Protestant evangelicalism has spread rapidly in Latin America at the same time that foreign corporations have taken hold of economies there. These concurrent developments have led some observers to view this religious movement as a means of melding converts into a disciplined work force for foreign capitalists rather than as a reflection of conscious individual choices made for a variety of personal, as well as economic, reasons.

In this pioneering study, Elizabeth Brusco challenges such assumptions and explores the intra-household motivations for evangelical conversion in Colombia. She shows how the asceticism required of evangelicals (no drinking, smoking, or extramarital sexual relations are allowed) redirects male income back into the household, thereby raising the living standard of women and children. This benefit helps explain the appeal of evangelicalism for women and questions the traditional assumption that organized religion always disadvantages women.

Brusco also demonstrates how evangelicalism appeals to men by offering an alternative to the more dysfunctional aspects of machismo. Case studies add a fascinating human dimension to her findings.

With the challenges this book poses to conventional wisdom about economic, gender, and religious behavior, it will be important reading for a wide audience in anthropology, women’s studies, economics, and religion. For all students of Latin America, it offers thoughtful new perspectives on a major, grass-roots agent of social change.

• Acknowledgments
• 1. Introduction
  • Contradictions in a Feminist View of Evangelical Women
  • More Contradictions: Colombian Evangelicalism and the Anthropology of Religion
  • Research Questions: The Domestication of Men?
  • Data Collection
  • The Different Levels of Meaning in the Conversion Experience
  • Gender Analysis in Conversion Studies
  • Plan of the Study
• 2. The Evangelical Movement in Colombia
  • Early Missions
  • The Contemporary Picture: The Size of the Movement
  • The Meaning of “Evangelical” in Colombia
  • Conclusion
• 3. Religion and Politics
  • Introduction
  • The Power of the Roman Catholic Church in Colombia: The Concordat
  • Constitutional Reform and the Concordat
  • Liberals and Conservatives and the Separation of Church and State
  • La Violencia
  • The Effect of La Violencia on Evangelicals in El Cocuy
  • Conclusion
• 4. El Cocuy: Colombian Evangelicalism on the Community Level
  • Rural Life in Urban Colombia
  • Choice of El Cocuy as the Rural Field Site
  • Description of the Town
  • Early History of El Cocuy
  • Religion in El Cocuy
  • The Impact of Foreign Missionaries in El Cocuy: The Lutheran Church of Our Savior
• 5. Domestic Abdication, Individualism, and Machismo
  • Introduction
  • Defining Machismo: Contradictions and Consistencies
  • Domestic Abdication
  • Psychological Approaches: Machismo and Male Dominance
  • Change over Time
  • Machismo, Proletarianization, and Individualism
• 6. Colombian Sex and Gender Roles and the Family
  • Introduction
  • Sex Roles and Familial Roles
  • The Consequences of Machismo for Women’s Household Roles
  • Conjugal Roles and Status Consciousness
  • Case History: Rosalinda
• 7. Colombian Evangelicalism from the Household Out
  • Gender Roles and Marital Roles in the Conversion Process
  • The Economic Effects of Gender Role Transformation
  • The Feminine Ethos of Evangelical Religion
• 8. Conclusion
  • Colombian Evangelicalism as a “Strategic” Form of Female Collective Action
  • Progress, Modernization, and Culture Change
  • Women, the Prosperity Ethic, and the Household Writ Large
• Appendix: Fieldwork with Colombian Evangelicals
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index