An in-depth look at the diplomatic strategy connecting Latin American congregations with powerful foreign capital networks.
The expansion of evangelical Christianity across Latin America marks a shift that extends far beyond personal faith or religious conversion. Over the past five decades, the growth of evangelicalism has evolved into a strategic political project, an ideological framework, and a mechanism for political influence across the Western Hemisphere.
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According to demographic studies compiled by the Pew Research Center, approximately 19% of Latin America’s population identified as evangelical in 2014, a dramatic rise from roughly 4% in 1970.
In several Central American nations, including Guatemala and Honduras, self-identified evangelicals now approach or exceed 40% of the national population.
This demographic transition coincided with, and was actively accelerated by, strategic geopolitical interests originating in the U.S. and Israel. Foreign policy strategists recognized in the rising evangelical movement a powerful vehicle for advancing specific political, economic, and diplomatic objectives across Latin America.
The structural relationship between evangelical organizations, Washington’s diplomatic apparatus, and Israeli foreign policy initiatives is not an incidental alignment of conservative values.
To understand the evangelical phenomenon, one must analyze the theological frameworks that justify political action, the channels through which international support flows, and the electoral outcomes produced across the region.
Origins and Expansion: From Marginal Movement to Political Force
The deliberate promotion of evangelicalism in Latin America gained significant momentum during the 1960s and 1970s. This period saw intense social upheaval, civil wars, and the rise of progressive religious movements within the Catholic Church.
Most notably, Liberation Theology emerged following the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) and the 1968 Bishops’ Conference in Medellín, Colombia. Catholic priests, theologians, and laypersons began framing the Christian gospel through the lens of social justice, civil rights, and structural support for marginalized populations.
Figures like Archbishop Óscar Romero in El Salvador and theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez in Peru argued that faith required directly challenging economic inequality, military dictatorships, and foreign intervention.
This progressive Catholic movement presented an ideological challenge to established economic structures and U.S. foreign policy in the region during the Cold War. In response, conservative policy circles in Washington began viewing the Catholic Church’s progressive wing as a vector for left-wing political mobilization.
The 1969 Rockefeller Report on the Americas, prepared by Nelson Rockefeller for President Richard Nixon, explicitly warned about the trajectory of the Catholic Church, noting that “if the Catholic Church should cease to be a force for stability… the consequences for the Western Hemisphere would be severe.”
The historical roots of Pentecostalism, the fastest-growing subset of evangelicalism, originally presented a very different social character. In its early twentieth-century origins, such as the 1906 Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles led by African American preacher William J. Seymour, Pentecostalism functioned as an egalitarian movement.
However, as the movement expanded southward, this egalitarian potential underwent a profound institutional shift. The theological emphasis within many growing churches transitioned from collective solidarity and mutual aid toward individual salvation, personal morality, and the “Prosperity Gospel.”
Propagated heavily by American televangelists, Prosperity Theology teaches that material wealth and personal health are direct indicators of divine favor, obtainable through individual faith and financial contributions to the church.
This theological shift aligned neatly with neoliberal economic frameworks. By framing poverty and wealth as products of individual faith and moral rectitude rather than structural economic factors, the new theology neutralized systemic critiques of inequality.
By the 1980s, these religious communities began transforming into organized political forces. During the Guatemalan civil war, General Efraín Ríos Montt came to power via a military coup in 1982, becoming one of the region’s first Pentecostal heads of state.
Supported by American evangelical organizations, the Ríos Montt regime framed counter-insurgency operations through explicit spiritual warfare rhetoric, demonstrating how rapidly evangelical identity could be deployed for state power and military counter-insurgency.
Zionist do not represent Jews!
Evangelical Christians do not represent Christianity!
Zionist and Evangelical act nothing like what have learned in the Torah, Bible.
You can’t say you are a Jew or Christian and then start a murderous war of Ethnic Cleansing and Humanity Crimes. https://t.co/r6fhs4Rg0W
— Robert Michael Delgado-Pérez
(@IBMLinux) September 4, 2026
The Geopolitical Architecture: U.S. Strategy and the Evangelical Vanguard
The expansion of evangelicalism throughout Latin America was supported by explicit institutional coordination involving state agencies, private foundations, and missionary organizations based in the U.S.
During the Cold War, agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) recognized that religious networks could serve as effective vehicles for soft power, particularly in rural and working-class areas where state presence was minimal.
High-profile crusades led by figures like Billy Graham in major South American cities during the 1960s were framed as apolitical religious gatherings. However, these operations established organizational infrastructure, forged ties with local elites, and promoted anti-communist sentiment under a spiritual banner.
In recent decades, this ideological push has evolved around a theological doctrine known as Dominionism, specifically expressed through the Seven Mountain Mandate. Developed within the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), a network of neo-charismatic evangelical leaders, this framework instructs believers to achieve influence or control over seven primary spheres of society.
As analytical studies on modern Christian nationalism document, the Seven Mountain Mandate moves beyond traditional pastoral care, framing state offices, educational systems, and media enterprises as strategic territory for religious leaders to occupy.
Prominent advocates of this doctrine, such as Lance Wallnau, explicitly link spiritual concepts to political conquest. Wallnau and associated figures advocate for a political theology centered on a militant posture designed to defeat ideological opponents and reshape civic institutions.
The Zionist Connection: Christian Zionism’s Doctrinal Roots
The geopolitical reach of the evangelical movement is further visible in its strategic alignment with the State of Israel. This relationship relies on Christian Zionism, a theological belief system asserting that the return of Jewish people to Palestine and the expansion of the Israeli state are biblical imperatives required to fulfill end-times prophecy.
Christian Zionism predates modern secular Jewish Zionism, drawing its structural foundation from nineteenth-century dispensationalism developed by the Anglo-Irish theologian John Nelson Darby.
Darby’s framework divided human history into distinct divine eras, positioning the physical gathering of Jewish people in the Holy Land as a mandatory prerequisite for the Second Coming of Christ.
This theological model influenced Western imperial policy throughout the twentieth century. The Balfour Declaration of 1917, through which the British government declared its support for a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, was actively shaped by Christian Zionist politicians like Lord Shaftesbury and Prime Minister David Lloyd George, who held dispensationalist views.
Following the founding of Israel in 1948 and its territorial expansion during the 1967 Six-Day War, dispensationalist theologians interpreted these military and diplomatic events as direct fulfillments of biblical prophecy, driving rapid growth in Christian Zionist political organizing.
In contemporary U.S. politics, this movement exerts substantial leverage over foreign policy. President Donald Trump acknowledged the political evangelical base force, regarding his administration’s 2018 decision to relocate the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Demographic and public opinion research from organizations demonstrates that approximately 80% of white evangelical Protestants in the U.S. express the belief that God’s covenant with Abraham gave the land of Israel to the Jewish people permanently, while over 70% state that Israel fulfills biblical prophecy.
Christian zionism is the ultimate BS! pic.twitter.com/EY9rckKLij
— Rania (@umyaznemo) August 19, 2025
Media Networks and Ideological Penetration
The transformation of Christian Zionism from a niche theological interpretation into a dominant geopolitical consensus relies heavily on an expansive communication infrastructure. Across Latin America, Christian broadcasting networks have grown into formidable media conglomerates that reach tens of millions of viewers and listeners daily.
Televangelists, radio broadcasters, and digital content creators have established thousands of stations and digital channels, creating an ecosystem that continuously broadcasts specific ideological and geopolitical narratives alongside spiritual programming.
This broadcast infrastructure operates through networks such as Enlace, a Costa Rica-based Christian television network with international distribution, as well as media organizations run by major church institutions like the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God in Brazil.
Through these networks, pro-Israel diplomatic stances and dispensationalist end-times narratives are delivered directly to mass audiences. Media researchers note that this continuous exposure fosters a widespread popular consensus across congregations that aligns the security and territorial expansion of Israel directly with divine mandate.
Consequently, diplomatic policies regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict maintain consistency across political administrations due to the electoral influence of this media-trained base.
The theological framework utilized within these media networks relies on an explicitly Manichaean worldview, one that divides complex geopolitical realities into binary struggles between good and evil.
Leaders within this movement frequently frame contemporary military conflicts not as political disputes over land, self-determination, or human rights, but as cosmic battles against demonic forces.
Following the escalation of hostilities in the Middle East in October 2023, popular evangelical authors and broadcasters like Jonathan Cahn presented the violence through apocalyptic rhetoric, describing the events as part of an ancient spiritual war.
By defining geopolitical conflicts as spiritual battles, this media ecosystem provides theological cover for military operations and foreign interventions.
From Faith to Political Power: Concrete Mechanisms
The translation of evangelical growth into tangible political power operates through three primary structural mechanisms that reinforce one another. First, in neglected urban neighborhoods and isolated rural areas where state infrastructure is virtually nonexistent, evangelical churches stepped in to fill the void by providing essential social services.
By running healthcare clinics, childcare centers, job training programs, and addiction recovery groups, local congregations build deep community trust. This direct material aid creates a level of grassroots loyalty and institutional authority that traditional political parties, trade unions, and civil society organizations struggle to match.
Second, evangelical leaders leverage their media infrastructure to shape public discourse directly, enabling them to frame political debates, bypass traditional journalistic oversight, and speak to their followers with absolute authority.
Third, pastoral associations function as highly coordinated electoral machines, capable of mobilizing millions of voters across thousands of local churches with single-word endorsements from the pulpit.
The political consequences of this organizational structure are evident across the region. In Brazil, the evangelical parliamentary bloc played a decisive role in the 2018 election of Jair Bolsonaro. Voting studies confirm that his overwhelming support among evangelical voters provided the critical margin needed for victory.
In Guatemala, President Jimmy Morales, himself an evangelical Christian, demonstrated the power of this alliance in 2018 by officially relocating Guatemala’s embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, making Guatemala the second nation in the world to take that step immediately after the U.S.
In Argentina, President Javier Milei actively cultivated strategic partnerships with evangelical leaders to secure territorial organizing power in key working-class districts.
By tapping into evangelical distribution networks for social relief while aligning Argentina’s foreign policy firmly with the U.S. and Israel, his administration demonstrated how modern right-wing political projects across the Americas rely on the organizational muscle of the evangelical vanguard.
For the evangelical right wing in Latin America, Zionism is just a continuation of Cold War-era anticommunist programming
A pro-Bolsonaro Zionist is asked why she’s carrying the flag of Israel: “Because we are Christians, just like Israel… we are not communists”
pic.twitter.com/rSg3RR85wD
— COMBATE |
(@upholdreality) February 26, 2024
The Empire of Faith
The rapid rise of the evangelical movement across Latin America cannot be treated as a simple narrative of personal religious expansion. It represents a deliberate, decades-long intersection between spiritual devotion and imperial geopolitics.
From the Cold War counter-insurgency strategies designed to counter Liberation Theology to the contemporary adoption of Christian Zionism, the movement has functioned as an effective vehicle for advancing specific political and diplomatic agendas.
By recasting complex geopolitical struggles, such as the occupation of Palestine or the restructuring of Latin American economies, into cosmic battles between good and evil, this alliance grants moral and legal cover to policies that would otherwise face intense democratic resistance.
For progressive movements, civil society organizations, and democratic institutions across the Americas, understanding the mechanics of this alliance is a necessity. The evangelical power bloc presents a formidable challenge to secular governance, social pluralism, and human rights across the region.
Sources: La Base América Latina – Britannica – Al Jazeera – ONU – Brasil de Fato – Resumen Latinoamericano – BBC – CNN – Democracy Now – The Guardia – The Herald – RT – TRT World – AP News – AJ+ – Diego Ruzzarin
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