Book Review: Evangelicals and Electoral Politics in Latin America

Taylor Boas convincingly argues that evangelical religious affiliations or congregations are not monolithic. This is due to different levels of religious practices, theological differences, and threats they may face, which is important for understanding how diverse interest groups can activate religious issues to engage congregants in politics.

It seems unnecessary to distinguish among types of Evangelicals and other Protestant churches, something Boas does for LDS (Mormons) and Jehovah’s Witnesses, in line with the polemic definition of para-Christians often used by Jean Pierre Bastian. If differences in religious practices allow an overlapping of what are called dimensions (believing and behaving) over denominations (belonging), then we can somewhat disregard some distinctions by religious affiliations. While acknowledging the significance of religious affiliations in providing insights into theological discussions, and understanding differences in beliefs and behaviors among churches, Boas appears to align with prior research that emphasises dimensions as more influential than denominations in explaining religious attitudes

Boas also convincingly establishes arguments about potential threats to some of the core beliefs promoted by some prominent evangelical churches. While the cultural war on traditional moral values has been widely studied in the case of the United States, it has generally been reduced to a very particular definition of Evangelicals (white, nationalists, maybe already republican sympathisers). Boas by contrast adopts a larger definition of evangelicals that includes beliefs, political engagement, and demographics.

For someone from a Catholic perspective in a country with clear restrictions on Church and State relations, it is easy to encounter a theoretical problem that cannot be so easily resolved. The problem is that different evangelical churches, with often diverse theological conceptions, might converge in protecting traditional moral values when they feel threatened, at which point they are more likely to engage in politics. This is seen in the book as a distinct and exclusive characteristic to these evangelical churches. This behavior however can also be observed among very traditional Catholics, who also defend conservative moral values. In this sense, it seems that in terms of moral values, when there is a threat for traditional sectors of various religious denominations, Catholic, Evangelical or Protestant congregants can be activated to engage in political participation, joining forces against laws which allow legal interruption of pregnancy and formalise gay marriage and gay adoption.

This convergence among traditionalists from various churches does not necessarily allow us to distinguish whether this active political participation is an evangelical thing or is simply related to the organisational capacities of each church. Thus, it not exactly because they are Catholic or Evangelical, it is because they are traditionalists that they feel the threat to core beliefs, and some are better equipped to deal with the political response. This point is acknowledged with a brief reference to traditional moral values, but the topic deserves further theoretical elaboration.

A successful aspect of the book, from the perspective of secularism, is theorising about the evangelical response to the necessary separation between churches and the State, in which it is implicitly assumed that to preserve the rights of religious minorities, a strong State is necessary. In the Latin American case, that situation refers to the hegemonic Catholic Church. This perspective may seem obvious in countries with strong restrictions on religious activities in general (Mexico or Uruguay). However, it is not obvious to many other Latin American countries, making it an important point to be highlighted. In every chapter, Boas offers a brief but substantial discussion of the role played by laicism from an historical perspective, which enhances our understanding of the role played by evangelicals to survive or navigate legal, political, and social perspectives. In this way, laicism emphasises the independence of governmental and religious institutions, and ensures that public institutions and political decisions are made without the influence of religious considerations. This, however, is not always equally managed or enforced across countries.

Regarding the importance of a single religious denomination, Boas correctly argues that while the presence of an evangelical candidate for election may help garner votes from the evangelical electorate, as revealed in his survey experiments, what matters the most is that the candidacy stands out on traditional moral values. An alternative explanation could potentially refer to the so-called laicism. This is because one might think that the phrase “brother vote for brother” could be more related to the notion of a necessary secularism to preserve the rights of other religious affiliations. The evidence suggests that evangelical citizens tend to vote for evangelical political candidates due to moral values issues, in which the institutional context, such as features of electoral systems, could facilitate access to the ballot in order to compete in the electoral arena, but as Boas shows, they do not fully define a successful Evangelical representation.

Boas reviews the role played by religion from a broader perspective, successfully integrating laicism first and moral values later, suggesting that the sequence of theological narratives depends on social and political contexts. A minor point is the omission of the prosperity gospel’s political implications, such as an increasing political participation in favor of conservative policies. Prosperity gospel succinctly states individual material goods are highly valued when compared to other approaches, such as liberation theology, in which a critical view of unfair social and economic structures drives political participation for social change. Boas briefly mentions the relevance of prosperity gospel when discussing different forms of Pentecostalism, but these implications could help us to better understand some reasons behind convergence among traditionalists, even if they belong to different religious denominations.

In his analysis of Brazil, a country in which Boas has centered his well-known expertise, the author studies three religious affiliations in which the two main drivers of evangelical political representation operate: laicism (in opposition to the Catholic dominance) and moral values (specifically, the rejection of sexual diversity). Despite the pro-choice perspective sponsored by one prominent evangelical religious leader, Boas effectively shows that the prevalence of moral value issues is leading evangelical representation in Congress.

On several occasions the author attempts to draw conclusions for Latin America based on the detailed studies of three South American countries, Brazil, Chile, and Perú. However, no one of these reach the proportions of Evangelical populations observed in Central America. To mitigate this problem, Boas includes three additional cases, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Colombia. These efforts are important, and despite the challenges in analysing six separate countries, the selection of cases seems adequately justified in terms of their significance to evangelical parliamentary representation in their respective national assemblies.

At the end, Boas seems to lead the future discussion in the convergence of traditional factions across churches. This could be because conservatism, rather than evangelicalism, appears to be the factor most strongly associated with religious political representation. Finally, the diversity of sources analysed, including surveys, survey experiments, parish bulletins, and administrative records, such as census and electoral data, allows the author to construct a reasonably robust corpus of evidence to support their two main points: when studying evangelicals, we have to pay more attention to religious dimensions and less to religious denominations, and traditionalism today (from the current events) and laicism in the past (from an historical perspective) allows us to understand why nowadays moral values are so important in politics and democracy.

This is a review of taylor Boas’ Evangelicals and Electoral Politics in Latin America (Cambridge University Press, 2024). ISBN: 9781009275118

Alejandro Díaz Domínguez  is a Research Professor at the School of Government, Tecnologico de Monterrey (alejandrod.dominguez@tec.mx). ORCiD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3856-5686

This article is published under a Creative Commons Licence and may be republished with attribution.