IS LATIN AMERICA TURNING PROTESTANT?

By

Timothy J. Halls

1032 Stimel Dr.; Concord, CA 94523

Fuller Theological Seminary

ST884 Critical Approaches to Latin American and Latino Theology

Prof. Juan Francisco Martínez

Spring 2009

IS LATIN AMERICA TURNING PROTESTANT?

BackgroundStatistical church growth studies in the 1960’s began to show that church growth

outside of Catholicism was beginning to make a significant impact on the spiritual and

ecclesiastical make up of Latin America (Read and Ineson 1973; Read, Monterroso, and

Johnson 1969; Lalive d'Epinay 1970 (1969)). The influence of growing Protestantism

was so decisive that by 1990, David Stoll was able to ask the question credibly Is Latin

America Turning Protestant? and use it as the title of a book (1990). David Martin’s

Tongues of Fire (1990), was released the same year and was subtitled: “the explosion of

Protestantism in Latin America”. David Martin claimed that next to “conservative Islam”,

there was only one other truly global movement in the international religious scene—

conservative (sic) Protestantism and that “The growth of Evangelical Protestantism in

Latin America, a continent still widely regarded as solidly Roman Catholic, is the most

dramatic case” (1990:vii).

The nearly simultaneous publication by Stoll and by Martin of books highlighting

the unprecedented growth of Evangelical Protestant churches brought about an awareness

of religious change in Latin America. Since then, attention to evangélicos has led to

much activity in the academic and publishing world. Documentation of their continued

growth is often interested in the political or sociological impact of this movement on

Latin America itself (Cook 1994; Deiros and Mraida 1994; Berg and Pretiz 1996; Núñez

C 1996; Cleary and Stewart-Gambino 1997; Garrard-Burnett 1998, 2000, 2007; Freston

2008). Further attention might also be given to the impact of Latin American evangélicos

on the outlook and theology of Christians outside Latin America, and to their active

missionary efforts to spread Christianity to all peoples and cultures of the world.

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Is Protestantism turning Latin American?In this paper, I will problematize the question itself. When the question is framed

in such a way as to try to fit the Latin American experience within a meaning of

“Protestant”, the religious changes taking place in Latin America today are being

squeezed into the framework of the European or American experience in a different time.

The label “Protestant”, in a Latin American context, brings up unhelpful

connotations from a European and American past that render the label of limited practical

value as an analytical category. By attempting to locate Latin America’s present in

Europe’s past, the use of “Protestant” to characterize a branch of Latin American

Christianity can be a tool to assert (or reassert, when used by Catholics) ecclesiastical and

political influence and privilege. During three centuries of Roman Catholic hegemony

(and neglect), Latin Americans were barred from the possibility of exercising religious

choice except for such choices as involved “underground” African or Native American

religion, European syncretism or witchcraft. Today, assertions of Protestant “majority”,

even when referring simply to church attendance can also have hegemonic undertones,

this time asserting Protestant hegemony.

It might be more productive to ask: “Is Protestantism turning Latin American?”

when Latin American membership in Assemblies of God, the Church of God Cleveland,

the Foursquare Gospel and many other denominations is larger than the American

membership in the same denominations in US, denominations that still assert control over

their Latin American counterparts. And how to account for Latin American Presbyterians

now having more missionaries deployed than the PCUSA?

I assert that the end of Roman Catholic hegemony, along with emerging new

approaches to the proclamation of the gospel by Latin Americans, has opened the door

for uniquely Latin American versions of Christian faith and discipleship that will lead to

the production of new theologies. That production is already underway and is

contributing to new forms of Christian practice in Latin America and elsewhere.

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Was Latin America ever Catholic?Our question can be problematized in another way. The assertion that Latin

America had been Catholic can be questioned. A common trope is that missionaries from

the US went to Latin America and converted Catholics and took them out of the Catholic

Church. In this way, their converts were alienated from their context, and joined to a

foreign invader (Míguez Bonino 1995:13). In reality many who have chosen to follow

Jesus outside of the Catholic church, did so without every really having been Catholics in

the first place. Even though Latin Americans were traditionally counted as Catholic

sheep, “there are many Roman Catholic historians, priests and other scholars who do not

feel that Latin America consists of a truly Catholic society, but only a thin veneer has

been applied over the surface” (Emery 1970:1/6). To call Latin Americans Catholic was

a way to keep the Protestants from influencing the masses, even when Latin American

liberalism was the source of the first invitations to American Protestants to send

missionaries (Míguez Bonino 1995:14, 26, 27). In 1991, Shirley Christian reported in the

New York Times that “Protestant leaders say that most of their new members are not

direct converts from Catholicism, but mostly people who, while they may have been

baptized as Catholics, were not practicing the faith” (1991). By way of example, when

the Nazarene mission entered Alta Verapaz, Guatemala1 in 1905 (Alvarado Muñoz

2006:1), there had been no Catholic priests in the region for more than 30 years. The

beginnings of the Nazarene mission in the region actually preceded the Salesian mission

and the naming of a Roman Catholic bishop for Alta Verapaz by 34 years (León V

1985:67). The first Catholic missionaries in the region in more than 100 years found

themselves in territory that was already being worked by North American Protestant

missionaries (León V 1985:147-150, 175-176)! Both Nazarenes and Catholics faced the

same challenge: to contribute to Christian discipleship in a context where people were

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1 Alta and Baja Verapaces are the two departments of Guatemala that make up the region where Bartolomé de las Casas was granted permission to attempt the conversion of Amerindians through peaceful means.

concerned about the spirit of the mountains and of corn. The Christianity each preached

had to address the fundamental concerns the traditional religiosity of the people in light

of the life and sacrifice of Jesus (Pacheco 1985).

In a similar way, the possibility of some sort of Protestant hegemony emerging in

Latin America is also problematic. Patricia Birman’s study of the neo-Pentecostal Igreja

Universal do Reino de Deus (IURD) leaves one wondering if the IURD can be

considered Protestant when it has reinterpreted Pentecostal theology by allocating a

central role to exorcism that expels "former spiritual entities derived from Afro-Brazilian

cults...from the bodies of the individuals involved” (2007)?

Is Church Growth enough?Orlando Costas problematized the question of whether Latin America is turning

Protestant when he questioned the premises behind the church growth studies

(1982:48,49) that led to Stoll’s question. The last 40 years of historical and sociological

studies of Protestant church growth in Latin America turn out to approach the question

from many different premises (Padilla and Arroyo 1991; Annis 1987; Siepierski 1987;

Samandú 1990; Galindo 1994; Lapadjián 1994; Berg and Pretiz 1996; Serrano Elías

1991; Freston 2008).

Depending on one’s perspective, the trends are either a promising development, as

reflected in the publication La hora de Dios para Guatemala by SEPAL (Núñez C,

Montgomery, and Vásquez 1983) or troubling, as reflected in David Stoll’s quote of one

alarmed Brazilian bishop who feared that Latin America is turning Protestant faster than

Central Europe did in the sixteenth century (1990:xiv).

Were it not for this rivalry, one might have expected that both Catholics and

Protestants would have responded positively, at least from a theological perspective, to

billboards and bumper stickers in Guatemala in the late 1980’s that proclaimed,

“Jesucristo es Señor de Guatemala”. In light of the violence that so recently had shaken

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the country to its core, that kind of publicity should have led both to prayer and fasting by

both Catholics and Protestants and intense turning to God. But the campaign had an

entirely different purpose. It appeared to be voiced as a triumphalistic declaration of an

impending majority of evangelicals in the country.

Costas sounds a similarly relevant theme when he questions the appropriateness

of the “first Protestant ‘te Deum’ in Latin America held in honor of General Pinochet” in

Santiago on September 14, 1975, delivered by a distinguished Pentecostal leader. Chile

was the first country in Latin America to experience explosive Protestant or Pentecostal

growth, leading Father Humberto Muñoz to declare, as far back as 1956, that “there is

reason for alarm…for if the Protestants continue to grow at the same rate, 50 years from

now the whole country will be Protestant” (cited in Costas 1982:49).

These kinds of concerns fed Costas’ questioning of whether Church Growth

sociology is a valid measure of the advance of the Kingdom of God in Latin America:

I feel obliged almost immediately to dissociate the kind of church growth inherent in a biblical theology of mission from the kind of growth I see reflected in some circles of contemporary Protestantism (Costas 1982:51).

Raising the question about whether Latin America is turning Protestant goes

beyond the question of the validity of Protestantism or Catholicism as expressions of

Christian faith. It is focused on declaring victory for one tradition or the other. Latin

America may be post-Catholic in the sense that a monolithic Catholicism can no longer

claim Latin America as its own. But Latin American Catholicism is definitely not dead.

It is showing renewed spiritual vitality in much of Latin America today.

The emergence of Latin American ChristianityA more productive approach, then, might be to ask theological and missiological

questions to a post-Catholic Latin America. In what ways is the Latin American

experience, as a vital and influential part of the Christian movement, making God and His

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ways more readily understandable? What challenges to the mission of the church are

Latin Americans particularly well placed to help address? The massive shift out of the

Catholic church has created a situation in which both Catholics and non-Catholics are

revisiting their understanding of the mission of God and His people (Ruiz 2007).

A broader recognition of a Latin American post-Catholic theology is still

hampered by a reality recognized by José Míguez Bonino:

¿Y la teología de los evangélicos latinoamericanos? El territorio es aún más inexplorado. Hay conferencias, libros, sermones, revistas donde escriben los notables de esta historia. Son una rica cantera, apenas abierta (1995:6).

This kind of living theologizing as a community, focused on issues raised in the

living of its life in Latin America redefines not only Latin America but Protestantism

itself. Latin American Christianity is unlikely to ever end up looking like the kind of

Protestantism that was forged in the experience of Europe and North America. What is

produced, performed and practiced theologically, by so-called Protestants, in Latin

America today would not be recognized by Luther or Calvin (and, arguably, most Latin

American Christians would not describe Luther or Calvin as particularly influential over

their own faith experience). Furthermore, much of the performed theology of

“Protestant” groups such as the Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus may not even be

recognizably Christian even for many Latin American Pentecostals.

A post-Catholic contribution to theology from Latin America begins to emerge.

Julio de Santa Ana in Protestantismo, cultura y sociedad writes that Protestants in Latin

America face an imporant task:

"a partir de [un] reencuentro con las fuentes de la revelación, proyectarse hacia la acción en la historia, llevando a cabo la evangelización (que no significa tanto "ganar" personas para la Iglesia, sino crear una situación humana en la que el hombre pueda responder afirmativamente al llamado de la gracia realizado por Dios en Jesucristo)...que se abre a la esperanza de la renovación de todas las cosas, que se operará cuando éstas sean

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recapituladas en Jesucristo" (1970:13, 14).

And this is precisely what is taking place. Using an example from Argentina,

Matthew Marostica credits Carlos Annacondia with creating

"a new set of Evangelical teachings that resonated with Argentine popular culture. His teachings were simple: God and the devil exist and are in permanent battle with each other. By accepting Christ, individuals gain access to the divine power they need to overcome Satan. As Annacondia …puts it, 'the mission of the Devil is to rob, murder and destroy. Christ's mission is to save and give life. My mission is to confront Satan.' With this message, reiterated in every crusade, Carlos Annacondia gave the Evangelical community a potent new grammar that connected the problems in the lives of poor Argentines to Satan and his demons and offered the power of Christ as a solution" (1999:154).

"Annacondia was not immediately accepted by all the pastors in the evangelical community [who]...thought that his confrontation with demons was not Biblical...Annacondia's insight is not limited to the specific point of whether or not spiritual liberation as he was practicing it had sufficient biblical support. The larger point is that Annacondia was limited by certain fundamental principles established by the missionary package of beliefs" (159).

So, according to non-Pentecostal pastor Edgardo Surenian who chaired an

Annacondia crusade, "Annacondia called into question the inerrancy of the missionary

myth and introduced a more resonant ideological frame and a more compelling

Evangelical identity" (159).

I am compelled to conclude that attempts to label post-Catholic Latin American

Christianity as “Protestant” is to do violence to a new future that is being lived and

written in and from Latin America. Latin American Christianity is not a history that is

being repeated, but a future that is being constructed and a participant in the construction

of humanity’s future. Attempts to characterize Latin American Christianity as Protestant

or Catholic inhibit the kinds of new theological reflection that can guide the church

missiologically into the challenges of today’s world, and tomorrow’s, in much the same

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way that attempts to characterize the apostle Paul as solely Jewish would have inhibited

the kind of theological reflection that guided, and still guides, the church missiologically

today.

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REFERENCES CITED

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Annis, Sheldon. 1987. God and production in a Guatemalan Town. 1st ed. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Berg, Clayton L., and Paul E. Pretiz. 1996. Spontaneous combustion : grass roots Christianity, Latin American style. Edited by Clayton L. Berg, Jr. and P. Paul. Pasadena Calif: William Carey Library.

Birman, Patricia. 2007. Conversion from Afro-Brazilian Religions to Neo-Pentecostalism: Opening New Horizons of the Possible. In Conversion of a Continent: Contemporary Religious Change in Latin America, edited by T. J. Steigenga and E. L. Cleary. New Brunswick: Rudgers University Press.

Christian, Shirley. 1991. Quiche Journal; Flocking to New Shepherds in Catholic Guatemala. NY Times, December 23, 1991.

Cleary, Edward L., and Hannah W. Stewart-Gambino. 1997. Power, politics, and Pentecostals in Latin America. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.

Cook, Guillermo. 1994. New face of the Church in Latin America : between tradition and change, American Society of Missiology series ; no. 18. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books.

Costas, Orlando E. 1982. Christ outside the gate : mission beyond Christendom. Edited by E. C. Orlando. Maryknoll N Y: Orbis Books.

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Deiros, Pablo Alberto, and Carlos Mraida. 1994. Latinoamérica en llamas: historia y creencias del movimiento más impresionante de todos los tiempos. Miami FL: Editorial Caribe.

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