* 6 *
Chilean Pentecostalism:
Coming of Age
EDWARD L. CLEARY AND JUAN SEPÚLVEDA
The clash between Chilean Pentecostals and North American missionaries on September 12, 1909, was so violent that police restrained followers, and Chile's premier newspaper, El Mercurio, commented on the events. Chilean Pentecostals went on to become, as Walter Hollenweger says, the first self-sufficient church in the Third World.1
Pentecostalism now occupies an established place in Chilean society. It has been growing and changing for almost ninety years, long enough to mark one of the main paths of perhaps the twentieth century's greatest religious movement through Latin America. Hence Chile has special import for social scientists and students of religious and mission studies. The churches that make up this movement demonstrate amazing vitality. Even now they are attracting converts at a very high rate. They also show, however, the problems, often unacknowledged, that one associates with maturing organizations. The reasons for Pentecostalism's appeal and its problems will be explored below. After examining its dramatic beginnings and the context for its initial growth, we will review some classical sociological studies cf Pentecostalism and then trace its development through turbulent years of change and repression up to the current democratic period.
Pentecostalism's Introduction and Growth
Chile's Protestant history begins in the 1800s with the immigration of small English or German ethnic groups, Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist, and other, bringing with them pastors who tended to limit their efforts to their own flocks. A few Baptists and Methodists pushed for conversion of others.
The religious conflicts of Europe during the 1600s had left a legacy of churchstate union in both Catholic and Protestant countries. Elaborate legal barriers and
97
98 Edward L. Cleary and Juan Sepúlveda
tacit understandings marked off separate parts of the world to exclude religious change. Catholicism was forbidden to return to Scandinavia, and Protestantism limited itself to immigrant Protestant groups in Latin America. Burial, marriage, and owning of property by outsiders were controlled. In Sweden even in this century the Catholic church was prohibited from owning property or organizing public worship. By contrast, Chile began early in this century to offer a context of welcome to other religions. According to the great chronicler of church-state relations in Latin America J. Lloyd Mecham, "Separation of church and state was a cherished political ideal of advanced thinkers in Chile."2 The Chilean historian Luis Galdames characterized Chileans of this period as ready for the separation of church and state because of "simple tolerance and religious indifference."3 The separation was accomplished with the constitution of 1925, whereby liberty of conscience and freedom of worship were guaranteed. The Catholic church remained the dominant religious influence and received favorable treatment by the state, but in Mecham's judgment "the tolerance of Chileans and the constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion have been favorable to the Evangelical movement."4
In various ways Chile's tolerance and religious indifference were special. In contrast to many Latin American countries, Chile had no intense anticlericalism that might demand constitutional reforms or oppose the Catholic church. A notable percentage of Chileans have long been indifferent to religion. Galdames noted in 1911 that about one-fourth of the people did not consider themselves "sincere" Catholics.5 "As for increased religious indifference, this was evidenced by the astonishing scarcity of men at Mass and the general laxity in the observance of fasting and confession,"6 Mecham judged. According to Kenneth Scott Latourette, "In the 1950s a careful survey indicated that in all of Chile only 3.5 percent of the men and 9.5 percent of the women went to mass on Sunday."7 Mecham reports a higher percentage: 13 percent women and 7 percent men for Sunday mass attendance.8 (This great disparity between women and men is also an issue for Pentecostals.)
Chile's "spiritual anemia"9 was also evidenced by a scarcity of Chilean clergy, which made certain geographical areas especially vulnerable. John Considine reported that the rural areas were only thinly supplied if at all.10 The country offered an opportunity for other religions, one that Protestant mission leaders came to call campos blancos, fields waiting for harvesters. A major figure of Chilean Catholicism, the Jesuit Father Alberto Hurtado,11 inquired in the 1940s if Chile was a Catholic country. On what evidence he could muster he responded that Chile in many senses had ceased being a Catholic country and was more appropriately considered a missionary territory.12 This evaluation, shared by others, was part of the motivation for the revitalization of core groups within the church.13
Pentecostalism arose from events within Chile rather than being introduced from abroad. Similar foundational events were, however, occurring elsewhere in Pentecostalism. As David Martin, the renowned English sociologist of religion,
Chilean Pentecostalism 99
notes, "A whole series of sparks [were] struck at roughly the same time [as in Chile] in Los Angeles, Armenia, Wales, Korea, and South Africa."14 Martin goes on to point out that in Chile the spark was struck within Methodism but the explosion took place through Pentecostalism.15
Perhaps no one was better suited than Willis C. Hoover to help to bring about the birth of Chilean Pentecostalism. His medical training and his Midwestern populism had provided him with a mind that was open, searching, vigorous, and trusting of common impulses. Born in Freeport, Illinois, and a physician by 1884, he assumed the rectorship of a Methodist high school in northern Chile in 1889. His theological studies came later. Unlike most Methodist missionaries of the time, Hoover threw himself into work among lower-class Chileans. The impact of other Methodist pastors was limited to converts from the more educated sectors of society because of the rationalist-modernizing character of their preaching. By 1902 Hoover was in Valparaíso as pastor of the largest Chilean Methodist Episcopal church. Valparaíso, as Chile's principal seaport, had a privileged and wealthy class, but Hoover's greatest appeal was not to them but to immigrants from the countryside seeking work in the city. He built upon popular religious experience and was willing to try virtually any known evangelistic method. He opened branch chapels, conducted house-to-house visitations, and taught adult classes. As had the Methodist circuit riders, he used his converts to bring in other converts. He pressed ahead as the caudillo, with sureness and energy.
When, despite all this converts still amounted to only a trickle, Hoover searched the missionary repertoire of the early twentieth century. Minnie F. Abrams, a classmate of Mrs. Hoover at the Chicago Training School for Home and Foreign Missions, sent the Hoovers her book The Baptism of the Holy Ghost and Fire, which described the Pentecostal experience in India in 1905. After inquiries about the Pentecostal phenomenon in various parts of the world, Hoover, as superintendent of the Methodist Central District and pastor of its largest parish, began to encourage the pursuit of similar experiences. From the 1909 Methodist Chile Conference on, Chilean Pentecostalism took form, and it went on to change the face of Protestantism in Chile.
Depending on the point of view of the storyteller or historian, the events of 1909 have been described with various shadings. In a recent retelling by Arturo Fontaine and Harald Beyer, Nellie Laidlaw ("a woman of dubious reputation") becomes a principal figure for her prophecies in tumultuous services.16 According to Hoover himself, "Laughter, weeping, shouting, singing, strange tongues, visions, ecstatic trances during which the person fell to the ground and had the impression of being transported to another place ... This was accompanied by various experiences ... which were generally of great benefit to those who had them, generally changing these people.."17
Hoover and the participants in the services experienced rejection and censure from the Methodist Chile Conference, and Hoover decided to submit to the discipline of the church. In the course of his trial within the Methodist Chile
100 Edward L. Cleary and Juan Sepúlveda
Conference the next year, his teachings were declared "anti-Methodist, contrary to the Scriptures, and irrational ."18After the 1910 conference, the majority of the two Valparaíso congregations and the Santiago congregation decided to abandon the Methodist Episcopal church to establish the National Methodist church. On May 1 of that year Hoover left the Methodist Episcopal church to take charge of the new church at the invitation of Chileans.
Chilean Pentecostalism attracted large groups of followers not at first in Santiago or Valparaíso, where it was founded, but in the provinces (nine of Chile's twenty-seven) south of Concepción and north of Puerto Montt. At the time of the early expansion of Pentecostalism, in the 1910s and 1920s, this area was much like a frontier. Both the Catholic church's lack of pastoral care and the fragility of frontier society may have played a part in Pentecostalism's putting down roots there.
Beginning in the 1940s, Pentecostalism grew rapidly in the so-called countryside of the Central Valley region and in the lower-class sections of Santiago and Valparaíso.19 In many places the Catholic church either gave the peasants little systematic attention or was identified as "allied with the landowners at the expense of the peasants."20 Recognizing its vulnerability in the countryside, the Catholic church began to take countermeasures.21
Christian Lalive d'Epinay's research, including reflections on previous studies in Chile, shows, according to David Martin, that "Pentecostals were those who had some individual niche in the interstices of society, however precarious that niche might be."22 In Chile Pentecostals were regarded by the upper classes as el bajo pueblo.23 Those who tried Pentecostalism and stayed with it were small artisans, semiskilled workers willing to travel where work was needed, and others in the lower classes. Whereas literacy was a key factor in older forms of Protestantism-adherents being expected to read the Bible for themselvesPentecostalism emphasized orality.24 Many Chileans in the early twentieth century were illiterate and found the emphasis on oral and highly participatory religious services, incorporating their own spoken testimonies, attractive.
The main thrust of Protestantism in Chile was becoming Pentecostal. Between 1932 and 1934 La Iglesia Metodista Pentecostal, the original Chilean Pentecostal church, underwent a painful split.25 Hoover and other pastors organized La Iglesia Evangélica Pentecostal. The two churches rank first and second among Pentecostal churches in Chile and account for about half of the Protestants in the
country.26
The Hoover-led churches and others that broke off from them became Chilean institutions to such an extent that some descendants of the early Pentecostals call themselves criollo Pentecostals.27 They contrast themselves to latecomers from worldwide Pentecostal churches such as the Assemblies of God.28 Some criollo Pentecostals originally looked upon more recent arrivals as mission products with heavy North American ideological baggage, but by now virtually all Pentecostal
Chilean Pentecostalism 101
churches are Chilean in leadership, membership, and finances.29 Estimates place Pentecostals at about 90 percent of Protestants in Chile.30
Pentecostalism in the 1960s
By 1960 an estimated 10.8 percent of the Chilean population were Protestant, the largest percentage in all of Latin America.31 Poblete and Galilea took it for granted years later that "among the countries of Latin America conquered by Catholic Spain, Chile has been traditionally considered the country with the largest number of Protestants."32 Both the estimates of Protestants in Chile (too high) and in other countries (too low) should have been questioned, but Chile's reputation in Protestant circles, especially the novelty of Pentecostalism, attracted the attention of the pioneering scholars Emilio Willems and Christian Lalive d'Epinay.33 Willems was at Vanderbilt University and Lalive d'Epinay, a young Swiss sociologist, enjoyed sponsorship by the World Council of Churches. Chilean social science was just beginning to be organized in universities and institutes, and therefore Chileans were unable to respond to these studies professionally and critically at that time. As Jeffrey Puryear points out, "Research was occasionally carried out in Chilean universities before 1955, but it was not part of their institutional goal."34 Then, too, an adequate response from within Pentecostalism was hampered by the lack of academically trained members. Lalive d'Epinay and Willems therefore received attention and deference that their work did not merit. Lalive d'Epinay's work in particular became for many outside observers a "safe-haven" paradigm for explaining Pentecostalism.
Willems attempted a work of extraordinary scope, for the times, covering Pentecostals not only in Spanish-speaking Chile but in Portuguese-speaking Brazil. His conclusions are consistent with the spirit of modernization theories in seeing Pentecostalism as fostering a work ethic. Employers often prefer to hire Pentecostals because they are punctual and disciplined; Pentecostalism and the capitalist wage system reinforce one another.35 They help persons moving from traditional rural patterns to adapt to urban life. Pentecostalism helps persons and families rise above anomie and socioeconomic pressures toward the integration of personal and family life. Reaching out to convert others empowered newcomers, turning them into active participants. Although enthusiasm for Willems's ideas of "lower-class culture" has waned,36 one can profitably read his work for his closeness to what was happening to individuals.37
In part because Lalive d'Epinay's work was published in Spanish and was supported by the World Council of Churches, it received attention from Chileans "as the best-established" theory of Chilean Pentecostalism.38 It was impressive, especially for Chileans, in its apparent thoroughness: review of documents, multiple interviews, participant observation, and questionnaires administered to Pentecostal pastors and two control groups. It was, however, seriously flawed in omitting the opinions of the persons in the pews.
102 Edward L. Cleary and Juan Sepúlveda
Lalive d'Epinay created an imaginative view of Chilean Pentecostalism that gained considerable attention. He pictured Pentecostalism as re-creating for those transposed from countryside to city the traditional structure of the hacienda. The Pentecostal pastor became the patrón, keeping the faithful out of politics and rendering them conservative and passive in relation to authority. Moral renewal took precedence over economic advance and did not necessarily lead to increased capital accumulation. This religion had little effect on social mobility or on the attitudes and values thought necessary for economic development. It was, in Lalive d'Epinay's terms, "alienating" but expressive in its own way of social discontent.
For Lalive d'Epinay the political product of this religion was passivity; he described Pentecostals as being on "sociopolitical strike" – of reconstructing a moribund society. What many remember of his work is his image of Pentecostalism as a "refuge for the masses," facilitating an escape from the world.
Cauldron of Pentecostal Change,
1960 to the Present
More careful studies by Chileans are helping to create a better picture of Pentecostalism. Juan Sepúlveda,39 Renato Poblete,40 Carmen Galilea,41 Cristián Parker,42 Humberto Lagos and Arturo Chacón,43 Juan Guillermo Prado,44 Katherine Gilfeather,45 and others46 have begun this work of systematic interpretation.
To trace the contribution of Chilean Pentecostal scholars one must return to the geographical areas that Lalive d'Epinay investigated. The groups among which Pentecostalism spread its roots suffered from profound social exclusion. They lacked effective channels for participation in organized life and had scant access to the services and benefits provided by the state, such as education and health. They observed the "democratization" and "modernization" of Chile from the sidelines. In a sense, for the adults of this sector the choice was between refuge in a cantina and refuge in a Pentecostal community. Further, becoming Pentecostal brought another mark of social exclusion: belonging to a religious minority in a society that was numerically and culturally Catholic. Hence, Pentecostals grew up with the feeling of being second-class citizens.
This situation began to change, however, in the early 1960s. Chile was being transformed into a social laboratory for confrontation between advocates of reform and proponents of revolution.47 The Christian Democratic party, representing the reform alternative, took power in 1964. It needed to build a strong base among the lower classes to counterbalance the hegemony of the left, communist or socialist, in the labor movement. Also, the government's model of economic development, based on increasing industrial capacity to reduce imports, required a much enlarged internal market. Thus began an impressive work of
Chilean Pentecostalism 103
state-sponsored social engineering aimed at integrating those on the margins (where Pentecostals lived) with those in the center of society.
Armed with agrarian reform legislation, the state moved vigorously toward labor organizing in the agrarian sector.48 With the legal creation of neighborhood associations and other types of organizations such as women's centers,49 it began a process of co-option aimed at taking over the grass-roots movement. This movement had arisen from land invasions supported by the left, and the issue to which these organizations especially devoted themselves was the provision of housing, a crucial aspect of the lives of the excluded. Suddenly the environment in which Pentecostalism was operating was inundated with social and communitarian organizations. A climate of rising expectations for social change pervaded this world, and the larger religious world was affected by this climate. A reinvigorated pastoral policy of the Catholic church, arising from the enthusiasm of the recently concluded Vatican Council, was created for this political context of "social promotion." Programs designed to involve Protestant and Pentecostal churches came from outside the country with the help of the Church World Service (National Council of Churches of the United States).50
These processes constituted an enormous challenge for Pentecostal preachers and for the relations between the churches and society. With or without the support of pastors and denominational leaders, many lay members and some pastors joined the new social organizations or unions, especially in rural areas. Many Pentecostals assumed leadership positions in these organizations. In rural and semirural settings where population groupings were small and organizational resources scarce, many churches and their pastors began to act as interlocutors for the municipalities in the implementation of communitarian programs. Other churches preferred to create their own service programs, typically combining voluntary work of members with resources provided through foreign aid. These programs included preventive medicine, food supplementation, literacy, and emergency aid for victims of frequent floods or less frequent earthquakes.
This process affected the Pentecostal world. The degree of social involvement of the local church fundamentally depended on its local leadership. Its pastor's understanding of the Gospel and his reaction to the changes that the country was experiencing determined the type of orientation that he gave his congregation. In a few cases, by contrast, the central leadership of a denomination took a favorable stance toward the social involvement of its members, as occurred especially among Pentecostal churches that had been more involved in the ecumenical movement.51
In the last years of the Frei government (1964-1970), the sociopolitical climate became more conflictive and polarized. The lack of cooperation of the economic elite made it impossible for the government to carry out its social programs, especially the provision of more housing. The frustration of expectations drove the popular movement, originally mobilized to support government policies, toward
104 Edward L. Cleary and Juan Sepúlveda
the leftist opposition. Salvador Allende headed the forces of the left (Unidad Popular) that represented the revolutionary alternative to reform. This became la via chilena al socialismo (the Chilean road to socialism).
The election of Salvador Allende, a socialist, as president in 1970 became an important test of the "safe-haven" theory. Renato Poblete, a Jesuit sociologist, reported his observations to Harvey Cox, a theologian friend at Harvard: (1) Pentecostals had voted in large numbers, (2)Pentecostal leaders had generally opposed Allende and supported the Christian Democrats, and (3)ordinary members of Pentecostal churches had voted for Allende.52
At the sociopolitical level, the years of Allende's Unidad Popular (1970-1973)were characterized by a heightening of expectations of social participation and a deepening of political cleavages. Politics became all-absorbing and divisive for many persons and their families. Pentecostals were faced with the choice of either full commitment to the political conflict or observer status. Whereas individuals were able to choose the first, the churches in general, as might be expected, chose the second, distancing themselves from the conflict. In this context a number of leaflets were distributed in the churches by foreign conservative Protestant organizations (alluding to the experience of Christians "behind the Iron Curtain").53 The effort did not succeed in involving the Pentecostal churches in an open campaign against the Unidad Popular regime. Thus, Pentecostal churches and individuals were not buried in safe havens; they became involved in social movements and politics when they judged that benefits were to be gained from it.
The impending military takeover in 1973 and the numerical prominence of Pentecostal churches again forced public choice on the churches. On the one hand, the divisive and belligerent character that politics had acquired drove the local congregations in the direction of separating themselves from the conflict. On the other hand, the profundity of the national crisis moved the leadership of important Pentecostal churches, including the largest, the Iglesia Metodista Pentecostal, to involve themselves for the first time in ecumenical initiatives to increase mutual understanding and reconciliation among political sectors, especially to avoid civil war.
On the Sunday previous to the coup, prominent Pentecostal leaders gathered in front of the governmental palace, along with Cardinal Raúl Silva Henríquez, Lutheran Bishop Helmuth Frenz, and representatives of other Protestant churches, Orthodox churches, and the Jewish community, to pray for peace in Chile. It was apparent from this event that the political future of Chile would no longer be something "apart" for the Pentecostal leadership.54
The coup and the subsequent sixteen and one-half years of military rule produced another, drastic change in Chile. This aspect of Chilean history is being well documented,55 and here we take up two issues relating to the religious field. First, the government's systematically repressing and outlawing political parties and social organizations and the social consequences of the difficult economic adjustment begun by the military indirectly produced in the general populace a shift
Chilean Pentecostalism 105
toward the churches. Especially in the popular sectors, the churches, inasmuch as they were the only places that were authorized for meetings, were filled with persons seeking protection, spiritual support, exchange of information, and the like. At the grass-roots level, the increased drift of the population toward the churches enhanced the perception that the recess from party politics improved the conditions for gaining converts.
Secondly, the historical and social weight of the Catholic church, summed up in the thought of its bishops (most of them inspired by Vatican II), turned it into the principal defender of human rights. This produced the first great crisis in relations between the Catholic church and the state since Chile's achievement of national independence. It was this withdrawal of moral support by the Catholic church that caused the government to turn to the country's second religious force. If this search found a ready partner in an important segment of the Protestant (not exclusively Pentecostal) leadership, this was not p rincipally because of any alleged political affinity but rather for reasons relating to religious power.
In the request for support on the part of the military regime there was an implicit recognition of the social and political importance of the Protestant world in Chilean society ("for the first time in history," some Protestant leaders keep repeating in amazement).56 The manifestation of this recognition came in the presence of Gen. Augusto Pinochet during the inauguration of a "Protestant Cathedral" (in reality, the mother church of the Iglesia Metodista Pentecostal) two days after 2,500 Protestant pastors and lay persons had publicly expressed their unconditional support for the military government.57 This symbolic recognition of the importance of Protestants in Chilean society encouraged hope that the military government would introduce legislation leading to full religious equality. This hope was the principal motive for Protestant support of the regime.
The appearance of broad popular Protestant support for the military regime (in reality the support of a select group of leaders and not an official representation of their congregations) was created through wide media coverage, especially the live television broadcast of the "Protestant Te Deum," an annual event first held in September 1975. Leaders of this sector of Protestantism, when asked, always asserted that the motivation for this was nonpolitical, but they made no great effort to counter the widely held political interpretation of it as support for the regime.58
The first critical voices from the other Protestant world took up the question of churches' being used politically by the regime and also the presumption of the so-called Consejo de Pastores in acting as if it represented all Protestants. Gradually these critical voices gained strength. The Confraternidad Cristiana de Iglesias, established in 1982, assumed an increasingly prophetic stance, denouncing the repression and injustices of the military regime.
As this critical posture was gaining greater attention in the 1980s, it was also making evident the profound division in the Chilean Protestant world. Each side
106 Edward L. Cleary and Juan Sepúlveda
claimed that the other was unauthorized to speak for the church. In the past, internal differences (doctrinal or theological) were glossed over as typical of a religious minority seeking its space in society. Superficially this division could be depicted as just another expression of classical theological debates (fundamentalists versus liberals) or ideologies (conservatives versus progressives) or as a reflection of the turbulent situation in the country.
Distinct models of historical evolution and organizational development in the Protestant, preponderantly Pentecostal, world emerged. One sector represented, consciously or not, a type of institutional development similar to the historical model of the Catholic church, treating the state or political society as its partner. From this model, a sort of neo-Christendom, are taken symbols such as the "cathedral," the "Te Deum," and the participation of political figures in important religious ceremonies. The other sector, in contrast, has seen a type of institutional evolution that, recognizing the tradition of independence of the state, consciously or unconsciously conceives the church as part of civil society.
Growth: Class, Clergy, and Women
Chilean Pentecostal churches have experienced sustained growth since the 1930s. A slight deceleration occurred in the 1960s, but steady growth resumed in the 1970s and 1980s (Table 6.1). Neither the 1982 census nor that of 1992 is fully comparable with earlier censuses. The 1982 census takers did not ask about religious affiliation, and the 1992 census takers inquired about religion only of persons fourteen or older.
Much has been written about the causes of growth of the Pentecostal movement.59 Most attention has been given to the massive changes in society that have made Pentecostal growth possible, but understanding must be also sought in the characteristics of the Pentecostal churches. The churches were not mere shelters
TABLE 6.1 Protestants in the Chilean Population, 1920-1992
|
|
Population |
Protestants |
Percent |
|
1920 |
3,785,000 |
54,800.00 |
1.44 |
|
1930 |
4,365,000 |
63,400.00 |
1.45 |
|
1940 |
5,065,000 |
118,400.00 |
2.34 |
|
1952 |
6,295,000 |
225,500.00 |
4.06 |
|
1960 |
7,374,000 |
425,700.00 |
5.58 |
|
1970 |
8,884,000 |
549,900.00 |
6.18 |
|
1982 |
11,329,000 |
1,132,900a |
10.00 |
|
1992 |
9,660,367 |
1,278,644b |
13.20 |
a Estimated by Juan Sepúlveda.
b Respondents 14 years and older only.
Source: National Census, various years.
Chilean Pentecostalism 107
in turmoil. Rather, they possessed dynamic ways of reaching out and educating, lively and participative ways of worshiping, preachers with unreconstructed humble backgrounds, and the capacity to translate the Christian message into everyday language that was descriptive and personal rather than doctrinal or rationalistic.
Carmen Galilea of the Centro Bellarmino, who has spent years observing Pentecostals, suggests that they
emphasize personal piety. This is the fruit of religious experience, of giving testimony, and of missionary outreach. They believe in justification by faith but the certitude of faith is found in baptism in the Holy Spirit.... Their meetings are distinguished by great cordiality, liberty of expression, informality, and spontaneity. Within the group individuals can freely communicate their feelings, joys, and worries. They are a community of faith but a community in which familiarity and human warmth are present.60
Galilea notes that, in marked contrast to Catholic practice, ordinary, nonordained Pentecostals are impelled to make converts.61 Pentecostal churches are also reaching out to other countries, sending them Chilean missionaries at a modest rate.62
Growth based more on individual religious experience and initiative than on doctrine has also produced a distinctive diffused organizational pattern. Some churches are large and centrally organized, with thousands of members; others have been founded by a single pastor or an ambitious lay person. As Galilea has observed all over Santiago, "These small communities are born of the conviction that believers can and ought to proclaim their faith wherever they will."63
Beyond personal appeal, the greater or lesser receptivity to Pentecostalism of ordinary people has also been affected by problems, conflicts, and tensions resulting from social strains. Thus Pentecostal growth has been facilitated in periods when large sectors of the population have experienced heightened social exclusion. The reality of social exclusion and the turbulent economic situation brought a constant threat of failure for many and generated a search for ways of coping. In this context Pentecostalism had special appeal, offering a plan for life.
The only period of deceleration occurred in the 1960s, which were noted for public schemes to promote national integration, increased urban and rural organization, and optimistic plans for social change. Despite the failure of these idealistic schemes, the government plans nonetheless had great capacity for raising expectations and generating hope. Pentecostalism grew more slowly then because of lesser receptivity on the part of ordinary people. Conversion to Pentecostalism returned to its previous rate of growth after 1973 with the political decline and acute economic adjustments that occurred under military rule.
The social and cultural space of Pentecostalism in Chilean society is especially that of the dependent underclasses. Indeed, lower-social-class origins has been the mainstay of observations about Pentecostalism in Latin America and elsewhere.64
108 Edward L. Cleary and Juan Sepúlveda
But in Chile, the picture has been changing. In a survey conducted in 1990 by the Centro de Estudios Públicos (CEP), 48.3 percent of Pentecostals 65 identified themselves as middle-class, 48.0 percent as lower-class, and 3.7 percent as upperclass. A degree of confirmation of this self-designation is offered by educational attainment, given the high correlation between education and income, especially in developing countries. Secondary education has frequently been associated with entry into the middle class. Forty-one percent of Pentecostals in the CEP study had completed nine to twelve years of schooling and 9 percent had completed thirteen years or more.66
This marked change in social status raises a number of questions to be addressed below. Two other characteristics are key to understanding Chilean Pentecostalism: the special character of its clergy and the position of women within the communities.
Chilean Pentecostal pastors are noteworthy for maintaining their humble origins and for their ability to communicate aspects of Christianity to persons from the lowest sectors of society. On-the-job training and apprenticeship have been favored over lengthy professional preparation. Hoover himself went through a similar process.
C. Peter Wagner, a leading figure in the church-growth school, attempted to a penetrate the puzzle of Pentecostal clergy in 1971: "Somehow the Latin American Pentecostals have developed more culturally meaningful patterns of church life than many other Protestant denominations.... One of the most interesting laboratories ... is Chilean Pentecostalism [in which] ministers are trained in streets rather than in seminaries. "67 According to Wagner, "virtually none of the great leaders of the Chilean Pentecostal churches has spent any time in a seminary or Bible institute." From this he turned to Lalive d'Epinay's detailed description of the intricate process of preparation of ministers through stages of street preaching, Sunday-school teaching, preaching in church, and then becoming pastor. 68 Approval for advancement took results (gaining converts, for example) into account. Reaching the pastorate required twenty years' work for some candidates. Almost 60 percent of pastors in the 1970s were over fifty years old, reflecting the long period of working at the grass roots. Hoff notes that this practice continues, with few being ordained before forty years of age.69 As a result, Jean-Baptiste August Kessler Jr., noted, "It is astonishing to note the care and reverence the people show toward their pastor."70
Contemporary training continues along the lines described by Wagner, but increasingly pastors avail themselves of biblical-theological education, generally through extension programs offered by interdenominational seminaries such as the Comunidad Teológica Evangélica or biblical institutes established by Pentecostal churches or missionaries.71 Access to pastoral ministry through academic theological education is still the exception.72
The Pentecostal clergy stands in marked contrast to the Catholic and other Protestant clergy, which until rather recently tended to come from the middle and
Chilean Pentecostalism 109
upper social strata and had to undergo lengthy academic training in isolation from ordinary people. These students and lesser numbers of seminarians from the lower classes thereby acquired a primarily literate culture that tended to separate them from the lives of common people.
The Chilean Catholic clergy on the leading edge of reform throughout Chile's modern history has tended to come from the upper-middle and upper classes, recruited among the Jesuit, Sacred Heart, and Holy Cross religious communities and among diocesan students. When priests found their way to working with lower-class groups in the cities and the countryside, many remarked on the adjustments needed in cultural and pastoral outlooks.73 Many students now making their way to Catholic seminaries come from the lower classes. Seminaries and religious communities have adjusted their programs to include some experience of life at the bottom. Few priest or ministers of the historical Protestant churches, however, are rooted in the lives of parishioners to the same degree as Pentecostal
pastors.74
Age differences are also notable, with Chile's Catholic clergy often entering fulltime ministry at twenty-five or twenty-six years of age, long before many Pentecostal pastors. Considerable deference is accorded experienced and effective older Pentecostal pastors by working-class Chileans. The older age of Pentecostal clergy may mean greater willingness on their part to look for compromise during inevitable conflicts. Many of the implications of class and age for Pentecostal growth have yet to be examined systematically.
From a purely statistical viewpoint, the CEP survey mentioned above shows that among "observant Protestants" women form a large majority, by a proportion of 2.3:1.75 Repeated observations of many Pentecostal congregations confirm this figure. Women also play a far more active role than men in the life of the congregation, acting as evangelizers and educators, engaging in pastoral work through visits to the infirm at home and in hospitals, helping other needy people, and engaging in many activities to sustain worship and community life.
In most churches even the most active participation of women rarely provides them access to directive positions, much less to ordained ministry.76 But Pentecostalism offers women not only the opportunity to express their private religious devotion but also a way to develop a publicly recognized and honored apostolate. Thus Pentecostalism offers lower-class women access to public space, an access typically denied them by the machismo of popular culture.
In the case of married women whose husbands do not share their beliefs, women's determination to exercise their religious faith operates, although not consciously, as a struggle for space for personal advancement and expression. In cases where wives and husbands share a faith and belong to a Pentecostal community, the participation of both partners equally (in terms of the right to participate) in common life within the congregation redounds within family life as an advance in the democratization of relations. In both cases religious mili-
110 Edward L. Cleary and Juan Sepúlveda
tancy has as one of its effects a significant increase in dignity and self-esteem for women, without this necessarily being accompanied by feminist discourse.
The Contemporary Situation: Stunning Revelations
The CEP survey referred to previously received unusually wide attention for a work on religion. A lengthy TV presentation emphasized the considerable inroads that Pentecostalism had made in numbers and social-class penetration, but Pentecostal scholars and pastors were shocked to learn that less than half of were found to be "observant." Only 48 percent of those who identified themselves as evangelicals (the great majority being Pentecostal) attended church at least once a week; while 13.7 percent attended church once or twice a month, almost 38 percent very seldom or never attended. The study also revealed that the annual rate of increase of the population identifying itself as Protestant was steadily rising. Fontaine and Beyer estimated the rate of growth as 2.5 percent between 1920 and 1940; 3.2 percent between 1940 and 1970; and 4.2 percent between 1970 and
1990.
In terms of organizational recruitment, attendance, and membership, the data show high attraction (4.8 percent annual growth), a high percentage of recent converts (26 percent having joined in the past ten years), a high proportion not observant (52 percent do not attend church weekly), and a high standard of membership criteria (militant or observant).77
Pentecostalism in Chile still has a high growth rate, of some 4 percent yearly growth. Pentecostalism is like a great harvester that takes in many new converts but also leaves a large residue of nonpracticing Pentecostals. What happens to exPentecostals? Systematic study of the question is lacking. The problem may never have been seen so clearly as in the results of the CEP study. For Pentecostals, a Pentecostal is by definition "observant," even militant; they point to frequent sermons critical of those who attend only on Sunday. In these terms, the Pentecostal/Protestant portion of the Chilean population is 7 percent, not the 13-16 percent shown by the national census or the CEP study.78 Pentecostal pastors carried this concern to an annual meeting, the second Encuentro Nacional de Diálogo Pentecostal at Buin in December, 1992, but hints of it had been apparent earlier. The great chonicler of Christianity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Kenneth Scott Latourette, on one of his field trips in 1956 heard from Protestant missionaries in Santiago of "a large erosion of membership ... especially the Pentecostals."
Pentecostalism, as a perfectionist religion, is extremely demanding, and many converts fail to measure up. What has alienated the dropouts? Is it the professional advancement of second- or later-generation Pentecostals?79 Or is it that young persons feel that the churches do not grant them enough space to be young in Chilean society? The change in the social composition of Pentecostals and the
Chilean Pentecostalism 111
passage of time have revealed serious weaknesses.80 Thirty years ago Willems noted that "proud as the Pentecostals leaders may be of their lack of formal theological training, they still live in a society where formal recognition of professional skill is highly valued."81 A recent study shows the high value that contemporary Pentecostal Sunday-school teachers place on university education.82 Paul B. Hoff, president of the Pentecostal Bible Institute in Santiago, points to class background and lack of education as issues: "Lay pastors are seldom able to provide biblical teaching. This problem is intensified because the pastor's knowledge of the Bible is limited to what they hear from the older men, who themselves have had no systematic teaching.... The preacher utters whatever comes to mind."83 Thus, says Hoff: "While middle-class Chileans often admire the zeal, faith, and sincerity of the Pentecostals, they are repelled by lack of preparation of their preachers.... Parents complain that their college-age children are bored with the sermons and leave the church."84
Older approaches are not working well for some sectors. Hoff quotes the president of a Pentecostal group in Vitacura, an affluent sector of Santiago, as saying that few persons are won over by street preaching: "It is not uncommon to see Pentecostals preaching to empty street corners. Yet they continue to rely on this method and seem incapable of adapting to new circumstances."85Galilea in her study of Pentecostal preachers notes both their insecurity about what methods to use with the middle classes and fear about the outcome of preaching to them.86
Bernice Martin, in a salient follow-up study to David Martin's Tongues of Fire, found important clues to Pentecostal adaptation to middle-class life in Chile and elsewhere.87 Key to understanding Pentecostal behavior has been the self-discipline that gives shape to economic and social lives. Pentecostal discipline has a strong contra mundum bent (against alcohol, tobacco, dancing, and soccer and the associated socializing), but, unlike that of Catholic monks, Pentecostal discipline is pragmatic rather than dogmatic. With increasing middle-class status, some Pentecostals are adapting to a more worldly life. Martin concludes that Pentecostals have the capacity to retain a moral and spiritual core while selectively adapting to the pleasures of consumerism.
Another finding of the CEP study came as a shock to some pastors: Many observant Protestants did not conform in their moral positions to those advocated by their pastors. Fontaine and Beyer were surprised to find that the positions of Protestants on moral themes were closer to the opinions of Catholic bishops than to those of the Catholic laity.88 Between 63 percent (in a 1990 survey) and 52 percent (in a 1991 survey) of observant Protestants opposed a divorce law; between 82 percent (in 1990) and 68 per cent (in 1991) were against abortion in all cases, and 54 percent were opposed to sexual relations before marriage. Pentecostal commentators felt, however, that the percentages were lower than might have been expected, that large numbers of Protestants expressed morally liberal positions, and that the picture would have been even more surprising if
112 Edward L. Cleary and Juan Sepúlveda
the CEP survey had included persons from the very large pool of Protestants who did not attend church weekly. Clearly, the Pentecostal pastors were confronting a picture of followers fitting into a pluralistic society and acting independently.
Another challenge facing the Pentecostal movement in Chile is the division and atomization of the Pentecostal movement. There are probably 1,500 Pentecostal denominations in a country of 14 million persons.89 Isolated from each other, they are not strong enough to respond to many challenges. For some Pentecostal leaders unity, understood as cooperation, interchange, coordination of efforts, has become an urgent need.
Conversion and Society
Pentecostalism has had an impact on the individual and family lives of members. Conversion is almost invariably described by members as a change in their way of seeing and experiencing life. Lalive d'Epinay captured this in an interview with a convert:
I was fifteen. Then I felt something happening in me; I felt repentance and began to weep and to ask Him to forgive my sin and transform my life. And I heard a voicebut not a voice of anyone near me – which spoke to me and said: "Your sins are forgiven you." And at the moment my life changed completely, to such a extent that when I left the church, I felt that everything had changed, that the streets and trees and houses were different. It was a very poor district, with some houses in ruins and unmade streets. But for me, everything was new and transformed.90
The basic conversion experience brings with it changes in lifestyle for the converted and indirectly has an impact on society as well. Among the examples often cited by Pentecostal and other observers the most obvious is the control of alcoholism and other destructive behaviors. There is abundant anecdotal evidence pointing to a notable decrease in alcoholism and similar addictions, but systematic studies are lacking.
Pentecostal conversion has also been an important factor in relieving dysfunctionality in poor families. Chilean observers have often characterized poor families and others from almost all sectors of Chilean society as "consensual families," wherein couples live together by agreement without the benefit of legal marriage.91 In this context Pentecostalism has been seen as a significant element of stabilization and regularization of the couple and the family. More stable commitment has also helped to reduce abuse of women92 and presumably family violence as well.
Chilean Pentecostalism 113
Relations with the Catholic Church
A warming of relations between Catholics and Protestants took place especially in the days after Vatican 11 (1962-1965). Gatherings, study days, communal prayer, and public worship were encouraged among Catholics, historical Protestants, and ecumenical Pentecostals. Out of these efforts grew the Fraternidad Ecuménica in 1973. This group continues its largely spiritual activities. Other church groups forged courageous links to offer assistance to many persons during the military regime (1973-1990).93
A notable cooling of relations between Catholics and many Pentecostal churches has taken place since the mid-1980s. The sociologist Katherine Gilfeather and others have attributed this to "sectarian proselytism."94 An impasse in interchurch relations exists at the institutional level, but a larger field exists that resembles the variety of human groupings in Santiago's Parque Florestal in late afternoon. At one extreme are groups reaching out to others: the Centro Ecuménico Diego de Medellín,95 the Instituto Pedro de Córdoba,96 the smaller Pentecostal churches that joined the ecumenically minded World Council of Churches (the first Pentecostal groups anywhere to do so),97 the Fundación de Ayuda Social de las Iglesias Cristianas,98 and the National Catholic Commission on Ecumenism under Francisco Sampedro Nieto.99 At the other extreme are the Pentecostal churches that do not cooperate even with other Protestant groups, much less with Catholics. In between, a great many Catholics and Pentecostals pass one another by, without conflict, adjusting to differences in gait.
Young clerics and seminarians form an important resource for future relations. Among the young clergy, Cristián Parker found many Catholic priests well disposed to seek dialogue and cooperation with Pentecostals.100 But a wide gulf in educational achievement separates the Catholic and the Pentecostal clergy.
Gilfeather reports on a possible bridge for this gap-a project that could offer Pentecostal pastors the intellectual basis for ecumenism. She emphasizes the Comunidad Teológica Evangélica as an institute that students from some ninety Pentecostal churches have attended. The curriculum is designed to foster a more inclusive Christian body than the Pentecostal model. Presumably this would open the door for dialogue with other Christians who are Catholic. However, exposure to a broader, more inclusive theology has had the effect of opening Pentecostal students to other Protestants; 68 percent rejected the idea of dialogue with Catholics.101 Gilfeather's study shows the long path that ecumenism has to travel.
Conclusion: Contemporary Politics
Pentecostal churches have an established place within Chilean society. Over a period of almost ninety years they have gradually transformed Chile from a traditionally Catholic country to one that is also Pentecostal. The churches are also ex-
114 Edward L. Cleary and Juan Sepúlveda
periencing problems of aging movements, with many dropouts and a lack of moral conformity.
Chile has turned from military government to an unusually complex democracy.102 With the return of political parties, the role of the Catholic church, once the voice of opposition during repression, has been reduced. Space is available for Pentecostal churches to speak on moral and social issues.
Given Pinochet's recognition of Pentecostals and the ostentatious support for him of many Pentecostal leaders, Chileans gained the impression that Pentecostals were conservatives.103 By contrast, Pentecostals showed their political independence in the CEP survey: Most observant Pentecostals had a negative opinion of Pinochet and a positive opinion of Patricio Aylwin, identified themselves as independent, and favored direct election of local officials, and less than 15 percent identified themselves as sympathetic to the right. 104
The presence of Pentecostals in politics has implications for Latin America that can be explored only briefly. Chile may offer models for other countries of two streams within Pentecostal leadership. Some pastors choose brokerage with the government, working with elite members and increasingly becoming part of the elite. Others prefer to maintain a distance between themselves and elite members, allowing them to evaluate the elite's fulfillment of their political and social responsibilities. The prophetic quality sometimes associated with Pentecostalism is thus maintained. However, experience rather than doctrine is the basis of Pentecostal theological tendencies,105 and this has inclined Pentecostalism in Chile more toward pragmatism than toward prophecy.
In terms of internal voice Pentecostals have great strength. Who one is as a person and how one relates to others in the church community is based on the Pentecostal experience of God, allowing those who have received it a special status-a right to speak and to be heard within the community. External voice is another matter. Chilean Pentecostals are finding a voice in the public sphere. They began by responding to the questions of power holders and newspaper and television reporters about their positions on abortion, divorce, premarital sex, and the like, and have gone on to take the initiative in expressing their ethical views.
But a more involved issue remains: Will Chilean Pentecostals seek power? Talking about a moral issue is seldom sufficient in a parliamentary democracy. Having power would mean that Pentecostals could decide what issues ought to come up for public debate and legislation. The skepticism of Pentecostals about human intentions, efforts, and institutions106 works against the seeking of power. The experience of political success draws Chilean Pentecostals forward.
Chile's Pentecostals have been latecomers to direct involvement in politics, behind the Protestant and Pentecostal plunge into politics in Venezuela, Brazil, Peru, Guatemala, and Argentina, in part because of Chile's long military tutelage. In 1992 a clear change was noted. A handful of Pentecostals began standing for national parliamentary elections. Local politics experienced what Las Ultimas Noticias (May 17, 1992) called "a true explosion." Pentecostals stood for election as mayors or local council members.
Chilean Pentecostalism 115
The march of events following the electoral defeat of the military government also appears to confirm tendencies evident before the fall of Pinochet. The sector that supported Pinochet continues to have the greater public visibility. The same practices (the Te Deum, the invitations to political authorities) are continued with the same enthusiasm but now in favor of the new democratic authorities. The change in the political scene has produced a softening in the prophetic sector.
Many Pentecostals are leaving behind their self-image as "pilgrims." They want to feel fully at home, recognized as full citizens, in Chilean society. This common aspiration has impelled the leaders of Pentecostal sectors to seek mutual understanding within the Pentecostal community and a healing of the wounds of the past.107
NOTES
1. Walter Hollenweger, "Methodism's Past in Pentecostalism's Present: A Case Study of
Cultural Clash in Chile," Methodist History 20 (July 1982), p. 169.
2. J. Lloyd Mecham, Church and State in Latin America: A History of Politico-
Ecclesiastical Relations, rev. ed. (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press,
1966), p. 217.
3. Luis Galdames, Historia de Chile: La evolución constitucional 1810-1925, vol. 1,
1810-1833 (Santiago, 1926), p. 493, cited by Mecham, Church and State pp. 217-218.
4. Mecham, Church and State, p. 222.
5. Galdames, Historia de Chile p. 493, quoted by Mecham, Church and State, p. 218.
6. Mecham, Church and State, p. 218.
7. Kenneth Scott Latourette, Christianity in a Revolutionary Age: A History of Christianity in the 19th and 20th Centuries, vol. 5 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1969), p. 213.
8. Mecham, Church and State, p. 222.
9. Latourette, Christianity in a Revolutionary Age, pp. 212-213.
10. John Considine, New Horizons in Latin America (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1958), pp.
328, 331.
11. Hurtado, who died in 1952, is revered as a modern saint. His work is analyzed in
Alejandro Magnet, El Padre Hurtado (Santiago: Editorial Pacífico, 1957, 3rd ed., revised),
and in Octavio Marfán, Alberto Hurtado: Cristo estaba en él (Santiago: Editorial Patris,
1993).
12. Alberto Hurtado, ¿Es Chile un país católico? (Santiago: Editorial Splendor, 1941).
13. Brian Smith's unsurpassed study of the Catholic church in Chile records the context
and processes of renewal. See his The Church and Politics in Chile: Challenges to Modern
Catholicism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982).
14. David Martin, Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America
(Oxford and Cambridge, Mass.: Basil Blackwell, 1990) p. 76.
15. Martin, Tongues of Fire, p. 76.
16. Arturo Fontaine Talavera and Harald Beyer, "Retrato del movimiento evangélico a
la luz de las encuestas de opinión pública," Estudios Públicos 44 (Spring 1991), p. 67.
116 Edward L. Cleary and Juan Sepúlveda
17. Willis C. Hoover, Historia del avivamiento pentecostal en Chile (Santiago: Imprenta Excelsior, 1948 [19311), p. 14.
18. Hoover, Historia del avivamiento pentecostal, p. 62.
19. Census data for 1992 show continuing religious disparities by region. See Cristián Parker, "Radiografía a la religión de los chilenos," Mensaje 428 (May 1994), pp. 178-181. Frank W. Young of the Cornell University Rural Sociology Department has conducted a census analysis of patterns of growth of Pentecostalism in Chile compared with those of the Reformation. See his "Evangelicals in Chile: Reproducing the Reformation Distribution," Rural Sociology 60, 3 (Fall 1995), pp. 481-492.
20. Hannah Stewart-Gambino, The Church and Politics in the Chilean Countryside (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992), p. 71.
21. Ibid.
22. Martin, Tongues of Fire, p. 79.
23. See Gabriel Salazar, "The History of Popular Culture in Chile: Different Paths," in Kenneth Aman and Cristián Parker, eds., Popular Culture in Chile: Resistance and Survival (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991), pp. 13-39.
24. Quentin J. Schultze has treated the orality of Pentecostalism as an essential element in his "Orality and Power in Latin American Pentecostalism," in Daniel R. Miller, ed., Coming of Age: Protestantism in Contemporary Latin America (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1994), pp. 65-88.
25. Charles Jones, "Willis Collins Hoover," in Stanley M. Burgess and Gary B. McGee, eds., Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1988), p. 445. A refinement on Jones's dating is needed: In 1932 the two church groups had been virtually formed, the two sides of conflict being clear. In 1933 the pastors who supported Hoover were expelled from the Iglesia Metodista Pentecostal, but in January 1934 the conference was celebrated with both parties present, and the two were formally separated thereafter. The legal disputes continued for some time.
26. From the Iglesia Metodista Pentecostal further subdivisions resulted in the Iglesia Unida Metodista Pentecostal (60,000 estimated members), the Iglesia Pentecostal de Chile (30,000 estimated members), the Misión Pentecostal Apostólica (30,000 estimated members), and many other churches. From the Iglesia Evangélica Pentecostal came the Iglesia Pentecostal Apostólica, the Iglesia de Dios Pentecostal, the Iglesia Evangélica de Dios Pentecostal, and others.
27. See Juan Sepúlveda, "Pentecostalism and Liberation Theology," in Harold D. Hunter and Peter D. Hocken, eds., All Together in One Place: Theological Papers from the Brighton Conference on World Evangelization (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), pp. 53-56.
28. Paul Hoff estimates that these mission churches "include no more than 35,000 people." "Chile's Pentecostals Face Problems Due to Isolation," Evangelical Missions Quarterly 27, 3 (July 1991), p. 244.
29. The criollo Pentecostal churches also contrast with the Catholic church in Chile, more than half of whose priests in the 1960s were foreign. See PMV Special Note 15 [Brussels: Pro Mundi Vita Institute, n.d.], p. 3.
30. Juan Guillermo Prado, El Mercurio, November 2, 1980; Hoff, "Chile's Pentecostals," p. 244; Patrick Johnstone, Operation World, 5th ed. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1993), pp. 160-161.
31. W. Stanley Rycroft and Myrtle M. Clemmer, A Factual Study of Latin America (New York: Commission on Ecumenical Relations and Mission, United Presbyterian Church, USA, 1963), p. 234, reported by Mecham, Church and State, p. 222.
Chilean Pentecostalism 117
32. Renato Poblete and Carmen Galilea, Movimiento pentecostal e iglesia católica en medios populares (Santiago: Centro Bellarmino, 1984), p. 3.
33. Christian Lalive d'Epinay, Haven of the Masses: A Study of the Pentecostal Movement in Chile (London: Lutterworth, 1969); Emilio Willems, Followers of the New Faith: Culture Change and the Rise of Protestantism in Brazil and Chile (Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 1967).
34. Jeffrey Puryear, Thinking Politics: Intellectuals and Democracy in Chile, 1973-1988 (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1994), p. 13.
35. However, both Willems and Lalive d'Epinay rejected the kind of relationship that Max Weber saw between Pentecostalism and the growth of large-scale capitalist activity. As Martin (Tongues of Fire, p. 229) says, "That ... is not the contemporary issue, since Pentecostals are not within striking distance of the social position that would make such a connection possible."
36. In their survey of work on Chilean Pentecostalism, Poblete and Galilea do not mention Willems. See Movimiento Pentecostal, pp. 7-23.
37. See excerpts from Willems in H. McKennie Goodpasture, ed., Cross and Sword: An Eyewitness History of Christianity in Latin America (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1989), pp. 234-238.
38. Fontaine and Beyer, "Retrato," p. 70.
39. Besides contributions to Religión y Sociedad, Sepulveda's publications include "Pentecostalism as Popular Religiosity," International Review of Missions 309 (January 1989), pp. 80-88; "Pentecostal Theology in the Context of the Struggle for Life," in Dow Kirkpatrick, ed., Faith Born in the Struggle for Life (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1988), pp. 298-318; "Pentecostalism and Liberation Theology," in Hunter and Hocken, All Together in One Place, pp. 50-64; "Reflections on the Pentecostal Contribution to the Mission of the Church," Journal of Pentecostal Theology 1 (1992), pp. 93-108.
40. See esp. Poblete and Galilea, Movimiento pentecostal; Renato Poblete, Carmen Galilea, and Patricia van Dorp, Imagen de la iglesia y religiosidad de los chilenos (Santiago: Centro Bellarmino-Centrode Investigaciones Sociales, 1979). Poblete became more acutely aware of Pentecostalism while a student at Fordham University. With Joseph Fitzpatrick as mentor, Poblete explored the world of Puerto Rican Pentecostalism in Sectarismo portorriqueño (New York: Centro Intercultural de Documentación, 1969).
41. Besides works cited elsewhere, see El Pentecostal: Testimonio y experiencia de Dios (Santiago: Centro Bellarmino, 1990); El predicador pentecostal (Santiago: Centro Bellarmino-Centrode Investigaciones Sociales, 1990); and Lugares de culto en Gran Santiago (Santiago: Centro Bellarmino, 1989).
42. See, in addition to "Radiografía," "Christianity and Popular Movements," in Aman and Parker, Popular Culture, pp. 41-65.
43. See esp. Humberto Lagos S., Sectas en Chile: ¿Opresión o liberación? (Santiago: PRESOR, 1985); Humberto Lagos S. and Arturo Chacón Herrera, Los evangélicos en Chile: Una lectura sociológica (Concepción: Ediciones Literatura Reunida, 1987); Humberto Lagos S., La función de la minorías religiosas: Las transacciones del Protestantismo chileno en el período 1973-1981 del gobierno militar (Louvain la Neuve: n.p., 1982)
44. Juan Guillermo Prado, Seminarios e institutos teologícos evangélicos (Santiago: Centro Bellarmino-Centrode Investigaciones Sociales, 1992); Las sectas juveniles (Santiago: Talleres Offset La Nación, 1984).
118 Edward L. Cleary and Juan Sepúlveda
45. See esp. Katherine Gilfeather O'Brien, El rol de ecumenismo protestante como posible solución al impasse en las relaciones entre la iglesia católica y la comunidad pentecostal (Santiago: Centro Bellarmino-Centrode Investigaciones Sociales, 1992).
46. Hans Tenneke, El movimiento pentecostal en la sociedad chilena (Iquique: Editor Centro de Investigación de la Realidad (CIREN), 1985); Andrés Droogers (see below); Matthew S. Bothner (see below); Servicio Evangélico para el Desarrollo (SEPADE), En tierra extraña: Itinerario del pueblo pentecostal chileno (Santiago: Amerinda, 1988); Manuel Canales, Samuel Palma, and Hugo Villela, En tierra extraña 2: Para una sociología de la religiosidad popular protestante (Santiago: Amerinda-SEPADE, 1991). The Comisión Nacional de Ecumenismo de la Conferencia Episcopal de Chile and the Arzobispado de Santiago have also published various works, including Francisco Sampedro, ed., Pentecostalismo, Sectas y Pastoral (Santiago: Comisión Nacional de Ecumenismo de la Conferencia Episcopal de Chile, 1989).
47. See, for example, William V. D'Antonio and Frederick B. Pike, Religion, Revolution, and Reform: New Forces for Change in Latin America (New York: Praeger, 1964).
48. In contrast to 1964 (the year of Eduardo Frei Montalva's election as president), when of a total of 335,537 agricultural day laborers only 1,647 (.004 percent) belonged to labor unions, in 1972, of a total of 335, 343, 207, 910 (62 percent) were unionized. See Manuel Castells, "Reforma agraria, lucha de clases y poder popular en el campo chileno," Centro de Investigaciones en Desarrollo Urbano, Santiago, mimeo, p. 9.
49. Until the middle of the 1960s the popular movement was concentrated in the labor movement. By 1972 it had expanded, to an estimated 800,000 members in a vast network of territorial organizations up and down the country, a number larger than the membership of all the rural and urban unions combined. See Manuel Castells, "El movimiento de pobladores y lucha de clases en Chile," Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios Urbanos Regionales (EURE), vol. 3 (Santiago: CUDU, 1973), pp. 9-35.
50. On Ayuda Cristiana Evangélica, see Lalive d'Epinay, Haven of the Masses, pp. 179-186.
51. The first two Pentecostal churches in the world to join the ecumenically oriented World Council of Churches were Iglesia Pentecostal de Chile and Misión Iglesia Pentecostal. The motive for their joining is believed to have been more a matter of service than of theological discussion.
52. Cox, Fire from Heaven, p. 170.
53. Copies of the book Torturado por Cristo, by Richard Wurmbrand, and various issues of the magazine La Voz de los Mártires began arriving without charge and in large quantities at the houses of Protestant pastors and church leaders.
54. After the military coup some pastors, Protestant as well as Catholic, interpreted the military intervention as a response from God to the prayer meeting. For this reason, some students of church-state relations, especially Humberto Lagos, have seen in this event a religious version of the appeals for military intervention by Allende's opposition. In our opinion, the most prominent leadership of this prayer meeting and similar initiatives acted sincerely to seek an accord (such as a plebiscite, which had the support of Allende) that would have avoided a bloody solution.
55. Lengthy accounts are provided by Pamela Constable and Arturo Valenzuela, A Nation of Enemies: Chile Under Pinochet (New York: Norton, 1991), and Mary Helen Spooner, Soldiers in a Narrow Land: The Pinochet Regime in Chile (Berkeley: University of
Chilean Pentecostalism 119
California Press, 1994). See also reservations about the Spooner volume expressed by David Gallagher in The Times Literary Supplement, September 9, 1994, p. 26.
56. According to a booklet describing the presidential reception, "The Chilean Protestant church is pleased because for the first time in the history of its one hundred years of existence, the head of state formally received its directors, pastors, and leaders, valuing the spiritual force constituted by 15 percent of the Chilean population." "Introducción al acto en el Salón Plenario del Edificio Diego Portales, 13 diciembre, 1974," in Pedro Puente Oliva, ed., Posición evangélica (Santiago: n.p., 1975), p. 45.
57. The principal paragraph of the document of support read as follows: "The military pronouncement of the armed forces in the historic process of our country was the response of God to the prayers of all believers who see in marxism Satanic forces of darkness in their highest expression." Puentes, Posición evangélica, p. 43.
58. Paradoxically, the same government that "for the first time" recognized the importance of Protestants and favored true religious equality also for the first time intervened directly in the internal affairs of Protestant churches, openly favoring sectors that lent it unconditional support.
59. Commentaries on this theme are provided by Juan Sepúlveda, "El crecimiento pentecostal en América Latina," in Carmelo Alvarez, ed., Pentecostalismo y liberación (San José, Costa Rica: Editoral Departamento Ecuménico de Investigaciones, 1992), pp. 77-88 and André Droogers, "Visiones paradójicas sobre una religión paradójica: Modelos explicativos del crecimiento pentecostal en Brasil Y Chile," in Bárbara Boudewijnse, André Droogers, and Frans Kamsteeg, eds., Algo más que opio: Una lectura antropológica del pentecostalismo latinoamericano y caribeño (San José, Costa Rica: Editorial Departamento Ecuménico de Investigaciones, 1991), pp. 17-42.
60. Carmen Galilea, Católicos carismáticos y Protestantes pentecostales: Análisis comparativo de sus viviencias religiosas (Santiago: Centro Bellarmino-Centrode Investigaciones Sociales, 1992), pp. 8-9; see also summary, pp. 57-58.
61. See also Catholic Bishop Roger Aubrey's similar analysis in his La misión siguiendo a Jesús por los caminos de América Latina (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Guadalupe, 1990).
62. Gilfeather, El rol, p. 9; see also Johnstone, Operation World, p. 161.
63. Galilea, Católicos carismáticos, p. 8.
64. In the United States Pentecostals are still ranked low on income and educational attainment. See, for example, Barry A. Kosmin and Seymour P. Lachman, One Nation Under God: Religion in Contemporary American Society (New York: Crown, 1993), pp. 256-263.
65. Defined by the survey as "observant," attending church at least once a week.
66. Fontaine and Beyer, "Retrato," pp. 88, 86.
67. Christianity Today, August 6, 1971, pp. 5-8.
68. Christian Lalive d'Epinay, "The Training of Pastors and Theological Education," International Review of Mission 57 (April 1967), pp. 185-192.
69. Hoff, "Chile's Pentecostals," p. 246.
70. Kessler quotes David Brackenridge in his A Study of the Older Protestant Missions and Churches in Peru and Chile (Goes, Netherlands: Oosterbaan and le Cointre, 1967), p. 318.
71. See Prado, Seminarios; Hoff, "Chile's Pentecostals," esp. p. 249.
72. As Prado shows in his Seminarios, only a few Pentecostal churches have their own seminaries or biblical institutes.
120 Edward L. Cleary and Juan Sepúlveda
73. See Aldunate's reflection in "Carpintero Segundo," in Aníbal Pastor et al., De Lonquen a Los Andes: 20 años de la iglesia chilena (Santiago: Rehue, 1993), pp. 111-129.
74. Hoff ("Chile's Pentecostals," pp. 246-247) sees poverty and lack of education of preachers also as grave weaknesses, alienating the increased membership from the middle classes.
75. Fontaine and Beyer, "Retrato," p. 84.
76. With the exception of a few congregations, Pentecostalism has inherited the masculine exclusivity of ordination. Nonetheless, because the differentiation between clergy and laity in Pentecostalism is much less accentuated than in traditional Christianity, the lack of access to ordination is rarely felt by Pentecostal women as an impediment to their apostolate. In strictly religious terms, the spirituality of women is highly appreciated. Elderly women often enjoy considerable spiritual authority, exceeding that of some pastors.
77. Fontaine and Beyer, "Retrato."
78. The national census of 1992 showed Protestants as 13.2 percent of the national population aged fourteen years or older (El Mercurio, September 3, 1993); Fontaine and Beyer ("Retrato," p. 91) reported 16 percent. See also estimates in Hoff, "Chile's Pentecostals," p. 244.
79. Arturo Chacón comments in a similar vein in La Nación, March 15, 1995.
80. Besides Hoff (below), see also Johnstone's summary of the issues in Operation World, p. 161.
81. Emilio Willems, "Validation of Authority in Pentecostal Sects of Chile and Brazil,"
Journal of Scientific Study of Religion 6 (Fall 1967), p. 258.
82. Matthew S. Bothner, "El soplo del Espíritu: Perspectivas sobre el movimiento Pen
tecostal en Chile," Estudios Públicos 55 (Winter 1994), tables 19 and 20, p. 295. 83. Hoff, "Chile's Pentecostals," p. 246.
84. Ibid.
85. Hoff, "Chile's Pentecostals," p. 248.
86. Galilea, El predicador, pp.41-43.
87. Bernice Martin, "New Mutations of the Pentecostal Ethic Among Latin American Pentecostals," Religion 25 (1995), pp. 101-117.
88. In a complementary study, in progress, of the Catholic church and politics in Chile and Peru, Brian H. Smith and Michael Fleet pursue this aspect at greater length.
89. Gilfeather, El rol, p. 22.
90. Lalive d'Epinay, Haven of the Masses, p.48.
91. Some scholars, especially the anthropologist Sonia Montecinos in a prizewinning work Madres y huachos: Alegorías del mestizaje chileno, 2d ed. (Santiago: Cuarto PropioCEDAM, 1993), attribute this tendency to the legacy of the encounter between the Spanish conquistadores, whose legal wives remained in Spain, and indigenous women. See Cynthia Rimsky, "La identidad de los chilenos," Evangelio y Sociedad 15 (1992), pp. 2-6.
92. See Slootweg, "Mujeres pentecostales chilenas," in Boudewijnse, Droogers, and Kamsteeg, eds., Algo más que opio, pp. 77-93.
93. See, for example, Patricio Orellana and Elizabeth Quay Hutchison, El movimiento de derechos humanos en Chile, 1973-1990 (Santiago: Centro de Estudios Políticos Latinoamericanos Simón Bolívar, 1991).
94. Gilfeather, El rol.
95. See esp. Pastoral Popular and publications of Ediciones Rehue.
Chilean Pentecostalism 121
96. See esp. the publications of its director, Cristián Parker.
97. For details see J. L. Sandidge, "World Council of Churches," in Burgess and McGee, Dictionary, p. 902.
98. On the origins of the Fundación, see Orellana and Hutchison, El movimiento, pp. 143-198.
99. See esp. Pentecostalismo, sectas y pastoral (Santiago: Conferencia Episcopal de Chile/Comisión Nacional de Ecumenismo, 1989).
100. Interview with Cristián Parker by Hannah Stewart-Gambino, June 1995.
101. Gilfeather, El rol, esp. p. 64.
102. The system has been called binomial majoritarianism. Chile's constitution, produced by the previous military government, imposes representation in congress from the right without full voter participation.
103. Fontaine and Beyer, "Retrato," esp. pp. 104-105.
104. Chilean life has been strongly organized around political parties. The independent position of many Pentecostals has been interpreted as lack of interest in politics or unpredictability. See, for example, Fontaine and Beyer, "Retrato," pp. 102-112.
105. On experience as the theological basis of Pentecostalism, see Cleary in this volume.
106. Everett A. Wilson, "The Dynamics of Latin American Pentecostalism," in Miller, Coming of Age, p. 93.
107. Since March 1991 a group called the Comité de Coordinación Evangélica has been meeting with some regularity. The group includes leaders of the Confraternidad Cristiana de Iglesias, the Consejo de Pastores, and other churches that remained neutral during the period of greatest division under the military regime, such as the Anglicans and the Baptists. In the beginning this group considered itself the Protestant response to President Patricio Aylwin's call for national reconciliation during the public presentation of the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.