The secular Left and progressive Catholics
have been bewildered and dismayed at the rapid expansion of what
they see as alienating-and imported-religion. At the barrio level,
however, the evangelical churches may be closer to popular culture
than the Catholic Church is.
It’s the Monday night special youth service at the Renacer church located on a major street near down- town Sdo Paulo. The seats of this recon- verted theater are stacked along the walls. Perhaps 3,000 young people are swaying-not quite dancing-on the gently sloping floor. The audience knows the religious rock tunes well enough to sing a cappella when the band stops. One A general Pentecostal mass for “Clamor Day” at Se Square in Sao Paulo.
song catalogues three decades of international youth
culture with allusions to beatniks, drugs, yoga, natural
foods, and politics (“Do we have to kill?”), concluding
with the line: “The revolution is God the Father and
his Son Jesus Christ!” A number of people in the ado-
lescent, mostly white crowd wear T-shirts emblazoned
with messages, many in English, such as, “Be Cool,
Jesus Loves You.”
Later that evening, a casually dressed man in his
twenties addresses the audience now seated on the
floor. A seminary student, the young man is more in
touch with his audience than the average preacher. His
point is simple:
“Jesus Christ,” he
exhorts, “wants to be
part of your life,
folks.” Later on two
or three dozen come
forward to accept
Christ and are taken
backstage (where
they are enrolled and
receive further in-
structions). Mean-
while a well-known
guitarist who has dis-
covered Christ does a
blues arrangement of
Psalm 22.
Renacer’s exuber-
ance-and success-
is one facet of the
current wave of evangelical Protestantism sweeping
Latin America. In 1993 the church reportedly paid $2
million for an auditorium in the heart of Sdo Paulo.
Such an event is hardly news anymore in Brazil. In
1990 the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God,
headed by Bishop Edir Macedo, paid $45 million for a
Sio Paulo television station. Macedo can attract
150,000 followers to Rio’s Maracani stadium. At one
such gathering, he told those wearing eyeglasses that
their eyes were healed; glasses were collected and
brought forward where he trampled on them.
Perhaps due to their fascination with the role of pro-
gressive sectors of the Catholic Church in movements
for social change, the Left and academics have been
slow to acknowledge the significance of evangelical
growth. It has also been tempting to view the phenom-
NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS
Phillip Berryman did research in So Paulo and Caracas in 1993
with a grant from the Social Science Research Council. His book
on the churches in Central America, Stubborn Hope (The New
Press and Orbis Books), will appear this spring.
6ANALYSIS/ RELIGION
enon in narrowly reactionary
terms, especially since Guate-
mala’s born-again president Efrain
Rios Montt (1982-83) justified
mass slaughter carried out by the
Guatemalan army, and U.S. tele-
vangelists supported the Nica-
raguan Contras against the “god-
less” Sandinistas.
The most elementary new reality
is that Protestants who a genera-
tion ago amounted to approximate-
ly 2% or 3% of the population in
most Latin American countries
have now reached a critical mass
of about 15% (with wide varia-
tions from country to country).
Although the vast majority of
Latin Americans when polled still
identify themselves
as Catholics, rela-
tively few attend
mass regularly. The
upshot is that the
number of active
Protestant church-
goers is comparable
to that of practicing
Catholics. The
number of practic-
ing Protestants is
greater than the
total number of
members of all
other kinds of vol-
untary organiza-
tions-in politics,
culture and sports
-combined.
Worshippers det
Macedo of the L Researchers at
the Institute for Religious Studies
(ISER) in Rio de Janeiro assert that
evangelical Protestantism is “the
most important movement chang-
ing attitudes in contemporary
Brazilian society, especially in its
poorest urban strata.” ISER found
that in greater Rio de Janeiro, 710
new churches were established–
five a week-between 1990 and
1992. Throughout that period, only
one new Catholic parish was estab-
lished. Although the historical
churches-particularly the Baptists
and Presbyterians-continue to
have a strong presence, 90% of the
new churches were Pentecostal. In
the poor neighborhoods, the num-
ber of churches in proportion to
population was three times higher
than it was in the wealthy beach-
front communities.
It would be a mistake, however,
to assume that the evangelical
movement is an invincible jugger-
naut. Despite much organizing by
many churches in Caracas, for
instance, a week-long evangelistic
campaign held at the old bull ring
(now owned by a church!) drew
fewer than one thousand people
most nights, almost all of them
already evangelicals. Similarly, in
Holy Week, 1993, the Assemblies
osit their cigarette packs up front, to be destro Universal Church in SAo Paulo.
of God planned a campaign in
downtown Sdo Paulo with the
objective of winning from six to
ten thousand souls for Christ.
Crowds of perhaps 5,000 people
attended, mostly evangelicals, and
those who came forward to accept
Christ numbered in the hundreds.
I recently spent time in Sao
Paulo, where there is a thriving
evangelical movement, and Cara-
cas, where Protestants are estimat-
ed to make up only about 1% of
the population (the figure for
Venezuela as a whole is 4%).
These two cities provide a window
for understanding some features of
the evangelical movement.
O utsiders tend to see Latin
American Protestantism as
undifferentiated. Clich6d,
stock images come to mind: small
storefront churches nestled among
the houses in the shantytowns;
women without makeup wearing
shapeless long-sleeved dresses;
individuals who do not drink,
smoke, dance or engage in “world-
ly” affairs, including politics.
Protestants-or “evangelicals”
(evangilicos) as they commonly
call themselves-are, however, by
no means all cut from the same
cloth. The “historic”
churches-Lutheran,
Methodist, Presbyter-
ian, Baptist and oth-
ers-are similar to the
denominations in
Europe and the United
States from which
they originated. In
general these churches
understand the Bible
more critically than
the conservative
churches which inter-
pret the Bible quite lit-
erally. While consid-
ered fundamentalist,
the fast-growing Pen-
tecostal churches are yed by Bishop centered not on doc-
trine or preaching, but
on an emotional experience of the
spirit. These broad categories are
by no means airtight. Pentecostal
practices have, for example, been
invading the historic churches.
Moreover, there is great diversity
within the Pentecostal sector of the
Protestant church. Bishop Mace-
do’s Universal Church, for
instance, reverses the practice of
most Protestant denominations,
which build new churches as con-
gregations divide, or as small mis-
sion groups that meet in homes
eventually become congregations
Vol XXVII, No 6 MAY/JUNE 1994
z
7ANALYSIs/ RELIGION
and acquire proper-
ty to build on. By
contrast, the Uni-
versal Church first
builds churches,
generally on com-
mercial property. It
then assigns minis-
ters who begin to
hold services, typi-
cally four times a
day (morning, noon,
afternoon and even-
ing), seven days a
week. The minister
must attract people
to services and
motivate them to
contribute. Pastor Radl Avil At the Universal costalservice at Church, each day
has a theme: “prosperity,” “the
family,” and so forth. Friday’s
theme, “liberation,” has nothing to
do with social change but means
liberation from evil spirits. Like
services on other days of the week,
the Friday service begins with a
half hour of singing. Then perhaps
a dozen people, primarily women, come forward. Soon they are
moaning, screaming, and crawling.
The preacher shouts at the demons
and leads singing with repeated
chants of “Sai! sai!” (“Get out!
Get out!”). The demons obediently
depart, leaving their victims spent
and their families relieved.
The Deus 6 Amor (“God is
Love”) church, a precursor of the
Universal Church, is also headed
by a preacher-caudillo, David
Miranda. It emphasizes healing, and boasts of its hundreds of hours
of radio broadcasts per week.
Those attending daily services at
its huge warehouse-like headquar-
ters in a decaying industrial area
across the river from downtown
Sdo Paulo are obviously quite
poor. Indeed, the church workers
themselves reflect the culture of
the popular classes from which
they have come, in contrast to the
Universal Church, whose ministers
a blesses a parishioner during a fervored moment in a Pente-
the Paseo Las Mercedes Cinema in Caracas.
look like they could be selling cars
or house furnishings. Many people
attend services at the Universal
Church or Deus 6 Amor as they
feel the need, and are not active
members in a local congregation.
The CongregaCqo Cristd in
Brazil is in many ways poles apart
from the Universal Church. It has
no clergy, and does not carry out
evangelistic campaigns, publish
books, broadcast on the radio, or
become involved in politics. Its
services, while Pentecostal, are
models of decorum. Even work-
ing-class men arrive in suits, and
men and women sit on opposite
sides of the aisle. Despite its qui-
etist style, the battleship gray
churches of the CongregaCqo
Cristd continue to spring up in the
periphery of So Paulo and along
major highways.
The largest single group in
Brazil, as elsewhere in Latin
America, is the Assemblies of
God. Today they number at least
eight million-they claim 12 mil-
lion or more-and have 35,000
churches throughout the country.
They constitute the largest Protes-
tant denomination in any
“Catholic” country and have at
least four times as many members
as the Anglican
Church in England,
notes British re-
searcher Paul Freston.
The Assemblies have
an impressive degree
of organization. For
example, I witnessed
about 1,100 ministers
from greater Sdo
Paulo gathered for
their monthly meeting
for prayer and plan-
ning. At another ser-
vice at that same
church, I observed
numerous distin-
guished guests in the
sanctuary, an orches-
tra, and what seemed
to be four choirs. As a
consequence of their sheer num-
bers, the Assemblies of God have
access to financial resources
unavailable to many off-shoot
churches. Drawing strength from
the central organization, individual
churches-though their members
are often desperately poor–exude
an air of self-sufficiency.
The widely admired Las Acacias
church in Caracas differs signifi-
cantly from the Brazilian churches
mentioned above and from most
Pentecostal churches in Venezuela.
Worship is Pentecostal but there
are moments of silence and recol-
lection as well, and intensity of
prayer is not measured by decibel
level. Contrary to the strict rules of
behavior of many evangelical
churches which prohibit smoking,
dancing, alcohol, movies and TV,
and impose a dress code (especial-
ly for women), Las Acacias leaves
conduct to the discretion of its
members. Its emphasis is on the
positive impact of faith in one’s
life. Some observers dismiss Las
Acacias as a middle-class church,
though in fact, it is multi-class.
More importantly, it offers an
alternative model to the rigidity of
some evangelical churches, one
that is being studied and adopted in
C
0
NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 8ANALYSIS/ RELIGION
Venezuela and else-
where.
This variety of styles
is a major strength of
Latin American Protes- are
tantism. Within the
boundaries
of a a Sil
Catholic parish in Sdo
Paulo, one can find a that
dozen or more Protes-
tant churches whose Sur
offerings range from
the historic churches to codE
independent
congrega-
call
tions that have spun off
from a larger Pente-
costal church.
he secular Left
and progressive
Catholics have been bewil-
dered and dismayed at the rapid
expansion of what they see as
“alienating” religion. They are
tempted to attribute evangelical
growth to a conscious U.S. govern-
ment strategy during the Reagan
and Bush years or heavy funding
from the U.S. religious Right. In
fact, evangelical churches are sus-
tained financially by the generous
support of their members, who are
generally expected to tithe-con-
tribute a tenth of their income–
which some literally do. Indeed,
the progressive Catholic Church is
far more financially dependent on
foreign (primarily European) fund-
ing agencies than the evangelicals
are. One area where the evangeli-
cals are dependent, however, is in
the intellectual realm. To give but
one example, 70% of the 585 evan-
gelical books published in Brazil in
1991 were by foreign authors.
Secular and Catholic critics,
most of whom do not seem to have
ever stepped foot in an evangelical
church to observe for themselves,
do not appreciate what draws mil-
lions of poor people to join its
ranks. This pull includes an inten-
sity of prayer, a simple compre-
hensible message that seems to
make sense out of the surrounding
The poor
Irawn by an intensity of prayer,
mple comprehensible message
seems to make sense out of the
grounding chaos, a firm moral
., a community in which people
each other brother and sister,
and a sense of self-respect.
chaos, a moral code that provides
guidance (and which in some ways
is a throwback to the firm moral
code of peasant society), a com-
munity in which people call each
other brothers and sisters, and a
sense of self-respect. Although the
evangelical churches are often
accused of being foreign imports,
at the barrio level they may be
closer to popular culture than the
Catholic Church is. Most Protes-
tant ministers come from the same
class and culture as their congre-
gations. By contrast, most progres-
sive Catholic priests, while they
may be striving to provide an “option for the poor,” inhabit
another world by virtue of culture,
training and class.
The “option for the poor,” the
Catholic renewal movement that
began in the late 1960s, was
expressed in new forms of pastoral
work, including the defense of
human rights and the forging of
“base communities”-small lay-
led groups for prayer, discussion
and consciousness-raising-which
were undergirded by liberation the-
ology. Progressive Catholicism has
never been a mass movement.
While the Catholic renewal move-
ment was qualitatively important,
especially in the role it played in
opposition to the mili-
tary dictatorships and
in the struggles of Cen-
tral America, only a
small minority partici-
pated. Even if there
are, as has often been
claimed, 80,000 base
communities averaging
25 members a piece
throughout Brazil, the
total number of partici-
pants would number
two million out of a
population of 160 mil-
lion. Recent research
indicates that those
estimates may be
inflated.
That current within
Catholicism, moreover, is to some
extent in crisis. A Vatican policy
of appointing conservative bishops
for over a decade, along with
repeated pressure against liberation
theologians, has had its toll. The
crisis is deeper, however, and has
to do with the clash between the
hopes invested in the “liberationist
project” and the current prospects
for Latin American society. Christ-
ian base communities, in the words
of one Brazilian theologian, were
to be “the starting point for a social
revolution that would lead to a new
society. To work in base communi-
ties was to be preparing the future
of a new Latin American society,
an overall transformation.” By the
1990s, however, the utopian
dreams nursed in the climate of
military dictatorship have been
dashed by the seeming universal
triumph of capitalism, the crisis of
Marxism, and the scaling back of
the Left’s agenda to reformist
social democracy. Catholic pro-
gressives in Venezuela, who did
not experience a heroic phase of
resistance to military dictatorship
and whose hopes were perhaps less
utopian, are less in crisis than their
counterparts in Brazil.
In any case, converts to Protes-
tantism come not from Christian
Vol XXVII, No 6 MAY/JUNE 1994 9ANALYSIS/ RELIGION
base communities,
but from the large
majority of people
whose contact with
the Catholic Church
is marginal. Those
who convert to
Protestantism never
“belonged” to the
Catholic Church in
the sense of being
active in a congrega-
tion. Indeed, rather
than simply “turning
Protestant,” it may
be more accurate to
say that Latin Ameri-
ca is becoming reli-
giously pluralistic Jehovah’s Witr
for the first time. Of cerstadium in: course a variety of
religious expressions, including
Afro-Brazilian religion and analo-
gous forms elsewhere, have long
flourished behind the Catholic
facade. The Protestant coming-of-
age marks the end of Catholic reli-
gious hegemony.
As a sheer consequence of
their size, Protestant move-
ments are at least a poten-
tial political force. Without his
identity as an evangelical, Jorge
Serrano might not have even been
a presidential contender in
Guatemala, and Alberto Fujimori
openly courted the evangelical vote
in Peru in the 1990 presidential
election. Evangelical congressional
representatives constitute one of
the most important blocs in the
Brazilian Congress.
Protestant political candidates are
more evident than ever before.
Their message to fellow believers is
that their moment has come and
that the evangelical movement has
a right to political representation.
They seek to convince the wider
public that their evangelical con-
duct sets them apart from ordinary
corrupt power-hungry politicians (a
claim whose appeal may not sur-
vive the example of many Jorge
esses are baptised at a three-day congress at Sao Paulo.
Serranos). Some Protestant leaders
yearn to have a voice in society
similar to that of the Catholic bish-
ops’ conference. Since many local
pastors do not see the need for such
a voice or acknowledge organiza-
tions such as the Brazilian Evangel-
ical Association, however, such
voices are not strong. Moreover,
the basis for a distinctively evan-
gelical viewpoint of society has yet
to be developed in a coherent way.
Conservatives have rushed to
embrace British sociologist David
Martin’s argument that Protes-
tantism may finally help Latin
America modernize by overcoming
its Catholic hostility to capitalism.
An article on Latin American
Protestantism in Forbes-a maga-
zine which normally pays little
attention to either Latin America or
religion-gloated that the “cultural
upheaval” of evangelical growth
“is simply another side of econom-
ic transformation” and “offers solid
clues to the future-a capitalistic,
bourgeois future, not a Marxist or
traditional future.”
Yet contrary to common belief,
evangelicals are not uniformly con-
servative. Evidence indicates, for
example, that evangelicals are pre-
sent in the leftist Workers Party in
Brazil in proportions
only a little below
their presence in
society. Benedita da
Silva, for example,
the black social
worker who was
elected to Congress
and almost won the
mayor’s race in Rio
in 1992, is an active
member of the Ass-
emblies of God.
By virtue of the
fact that approxi-
mately 15% of the
Latin American pop-
ulation finds mean-
Pacaembu soc- ing in evangelical
religion, these
churches play an
important role in society. Even if
in their theology they might dis-
courage social activism, their
political stance may be evolving.
In some theologically conservative
circles, one hears the assertion that
the salvation offered by Christ is
“integral”: that is, it affects not
only the “soul,” but the whole per-
son and indeed society. This posi-
tion is analogous to the position in
Roman Catholicism that has pro-
vided the basis for social action
and indeed for liberation theology.
A group of conservative Protestant
theologians gathered in Medellfin
in 1988 criticized liberation theol-
ogy, but acknowledged that evan-
gelicals had largely failed to
address social ills. The final docu-
ment of the gathering called for
greater commitment to social
issues.
If the post-Cold War Latin
American Left is to forge alliances
with various sectors of society in
its effort to find alternatives to doc-
trinaire neoliberalism, it must
abandon its stereotype of the evan-
gelical churches. It is high time
that the Left took seriously these
religious movements that it has
thus far ignored, derided or viewed
only from a distance.
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