Mapuche resistance to the imperial church was overwhelming. Their rebellions against white invaders resounded with protests against the Church. During the uprising of 1598 the natives "profaned" more than fifty churches or chapels and renounced their christian names. Mapuche peasant materialism was a wall of contention raised against Catholic eschatology: the former owners of the land of Chile did not accept the doctrine of hell and imagined a heaven full of earthly delights.

The Church in the Southern Cone