This book attempts an initial mapping of evangelical involvement in the politics of the Third World. It represents a pioneer cross-cultural comparative study of the political dimensions of the new mass Protestantism of sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and parts of Asia.

These political dimensions certainly need mapping, since the terrain is unpredictable. Amongst Third World evangelical presidents, for example, there has been the head of a military junta who delivered televised sermons every Sunday until being overthrown by other generals; a trade-union leader who, in Lech Walesa style, led the opposition to a one-party system and was elected president, only to create a virtual replica of the deposed regime; a former Marxist dictator who converted to democracy and pentecostalism and returned to power via the ballot box; a businessman-cum-prophet who won a democratic election and two years later had to flee the country after suspending the constitution and trying to govern autocratically; and even a ‘president in clandestinity’, titular head of resistance to an incipient autocracy. At another level, we come across missionary societies specialised at recruiting former soldiers to continue the struggle against communism, as well as socialist guerrillas with an evangelistic music group; not to mention the vice-president of a pentecostal denomination who is also director-general in the office of the presidency of his country, but who under the former regime was arrested as a subversive and tortured by a deacon of his own church.