* 1 *
Introduction: Pentecostals,
Prominence, and Politics
EDWARD L. CLEARY
In 1986 Newsweek noted that Protestants, especially Pentecostal ones, were entering party politics in Latin America.1 From then on many newspapers recorded the surprise of Catholics and the chagrin of leftists as Pentecostals became active in the public arena in Guatemala, El Salvador, Colombia, Peru, and Brazil. Political activity brought Pentecostals a notoriety that they had until then escaped. Largely ignored on the margins of society, they had grown to impressive numbers. Now journalists, the general public, and other churches found themselves faced with mysterious groups with sufficient numbers to have strong national influence.
Pentecostalism has quietly become the largest Christian movement of the twentieth century.2 Some 400-500 million followers are spread over most of the world.' Their number is almost half that of the largest Christian denomination, Roman Catholicism. Pentecostalism's otherworldly style and growth by conversion and by inherited status are astonishing, given the predictions that modern times would be increasingly secular. Harvey Cox's Fire from Heaven4 opened to general readers in 1995 what was barely known even in theological schools.5 Pentecostalism is especially prominent in Latin America, where it challenges Catholic, historical Protestant, and Mormon churches, vodoun, macumba, and indigenous religions.
This book is an attempt to provide a unique view of Latin American Pentecostalism. Its contributors are seasoned Latin Americanists dealing with themes and contexts with which they have long familiarity. They examine history, looking at the roots of Pentecostalism rather than concentrating on the recent invasion of the religious right from the United States. They employ social science, especially sociology and political science, rather than polemics or speculation. They represent a mix of Pentecostal and non-Pentecostal, Latin American and
1
2 Edward L. Cleary
North American scholars, all of them highly attentive to Pentecostal perspectives. In contrast to previously published volumes, this collection seeks to present Pentecostal perspectives rather than the agendas that have dominated social science or Latin American Catholic examinations of Pentecostal growth. Who Pentecostals are and why they have taken hold in Latin America are foremost, but related questions of women in religion, ecumenism, and politics are addressed as well.
This volume has important predecessors. They include works most cited by Latin Americans, such as those of Emilio Willems, Christian Lalive d'Epinay, Francisco C. Rolim, and Jean-Pierre Bastian.6 Willems's summary article 7 and later book, Followers of the New Faith, 8 became minor classics. His book, published in 1967,9 opened a window to what Time in 1962 had called "the fastestgrowing church in the Western Hemisphere."10
Willems entered the field as a pioneer, exploring. Rather than emphasizing surveys, he relied especially on repeated interviews and observation of street-corner proselytism, church services, spirit possession, and healing rites. This process resulted in a vivid picture of the conditions in which many Pentecostals lived. He believed that social dislocations among these lower-class persons produced anomie. The churches countered this moral aimlessness with a sense of purpose and a modernizing ethic capable of fitting Latin Americans into modern secular society. Willems emphasized la tomada del Espiritu (seizure by the Spirit) as fundamental. Seizure by the Spirit made it clear to others that one had experienced God, and on that evidence alone one was included in community worship and activities.
In a field where reputations are made by criticism, Christian Lalive d'Epinay, a young European social scientist, took a contrasting view. The title of his main work, Haven of the Masses," captured well the thrust of his argument. The study was commissioned by the World Council of Churches, and this sponsorship and publication in Spanish as well as English gave it much wider circulation than Willems's and other studies. Lalive d'Epinay depicted Pentecostalism as a continuation of folk Catholicism, preserving the past, with the authoritarian pastor in place of the old hacendado or patron. This explanation appealed to many, in and outside of Latin America.
Jean-Pierre Bastian represented a different strain of interpretation, one sometimes critical of Protestantism as too closely tied to liberal and North Atlantic interests. In his view, a number of Latin American Protestants "lent themselves to being true ideological vanguards of North American interests and those of the national bourgeoisie in Latin America."12 He expressed skepticism that Latin American Pentecostalism, given its authoritarian leadership, would contribute much to democracy.13
Samuel Escobar, one of the most respected Latin American scholars, summarizes these studies and those of Catholic bishops, ecumenical organizations, anthropologists and sociologists in academic settings, and the mass media as dis-
Introduction 3
playing "an amazing inadequacy to deal with their subject"14 Harvey Cox points to a number of "large holes" in Lalive d'Epinay's and other accounts.15 Three studies published before 1990 should, however, be exempted from Escobar's evaluation. Cornelia Butler Flora's Pentecostalism in Colombia" was a careful study that opened the door to scholarship about Pentecostal women. Her appraisal of Pentecostal politics-"Their religious doctrine allows them to `strip halos of sanctity' from those who occupy seats of power, and their class homogeneity allowed them to mobilize toward secular change"17 shed light on events that would follow. Stephen D. Glazier and colleagues received insufficient attention for Perspectives on Pentecostalism: Case Studies from the Caribbean and Latin America. 18 Eugene A. Nida's "The Relationship of Social Structure to the Problems of Evangelism in Latin America"19 was a seminal contribution to the understanding of "cultural reconstruction"
For Escobar and others, a new and impressive stage of scholarship began in 1990 with the appearance of the first comprehensive works on Latin American Pentecostalism and politics and the first to appeal to a wide readership: David Stoll's Is Latin America Turning Protestant? and David Martin's Tongues of Fire.20Their publication opened the way for numerous commentaries, many of them opportunistic and erroneous.
Pentecostalism in Latin America is a complex development with a broad array of implications.21 Further, Pentecostal churches do not have the same history or emphasize the same teachings as historical Protestant or evangelical churches. In a word, a good deal of discussion of Protestant history in Latin America has been irrelevant for explaining Pentecostal growth.22
Elizabeth Brusco, Cecilia Mariz, Leslie Gill, Paul Freston, Rowan Ireland, John Burdick,23 and others have recently completed works of unusual merit, marked by their determination to listen to Latin Americans explain religion in their own terms. Further, only recently have Pentecostal scholars been trained in social research and academic theology, and it was judged essential that their research be part of this volume. For years social scientists and journalists have ignored distinctions considered indispensable by Pentecostals.24
Probing into the complexities of Latin American Pentecostalism rewards readers with a surer grasp of a phenomenon that will continue to be crucial in the coming years. Without this understanding, one has an incomplete view of Latin American culture and will enter ill-prepared upon any analysis of contemporary Latin American politics.
Lack of comprehension of Pentecostalism is not limited to North Americans. By and large, Latin American politicians, Catholic church leaders, and most of the 70,000 Latin American journalists have given no evidence that they comprehend Pentecostalism. Until recently Pentecostals have been isolated, out of public view, and unreported by the media. As Philip Berryman remarks, "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 millions of poor
4 Edward L. Cleary
people to join its ranks."25 Pentecostals are emphasized here because they account for 75-90 percent of contemporary Protestant growth in Latin America.26
History and Stereotypes
To focus more clearly on the complexities that Pentecostalism presents it is useful to address next: stereotypes associated with Pentecostal history, theological achievement, distinction from latter-day cousins, and the oft-repeated charge that Pentecostalism will rend the unifying garment of Latin American culture. Because of the many false and blurred depictions of Pentecostalism, one needs to state what it is not as well as describe what it is. First, contrary to a common Latin American stereotype, Pentecostalism is not a North American invasion. It did not begin with a pervasive outside missionary effort, nor are major groups sustained by personnel or money from the United States or Europe.
In the three most prominent areas where Pentecostalism has expanded, Brazil, Chile, and Central America, outside missionaries helped to spark, not create, a Latin American institution. In the case of Chile, contributors to this volume describe North American Willis C. Hoover as accepting an invitation from Chileans to be their leader rather than characterizing him as the founder of Chilean Pentecostalism. In Brazil and Central America, as Douglas Petersen has said,27 the "strong, determined personalities [of foreign missionaries], whose influence was more catalytic than institutional, provid[ed] models for Latin Americans who applied Pentecostal beliefs and practices to their own situations without becoming dependent or subordinate."
Missionary presence at the inception of Latin American Pentecostalism was infinitesimal. In the case of Central America, only two North American families from the Assemblies of God, now the largest Pentecostal church in Latin America, were in the region at any one time before World War II. A slight increase, ranging from two to eight missionaries per Central American country, occurred after World War II.28 Central Americans took the initiative to organize and to staff a complex enterprise with thousands of churches and chapels and numerous projects. In Central America, Panama, and Belize the number of national credentialed pastors within the Assemblies of God alone has grown to 4,500.
Not only leadership but by far the majority of the financial support of "classical" Pentecostals comes from Latin Americans. When David Stoll published Is Latin America Turning Protestant? Pentecostals read it with trepidation, since Stoll had previously studied the Summer Institute of Linguistics and was highly critical of those North American missionary efforts. Stoll himself had expected to find a strong North American hand in financing Pentecostal growth in Latin America. Instead, he found that the Assemblies of God, with some 10 million members, had expended only US$20 million yearly from North America (much of it spent in the United States). More than one Pentecostal has been content to repeat Stoll's
Introduction 5
judgment that "a mere $20 million a year cannot explain these kinds of results. If evangelical churches were really built on handouts, they would be spiritless patronage structures, not vital, expanding grassroots institutions."29
The fundamental source of financial support for Pentecostal churches in Latin America is the generosity of individual members. Church attenders (many Pentecostals do not attend regularly)30 give frequently and give from their substance rather than their surplus. Contributing 10 percent of income is not uncommon and is often held up as a goal. The results of this generosity are impressive. Petersen estimates that the Assemblies of God in Central America, Panama, and Belize possess combined assets of US$150 million in real estate and improvements.31
Is there not a North American invasion among some Protestants in Latin America? Yes, but they are not the major Pentecostal groups we are discussing. Further, Catholic critics of North American financing of Protestants frequently ignore the very large amounts of money and numbers of missionaries that the Catholic church in Latin America has received from North Atlantic countries.
Pentecostals in Latin America differ greatly from historical Protestants. Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, and other such groups brought with them immigrant cultures, for example, German or British, that embodied Christianity in a different way from Latin American cultures. Pentecostals did not have to become little Germans or Britishers preferring high- or low-church liturgies. Nor did Pentecostals have to accustom themselves to the pastoral practices established by foreign missionaries as overseas extensions of their own denominations. Pentecostals were not burdened with preferences for territorial parishes, elite high schools, and expensive clinics. Nor did Latin American Pentecostals have to subordinate themselves to foreigners in high national positions. They formed rapidly multiplying small communities rather than parishes and looked to themselves for organizing rather than to central headquarters in Stockholm or in Springfield, Missouri.
But Pentecostals are profoundly Protestant.32Some Pentecostals exaggerate their uniqueness, and some institutional histories read almost like accounts of virgin births. Pentecostalism is deeply rooted in the Holiness and Revival traditions and in the minds of some scholars cannot be understood without knowledge of these traditions. David Martin's case for the importance of Methodism's carrying on its mission in Latin America through Pentecostal expressions may be overstated but calls attention to history's guiding hand.
The Holiness and Revival traditions grow out of a centuries-long impulse among ordinary Christians toward a deeper spiritual life, beyond mere church attendance to make contact with God. In European Protestantism after the Reformation this impulse was often guided by Pietists. They accepted as foundations the seeking of personal experience of God, commencing with a new birth by the Holy Spirit, the conviction that experience leads to reforming lives, and the
6 Edward L. Cleary
idea of living within a community taking a stand against a corrupt world. Communities thus took on a contra mundum cast. To a remarkable degree Latin American Pentecostals mirror these characteristics.
The Pietist movement waxed and waned throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. The impulse to "a higher life" took various forms. In England and the United States the tradition of John and Charles Wesley was of particular importance. Those within the Pietist tradition fought not only against declining church attendance but also against the perceived loss of religious fervor in older churches. Revivals, camp meetings, retreats, full-throated hymn-singing, and testimonies were employed.
In the United States in the nineteenth century, religious leaders were anxious about the spiritual condition of the partially de-Christianized Yankees (settled and godless) and frontier types (unsettled and godless). The Civil War was perceived as having taken its moral toll, accentuating secularism, moral decline, and indifference to religion (if not to God). Through camp meetings and revivals, circuit riders, evangelists, and pastors lead American Protestants to a fuller holiness. Since, in the view of some participants, the older (by one or two generations) churches from which they came, mostly Methodist or Baptist, had grown lifeless, innovators broke away to form new groups. After the Civil War Holiness and Revival teaching came to center upon the Pentecost event. Holiness and Revival participants used Scripture as their written guide. In their search they read the accounts of the early Christians in the Acts of the Apostles.
Perfectionist Religion
Building on Pietist backgrounds and on their reading, these innovators took for granted that every Christian was called to perfection. They increasingly focused on the notion of perfection as seizure by the Holy Spirit. Holiness preachers and songwriters spoke of the Upper-Room event. Albert B. Simpson and others in the Holiness churches preached that the gifts of the Holy Spirit, many of them bordering on the miraculous, did not cease with the apostolic age but would continue in the lives of ordinary Christians until the end of the world. In a word, Simpson and others used the standard of spiritual life portrayed in the Acts as the norm by which to measure each Christian's life. They also used it to measure the shortcomings of the churches at that time. (It is relevant here that Holiness and Pentecostal church members were critical of other Protestant churches long before judging the Latin American Catholic church lifeless.)
When Pentecostalism began in 1901 and its members experienced "a second blessing (baptism)" and spoke in tongues, its participants were hardly surprised by these events, as the Holiness movement included many elements of Pentecostalism33and led many participants to the doorstep of the Pentecostal experience.34 The Holiness movement imparted more than ideas. It deeply influenced Pentecostalism's structures, mission strategies, nature of support, content,
Introduction 7
and manner of worship." Latin American Pentecostals were to prove more adept at putting many theological and organizational ideas into practice than their North American or European brothers and sisters.
One of the key borrowings has been self-support generated by ministers. This was well known in Holiness circles, especially as advocated by Bishop William Taylor. Young persons went to the field (home or foreign missions) without formal backing or pledges, relying solely on faith and prayer for support. Pentecostals in Chile extended this as test or a sign – observing whether potential pastors could support themselves. Those who did not receive sufficient support were kept from advancing to higher status in the ministry.
The perfectionist character of Pentecostal churches has implications for statistics. The contributors to this volume have avoided stress on statistics, partly because they consider statistics in Latin America, especially about religion, unreliable because of inadequate surveys and lack of sustained membership. More important, many Pentecostal churches count only habitual attenders. Pentecostals are by their definition not only attenders but militants. Therefore, for many fervent Pentecostals, nonattenders are nonmembers. When Everett Wilson writes of Pentecostals in Guatemala, following pastors' reports he implies that their numbers represent about 15 percent of the population. If he had asked individual Guatemalans, the percentage would have been higher.
Theological Achievement
Pentecostalism's greatest theological achievement in Latin America is freedom of expression and the affirmation of the individual's worth within the community. These are fundamental Protestant emphases. To them may be added a call to sanctity for all members and a missionary zeal for sharing spiritual gifts with others – perpetuating the Holiness and Revival traditions and mirroring ideals of Catholic religious orders as well.
Freedom of expression in worship is the basis of a major innovation for Pentecostalism. In sharp contrast to what takes place in traditional Catholic or Protestant worship, almost anyone accepted by the Pentecostal community is allowed to interpret Scripture during worship, to moralize about the conditions of life, to preach about the changes needed in personal conduct, to pray spontaneously, to offer suggestions for the community's response to an evil world, and to vote on questions of importance such as large expenditures of community assets. All this is deeply rooted in Protestant traditions such as interpretation of Scriptures by ordinary Christians, the priesthood of all believers, and the priority of practice over dogma.
One of the marks of confusion about Pentecostal churches is calling them "evangelical." The long-standing Latin American custom of describing Protestants as evangélicos (sometimes with a pejorative sense of "Biblethumpers") has led bilingual reporters to use "evangelical" as the English equiva-
8 Edward L. Cleary
lent, overlooking its restriction to specific tendencies in Protestant history.36 Two of the best-known depictions of non-Catholic religion in Latin America were Marlise Simons's 1982article in the New York Times Magazine and a 1984 issue of NACLA Report on the Americas describing the offensive ofconservative evangelical groups in Central America.37 From then on, the fastest-growing groups, the most active groups, the worrisome Protestant growth groups were often referred to interchangeably as "evangelical," "Pentecostal," "conservative," and, sometimes, "fundamentalist Christian."
Pentecostals have been looked down upon by their evangelical cousins in the United States as well as in Latin America – marginalized as unreliable and regarded as theologically naive and perhaps heterodox. Evangelicals ofthe Billy Graham mold have typically pointed to differences between themselves and Pentecostals, who had notably lesser levels of formal education and financial support, were excessively demonstrative in worship, and placed undue emphasis upon speaking in tongues and the gifts of healing and prophecy.38 (When the Pentecostal scholar Everett Wilson and I [a Roman Catholic] appeared on the platform at the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College [Ill.] some years ago, we agreed that we were almost as marginal to "evangelicals" as the few who had preceded us on the platform.)
Missionary histories of evangelicals and Pentecostals have differed. When evangelicals such as William D. Taylor describe evangelical churches in Latin America, they presume that in evangelical churches the forms and structures and major decisions come from abroad.39 The major Pentecostal groups have not been burdened with such a foreign character.40 These Pentecostal groups have been largely Latin American adaptations. Their structures (such as pastorship, informal education, administrative looseness and controls) grew especially from experience in Latin America rather than being imported from Europe or North America. Their political responses were not deeply influenced by the religious right in the United States as were some evangelical churches but were fashioned as survival strategies for Latin Americans ofsubordinate social status. The differences were especially evident in the Central American conflicts of the 1970s.
In the course of time, however, the differences have diminished. Kenneth Gill and Robert Coote, long-term observers of Protestantism, point to the contemporary membership of Pentecostal churches within the National Alliance of Evangelicals and the inclusion of Pentecostals by that consummate evangelical, Billy Graham, within his crusades.41 In Latin America contributors to this volume often find the distinction irrelevant in analyzing ethical or political positions.
Pentecostals, Charismatics, and Neo-Pentecostals
If Pentecostals are not Protestants of the historical traditions or evangelicals of the Billy Graham cast, neither are they charismatic or Neo-Pentecostal.42 The
Introduction 9
mistaken identification by the media of Pentecostals with the late-arriving charismatics troubles older Pentecostal groups because of vast differences in class backgrounds, lifestyles, and political leanings. Nowhere are the differences more evident than in Guatemala, where prominent Neo-Pentecostal groups have spread across cities and countryside preaching a gospel of health and wealth, often espousing an uncritical support of military and oligarchic politics, and sweeping into their folds disaffected middle- and upper-class Catholics by the chapel full.
In brief, Pentecostals are churches founded mostly in the early part of this century. They often are connected to foundational events as Charles Parham's spiritual revival in Topeka, Kansas, in 1901 and the subsequent revival at the Azusa Street Mission in Los Angeles in 1906-1909. These are not obscure events in North American history but landmarks for many of the fastest-growing churches in the United States and the world. Classical Pentecostal groups include the Assemblies of God Church, the Church of God (Cleveland, Tenn.), the Church of God in Christ, and the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel. If readers are not yet familiar with these groups or their schools, such as Oral Roberts University and Lee College, Pentecostals are content to continue unnoticed in their counterculture, growing and changing to meet the times on their own terms.
Charismatics represent a second wave of religion attentive to the Holy Spirit and his work in individuals and churches. This second movement came to national attention in 1959 when many members of an Episcopal congregation in Van Nuys, California, and their pastor, Dennis Bennett, received what they considered baptism with the Holy Spirit. Individual members of Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox churches quickly spread a "charismatic renewal" within their traditions. By 1972 the movement had affected key figures such as Cardinal Leon-Joseph Suenens. Suenens participated in the reform movement of Vatican II and acted as mentor and integrator for the international Catholic charismatic renewal. Many independent groups outside the classical Pentecostal tradition also emerged from the religious ferment of the 1960s and 1970s.43
None of these distinctions would be important to many social scientists in the United States or observers of Latin America were it not for the effect of NeoPentecostals on public life. In contrast to the Pentecostals' asceticism and modesty, the behavior of some Neo-Pentecostals knew no restraints. They noisily entered politics, preached an ethos of consumerism, and supported or emulated the showmanship of North America's religious-right figures Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. In Guatemala two charismatics became presidents-one by military selection (Gen. Jose Efrain Rios Montt) and the other by national election (Jorge Serrano Elias). Charismatics there supported the military's displacement and repressive control of a million internal refugees. They cooperated with government forces in pushing other churches aside, and they acted as an alternative to the progressive Catholic church for many middle- and upper-class Guatemalans. The
10 Edward L. Cleary
class preferences and pro-U.S. biases of many Neo-Pentecostals earned them the enmity of older Pentecostals and historical Protestants.44
Latin American Culture and the Catholic Church
The Catholic church in Latin America has been largely ignorant of the indigenous character of major groups of Pentecostals.45 As the Pentecostals' and other Protestants' presence in Latin America has increased, the Catholic church has been depicted as responding belatedly to this challenge. In fact, the Protestant "threat" has been a central theme since the 1940s and 1950s. At that time indigenous Pentecostals were growing on the margins of society, but high-profile missionary evangelical groups were coming to Latin America in notable numbers because the doors to traditional Protestant missions in China and elsewhere were closed. The first Latin American Bishops Conference noted the growing danger of Protestantism .46
The bishops at the 1955 conference spoke of the menace to the traditional Catholic culture of Latin America.47 This argument has been extended to include threats to the unity of Latin American culture-the idea that Latin Americans have a Catholic soul and a Catholic culture that bind them together. Assumed in this line of argument is that Protestantism has no right to establish itself in Latin America, having its own territory in northern lands, such as Scandinavia, where it excludes Catholics as much as possible. The Protestant religion is judged incompatible with the soul and the culture of Latin America, and therefore the presence and the proliferation of non-Catholic religions cannot be considered "normal" and must be attributed to North American imperialism and disloyal, aggressive, and fanatical proselytizing.
Speaking of sects (presumably including Pentecostals), John Paul II told the bishops at the fourth Latin American Bishops' Conference in Santo Domingo in 1992, "We should not underestimate a particular strategy aimed at weakening the bonds that unite Latin American countries and so to undermine the kinds of strength provided by unity. To that end, significant amounts of money are offered to subsidize proselytizing campaigns that try to shatter such Catholic unity."48
Prominent North American social scientists such as Howard J. Wiarda and Glenn Dealy have developed arguments about the Catholic character of the culture of Latin America,49 but these arguments have been criticized as deeply flawed.50 Given the fluidity and plasticity of culture and its evident fragmentation in Latin America, I believe it impossible to maintain the fiction of a unity of Catholic culture in Latin America. No one has been clearer in taking apart the myth that Latin America has a special unity than Franz Damen, a Catholic priest performing interchurch work in Bolivia. He points to the fragmentation of religion in Latin America as part of the larger social processes occurring in the contemporary Third World.51 He and others, such as the renowned Protestant theologian Jose Miguez Bonino, consider Pentecostalism an authentic expression of
Introduction 11
the Latin American ethos.52 Damen also believes that it is becoming increasingly evident that "proselytizing methods" are not among the principal reasons for church growth.53
Politics and Prominence: A Map
The entry of Protestants into electoral politics began in Latin America in the 1950s,54 was mostly episodic in Peru and Brazil, and was largely limited to Protestants who were not Pentecostal. Most of these activities were ignored until 1986, when eighteen Pentecostals were elected to the Brazilian Assembly. Until then Protestants and especially Pentecostals were praised or vilified for staying out of the public arena in terms of both social action and direct political activity. Observers strongly criticized the prohibitions on Pentecostals' entering into politics and the putative escapist ideology that served as a political opiate, as support for repressive governments, and as a denial of the major obligations of Christians to help set the world on a just and peaceful course.
Assessing politics and religion requires looking at several countries, since the character of institutions and the cultural arrangements of the countries of Latin America vary. This increases the complexity of the analysis but reduces the risk of inadequate generalizations. Here and in succeeding chapters dealing with countries, several themes, with country variations, become evident: a widening political agenda, the formation of political parties, learning experience, cycles of activism and avoidance, the role of the media, and two streams of political orientation and action.
Little research has been conducted on the details of the life of Pentecostals in the 1930s, but it seems clear that, as in Peru, Pentecostals backed parties such as the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (American People's Revolutionary Alliance–APRA) primarily as ways of breaking the Catholic religious monopoly. In more recent years political involvement has greatly widened. Prominently, Pentecostals stood for and won elections for president of Guatemala, second vicepresident of Peru, and a variety of government positions in Colombia and Brazil. The range of political activity has been extensive. Pentecostals have worked in political campaigns, noisily in the case of the Alberto Fujimori campaign of 1990. Protestants – Pentecostals among them – began formulating papers on public positions." They assumed a much more public role, as in El Salvador, where Pentecostals sought a harmonious church-state relationship. Even in subordinate positions such as that of Puerto Ricans in Allentown, Pentecostals have frequently protested discrimination against them.
The most basic political activity has been voting. Pentecostals have done this enthusiastically in some countries (and politicians have taken notice). Posting prominent Protestants such as Rios Montt as candidates heading a party's ticket generates intense curiosity and even small industries tracking voting patterns. Pollsters are beginning to treat such questions as whether Protestants vote nar-
12 Edward L. Cleary
rowly for other Protestants, "brother for brother," as some Pentecostal pastors have counseled and whether Catholics in large numbers support or avoid candidates strongly identified as Protestant. This widening political activism has led to the formation of separate political parties such as Venezuela's Organization Renovadora Autonoma and El Salvador's Movimiento de Solidaridad National and Movimiento de Unidad. Although this is not a universal regional trend, separate Pentecostal or Protestant political parties have begun to appear in several other countries in Latin America. This pattern invites speculation on the fate of religious parties in secular states and parallels that of Christian Democracy, which has gradually lost much of its Christian ethical character in Latin America. Generally the religious parties are, to date, small and likely to remain so, but in contemporary politics even tiny religious parties, such as those of Israel, can hold a balance of power. Williams points out their potential role swing votes in El Salvador.
Pentecostals have clearly entered upon a political learning experience. Nowhere is this clearer than in Peru. Victor Arroyo and Tito Paredes, Peruvian Protestant social scientists, were so encouraged by events that they concluded: "The massive decisive evangelical participation in the 1990 general elections has changed not only Peru's political scene but also the characteristics of evangelical presence in the country."56 Disillusionment set in quickly, however, and these observers' exaggeration betrays their lack of experience in political involvement.
Many Pentecostal and Protestant leaders were unprepared for larger public roles, and inexperience took its toll in political experiments. In Peru in 1980 Protestant leaders including prominent Pentecostals attempted to form El Frente Evangelico, a political movement intended to incorporate Protestants of various tendencies, but the movement failed. Arroyo and Paredes point to lack of maturity for political action, insufficiently representative organization at the national level, inadequate resources, and insufficient time for organizational evolution.57A larger disappointment followed Alberto Fujimori's election as president.
A leading voice in the political awakening of Protestants in Latin America, Rene Padilla, warns not only of entering politics without experience but of activism without a theological basis. He says that Latin American Protestantism "has a theological deficit which means that the movement runs the risk of investing its energies in fruitless or even destructive political activism."58 But Pentecostals and Protestants have been learning quickly. The high-profile examples of Catholic activists in Latin America and, by contrast, of the North American religious right were easy to track.59
The relative ease with which many Protestants and Pentecostals in Latin America have entered politics has dismayed journalists and political commentators. For years they had attributed political noninvolvement to religious or theological prohibitions, depicting strong pastors as keeping their flock out of politics, with its inevitable immoral staining.60 If this were not enough, during a crisis such as military repression pastors were seen as searching Scripture for justifying texts and consequently stressing one of Paul's comments on obedience to government authority61
Introduction 13
Pentecostals, I believe, held back from politics not primarily for the above reasons but for two others: They were mostly poor, and they were outsiders to the political process. Once they had access to people in positions of power and judged that they had the numbers and status to effect changes in the political systems, politics became a new game, open to them.62 In effect, they entered politics when they assessed that the benefits outweighed the costs.
Why are religionists who emphasize spiritual experience entering politics? Because they are pragmatic. Experience is the basis of their religion and the foundation for a pragmatic, nondogmatic approach to the context in which they live. (Following the frequently cited injunction of Romans 13.1 ["Let every one obey the authorities that are over him"] was not a religious absolute but practical advice, to be followed when useful.) Hence, by the millions Pentecostals enter the polling booths and support political parties as a way of improving the environment in which theyhave to live.
This same pragmatism will lead Pentecostals away from politics as well. One cannot count on their remaining deeply involved in politics. Their "arrival" in politics assumes that entry into politics is a "natural" evolution. Marginal groups thus become mainstream political actors when they reach a critical size. Perhaps only an insider such as Everett Wilson could capture the character of their pragmatism. He remarks in his chapter on Guatemala in this volume that both activism and avoidance are natural to Pentecostals. They "tend to stay aloof, their independence ensuring their freedom until, with little risk of compromise, they can assert their influence." This makes political analysis and prediction precarious enterprises.
In a sense, though, Pentecostals have irretrievably lost their ability to remain out of view. As Sepulveda and I demonstrate below, now that Chilean Pentecostals represent a significant sector of society, politicians have had to seek their views on divorce, public education, sexual questions, AIDS, and similar issues.63Apart from participation in party politics, Pentecostals are being thrust willy-nilly onto the public stage by the mass media.
The question is how to exploit this prominence. Will Pentecostals offer a coherent message? In contemporary Latin America organizations can seldom control communication of their moral or political positions. Television and newspaper reporters are able to ferret out Pentecostal "positions" through opinion polls, effectively circumventing authoritarian pastors.64 And interviews for tabloids or for insatiable television news managers searching for "Pentecostal views" can typically be obtained from one or another of the hundreds of part-time Pentecostal pastors, not from spokespersons at central offices. Further, the media may shape Pentecostal public positions in ways uncomfortable to Pentecostal leaders; as Sidney Tarrow points out, the media do at least as much to control the construction of meaning as states or social actors.65
One trend that may continue for a time and merits watching has evolved in Chile. There Pentecostals have tended to flow into one of two major streams. Their political activism has tended to cast leaders in political brokerage roles, with
14 Edward L. Cleary
pastors working with members of the political elite to obtain legal protection and privileges. Some pastors become partners in the high political networks. Others adopt a more prophetic stance, one critical of the ethical failures of governments and parties. Leaders of this tendency include persons whom Guillermo Cook describes as "erudite" Pentecostals, leaders who have ventured outside their churches for more advanced study in theology and social sciences.
Theological Roots
Attempting to understand Pentecostal politics or any other expression of the religion invariably leads to basic questions. What, after all, makes Pentecostals act as they do? Activities such as being slain in the spirit, healing, speaking in tongues, and denouncing Catholics and older Protestant groups as dead bodies have led superficial observers to consider Pentecostals marginal and esoteric. Not only are long-term Pentecostals down-to-earth, but they fit in well with mainstream twentieth-century philosophy and theology. Having traced these connections, one is less likely to dismiss Pentecostalism as groundless or unworthy of serious analysis.
As the histories of Latin American Protestant groups – historical, evangelical, and Pentecostal – differ, so do their beliefs or, rather, what they choose to emphasize within Christianity. "Beliefs" may be more appropriate than "theology," which implies systematic reflection by academically trained intellectuals aimed at describing the content of the faith.
The attempt to identify core beliefs here is preliminary, because few Pentecostals in Latin America are trained in theology and Pentecostal churches differ among themselves in what they emphasize. Pentecostal scholars such as Douglas Peterson emphasize speaking in tongues as a central belief, and Pentecostals in many places take speaking in tongues as the measure of whether a person has received the Holy Spirit. But there are important churches in Latin America that do not emphasize speaking in tongues. Kenneth Gill, associate director of the Billy Graham Center Library and a disciple of the Pentecostal scholar Walter Hollenweger, says that, so diverse are Pentecostals worldwide, he has spent more than twenty years trying to elaborate a comprehensive Pentecostal theology and has been unable to do so.66
However, reflection on Pentecostals in Latin America reveals central practices and beliefs that set Pentecostals there apart from most Catholics and from other Protestants. Pentecostals center their lives on experience of the Holy Spirit. This is an event radiating throughout one's body and evident to others, better described as individual than as subjective or illusory experience. It is a vividly felt contact with God. Unlike Catholic or historical Protestants, for whom experience is a secondary consideration, or evangelicals, for whom a decision for Christ is often a discrete, noncontinuous event, Pentecostals' experience of God is a primary and ongoing aspect of their religion. The structures of their worship are designed to
Introduction 15
enhance these experiences on a routine basis through expressive, intense, and performance-oriented liturgies. La tomada del Espiritu (seizure by the Spirit) noted years ago by Willems is typical of the kinds of experience that are at the core of Pentecostal practice.67
Pentecostals emphasize the gifts of the Holy Spirit, as described by Luke. They are confident that these gifts are present within the church and can be relied on. Wilson agrees: "Stated theologically, Pentecostal groups carry the doctrine of immanence accepted by all Christian believers beyond the usually accepted boundaries, since the grace, gifts, and power attributed to the church are believed to be accessible, at least on occasion, to every believer."68
To provide readers with a sense of what matters to Pentecostals I outline a theological basis for Latin American Pentecostalism. Remarkably, this sketch shows not a theology that is traditional, imported, cryptopsychological, or uncommon but one based on experience that is eminently contemporary, Latin American, Christian, and ordinary. This is not the place to elucidate a full theology of experience,69 but several observations about experience as emphasized by Pentecostals are in order.
A turn to experience has marked a variety of contemporary theologies. Experience is all-important because the contemporary age is characterized as one of experiences. As Jean Mouroux suggests, even when moderns turn to Christianity they ask, "What worthwhile experiences can you give me?" Contemporary theologians drawn to experience as a philosophical basis for their theologizing include giants of the Vatican II era such as Karl Rahner, Edward Schillebeeckx, and Bernard Lonergan.
In the United States and England major figures of contemporary philosophy such as Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, Josiah Royce, George Santayana, and Alfred North Whitehead argued over the structure of experience. Donald L. Gelpi, a Catholic theologian at Berkeley's Graduate Theological Union, has made a noteworthy attempt to employ the technical achievements of Peirce in tracing the outlines of a realist theology.70
Gelpi warns readers that "experience" is a "weasel word," there being no consensus among theologians about its meaning.71 Nor do Pentecostals agree on its meaning. Contemporary theology, in the view of many theologians interviewed, is roughly in the same stage it was in the eleventh century, possessing brilliant and partial insights but lacking a coherent synthesis. Pentecostalism, in my view, will play a prominent role in the next millennium's Christian vision.
In Latin America Pentecostalism shares its emphasis on experience with other theologies and religions. Liberation theology is marked by an emphasis on praxis (knowledge derived from doing), especially as elaborated by major figures such as Gustavo Gutierrez, Juan Luis Segundo, and Clovodis Boff.72 Gutierrez, the father of liberation theology, believes that a spirituality appropriate to Latin America is being created to replace the "spirituality of evasion" that has long characterized Latin Americans, and "every great spirituality begins with the attain-
16 Edward L. Cleary
ment of a certain level of experience."73 Traditional popular Catholicism and indigenous religion are based on experience as well.
Most important here is understanding the Christian character of Pentecostal grounding in experience.74 One of the blanket criticisms of Pentecostalism is that it is little other than feeling, a precarious foundation for religion in that it opens the way for aberrations, faddism, and chaos. On this basis the Brazilian bishops in 1994 declined to endorse the Catholic charismatic renewal.75
Further, establishing religion on a foundation of emotion misplaces religion's central emphasis, calling attention to the experience rather than to the being encountered, God. Christian teachers have for centuries instructed their disciples that the feelings experienced in making contact with God are often secondary, distracting, and utterly unimportant. Disciples had to strive to live by pure faith, without directly seeing God in this life.
However, Christian experience, in a modern view, is not so much affective experience as its personal integration. Experience thus is first making contact with God and then maintaining communion with God. Contemporary theologians have recognized the function of affectivity. Mouroux believes that spiritual affectivity ("taking pleasure in the Lord" is the way many Pentecostals speak of it) heals and transforms through joy.76 Contemporary theologians also focus not on experiences that are mystical (in the sense of extraordinary) but ones that occur within the ordinary and unforced religious life experiences of average persons.
That these experiences are commonplace in general populations was shown by Linda B. Bourque, Kurt Back, William C. McCready, and Andrew M. Greeley some years ago.77 McCready and Greeley conclude: "There are a lot of mystics around, more than any one ever thought existed. They are neither prejudiced nor maladjusted nor narcoticized. They claim to have contact with the ultimate, and it does not seem to hurt them. On the contrary, it seems to have helped."78
Theologically, being grounded in experience has important consequences. In a profound sense, no institution or person mediates in a Pentecostal person's conversion to God.79 No formal rite (not even baptism) is required, and the role of the pastor is limited. Testimony and fervor demonstrate the Pentecostal's faith. The Pentecostal movement does not require more than this testimony for acceptance as a convert and a participant in services. Neither any given level of preparation nor knowledge of Scripture is required at this entry level. Thus Pentecostalism is an open field for personal liberty.
Statistics are therefore often unreliable. Initial entry (not full membership) is based on self-identification. Men and women give testimony about their religious experience, attend regularly for a while, and are caught up in the whirlwind of active worship. Catholics and historical Protestants may sample Pentecostal life and be counted by churches as congregants (a lesser status of membership). Full membership in Pentecostal churches, however, is often denied neophytes and oc-
Introduction 17
casional attenders. Core membership is typically demanding and exclusive. Everett Wilson says: "Pentecostals have always tended to be elitist. They make converts prove themselves. Pentecostal pastors and core members are more concerned with the rectitude of their communities than adding numbers. Pentecostals regularly discipline members, especially if they do not measure up."8º
As a result of intense religious experience persons aim their efforts at bringing their lives into conformity with the norms expected of a person living in contact and communion with God. These persons typically have a heightened sense of hope. This description fits what Wilson says of Latin American Pentecostals: "At [Pentecostalism's] roots lies the assertion that Christian faith, biblically and historically understood, no matter how orthodox or pietistic, must be existential [based on experience]. Though typically buoyant and enthusiastic, Pentecostals are basically skeptical of human intentions, efforts, and institutions. However, their movement views human brokenness not with despair, but with hope "81
Because of this strongly spiritual emphasis, some observers have seen Pentecostalism as the natural home for Latin Americans looking for a spiritual emphasis and not finding it in the post-Vatican II, thisworldly Catholic church.82 This may be too facile, as Wilson points out: "Even while Pentecostals give a prominent place to glossolalia (speaking in tongues), the miraculous, and the prophetic, they are not characteristically mystical or ascetic."83 In characterizations of Pentecostals as sects they are mistakenly depicted as otherworldly and uninterested in the progress of this world. Wilson insists: "They are clearly more concerned with God's immanence than his transcendence."84 Virtually every Pentecostal I have interviewed over more than ten years has emphasized the pragmatic character of Pentecostalism, in contrast to the prevailing stereotypes.85
A negative consequence of Pentecostalism as a religion that emphasizes experience is a lack of unity. Wilson describes Pentecostalism as "a sprawling, decentralized movement that lacks unity of polity and doctrine "86 The histories of older Pentecostal establishments in Chile, Brazil, and Central America show this fissiparousness. Serious sociological and theological questions about stability and about sustaining growth arise. Pentecostalism has no stated religious logic (theology) to validate it. It does not stress literacy, and this hampers its organizing for denominational cohesion. Its temporary efflorescence of voluntary religiosity8i makes for an uncertain future. The question also arises of Pentecostalism's ascetic and moral standards' being so high (tithing, frequent church attendance, and abstinence from alcohol) that the majority of Latin Americans will never cotton to it.
Yet Pentecostalism has proved itself immensely adaptive and pragmatic. Pentecostals apparently sense an underlying unity, one built on core beliefs. The creation of yet another church or transfer of members to another denomination is not the rending of the body of Christ (the classical definition of schism) but a
18 Edward L. Cleary
change of pastors or more likely, a change to a community that endorses and affirms a person better than the last one.
Conclusion
To provide exploratory and explanatory views of Pentecostalism in the chapters that follow, themes that need special treatment are taken up first. These include interchurch relations and the complexities of women's roles in Latin American religion, Catholic and Pentecostal. Pentecostalism is then examined within national contexts in five countries, with large Pentecostal populations-Chile, Brazil, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Puerto Rico. If Puerto Rico is a surprise leader, with at least one-third of its population Pentecostal, the surprise will not be for long, since Puerto Rican Pentecostals are changing the face of Protestantism on the U.S. mainland as well. The inclusion of Venezuela opens the religious world of the urban migrant and of Pentecostal minorities in Latin American society and politics.
Latin American Pentecostals move between poles of perfectionism and pragmatism. Practitioners are called to a high degree of sacrifice: 10 percent of income, no alcohol or tobacco, marital fidelity. Even more, Pentecostals are called apart from the world. For men this can mean giving up weekends with soccer and beer, no small sacrifice in lower- and middle-class life." But religious experience leads them to pragmatism-to valuing survival in nations opening toward democracy. The political and religious environment has opened, offering Pentecostals new opportunities. Catholics and other non-Pentecostals watch as Pentecostals impressively fill a new niche in Latin America.
NOTES
1. Newsweek 108 (September 1, 1986), pp. 63-64.
2. A number of scholars accept William Menzies's description: "The Pentecostal movement is that group of sects within the Christian church which is characterized by the belief that the occurrence mentioned in Acts 2 on the day of Pentecost not only signaled the birth of the church, but describes an experience available to believers in all ages." Anointed to Serve (Springfield, Mo.: Gospel Publishing House, 1971), p. 90.
3. David B. Barrett, in a statistical survey for International Bulletin of Missionary Research 19, 1 (January 1995), pp. 24-25, combines Pentecostals and charismatics and estimates their number as 463,741,000 in mid-1995.
4. Harvey Cox, Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-first Century (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1995).
5. In addition to Cox's, especially useful views on Pentecostalism have been provided by Robert Mapes Anderson, Vision of the Disinherited: The Making of American Pentecostalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979); Walter J. Hollenweger, The Pentecostals: The Charismatic Movement in the Churches (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1972); Grant Wacker, "Pentecostalism," in Charles H. Lippy and Peter W. Williams, eds., Encyclopedia of
Introduction 19
American Religious Experience: Studies of Traditions and Movements (New York: Scribner, 1988), vol. 2, pp. 933-945; H. Vinson Synan, "Pentecostalism: Varieties and Contributions," in One in Christ, pp. 97-109; Stanley M. Burgess and Gary B. McGee, eds., Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1988); and Pneuma and other publications of the Society for Pentecostal Studies. Pioneering views of Pentecostal theology are offered by Donald W. Dayton, Theological Roots of Pentecostalism (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1987), and Matthew S. Clark, Henry I. Lederle, et al., What Is Distinctive About Pentecostal Theology? (Pretoria: University of South Africa, 1983). Speaking in tongues, a central phenomenon for many Pentecostals, is discussed by Cyril G. Williams, Tongues of the Spirit: A Study of Pentecostal Glossolalia and Related Phenomena (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1981). For bibliography, see Charles Edwin Jones, Guide to the Study of the Pentecostal Movement, 2 vols. (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1983).
6. For a Latin American survey, see Jorge Soneira, "Los estudios sociólogicos sobre el Pentecostalismo en America Latina," Sociedad y Religion 8 (March 1991), pp. 60-67.
7. Emilio Willems, "Protestantism and Cultural Change in Brazil and Chile," in William V. D'Antonio and Frederick B. Pike, eds., Religion, Revolution, and Reform (New York: Praeger, 1964), pp. 93-108.
8. Subtitled Culture Change and the Rise of Protestantism in Brazil and Chile (Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 1967).
9. The fieldwork was carried out in 1959-1960, before the first Frei government in Chile and the military coup in Brazil.
10. Time 80, 56 (November 2, 1962). America, the Jesuit weekly, described "the Pentecostal breakthrough" in its January 31, 1970, issue.
11. Subtitled A Study of the Pentecostal Movement in Chile (London: Lutterworth, 1970).
12. Jean-Pierre Bastian, Historia del Protestantismo en América Latina (Mexico City: Ediciones Casa Unida de Publicaciones, 1990), p. 232.
13. See Cox, Fire from Heaven, pp. 182-183.
14. Samuel Escobar, "The Promise and Precariousness of Latin American Protestantism," in Daniel R. Miller, ed., Coming of Age: Protestantism in Latin America (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1994), p. 11.
15. Cox, Fire from Heaven, pp. 161-184.
16. Subtitled Baptism by Fire and Spirit (Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1976).
17. Flora, Pentecostalism in Colombia, p. 227.
18. Stephen D. Glazier, ed., Perspectives on Pentecostalism: Case Studies from the Caribbean and Latin America (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1980).
19. Practical Anthropology 5(1958), pp. 101-123.
20. David Stoll, Is Latin America Turning Protestant? The Politics of Evangelical Growth (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); David Martin, Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America (Oxford and Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1990). See also Miller, Coming of Age, and Virginia Garrard-Burnett and David Stoll, eds., Rethinking Protestantism in Latin America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993). For a critique of the treatment of Pentecostalism as part of fundamentalism, see Daniel Levine, "Protestants and Catholics in Latin America: Family Portrait," manuscript, Fundamentalism Project, University of Chicago, November 1991. For a differing view, see Russell P. Spittler, "Are Pentecostals and Charismatics Fundamentalists? A Review of
20 Edward L. Cleary
American Uses of These Categories," in Karla Poewe, ed., Charismatic Christianity as a Global Culture (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1994), pp. 103-116. For bibliographies, see Martin, Tongues of Fire; Stoll, Is Latin American Turning Protestant? Cecil M. Roebeck Jr., "Select Bibliography on Latin American Pentecostalism," Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 13, 1 1991), pp. 193-197. The most comprehensive source for works in Spanish or Portuguese, though dated, is Bibliografia teologica comentada del area latinoamericana (Buenos Aires: Instituto Superior Evangelico de Estudios Teologicos, periodically).
21. The hazards of this field of inquiry have been expressed by David Martin: "The whole field is fraught with propaganda, and the investigator is bound to be caught in a cross-fire whatever position he takes up." Tongues of Fire, p. 292.The complexities are not just conceptual but historical, as the editors of the Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements point out: "When points of delineation [between Pentecostal and charismatic] are decided upon and connected, the resulting line is invariably crooked, perhaps broken, and sometimes split into various branches." Burgess and McGee Dictionary, p. 1.
22.See comments by Pentecostal scholars: Douglas Petersen, "The Formation of Popular National Autonomous Pentecostal Churches in Central America," in Conference Papers on the Theme "To the Ends of the Earth" (Gaithersburg, Md.: Society for Pentecostal Studies, 1994), p. 13, and Everett A. Wilson, "Who Speaks for Latin American Pentecostals?" Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 16, 1 (1994), pp. 143-150.
23. Among other works, see Elizabeth Brusco, "The Household Basis of Evangelical Religion and the Reformation of Machismo in Colombia," Ph.D. diss., City University of New York, 1986; Cecilia Mariz, Coping with Poverty: Pentecostals and Christian Base Communities in Brazil (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994); Leslie Gill, "Religious Mobility and Many Words of God in La Paz, Bolivia," in Garrard-Burnett and Stoll, Rethinking Protestantism, pp. 180-198; Paul Freston, "Brother Votes for Brother: The New Politics of Protestantism in Brazil," in Garrard-Burnett and Stoll, Rethinking Protestantism, pp. 66-110;Rowan Ireland, Kingdoms Come: Religion and Politics in Brazil (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991); and John Burdick, Looking for God in Brazil: The Progressive Catholic Church in Urban Brazil's Religious Arena (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
24. Wilson, "Who Speaks for Latin American Pentecostals?" p. 144.
25. Philip Berryman, "The Coming of Age of Evangelical Protestantism," NACLA Report on the Americas 27, 6 (May/June 1994), p. 9.
26. Percentages given for growth are not the same as current percentages of Pentecostals within the national Protestant populations. Paul Freston estimates that Pentecostals represent no more than 60-65 percent of the current Protestant population in Brazil. Freston, "Brother Votes for Brother," p. 72.
27.Petersen, "The Formation of Popular National Autonomous Pentecostal Churches," p. 2.
28. Ibid.
29. David Stoll, "Is There a Protestant Reformation in Latin America?" Christian Century 107 (January 17, 1990), p. 46.
Introduction 21
30.See discussion in Sepulveda and Cleary in this volume and Everett A. Wilson, "The Dynamics of Latin American Pentecostalism," in Miller, Coming of Age, p. 97.
31.Petersen, "The Formation of Popular National Autonomous Pentecostal Churches," p. 3.
32.For the sake of cohesive argument, I am abstracting from the non-Protestant aspects of Pentecostalism. Walter Hollenweger has argued that Pentecostalism has as many Catholic as Protestant roots. Everett Wilson ("Dynamics," p. 93) notes that Latin American Pentecostalism "displays many resemblances to Roman Catholic practices."
33.See, for example, Charles Edwin Jones, "Holiness Movement," in Burgess and McGee, Dictionary, pp. 404-409, including an invaluable bibliography.
34.Not all of the Holiness precursors moved "forward" into the Pentecostal movement. Albert B. Simpson, founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, held his group apart, partly because he believed that not all should speak in tongues. The Church of the Nazarene also looked unfavorably on the practice.
35.Latin American Pentecostals did not acknowledge many of these debts, instead taking pride in their indigenous or criollo Pentecostalism.
36.See, for example, Leonard I. Sweet, ed., The Evangelical Tradition in America (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1984), with especially illuminating chapters by Joel Carpenter and Grant Wacker; Donald W. Dayton and Robert K. Johnston, eds., The Variety of American Evangelicalism (Knoxville, Tenn.: University of Tennessee Press, 1991). See also Pentecostal views of evangelicals in "National Association of Evangelicals" and "Evangelicalism" in Burgess and McGee, Dictionary.
37.Marlise Simons, "Latin America's New Gospel," New York Times Magazine, November 7, 1982, pp. 45-47+; Enrique Dominguez and Deborah Huntington, "The Salvation Brokers," NACLA Report on the Americas 18, 1 (January/February 1984), pp. 2-36.
38. Pentecostals also dissociated themselves from evangelicals in part because Pentecostals were strongly pacifist. In the United States, changes have taken place on both sides. See, for example, the history of the National Association of Evangelicals as described by Cecil M. Roebeck Jr., in Burgess and McGee, Dictionary, pp. 634-636.
39. See, for example, Emilio A. Nunez and William D. Taylor, Crisis in Latin America: An Evangelical Perspective (Chicago: Moody Press, 1989), p. 156.
40. For the sake of clarity of exposition I am focusing on major Pentecostal churches such as the Iglesia Metodista National, the Iglesia Evangelica Pentecostal, the Assemblies of God, and the Church of God (Cleveland, Tenn.).
41.Interviews with Kenneth Gill at the Billy Graham Center, and Robert Coote at the Overseas Mission Study Center, June 19, 1995.
42. See Stanley M. Burgess and Gary B. McGee, "The Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements," in their Dictionary, pp. 1-6. For somewhat different use see Poewe, Charismatic Christianity as Global Culture.
43. Burgess and McGee, Dictionary, is an extraordinarily useful guide. See also Anderson, Vision.
44. Interviews with Dennis Smith, general coordinator, Centro Evangelico Latinoamericano de Estudios Pastorales, Guatemala City, June 1991 and February 1992.
45. Bishop Roger Aubry of Reyes, Bolivia, Father Franz Damen, also of Bolivia, and Jose Luis Idigoras of Peru are notable exceptions. See Escobar, "The Promise," pp. 25-29.
22 Edward L. Cleary
46. Conclusiones, Conferencia General del Episcopado Latino-Americano, Rio de Janeiro, July 25 – August 4, 1955 (Vatican City: Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1956), pp. 41-42. 47. Ibid., p. 41.
48. John Paul II, "Opening Address," in Alfred T. Hennelly, ed., Santo Domingo and Beyond (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1993), p. 48.
49. See, for example, Howard J. Wiarda and Harvey F. Kline, "The Context of Latin American Politics," in Howard J. Wiarda and Harvey F. Kline, eds., Latin American Politics and Development, 3rd ed. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1990), pp. 15 ff.; Glenn Dealy, The Public Man: An Interpretation of Latin American and Other Catholic Countries (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1977).
50. For a contrasting view of Latin American culture see Levine, "Protestants and Catholics."
51. See especially his "Sectas," in Ignacio Ellacuria and Jon Sobrino, eds., Mysterium liberationis: Conceptos fundamentales de la teologia de la liberation, vol. 2 (San Salvador: Universidad Centroamericana Editores, 1991), pp. 423-445. See also "Las sectas, ¿Avalancha o desafio?" Cuarto Intermedio, no. 3 (May 1987), and La cuestión de la "sectas" (La Paz: Secretariado National de Ecumenismo, 1990).
52. Damen, "Sectas," pp. 423-445.
53. Damen, "Las sectas, zAvalancha?," pp. 61-62; see also J. Cordova, Conferencias fundamentalistas en El Alto (La Paz: n.p., 1990), pp. 64-71.
54. Escobar, "The Promise," p. 50.
55. See, for example, for an early statement, Fraternidad Teologica Latinoamericana, "Declaration de Jaracaboa," in Pablo Alberto Deiros, ed., Los evangelicos y el poder politico en America Latina (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1986), pp. 345-361. See also the account of a noteworthy meeting in 1991 by Elsa Romanenghi de Powell, "Participation de los evangelicos en la politica latinoamericana: Una cronica," Boletin Teológico 23, 44 (December 1991), pp. 233-248.
56. Victor Arroyo and Tito Paredes, "Evangelicals and the 'Fujimori Phenomenon,"' Transformation 9, 3 (July-September 1992), p. 15.
57. Arroyo and Paredes, "Evangelicals," p. 16.
58. Rene Padilla, "Latin American Evangelicals Enter the Public Square," Transformation 9, 3 (July-September 1992), p. 7.
59. A careful presentation of North American politics is provided by A. James Reichley, "Pietist Politics," in Norman J. Cohen, ed., The Fundamentalist Phenomenon: A View from Within, a Response from Without (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1990), pp. 73-98.
60. See, for example, James C. Dekker, "North American Protestant Theology: Impact on Central America," Mennonite Quarterly Review 58 (August suppl.), pp. 378-393.
61. Romans 13.1. In the Dios llega al hombre ([New York: Sociedad Biblica Americana, 1970], p. 357) version, "Todos deben someterse a las autoridades del gobierno."
62. For a comparison with Pentecostals in the United States, see Jerry W. Shepperd, "Sociology of Pentecostalism," in Burgess and McGee, Dictionary, pp. 794-799.
63. See also Juan Sepulveda, "The Pentecostal Movement in Latin America," in Guillermo Cook, ed., New Face of the Church in Latin America (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1994), p. 73.
64. See, for example, the studies by Centro de Estudios Publicos reported in the Cleary and Sepulveda chapter in this volume.
Introduction 23
65. Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements, Collective Action, and Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 119.
66. Interview with Kenneth Gill, Wheaton, Ill., June 22, 1994.
67. Willems, Followers of the New Faith.
68. Donald Dayton discusses the effect of stressing Luke's rather than Paul's views of Christianity in Theological Roots, pp. 23 ff. Everett A. Wilson, "The Dynamics of Latin American Pentecostalism," in Daniel R. Miller, ed., Coming of Age: Protestantism in Contemporary Latin America (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1994), p. 94.
69. See, for example, Donald L. Gelpi, The Turn to Experience in Contemporary Theology (New York: Paulist, 1994).
70. Gelpi offers an introduction to the technical issues involved in the different constructs of experience in The Turn to Experience.
71. Gelpi, The Turn to Experience, esp. pp. 1-3.
72. On Latin American theology and practice see Edward L. Cleary, Crisis and Change: The Church in Latin America Today (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1985), p. 64 and passim. On European theology see Jose Maria Gonzalez Ruiz, "Ortodoxia/ortopraxis," in Casiano Floristan and Juan Jose Tamayo, eds., Conceptos fundamentales del Cristianismo (Madrid: Editorial Trotta, 1993), pp. 923-937. For the concept of praxis as used by Latin American social scientists, see Edward L. Cleary and German Garrido-Pinto, "Applied Social Science, Teaching, and Political Action," Human Organization 36, 3 (Fall 1977), p. 270. On orthopraxis as a starting point, see Robert L. Kinast, "Orthopraxis: Starting Point for Theology," Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society of America 38 (1983), pp. 29-44.
73. Gustavo Gutierrez, We Drink from Our Own Wells: The Spiritual Journey of a People (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1984), p. 52.
74. For an empathetic view of Pentecostal experience by an outsider, see Carmen Galilea W., El Pentecostal: Testimonio y experiencia de Dios (Santiago, Chile: Centro de Investigaciones Sociales-Centro Bellarmino, 1990).
75. Latinamerica Press, June 16, 1994, p. 6.
76. Jean Mouroux, The Christian Experience: An Introduction to a Theology (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1954), p. 272.
77. Linda B. Bourque, "Social Correlates of Transcendental Experience," Sociological Analysis 20(Fall 1969), pp. 151-163; Linda B. Bourque and Kurt Back, "Values in Transcendental Experiences," Social Forces 47 (September 1970), pp. 34-38; Kurt Back, `Language, Society, and Subjective Experience," Sociometry 34 (1971), pp. 1-21; William C. McCready and Andrew M. Greeley, The Ultimate Values of the American Population (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1976), esp. pp. 129-157.
78. McCready and Greeley, Ultimate Values, p. 156.
79. Galilea (El Pentecostal, p. 86) notes: "It is only the living, personal experience of the believer that determines that the believer can count on possessing the power of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which sometimes can be expressed as charismatic gifts."
80. Personal communication, March 30, 1995.
81. Wilson, "Dynamics," p. 93, emphasis mine.
82. Timothy E. Evans, "Religious Conversion in Guatemala," Ph.D. diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1990, pp. 270-318.
24 Edward L. Cleary
83. Wilson, "Dynamics."
84. Ibid. Gelpi adds an insight for explaining the paradox of Pentecostal pragmatism: "Every version of pragmatism builds on a construct of experience." Gelpi, The Turn to Experience, p. 1.
85. Interviews in the United States, Guatemala, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, and Chile, 1981-present.
86. Wilson, "Dynamics," p. 93.
87. Phrase borrowed from Martin, Tongues of Fire, p. 294.
88. See Arturo Fontaine Talavera and Harald Beyer, "Retrato del movimiento evangelico a la luz de las encuestas de opinibn publica," Estudios Publicos 44 (Spring 1991), pp. 63-124. They conclude with the hypothesis that Pentecostalism represents the feminization of Chilean culture.