The Protestant Push
Winning over Catholics in Latin America
Raiding Catholic turf: Born-again baptism at Brazilian RevivalOn the world map of religion, Latin America is coloured cardinal-red: Roman Catholic turf. But the continent is rapidly changing its spiritual complexion - chiefly because zealous Protestants are claiming the territory in the name of a more personal Jesus. Every hour, demographers calculate, aggressive "evangelicals" - most of them independent Pentecostals or fundamentalists - convert 400 Latin Catholics.
According to recent studies, one-eighth of Latin America's 418 million people now belong to Protestant sects. In Guatemala, sects constitute 30 percent of the population. In Brazil, nominally the world's largest Catholic country, it is said there are almost four times as many evangelical pastors and lay evangelists as there are Catholic priests. The trend is clear: not since the mass baptisms by the conquering Spanish four centuries ago has Latin America seen such an upsurge in Christian conversions. This time, however, the struggle for conquest pits Christians against Christians, and Rome is plainly perplexed. "The springtime of the sects," warns Msgr. Lucas Moreira-Neves of the Vatican's Sacred Congregation for Bishops, "could also be the winter of the Catholic Church."
'Reagan cults': The competition is not just for souls. Evangelicals tend to be very conservative in politics. Their pastors decry Catholic "liberation theology" as Marxist; thus, in Chile, where the Catholic bishops are publicly opposed to the military regime of President Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, the sects generally support the government. In turn, Catholics call the sects "Reagan cults"; recently Brazil's Catholic hierarchy charged that the spread of the sects "forms part of a United States geopolitical strategy." Tensions are especially acute in Central America, where the sects are supported by funds from politically conservative television preachers from the United States - particularly Jimmy Swaggart, whose revival shows are so smoothly dubbed into Spanish that many viewers believe he is Hispanic.
In truth, the Catholic Church in Latin America is a wobbly Goliath confronting an upstart evangelical David. In many parishes there is only one priest to serve 10,000 faithful, and masses have become impersonal supermarkets of sacrament. In Colombia, priests at Bogotá's huge central cathedral are lucky if 50 Catholics show up on Sunday. The Brazilian church claims 105 million members, but only 12 percent of them bother with Sunday mass. "Seventy percent of the people in Latin America say they are Catholic," observes Brazilian Bishop Boaventura Kloppenberg, "but they are really indifferent." Laments Bishop Karl Josef Romer of Rio de Janeiro: "Jesus Christ deserves a better church."
Evangelicals agree. Their churches may be poor, but their members are well disciplined and highly motivated. As a result, says Walter Brunelli, director of a Pentecostal seminary in Sâo Paulo, the religious reality in Brazil is that evangelicals have 25 million "practising" Christians compared with 20 million "observant" Catholics. The picture is much the same in Guatemala. There, Pentecostals claim half the Indian population, and by the end of the century, predicts the Rev. Guillermo Galindo, president of the Evangelical Alliance, evangelicalism will be the majority religion for Guatemalans. Bishop Mario Rios Montt has his own prediction: Guatemala, he says, could find itself "in a religious war more serious than our political war."
Swollen cities: In most countries, rural areas remain solidly Catholic. But over the last quarter century the cities have swollen with peasants seeking jobs or fleeing guerrilla warfare. Uprooted from families, living in slums and at the mercy of criminals and sometimes official predators, the poor turn to the sects for fellowship and hope. Many Pentecostal congregations are hardly bigger than an extended family, and within these circles the dispossessed find a very personal Jesus, "What man needs," says Brunelli, "is contact with God."
Colour them Bible-black: Pentecostals in GuatemalaIn Pentecostal churches, that contact means exuberant dancing and soulful singing. "The evangelicals in our village were happy and I liked their singing," says Isidra Cuxil, a Guatemalan Indian woman who converted six years ago. "Later, the church gave me answers to problems like adultery and alcoholism." Indeed, much of the evangelicals' appeal lies in their strict morality. "Once a man surrenders his life to Jesus," says Argentine evangelist Luis Palau, "he finds he can stop drinking and chasing women." For Latin wives, such changes in male behaviour are proof enough that Jesus saves.
For many Catholics, joining a sect requires no real break with the past. The fatalism in popular Catholicism, which encourages prayer to saints for miraculous cures or for protection, is easily transferred to an all-powerful Jesus. But many of the sects are also millennialist, preaching Christ's imminent return to earth - and thus favour a passive response to social injustice.
"I've got noting in the world, but a mansion in the next," announces a favourite song. These sentiments rankle proponents of liberation theology, like Brazil's Cardinal Aloisio Lorscheider. Yet he is one of the few Latin American bishops who do not consider converts to Protestantism a total loss. Says Lorscheider: "I'm not going to be saved just because I am a Catholic."
The trouble is, many sects preach that Catholics will not be saved at all. And they preach that message at street corners, on buses and from door to slum door. "They tell them the pope is the beast of the Apocalypse or that the church is a satanic institution," complains Archbishop Román Arrieta of San José, Costa Rica. The evangelicals also dominate religious programming in Central America; one Costa Rican radio network alone produces more than 2,000 shows a month.
Counter-witnesses: Gradually, the bishops in some countries are encouraging their flocks to sing and clap hands in church in an effort to instil a little Pentecostal warmth at mass. Others are pushing their people to take to the streets as counter-witnesses for Christ. But only Pope John Paul II, it seems, can muster large crowds the way a Yankee television evangelist like Swaggart can do. Indeed, the sects now fill stadiums. Unlike activist Catholics, they aren't out to alter society. They offer the poor a temporary refuge - and a hope in a life hereafter that has got to be better than the one here and now.
by Kenneth L. Woodward with
Penny Lernoux in Colombia, Mac Margolis in Brazil and bureau reports
Source: 'Newsweek', 1st September 1986, p.44/45
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