Redeemed, reborn, forgiven

Abstract

During the Peruvian civil war in the 1980s and 90s, evangelical and especially pentecostal churches experienced an enormous growth in the Andean regions highly affected by the violence. Drawing on field research, this chapter sheds light on the role these churches played and still play in the aftermath of the conflict in Ayacucho, where survivors until today do not only have to deal with economic devastation and the loss of tens of thousands of human lives, but are also confronted with a complex social landscape where lines between victims, perpetrators and bystanders have offen been blurred. Although evangelical churches did not establish any institutional mechanisms regarding the violence and its effects, they provided their adherents with ways to deal with their experiences and to work on local processes of reconciliation: Conversion gave former perpetrators a chance to credibly repent. For victims, evangelical belief and theology and especially the practice of forgiveness gave them a possibility to explore alternative pathways to justice and to manage to cope with daily life in a complex and unsafe environment.