ABSTRACT
Protestant involvement in liberal-national projects such as the Mexican Reforma of the mid-nine teenth century and the Mexican Revolution (see revolutions) itself, as well as in the Peruvian centrist-nationalist party APRA. But this history was marginalized by the ascent of the corporatist state, with its organicist ideological underpinnings and its sponsoring of large-scale clientelistic interest groups. The highly successful Evangelical or Pentecostal movement, which tended to prefer discretion against public visibility, began to change its strategy in the 1980s, by using the mass media, and by putting up candidates in national and local parliamentary elections. These interventions seem not to have a common ideological thread, being united only in their hostility to communism, though not to social democracy or Christian Democracy. These churches first came to politics in processes of Constitution-making, where they had a clear interest in ensuring that all religious faiths had equal rights and freedoms - and putting an end to the privileges enjoyed by the Catholic Church. In this they were very successful. They also had a strong commitment to certain moral issues in the new constitutions, being opposed to the death penalty, abortion and non-traditional marriage. In the parliam entary arena, the Churches in Brazil have revealed themselves to be motivated not in the least by ideological considerations but by their own corporate interests. As newcomers to the religious marketplace, they need political representation to gain access to media ownership, to equal treatment with other religious persuasions, and to subsidies for their growing involvement in social programmes.
