Maryknoll Catholic missionaries from the United States settled in Peru in 1943 believing they could save a "backward" Catholic Church from poverty, a scarcity of clergy, and the threat of communism. Instead, the missionaries found themselves transformed: within twenty-five years, they had become vocal critics of United States foreign policy and key supporters of liberation theology, the preferential option for the poor, and intercultural Catholicism. In The Maryknoll Catholic Mission in Peru, 1943-1989, Susan Fitzpatrick-Behrens explains this transformation and Maryknoll's influence in Peru and the United States by placing it in the context of a transnational encounter Catholics with shared faith but distinct practices and beliefs. Peru received among the greatest number of foreign Catholic missionaries who settled in Latin America during the Cold War. It was at the heart of liberation theology and progressive Catholicism, the center of a radical reformist experiment initiated by a progressive military dictatorship, and the site of a devastating civil war promoted by the Maoist Shining Path. Maryknoll participated in all these developments, making Peru a perfect site for understanding Catholic missions, the role of religion in the modern world, and relations between Latin America and the United States. This book is based on two years of research conducted in Peru, where Fitzpatrick-Behrens examined national and regional archives, conducted extensive interviews with Maryknoll clergy who continued to work in the country, and engaged in participant observation in the Aymara indigenous community of Cutini Capilla. Her findings contest assumptions about secularization and the decline of public religion by demonstrating that religion continues to play a key role in social, political, and economic development.

By 2025, Latin America's population of observant Christians will be the largest in the world. Nonetheless, studies examining the exponential growth of global Christianity tend to overlook this region, focusing instead on Africa and Asia. Research on Christianity in Latin America provides a core point of departure for understanding the growth and development of Christianity in the "Global South." In The Oxford Handbook of Latin American Christianity an interdisciplinary contingent of scholars examines Latin American Christianity in all of its manifestations from the colonial to the contemporary period. The essays here provide an accessible background to understanding Christianity in Latin America. Spanning the era from indigenous and African-descendant people's conversion to and transformation of Catholicism during the colonial period through the advent of Liberation Theology in the 1960s and conversion to Pentecostalism and Charismatic Catholicism, The Oxford Handbook of Latin American Christianity is the most complete introduction to the history and trajectory of this important area of modern Christianity.