and measurement, these cross-national studies set the stage for fruitful dialogue and synthesis of research across states and regions.

Sub Unit

• Division 33: Religion and Politics

Individual Presentations

• How Restricting Money in Politics Strengthens Religious Influence - Melani Cammett, Harvard University; Lucas M. Novaes, Insper - Institute of Education and Research; Guadalupe Tuñón, Princeton University

• Ortega vs. Church? Catholic Protest Mobilization in Nicaragua’s 2018 “Uprising” - Sergio Miguel Cabrales Domínguez

• Comparing Renewalists’ Political Orientations in Latin America and Africa - Elizabeth S. Sperber, University of Denver; Erin Accampo Hern, Syracuse University

• Serving Saints: Contextual Variation of Religious Influence on the Environment - Amy Erica Smith, Iowa State University; Paul A. Djupe, Denison University

Chair

• Consuelo Amat Johns Hopkins University

Discussants

• Consuelo Amat Johns Hopkins University

• Guadalupe Tuñón Princeton University