Cristianismo y democracia en los siglos XIX y XX

Abstract

This article offers a historiographical reflection on academic scholarship (1984–2025) regarding the relationship between Christianity and democracy in the Southern Cone (Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay) during the 19th and 20th centuries. The timeframe spans from the return to democracy in the 1980s to recent assessments prompted by the democratic crisis in the West. It argues that the Christianity-democracy pairing functioned as a set of «floating signifiers», with conceptual and practical intersections that influenced local political cultures. The methodology employs a qualitative content analysis rooted in a hermeneutic approach, supported by a systematic survey of public libraries, digital repositories, and specialized journals. To foreground the plurality of confessional voices, the study moves beyond a Catholic-centric analytical framework. It maps four historiographical currents: the history of elections and politico-religious ideologies; socio-political history; confessional-internalist history; and intellectual-conceptual history. By linking national and transnational scales—connected to the global dynamics of Catholicism and the Evangelical-Protestant world—the study concludes that regional historiography has evolved from structural interpretations focused on institutions and parties toward perspectives centered on agency, political culture, languages, and religious subjectivities.