THE WITNESS AND INFLUENCE OF PENTECOSTAL CHRISTIANS IN LATIN AMERICA

Abstract

Introduction I have been asked to describe the calling and witness of Pentecostal Christians in the communities of Latin America with an eye to their influence on the understandings of mainline churches. I do not know exactly why I was invited to do so, since I am not a Pentecostal myself. And I do not know why I have accepted, except that I have co-journeyed with Pentecostal Christians in Latin America for nearly thirty years. Much of the turmoil that shaped the life and witness of the Pentecostal movement in Central America has shaped me and the evangelical and mainline churches and agencies with which I have been most involved. Together with Pentecostals, and separately, we have been reading the same Bible and, together and separately, we have been immersed in the struggles of the poor. So I will speak as one whose personal journey has been influenced by the power, joy, difficulties and hopes of Pentecostal Christians and also as one who, coming from a mainline church, can identify some points of challenge and influence. I would like to start by pointing to Pentecostalism's most remarkable feature, namely its growth and increasing visibility, and relate these elements to the question of the identity of Pentecostal Christians in Latin America. Growth, visibility and identity No one who knows anything at all about Latin America can ignore the significance of Pentecostalism as a major movement in the transformation of the region's socio-religious reality. Expressions such as eruption, explosion, and spectacular are commonly used when describing the growth and increasing visibility of this movement. Pentecostals are everywhere present, and palpably so. Their churches can be found in remote villages of the countryside and at a short distance from Roman Catholic cathedrals and other impressive churches of all denominations in the mega cities. The boundaries of an average Catholic parish in the main cities of countries like Venezuela, Chile, Brazil and Guatemala may contain as many as sixteen Pentecostal churches, not counting other Pentecostal centres for gatherings of people, such as house churches for worship, and enormous tents for healing and evangelistic services. A study undertaken by the Institute for Religious Studies (ISER, Brazil) on the growth of churches in the metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro affirms this dynamic trend. It shows that in the period 1990-1992, 710 new churches (an average of five per week) were established in that immense city. And although Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian churches were part of this expansion, the highest growth by far had taken place among the Pentecostals. Today, several Brazilian Pentecostal denominations - among them the Assemblies of God, the Brazil for Christ Church, and the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God - have more than a million members each, with the Assemblies of God claiming a membership of eight million. Another case in point is Guatemala where, in the 1930s, Pentecostals were a token group. By 1982 (the centennial of evangelical presence in that country), Pentecostals were growing more rapidly than the historical denominations. Eight years later, with the emergence of the so-called Neo-Pentecostals, the two groupings together accounted for two-thirds of the total evangelical community of more than two million (20% of the population). Similarly high increases were registered in the same period in the neighbouring countries. It must be remembered that in the 1980s, the governments and the military forces of these countries were deeply entangled in civil wars and were almost entirely at the will of their powerful northern neighbour. For the civilian population, the insecurity, suffering and destruction were enormous. The religious scenario was equally tense and conflictive. The role of the media, polarization inside the Christian communities, schisms in existing Pentecostal denominations, and a wave of new missionaries whose sole concern was mass evangelism, were all elements of that dynamic scenario during the decade. …