Only recently have protestant histories begun to address historical, ideological, and theological questions in relation to the Protestant church in Latin America. In this book renowned theologian José Míguez Bonino distinguishes four "faces" with which Protestantism appears in Latin America: the mission and expansion of mainline churches, the evangelical missionary wave at the turn of the nineteenth century, the growth of Pentecostalism, and the Protestant immigration churches from Europe all along modern Latin American history.

In order to understand these religious expressions, Míguez Bonino relates internal conditions in Latin America to international relations, explores the religious and theological Anglo-Saxon trends that fed early Protestantism in Latin America, and discusses the transformations experienced by these churches in the local cultural, social, and religious conditions prevalent at different times in Latin America. Working from the thesis that evangelicalism has been the common denominator of all Protestant churches in Latin America, Míguez Bonino offers a theological critique of these different "faces" of Protestantism, discusses the conflicts that have appeared since the 1940s in the polarization of fundamentalism, evangelicalism, and liberation theology, and suggests a rereading of the evangelical tradition along trinitarian and missiological lines.