ABSTRACT
During the last few decades, religious effervescence in Latin America has become an important theme of study, changing the boundaries of disciplines such as Political Science and Sociology, disciplines which, until then, had not considered the relations between politics and religion as an important trend. After the initial surprise caused by the rapid rise of new religious movements, especially, but not exclusively, related to Pentecostalism, the study of religious phenomena within the fields of Political Science and Sociology came to occupy a central place. As Patrick Michel (1997: 177-201) puts it, “the theme of the ‘Return of the religious’ is very much in favour these days … The debate as to the current role of the religious (the ultimate bulwark of ethics for some, a formidable threat to democracy for others) holds nowadays a strategic position.”
