Believers and Neighbors: “Huaycán Is One and No One Shall Divide It”
Believers and Neighbors: "Huaycdn Is One and No One Shall Divide It" Contrary to the argument that evangelical Christianity is inherently apolitical or conservative, evangelicals in a new pueblo on Lima's periphery extended political mobilization to negotiating with municipal authorities, Catholic neighbors, and even Sendero Luminoso to define political and ideological space in the new neighborhood. Yet differences within and among denominations kept them from permanently coordinating their political activism. This case highlights the nature of citizenship building and political participation for evangelicals in Peru.
Pentecostalism, Conversions, and Politics in Brazil
The stereotype of all Latin American Pentecostals as political conservatives or apolitical has long been abandoned by scholars. But how Pentecostalism figures in the lives of Pentecostals so that some are indeed akin to stereotype and others are active, critical citizens involved in radical politics, remains a matter for debate. This paper argues that variation in type of citizenship among Brazilian Pentecostals may be understood not only in terms of variations in religious culture but also in terms of different types of conversion. It is proposed that reference to types of conversion, as distinguished by some theologians, helps explain why Pentecostals who share elements of a common religious culture nevertheless differ in type of citizenship; and why some Pentecostals and Catholics of the ‘base communities’, though different in their religious cultures, nonetheless share a common quality of critical citizenship.
The Internet and the Changing Beijing-Taipei Relations: Toward Unification or Fragmentation?
Information and its technologies facilitate the exercise of what has been called “soft power,” a concept that differentiates information from the conventional dimensions of “hard power,” which is mainly associated with military force and economic influence. Soft power, according to Nye, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense of the United States, means that “A country may obtain the outcomes it wants in world politics because other countries want to follow it, admiring its values, emulating its example, aspiring to its level of prosperity and openness. In this sense it is just as important to set the agenda in world politics and attract others as it is to force them to change through the threat or use of military or economic weapons.”1