Florez's text analyses the lived experience of Pentecostal activists as they navigated the intense years of dictatorship in Chile during the 1970s and 1980s. In it, we get to know Chilean Pentecostals as they made meaning of, confronted and defied the logic of the Pinochet regime. In conversation with sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists and scholars of religious studies, Florez's research advances the literature on Latin American Protestantism and global Pentecostalism. The book's central argument is that Pentecostals’ everyday religious innovations during the dictatorship were inspired by and had an impact on the broader Chilean society. In these pages, historians of Latin America will find fascinating new ways of looking at this key turning point in Chilean history, and scholars of religion will benefit from the author's deep familiarity with the English- and Spanish-language literature on the Pinochet years.
Oral histories make up the bulk of Florez's primary sources. Through fifty interviews we meet the Pentecostals of late twentieth-century Chile, many of whom actively resisted the Pinochet dictatorship. In his analysis and argumentation, Florez blurs the line between the religious and political realms, following the cue of his interlocutors as they ‘shaped and molded religious responses to meet the challenges of state repression’ (p. 7). The rich oral history interviews are supplemented by a range of archival documents from churches and missionary organisations in Chile, Geneva, London and Berlin.
In five chapters, plus an introduction and conclusion, the author's approach is primarily thematic. The chapters tend to begin with a section or two of historical context, focusing mostly on the political and social realities of late Cold War Chile. These sections are concise and provide readable syntheses rooted in both recent and classic secondary literature. From there, Florez reflects on the theoretical and historiographical implications of the chapter's topic, after which he turns to the oral histories and other primary sources to sketch out his case studies on Santiago-area Pentecostal activism. A front-matter glossary of acronyms used throughout the text is a useful reminder of the churches, missions and other organisations discussed.
Giving life to the faith is a careful evaluation of the theological and political adaptability of Chilean Pentecostals, a phenomenon the author calls ‘lived religion in the shadows’ (see introduction). Florez's is not the embodied, sensory-focused lived religion of foundational scholars like Robert Orsi or Jennifer Scheper Hughes. Instead, the intimacy between the reader and the subjects comes in the form of a look behind the scenes as people and communities decided which politically-oriented ‘religious improvisations’ to enact in the face of the harsh realities of life under the dictatorship (p. 29). This approach allows the author to centre the fluid boundaries between people's identities as Pentecostals, Chileans and activists. Many readers will be struck by the ties of solidarity formed between Pentecostals and other poor and marginalised Chileans.
The book's first chapter is a compelling rundown of the history of Protestantism in Chile since the early nineteenth century. The second chapter takes on the topic of memory-making and the dramatic transition from the Salvador Allende administration (1970–3) through the military coup and the early years of General Pinochet's regime. Emerging debates and divisions within Pentecostal communities under Pinochet are the topic of chapter iii. In chapter iv, we learn about the generational tensions between Pentecostals that ranged from ‘mundane quarrels over footwear in the temples to very intimate issues about the stigmatization of female sexuality’ (p. 176). Chapter v outlines some of the ‘prohibited’ activist practices used by Pentecostals in resistance to the dictatorship that ‘ran counter to the veneer of established exercises of faith or the strict limitations of the regime’ (p. 199). These acts, such as hiding firearms in their temples, opened new pathways of religious activism in Chile. In each chapter, we see vivid images of the complex connections and divisions that inspired Pentecostal innovations.
At times, the author's focus on the ties between Pentecostals and non-Pentecostals raises more questions than answers. Throughout the text, we see interjections akin to the following: ‘Pentecostals, like their non-member neighbors’ (p. 160). In fact, so often do the Pentecostal Chileans we meet act like their non-Pentecostal peers that we are occasionally left wondering why the operative variable is indeed religious affiliation. While separating the subjects’ ‘identities and worldviews as Pentecostal and Chilean activists’ might at times obscure more than it reveals, this task is neither impossible nor fruitless (p. 27). Florez's insistence on presenting Pentecostals as average Chileans will speak more to scholars of Pentecostalism than to historians of Latin America. The latter group is still in need of good historical literature that explains the uniqueness and particularities of Evangelical communities throughout the region.
Through even-handed analysis and clear prose, this monograph convincingly challenges the misconception that late twentieth-century Pentecostals were all either apolitical holy rollers or far-right conservatives. Most of the people we meet throughout the book were politically engaged and leaned towards progressive and left-wing causes. We learn about Buena Nueva, a Pentecostal folk band that formed part of the Nueva Canción movement inherited from leftist musicians like Violeta Parra and Victor Jara. We meet Daniel Palma, the Socialist pastor of the Misión Iglesia Pentecostal who worked with the famed Methodist liberation theologians Emilio Castro of Uruguay and José Míguez Bonino of Argentina. Pastor Palma and others coordinated a clandestine asylum network for members of Uruguay's Tupamaros guerrilla forces. These revealing and unexpected stories offer new ways to understand the dramatic changes in the relationship between politics and religion in late Cold War Chile and Latin America. Scholars of religion as well as historians of Latin America looking for untold stories from the Pinochet years will find this book a welcome addition to a variety of ongoing conversations.
