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Pentecostalism is a religious movement, spreading, from its origins in the early twentieth century and more strongly since the 1950s, to the entire Latin American continent, mainly through ethnic and class segments located in the lower parts of the social pyramid. With the pass of the time, Pentecostalism showed a great capacity for theological and organisational recreation, but did not cut, despite this, its basic ties with evangelical heritage. This dynamism has strengthened its public presence from the religious point of view while its civic impact is still in great part unknown, and led to various hypotheses that present this movement as associable to democracy and, conversely, as opposed to its founding values and to the change of social structures in a 'progresist' sense. It is clear however that the Pentecostals have been the excuse to debate the issue of 'invasion of the sects ' by those who stigmatised its churches, especially in the 80's. This paper works these aspects and presents methodological demands that seem appropriate to take into account in friture compara-tive studies in Latin American countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reports the first results of a comparative research on Pentecostalism that involves scholars in Europe, Asia, Africa, South and North America. The author focuses on the characters which, in his opinion, are responsible of the success of this religion in various parts of the world: the internal differentiation that allows Pentecostal churches to intercept different tastes of the public, the doctrinal and liturgical innovations, the role of music in the liturgy, as a factor of seduction, identity and loyalty. The author than raises the issue why in Latin American and in Europe Pentecostalism is spreading especially among the popular and impoverished classes and concludes that its development is linked to the opening of the religious market that has enabled these churches to catch that part of the religious demand that for various reasons, the traditional churches were predisposed to accept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]