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In Europe, church and state are still intertwined in ways that secular Christians hardly notice but nonetheless penalise religious minorities. National policies are bewilderingly inconsistent and the continued importance of legal privileges for Christians is most evident in those European countries that have established churches, as churches are commonly recognised by law as the official church of a state or nation and thus given civil authority. Overall, Europeans have followed two different models for organising church—state relations: religious monopolies and state-sponsorship of particular recognised national religions. Religious pluralism is a new social fact with which European states have yet to come to terms and, country by country, they are plunging into national debates about religion and public policy and how to accommodate growing numbers of nonconformist believers.

This chapter introduces four types of state-religion relations in human history – religious monopoly, pluralism, oligopoly, and a total ban. It argues that religious oligopoly is the most common practice in the world today and applies that understanding to the situation in China. The chapter illuminates the operation of triple markets in China: a red market of legal (officially permitted and regulated) religions; a black market of illegal religious groups and activities; and a grey market of spiritual organizations and practices of ambiguous legal status. This triple market is dynamic, as some groups, such as the Falun Gong, moved from ambiguous to illegal status, while some illegal underground Christian churches have moved into the gray category. The chapter draws upon these findings to challenge and refine dominant theories about the operation of religious markets.

Empirical evidence shows that the most common type of religion-state relations in the world today is neither religious pluralism nor religious monopoly, but religious oligopoly, where not a single one but a selected few religions are sanctioned by the state. The concluding Chapter Seven argues that religion in China under Communist rule is only one case of religious oligopoly. What has happened in China may be applicable to or indicative of religious dynamics in other oligopoly societies under heavy regulation. The triple religious markets can be found in most societies, including the former Soviet societies, East Asian countries, Latin America, and Western Europe. Religious pluralism as social arrangements includes legal, civic, and cultural dimensions. While religious pluralization may have become a historical trend, religious oligopoly remains dominant in reality in the world today.

The conclusion of the work is that the different Catholic attitudes toward state terrorism were linked to the way in which each of them dealt with the religious transformation of Argentine society in the second half of the twentieth century. Argentina faced social pluralization, religious secularization and deconfessionalization, and believers’ autonomy. Antisecular Catholics thought they were fighting a war against secularization and communist infiltrators to recover Catholic monopoly in the public sphere. Institutional Catholics were concerned about their relation with the government and their responsibilities as political actors in the fragile Argentine social order. Committed Catholics were victimized because of their religious convictions, which had pushed them to be closer with the poor.

This section reviews the history of Christianity in Latin America and introduces the main themes of the rest of the book. Four centuries of Catholicism prepared the way for the stunning rise of Protestantism in the twentieth century. After 1950 the region experienced the rise of Pentecostalism, the growth of new movements within the Catholic Church, and an antagonistic but nevertheless fruitful relationship between Catholicism and Protestantism. At the same time, Protestants often provided a valuable service by breaking the religious monopoly held by indigenous religion in rural villages. Once they had done so, it was not just Protestants who benefited but institutional and theological forms of Catholicism as well.