Book Review
The Other Americas
The Rebirth of Latin American Christianity
by Todd Hartch
Oxford University Press, 2014
(294 pages, $24.95, paperback)
reviewed by Leon J. Podles
Todd Hartch, a professor of Latin American history at Eastern Kentucky College, maintains that Latin America has become both more Protestant and more Catholic in the past two generations. He holds that "Protestantism was a blessing in disguise for the Catholic Church. Nothing roused Latin American Catholics more than the spread of Protestantism."Catholicism was the universal religion of Latin America, but the Catholic Church encompassed a spectrum of religious modes, from the clerical, European Catholicism of the cities to the folk Catholicism of the countryside, where priests were rare, and which faded off into syncretism and paganism.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
Leon J. Podles holds a Ph.D. in Old English and Old Icelandic from the University of Virginia and is a senior editor of Touchstone. His latest book is Losing the Good Portion: Why Men Are Alienated from Christianity (St. Augustine's Press, 2020). He and his wife Mary (author of the Touchstone column "A Thousand Words") are the parents of six children. He resides in Baltimore, Maryland.
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on christianity from the online archives
31.1—January/February 2018
on Taking the Measure of the Deserving & the Undeserving Poor by Martin Bordelon
18.10—December 2005
on an Apostle’s Encounter with the Son’s Children by Anthony Esolen
more from the online archives
33.3—May/June 2020
Human & Divine Societies Require Careful Thought & Discourse by Anthony Esolen
20.4—May 2007
A Short & Surprising History of Protestantism & Contraception by Allan C. Carlson
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
