Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Effects of Evangelical Conversion on Latin American Masculinity, and its Social Consequences.

Southern Methodist University, Dallas TX

Investigators

Abstract

Religious fundamentalism has grown rapidly over the past several decades, particularly in the developing world where renewed religious faith is a common response to conditions of poverty and social crisis. At the same time, attitudes concerning men, women, and their appropriate roles in society, also have changed. In Latin America, these two phenomena (religious growth and changes in gender ideology) appear to be linked. As men convert in increasing numbers to evangelical Christianity, they also alter their attitudes and behaviors, particularly their notions of manhood and their attitudes towards women. This project will examine the link between religion and gender ideology in the city of San Miguel, El Salvador, by comparing the lives of Catholic and evangelical Protestant men and women. The researcher, an Hispanic American graduate student who is blingual in English and Spanish, will use interviews, life histories, and surveys to meticulously document and understand the process and consequences of religious conversion. Religious conversion from hierarchical traditional faiths to more egalitarian personalized ones is a worldwide phenomenon today. This study will contribute to our understanding of this process. Because the study will take place in a post war state with a depressed economy, it also may be possible to draw comparisons with other societies in similar situations. Finally, the research will contribute to the science education of an Hispanic graduate student, an under represented minority in American science.