From Booklist
Berryman offers a close reading of Roman Catholic, historic Protestant, and Pentecostal communities in two Latin American megacities--Sx8b o Paulo and Caracas. His account is accessible and informative, of interest to North American readers who belong to those traditions as well as others who seek to understand their historic development. Given the growing influence of Pentecostal and evangelical communities in many parts of the world, Berryman's account of their growth in two cities that have long been identified as Roman Catholic is of particular interest. It ends up being a refutation of the dramatic claim that Roman Catholic ("Iberian" ) Latin America is "going Protestant" ("Anglo" ). Berryman suggests that a more accurate claim would be that the megacities he reads closely are becoming religiously pluralistic. That results in a call to Catholics, Protestants, and Evangelicals to "cross one another's thresholds regularly, learning from one another, and together giving witness" --a suggestion that is at least as important in North America as in South. Steve Schroeder
Review
In Religion In The Megacity, Phillip Berryman surveys the new face of religious reality in urban Latin America by focusing on two representative "mega-cities", Sao Paulo, Brazil, and Caracas, Venezuela. Religion In The Megacity introduces the people and forces that are shaping the latest "religious revolution" in Latin America by contrasting social cultures, one more traditionally Catholic, the other more secular, even to the point of religious skepticism. The advances of Protestantism in traditionally Catholic communities is directly addressed. In each city a range of men and women (including scholars and those in the trenches of urban ministry) were interviewed to present a balanced and often surprising views of the situation. Rather than simply a division between evangelicals and Catholics, Berryman finds a much more complex and fluid range of identities from profound differences about the meaning of the gospel in relation to questions of poverty and injustice, the role of women, and models of authority, to the often surprising areas of convergence on key issues now being played out in the political, cultural, social, and religious arenas of public discussion. Religion In The Megacity is a seminal work well deserving of close and serious attention by anyone with an interest in the changing religious climates of Latin America. -- Midwest Book Review
