The open-access Serbian journal Politics and Religion (not to be confused with the journal of the same name published by the religion section of the American Political Science Association) devotes its current issue (Vol. 12, No. 1) to the growth of Christian, mostly evangelical, parties and political mobilization in Latin America. Articles include an examination of the way evangelical political mobilization in Colombia has shifted from its previous stress on fighting for Protestants’ religious freedom to focusing on culture war issues, particularly gay rights and abortion. Another article finds a similar pattern in Brazil, with a coalition of Pentecostals and Catholic charismatics having considerable impact, challenging the human rights platform of the Worker’s Party, particularly on “gender ideology” and reproductive rights. Other articles cover the role of religious parties—Catholic and Protestant—in Argentina and the unexpected emergence of Catholic and evangelical politics in Mexico. This issue can be downloaded at: https://www.politicsandreligionjournal.com/index.php/prj
The Adventist hypothesis had been dismissed by scholars advocating the crypto-Jewish explanation, due to the low numbers of Adventist believers in the area. However, writes Carroll, this fails to take into account the impact of Adventist missionary activities and literature spread by Adventist colporteurs among Hispanos who heard the message without embracing it in the 1920s and 1930s. The claims of a crypto-Jewish descent during the 1970s and 1980s were made at a time when various identity claims and the rediscovery of roots became popular across various population groups. It may have been used for articulating a rejection of Catholicism and “to explain practices that had always made them or their families feel different.” Carroll is convinced that, whatever the evidence (or lack of it) is, the crypto-Jewish hypothesis will remain popular, not least because it has been become part of an attractive vision of New Mexico as a proud multicultural society. For more information on this article, visit: Religion, https://www.tandfonline.com/rrel/
The moral aspect of small-town and rural discontent can be seen in residents’ criticisms and protests of the Washington establishment, which they feel prefers regulatory and distanced solutions to community problems that politicians have little knowledge about. The norms of small towns centered on first-hand assistance and personal responsibility as often modeled in church life are seen by the people Wuthnow interviews as being eroded by elites and big government. Wuthnow argues that the idea that rural Americans are not voting in their self-interest by focusing on concerns such as gay rights and abortion ignores how these and other moral issues are part of the moral consensus of their communities and churches and thus do involve self-interest. Wuthnow concludes that too much reporting on the “left-behind” is about private resentments and personal attitudes on a range of hot-button issues and that more attention needs to be paid to the communal nature of small-town life and how that shapes their views.
