Abstract
The study of the religious phenomenon assimilated to the generic concept of “protestantism” has turned out to be a fruitful field of research for sociologists, anthropologists and historians these last twenty-five years. Nevertheless, reductive comprehension of such a complex social and religious phenomenon, related to the differentiation and atomization of a religious field wider than mere “Protestantism” still predominates. In order to emphasize the degree of difference and dissociation between the new religious movements, so-called Protestants and the historical Latin-American Protestantism, the author develops a socio-historical approach. When the Protestant societies of the late 19th century emerged from the political culture of radical liberalism typical of those schools of thought favouring an anti-corporatist and democratic modernity, the present-day Protestant religious movement, particularly the Pentecostals, evolved from a religious and political culture typical of folk catholocism, syncretic and strengthening the passivity of the masses. Contemporary forms of Protestantism deputize for popular Catholicism and fill a vacuum, reshaping in a traditional way the relative autonomy of popular religion.