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Protestantism in El Salvador: Conventional Wisdom versus Survey Evidence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2022

Edwin Eloy Aguilar ,
José Miguel Sandoval ,
Timothy J. Steigenga  and
Kenneth M. Coleman
Edwin Eloy Aguilar
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
José Miguel Sandoval
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Timothy J. Steigenga
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Kenneth M. Coleman
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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Protestantism has grown strikingly throughout Latin America in the last two decades. Estimating such growth is hazardous in the absence of firm national survey data, but the phenomenon is clearly embracing sizable segments of national populations. In Guatemala, estimates of Protestants in the national population ranged from 20 to 25 percent by the early 1980s, with more recent estimates approaching 30 percent.

Type
Research Reports and Notes
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , 1993 , pp. 119 - 140
Copyright
Copyright © 1993 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

∗

This study is dedicated to the martyrs of El Salvador's Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas (UCA): Julia Ramos and her daughter, Celina; Father Ignacio Ellacuría, Rector; Father Ignacio Martín-Baró, Vice Rector and Director, Instituto Universitario de Opinión Pública (IUDOP); Father Segundo Montes, Dean of Social Sciences; Father Juan Ramón Moreno; Father Joaquín López y López; and Father Amando López. No conventional expression of gratitude can do justice to the sacrifice made by these individuals, who died on 16 November 1989 because of their commitment to academic integrity, religious tolerance, and political reconciliation in El Salvador. In presenting a secondary analysis of data collected under the supervision of Father Martín-Baró at IUDOP, we acknowledge the immense achievement of those who engaged in the scientific study of public opinion under conditions of civil war and constant threat.

The authors also wish to thank Héctor Avalos, Virginia Garrard Burnett, Charles L. Davis, the Reverend James E. Goff, Jonathan Hartlyn, David L. Lowery, Gary Marks, Catharine Newbury, James Penning, Lars Schoultz, Donald Searing, Jurg Steiner, David Stoll, and James W. White for helpful comments on this paper, as well as six anonymous LARR reviewers. Edwin Aguilar wishes to thank the National Science Foundation for fellowship support, and all the authors thank the Institute for Research in Social Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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