This panel examines how Christianity—Catholic, Orthodox, and evangelical—continues to reshape political and cultural imaginaries in contemporary Latin America. Across diverse national contexts, religious actors and institutions are not only responding to shifting demographic realities, including migration and diaspora, but actively intervening in public life through moral discourse, political mobilization, and reconfigurations of identity. Drawing on ethnographic and political analysis, the panel explores how Christian identity becomes a vehicle for asserting claims to nationhood, legitimacy, and moral authority. From diasporic communities that sacralize political struggle, to emergent religious political parties that challenge secular and pluralistic frameworks, and to conservative realignments that conflate religiosity with national values, Christianity remains central to how power is imagined and enacted. These interventions reveal a region in which religion is neither merely resurgent nor in decline, but instead is being renegotiated in dynamic and contested ways—shaping who belongs, who governs, and what it means to live faithfully in the twenty-first century.
Today, millions of Christians of Middle Eastern descent reside in Latin America—a primary destination for Arab immigrants since the late nineteenth century. Notably, more Palestinians now live in Chile than in any other country outside of the Middle East. The majority of these 500,000 Chilean-Palestinians are Eastern Orthodox, a population that far outnumbers the small Palestinian Christian community remaining in the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel. Calling for more scholarship on the flourishing Middle Eastern Christian communities of Latin America and their lived religion, this paper focuses on the unique role of Chile as a place of refuge and spiritual development for Christian Palestinians. Based on ethnographic interviews it seeks to answer the following questions: What does it mean to be Palestinian Christian in the Chilean diaspora? How do Chilean Christians of Palestinian descent speak about and enact ideas of freedom and Palestinian nationhood in religious and secular spaces?
This paper presents some of the most salient results of an ongoing research on religion and politics in Peru, focusing primarily on conservative trends. We delve on the new alliances woven between political and religious actors.
Three salient features may be identified: 1 Revisited moral agenda. In terms of sexual rights, Peru is one of the most conservative country in the hemisphere. The moral agenda focuses on protecting the population from homosexuality and on defending the conservative legal Status Quo. 2 Moral agenda and politicians. To compensate their lack of popularity and in an attempt to legitimate their position, politicians mediatize their religious practices and their closeness to clerics and pastors. Additionally, outspoken Catholics belonging to new movements and Charismatics pastors unite to create political parties. 3 Abuses in Catholic environments. The Church and its allies are confronted with an evolving crisis in its first stages.
Political parties anchored in religious identity or issues of church and state are one of the oldest forms of political organization in Latin America. Recently, such parties have proliferated as evangelical Christians with political ambitions form their own electoral platforms, bringing diversity to a field long dominated by the Catholic Church. What forms of religious political party exist in contemporary Latin America? What factors explain their varied electoral success, longevity, and relations with other parties, both secular and religious? Do they reinforce the longstanding divide between Catholicism and Protestantism, or do they appeal to a broader Christian identity? Do these parties embrace an exclusionary Christian nationalism—asserting Christianity as the core of national identity and public policy—or do they respect religious pluralism and state secularism amid growing nonbeliever populations? This paper will explore these questions as it surveys contemporary religious political parties across Latin America.