Abstract
The social and political participation of evangelical communities and actors in Argentina has been reflected in their increasing involvement in debates about public policies on sexual and reproductive health. This chapter has two objectives. First, it aims to identify and describe the major evangelical actors who have participated in recent discussions on sexual and reproductive rights in Argentina, as well as their argument strategies. Second, it seeks to explain how these interventions impact on the relations between politics and religion in contemporary Argentina. Our analysis focuses on the debate surrounding the legal recognition of same-sex couples between 2003 and 2010.
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- 1.
The absence of census data that report on the number of the faithful in religious groups makes it difficult to establish with certainty evangelical growth rates. The most recent representative study on the percentage of evangelicals in Argentina indicates that they constitute 9 % of the population (Mallimaci 2013); another survey indicates that they total 7.3 % (Pew Research Centre 2012). The increased visibility of evangelicals in the 1980s and 1990s and their increasing interaction with state agencies based in extensive social work (Carbonelli 2009) leads one to consider evangelical churches as the religious group with the highest growth in recent decades.
- 2.
There were also demonstrations against same-sex marriage in the Argentinean provinces of Córdoba, Salta, Jujuy, San Luis, San Juan, Mendoza, and Corrientes, which were organized by the Catholic churches of these provinces. However, these events were not considered in this study.
- 3.
Acronyms throughout the chapter correspond to Spanish translations.
- 4.
Since the 1970s, leaders and institutions related to Historical Protestantism built alliances with figures of other faiths and political and labor actors, with whom they established a movement oriented to protect human rights . Just before the military coup of 1976, leaders of these evangelical churches founded the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights (APDH) (Míguez Bonino 1985) and the Ecumenical Movement for Human Rights (MEDH) (Bianchi 2004). This advocacy was acknowledged once democracy was restored. The former President Raúl Alfonsín designated Emeritus Methodist Bishop Carlos Gattinoni as a member of the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP) in 1984 (it was the first time that a figure from a non-Catholic church was called to be part of a committee created by the national executive). In 1994 the Methodist pastor José Miguez Bonino was elected, through Frente País Solidario, to be part of the Convention for the Reform of the Constitution.
- 5.
Liberation theology is a theological stream born inside the Latin-American Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) and the Conference of Medellín (1968). Among its tenets, the most important are the preferential treatment of the poor and the fact that Christian salvation cannot exist without economic, political, and ideological liberation, which are visible signs of the dignity of men (Gutiérrez 1971; Dussel 1972).
- 6.
The religious right is an ultraconservative and fundamentalist movement, which has functioned as a lobby through organizations such as the Moral Majority (Martin 1996).
- 7.
The National Law No. 21.745 was sanctioned in 1978, during the last military dictatorship. It establishes that all religious institutions in Argentina , with the exception of the Catholic Church , must apply for official recognition and registration as a condition for their cult activities.
- 8.
Cynthia Hotton comes from the tradition of Free Brothers and participates in a Pentecostal church. She was elected deputy for the alliance between the parties Propuesta Republicana (PRO) and Recrear para el Crecimiento (RECREAR) in 2007. In 2009, she founded the political group “Valores para mi País” and after several disputes with the leader of PRO and Governor of the city of Buenos Aires, Mauricio Macri, she created an autonomous space that lasted until December 2011. Hugo Acuña comes from the Baptist tradition and won his seat with Movimiento Popular Neuquino in December 2005, which he held until December 2009.
- 9.
The appropriation of human rights language in order to defend a “pro-life” and “pro-family” agenda by religious activists and leaders is a global phenomenon that is critically analyzed by Morgan (2014) in Latin America.
- 10.
The belief in the Bible as a text fully inspired and without error is a common denominator of the biblical conservative pole and a “central difference with the view that historical liberationists apply to the biblical hermeneutics which has been historically placed in parallel to empathy with modernity and illustration” (Wynarczyk 2009, 47).
- 11.
When Boltanski (1990, 277–278) talks about maneuvers of magnification he refers to the discursive resources that people use to appear as speakers for causes and claims that exceed individual interests and would jeopardize the welfare of the whole community.
- 12.
During the analyzed period no political leaders or legislators publicly identified as evangelicals acted in favor of these demands.
- 13.
For an analysis of the history and current profile of these institutions, see Forni et al. (2003).
- 14.
Following numerical criteria (number of believers and temples), liberationist churches are a small group within a minority religious group.
- 15.
The FALGBT was established in 2006 as a new national space of coordination between different groups of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and trans (FALGBT’s website, January 24, 2014). It led the demand for equal marriage in Argentina .
- 16.
The TV spot is available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hK2ns7TmImc.
- 17.
From Catholicism two groups of priests declared themselves in favor of the law: one from the province of Córdoba (Grupo de Sacerdotes Enrique Angelelli 2010) and another that belongs to the Diocese of Quilmes in Buenos Aires (Presbítero Blanco et al. 2010). The lays of the Asociación Civil Nueva Tierra (2010) also supported the law. From Judaism, Rabbi Daniel Goldman supported the project at the Committee on General Legislation of the Senate (La Nación 2010b) and Rabbi Silvina Chemen participated in the spot “Faith says yes to equality.” Both come from the Bet-El community.
- 18.
In Argentina the dioceses and Catholic bishops affiliated with liberation theology participated in the formation of MEDH with liberationist evangelical churches. Rabbi Marshall Meyer from the Bet-El community, the Catholic Bishop Jaime de Nevares, and the Methodist Bishop Carlos Gattinoni from IEMA were part of the CONADEP.
- 19.
In the field of modern and contemporary political theory, there is a long tradition that considers the weight and decision of the majority as a priority value of democracy. This tradition has its roots in the social contract of Rousseau ([1762] 1996), and has continued in the development of Schmitt’s (1988) concept of the people as a homogeneous entirety, and in Schumpeter’s (1981) association between electoral and market dynamics.
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This chapter was written within the project UBACYT 20020120200132, which is based at the Gino Germani Research Institute (University of Buenos Aires, Argentina).
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Jones, D.E., Carbonelli, M.A., Cunial, S.L. (2017). Evangelicals Within Contemporary Argentinean Politics: Logics and Political Actors Around Sexual and Reproductive Rights. In: Vaggione, J., Morán Faúndes, J. (eds) Laicidad and Religious Diversity in Latin America. Boundaries of Religious Freedom: Regulating Religion in Diverse Societies, vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44745-2_8
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