Pensamiento Cristiano: a showcase to power relationships in the Evangelical Latin American publishing field (1953-1975)

Abstract

The Latin American religious field experienced a progressive pluralization in the 1950s. In this process, the emergence of charismatism marked a before and after in the disputes over the moral and spiritual guidance of the population. Traditional producers of religious literature, both Catholic and Evangelical, had to face new competitors and mass forms of religious proselytizing. Radio and television, together with a model of a massive church, questioned the importance of the print in the symbolic production of religious identities. In this article I will characterize the transformations of the Evangelical publishing field between 1953 and 1975. Exercise that I will carry out through the study of a magazine called Pensamiento Cristiano, published in Argentina between 1953 and 1985, whose circulation was transnational. I will focus on its first editorial stage that goes up to 1975, which was marked by the direction of Alejandro Clifford. The analysis perspective will be mixed: quantitative through bibliometrics and qualitative from certain postulates of Cultural History. This is how I will locate actors, discourses and practices in the struggle for the identity definition of Evangelicals through this printed page.