Will Latin America become Protestant?
Coleman, John A.
America in three waves. Nineteenth-cen- tury Protestantism (mainly Lutheran, Methodist, and Presbyterian) usually restricted itself to the enclaves of British and German immigrants where it stood...
...Pentecostals and Catholic base commu- nities compete for the same members but, ultimately, as Stoll argues,"what has flung open Latin America to evangelical Protestantism is the Catholic church's inability to decentralize its system of authority...
...What can such a sentence conceivably mean...
...Pentecostalism also has made inroads in areas of sociological or cultural dislo- cation and among special niches of the pop- ulation (for example, the urban proletariat in Chile and Brazil...
...That is why Pentecostalism fares best when whole fam- ilies convert...
...Catholic symbols merge with strong and potent mark- ers of national and cultural identity...
...Not merely "some Jews," but "Jews...
...Nonetheless, the cultural power of Catholicism remains quite strong...
...The twin themes, he argues, have produced a theology that enables the Jews to evade responsibility for their (wretched) behavior...
...Some doubt these conditions are present in much of Latin America...
...This we may discern from earlier pas- sages in the book...
...Catholics, in contrast, look to long education programs that often separate ministers from people...
...To be sure, Roman Catholicism stands at some disadvantage in competing with Pentecostalism among the uprooted and marginal...
...The real story of the explosion of Pentecostalism in Latin America, it seems to me, is the conspicuous success of Evangelicalism in occupying niches of receptivity to the new religion among uprooted populations: recent migrants to cities and colonizers along the frontier...
...Neither Martin nor Stoll presents any convincing evidence that the new Pentecostal sects carry any "genet- ic code" for this kind of civility...
...Though the claim of sincerity is belied by the extraordinary selectivity in the 25 January 1991:63...
...Yes, there are Israeli Jews whose behav- ior is indistinguishable from the behavior of the accursed Nazis...
...It also has its attractions for women...
...No," in the end, because Ellis commits and extends what we may think of as "the Begin error...
...In reaction to an earlier Catholic church-society nexus, Pentecostals become apolitical...
...The third wave came after 1960 from the Pentecostals (Assemblies of God, the Four- Square Gospel church, the Church of God of Cleveland, Tennessee...
...Jews," Ellis informs us toward the end of his book, "are in danger of becoming everything we loathed about our oppres- sors...
...After all, "Jews are essentially a diaspora people who choose BEYOND INNOCENCE AND REDEMPTION Confronting the Holocaust and Israeli Power Marc H. Ellis Harper & Row, $21.95,214 pp...
...The branch: in accents of sweet reason, Ellis puts forward a message of collective guilt: the collective guilt of the Jewish peo- ple...
...Yes, "it" can happen anywhere, even, may God help us all, in Israel...
...And it may be that Marc Ellis is equally sincere when he inverts the Begin analogy, now placing the jackboot on Israel's foot...
...Yes, Israel's behavior toward the Palestinians is both stupid and wrong, and threatens to corrupt Israeli soci- ety...
...Nineteenth-cen- tury Protestantism (mainly Lutheran, Methodist, and Presbyterian) usually restricted itself to the enclaves of British and German immigrants where it stood for religious liberty, economic liberalism, and progress...
...In Martin's view, no single religion in a politically modernizing Latin America can any longer offer comprehensive cov- erage as Catholicism once did, or attempt to promulgate norms for society as a whole, or act as its moral mentor...
...The tone may be sor- rowful, but it cannot conceal Ellis's animus toward Israel...
...In other words, it is not Israel's control of or behavior in the ter- ritories, in the West Bank and Gaza, that is the problem...
...displaced rural migrants in other areas...
...A very different kind of politico-histor- ical reading of the preconditions for moder- nity might stress the necessity of an ethos of pluralistic civility for modern political and economic forms...
...Cook believes the dynamism unleashed by Protestantism will now have to go in other directions...
...Organizationally indigenous and partially self-reliant, Pentecostalism shows wide adaptive abil- ities in liturgy and doctrine...
...In Brazil alone, where Protestants represent slightly more than 10 percent of the population, there were seventeen thousand ordained and thirteen thousand nonordained full-time Protestant ministers (by contrast there are thirteen thousand ordained Catholic priests...
...These niches are not, however, infinite and statistics about the number of Protestants are frequently inflated or based on extrap- olations...
...It is not hard to see how Evangelicalism could split communities into hostile frac- tions...
...They were typically too straightlaced and puritanical, opposed emo- tional forms of worship, and were exceed- ingly slow to let local Evangelicals mn their own show...
...Although not feminist in any explicit way, Pentecostalism appeals to women by offer- ing them a public place where they can experience independence, self-esteem, and power and by taming in their men the abuse of drink and the cult of machismo...
...This is a far cry from the view that they will be major forces for political and social change...
...The right hand giveth...
...Still, given the radical orga- nizational problems of Catholicism, espe62: Commonweal cially shortage of trained personnel and a disadvantage in the amount of money it is able to expend, Pentecostalism seems likely to continue to grow among uprooted and BOOKS marginal segments of the population...
...Sometimes its base community strategy is more overtly political than the poor want or feel they can achieve as pawns in a power game...
...The competitive edge of evangelical Protestantism in Latin America comes from the creation of an active laity, proselytizing along chains of personal and family contact and working alongside a huge pastorate recruited on the basis of abil- ity to communicate and not prolonged the- ological training...
...According to one of Stoll's infor- mants, "the main political reason that the poor turn to Evangelicalism is not anticom- munism but safety...
...In divided enclaves that include both Catholics and Protestants, Catholics retain community leadership...
...Besides, Evangelical doctrine gives a reason, not a solution, for the suffering faced by the poor...
...Using songs and stories, Pentecostalism enters a Latin American cultural world of curanderos with new forms of healing, and shamans have been drawn into the evangelical fold...
...In the preface to Tongues of Fire, Peter Berger argues to that point: "The same ethos evinces affinities with the spirit of capital- ism, with a hunger for education, and (last but not least) with a favorable disposition toward democratic politics...
...Thus Pentacostalism paves the way for modemity by breaking up religious monop- olies and restricting religious influence to the realm of culture or the private sphere...
...It finds out the morphology and shape of the local society and participates in the life of people...
...I believe that Begin was sincere about all that, not consciously manipulative...
...his is not a call for reform of Israeli practice but a demand for revision of Israeli principles, including the very first principle--that there is merit to the notion of Jewish self-determination...
...This rep- resents the first popular acceptance of Protestantism among a number of impor- tant groups in Latin America...
...Community leadership carries with it cultural power...
...Perhaps, as Martin writes, these older forms of community must die if modernity is to take root...
...By 1985 there were more Protestant missionaries in Latin America (over eleven thousand) than in any other part of the globe...
...Catholicism may also have more staying power...
...Stoll at least enters into an argu- ment on this issue...
...In looking at Evangelical growth rates in Latin America, we ought to also remem- ber Max Weber's insistence on an "elective affinity" between the Protestant ethic and other material, structural, and economic conditions for capitalism...
...it is not a house united...
...And why not...
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...Ellis inserts, as is his irritating habit, an exculpating qualifier: We are merely "in danger of becoming," we have not yet arrived...
...Or, "The choice to pursue a small or enlarged Jewish state demands either subservience of the Arab population or, better yet, their dis- appearance into neighboring countries" (emphasis added...
...Martin downplays this Pentecostal apo- litical stance since "its contingent and tem- porary political role is quite contrary to its cultural logic...
...This opening argu- ment might deserve to be taken more seri- eusly did he not devote the rest of his book to a polemic against Israel, root and branch...
...Leonard Fein to live among the people of the world" (emphasis added...
...The first thirty pages of Ellis's book are devoted to a searching critique of the uses the Jewish people in general and the state of Israel in particular have made of their suffering (the Holocaust/innocence) and their subsequent empowerment (Israel/ redemption...
...Martin stands amazed at "the capacity of Pentecostalism simultaneously to conform and to transform...
...At the same time, it provides new networks of participation and offers lines of organization and communication along which signals of modernity and symbols of equality may travel...
...Many poor have given up on solutions...
...Overall, Latin America is 10 percent Protestant and, given the weak practice of most Catholics, they represent the majority of consistent churchgoers...
...Pentecostals, argues Martin, "are able to create voluntary networks of mutual support where once there were instabilities of tribal unity and rural hierarchy...
...hnmediately, how- ever, he qualifies: "...though some of the behavior may in fact be comparable...
...No" not merely because the comparisons are odious, not even merely because they are mistaken nor because the line between criticism and delegitimation, a line the doves among us have never crossed, is a line that Ellis, taken as a whole, simply ignores...
...But no...
...it focused its efforts on education...
...And according to Martin, many disgruntled Catholic catechists or delegates of the word have become Protestant pas- tors, taking their people with them...
...This is how Evangelical and Pentecostal Christians remain in contact with ordinary people...
...The root: "Solidarity with the Palestinian people," Ellis's principal commitment, "means preparing for the transformation of the Jewish state into something else, perhaps a confederation or even a unified state with autonomous and integrated com- munities" (emphasis added...
...It fostered upward mobility in its congre- gants but did not penetrate beyond a small niche of the population, and this very mobility quickly quenched its evangelical fire...
...But as Martin notes, not every Latin American country is equally fertile ground for Pentecostal out- reach, "The optimum conditions for Protestant expansion exist where the church has been seriously weakened but the culture has not been secularized as in Brazil, Guatemala, and Chile...
...It has less flexibility in ministry because of the requirement for a celibate clergy who must undergo an extended edu- cation...
...They see a high political profile as characteristically Catholic and react against it...
...Mexico's Jean Pierre Bastian, a major student of the subject, notes that Protestantism, far from secularizing or "dis- enchanting" Latin American society, has been "re-enchanted" itself by Latin America in the form of a mainly reactionary Pentecostalism that mystifies the interest of the poor (Protestantismo y Sociedad en Mdxico, 1983...
...According to Guilliermo Cook, a prominent Latin American author, the economic crisis of the last decade has neutralized the ability of the Protestant ethic to "redeem and lift" converts...
...Perhaps Stoll has the apt metaphor for Pentecostal churches when he refers to them as "survival units" for the poor...
...in 1982, as Begin presid- ed over Israel's siege of Beirut, Beirut became for him Berlin, and that is what he said to the nation he misled...
...In Menachem Begin's world, Arafat was Hitler...
...And yes, one terrible lesson we have learned from these y~ ::, of conflict is that being Jewish offers no immunity against the follies and flaws which afflict all peoples...
...The sociological prob- ability that Latin America will turn Protestant, in majority numbers, strikes me as culturally and statistically unlikely, l/ asserting that "it is important to see that [these] are not primarily c,-sons between Nazi and Israeli bel~a,'lor...
...In spite of massive expenditures of time, money, and personnel, these sects did not reap the scriptural hundredfold in conversions...
...But the threat will not be overlooked by Catholics who are, already, calling for new and imaginative programs of re-evangelizaThanks, but no thanks arc Ellis offers us in his new book less a critique of Israel than an indictment of Israel...
...Martin wants to highlight how the same ethos (now car- ried by the Pentecostals) contains the latent cultural logic of participation, voluntarism, self-government, and personal initiative characteristic of Puritanism and Methodism...
...Indeed, the opposite...
...Everything...
...Under less hostile conditions, Protestantism helped converts move upward in the social scale...
...it is the lack of sensitivity to these losses that can make Martin sound like an apologist for the inevitable and destructive world of a modernity which requires the erosion of community and loss of meaning...
...On the other hand, not all Pentecostals have shown themselves political reactionar- ies...
...The expanding Pentecostal churches also appeal to the poor, offering them hope and community, as well as to uprooted peasants who are helped to fend off chaos and anomie...
...He puts it blunt- ly...
...It helps the poor and marginal middle class to acquire skills of organization, self-help, and self-expres- sion that make them articulate and self- reliant...
...Moreover, their new theology reinforces this apolitical stance...
...It is also important to note the new and some- times strong polarization among and American Summer Institutes Summer 1991 THEME: "OTHER WORLDS/OUR WORLD" Leysin --July 17 to July 31 (Optional: Zurich, Basel, Colmar --July 31 to August 6) Directors: Ted and Katie Gill St...
...not merely "taking on some of the characteristics of our oppressors," but "becoming everything we loathed about our oppressors...
...What was done to the Jews is now being done by the Jews to another people...
...That logic sees Pentecostalism as creating free space for the poor and creating a psychic mutation (the Protestant ethic) that paves the way not for a political but a cultural revolution of modernity...
...Its effect (I trust that Ellis would deny the intent) is the delegitimation of Israel...
...A certain d~jd vu colored my reading of Martin: as a graduate student in soci60: Commonweal Stoll also documents the way in which Campus Crusade for Christ used the Catholic charismatic movement to wean practicing Catholics away...
...Still, in reading Stoll, we have reason to mourn what is being lost...
...So, for example, in dis- cussing Jewish writings on "the connection between the Jewish experience of suffering in Europe and the Palestinian experience of suffering at the hands of the Jewish peo- ple in Palestine and Israel," Ellis starts by tion in the continent...
...But the qualifier fails...
...The second wave of Protestant penetra- tion came after World War II through North American evangelical-fundamentalist groups...
...Martin sees Pentecostalism as the third form of the Protestant ethic, following the seventeenth-century Puritan ethic, much studied by Max Weber, and the nineteenth~ century Methodist ethic, detailed in the his- torical studies ofElie Halevy...
...Moreover, rapid early growth of new religions frequently comes up against a wall of limits, cultural and sociological, to continued rapid further expansion...
...And what, therefore, is the place of Israel...
...And the left hand taketh away...
...Conversion to Protestantism, on the other hand, often entails a break with that culture and the family nexus...
...Backed by the state, Protestants were driving a spike into the heart of the old community...
...And often Catholic prelates fall back, almost instinctively, on alliances between throne and altar that compromise the church's work with the marginalized and the poor...
...It may be that at this point a state organization of the Jewish community of Israel is important, but that hardly means forever...
...it is the very idea of a Jewish state...
...Protestants disproportionately emi- grate to North America, siphoning offcul- tural leadership...
...Pentecostalism combines a potent com- bination of the orderly in work and family life (sobriety, thrift, regularity, and orderly community are the rule) with the riotous (worship services allow emotional tongue- speaking and all-night songfests...
Vol. 118 • January 1991 • No. 2
