In Guatemala, the 36-year armed conflict from 1960 to 1996 claimed 200,000 lives, over two per cent of the population, and displaced a million more. In the 1970s and the 1980s the widespread and violent repression of social movements fighting for justice and human rights reached unimaginable proportions, involving assassinations, disappearances, and exile. Even parts of the Church, traditionally considered an ally of the powerful and the wealthy, were not spared this fate.

Missionaries and Re...

How churches in Northern Europe reinvented their role as providers of social relief.

Charity is a word that fits well in the history of religion and churches, whereas the concept of social reform seems to belong more to the vocabulary of the modern welfare states. Christian charity found itself, during the long nineteenth century, within the maelstrom of social turmoil. In this context of social unrest, although charity managed to confirm its relevance, it was also subjected to fierce critici...

The changing attitude of Catholic culture towards modernity.After decades of a problematic, if not plainly hostile, approach to modernity by Catholic culture, the 1960s marked the beginning of a new era. As the Church employed a more positive approach to the world, voices in the Catholic milieu embraced a radical perspective, channeling the need for social justice for the poor and the oppressed. The alternative and complementary world views of 'universalism' and 'liberation' would drive the e...

Among a wide spectrum of American Protestants, the horrors of World War II triggered grave concern for Europe’s religious future. They promptly mobilised resources to revive Europe’s Christian foundation. Saving the Overlooked Continent reconstructs this surprising redirection of Western missions. For the first time, Europe became the recipient of America’s missionary enterprise.

The American missionary impulse matched the military, economic, and political programs of the U.S., all of w...

Catholic mission from the mid-20th century onwards was complicated by geopolitical upheaval, church reform, and the emergent critique of the colonial power matrix to which the Church belonged. Missionary movements to Latin America coincided with visions for a progressive, radically transformative church.

Landscapes of Liberation expands scholarship into liberation theology’s reception in Andean America and critically examines the interplay of the Catholic Church as a global institution with...