The Appeal and Potential Of The Pentecostal Churches
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The Appeal and Potential Of The Pentecostal Churches
The Pentecostal and other nonevangelical churches in Latin America are experiencing phenomenal growth. The reason is that they have succeeded in connecting with and directing a powerful spirituality streaming through the poorest people that neither the Roman Catholic nor the older Protestant churches have been able to channel. Touching the deepest religious longings of the poor, Pentecostal and evangelical churches offer them a satisfying experience of God. As a result, the daily struggle of the poor for health and survival is set in the context of their faith in the supernatural. In the Pentecostal experience, many elements of Catholic popular religiosity reappear, but are filled with new meaning. In contrast to the formal and emotionally sterile worship in many traditional Protestant churches, which uses a language quite foreign to the world-view of the poor, Pentecostalism offers a type of worship in which the most humble can participate fully with exuberance and spontaneity (e.g., in individual and group prayer, joyous songs, and holy groaning and shouting).
In situations of the greatest suffering and poverty, the emotional and spiritual appeal of Pentecostals may touch much more intimately the anguish and despair of the people than theological discussion or Bible study focusing on social, economic, and political issues. If this spirituality often serves to turn the attention of Pentecostals away from the struggle to transform the structures of oppression under which they live, this same religious experience provides others with what they most need to sustain a long and hard struggle against the forces of exploitation and repression.
The spiritual revitalization produced by Pentecostalism, which radically transforms the moral life of the individual, can also contribute to the transformation of family life and the establishment of new relations in the local community. Especially for those who migrate to the large cities from rural communities, these small churches often constitute a new “family,” or community, for those who would otherwise be completely abandoned.
These congregations are becoming a type of “popular church,” open to people regardless of race or social class. Their ecclesiastical structure permits rapid growth and easy adaptation to new conditions. With their strong
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Latin America Interpretation
emphasis on the “gifts of the Spirit” and the vocation of each believer, the Pentecostal churches not only call on all their members to exercise a ministry but also offer them ample opportunities to participate in the life and mission of the church. When one member is preaching, others can participate, giving “glory to God” or speaking in tongues. New members, who have never had an opportunity to express themselves in public, are urged to take responsibility for a prayer meeting in the middle of the week, to give out tracts, or to engage in street preaching. Soon those who have been most marginal in society, convinced that they were of little worth and were incapable of doing anything of value, discover that they have “gifts” for preaching, serving others, and organizing new congregations. In the view of Pentecostals, the most important thing in becoming a pastor is not to have the right academic training but the “gift” to communicate the faith and organize new congregations. “Anyone who has the gift can be a pastor.”
These elements in the life of Pentecostal churches have the potential to provide their members with spiritual resources for dynamic participation in the struggles of the poor in the coming years. At the same time, these elements are offset by other factors. The theological orientation of Pentecos- tal preaching and teaching has been essentially dualistic; the salvation offered by Christ centers on the spiritual transformation of the individual, and hope for the future is focused on the promise of eternal life and the Second Coming of Christ, not on the transformation of historical existence in the direction of the reign of God. In addition, many Pentecostal churches have a patriarchal structure, in which the pastor occupies a position of authority and control over the members similar to that of the landlord in the traditional rural society. Also preachers with limited theological training may inadvertendy use biblical language to sacralize traditional values and structures, rather than to draw on that heritage to challenge and transform them.
Nevertheless, what is becoming increasingly evident is that a growing number of Pentecostals, both pastors and laypersons, are finding that their religious faith and their experience of Christ is sensitizing them to the suffering and death caused by poverty and injustice. Such sensitivity opens their eyes to what the Bible says about God’s concern for the poor and leads them to seek help in broadening and deepening their understanding of the gospel.
In a movement among poor people, such as Pentecostalism, which has much spiritual dynamism and ascribes great importance to the Bible and its authority in the life of the believer, these concerns about suffering and death and about poverty and injustice are very likely to grow. This will all the more be the case if Pentecostals live in daily touch with other Christians who have discovered and are living the gospel message of liberation. Many Pentecostal pastors may be bound by a rigid, otherworldly theology, but as it is not this
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theology but the experience of the Spirit that holds the central place in Pentecostalism, changes in theological orientation may come about more easily than in churches placing greater emphasis on correct doctrine.
In the Pentecostal churches, marginal people become active members of a community that has a degree of autonomy over against state and society. In them, alongside of the tendency to affirm and even sacralize some of the values of the dominant society, is often found an element of protest against an oppressive social system. As the economic situation of the poor majority gets increasingly worse, evangelical movements identified with this majority may be inclined to take much more seriously what the Word of God has to say about the nature of God’s action in history, the concern of the Hebrew prophets for social justice, and the message of Jesus about the reign of God.
Across the centuries, many revivalist and renewal movements, which began with a limited spiritualistic and individualistic orientation, evolved, after the first generation, in the direction of concern for social transforma- tion. The same thing may well happen among the vigorous neoevangelical movements in Latin America. Moreover, the future of the older Protestant churches may depend upon their ability to relate creatively to these developments.
Can we in the United States learn anything from the crisis in the older Protestant churches in Latin America, the reinvention of the church in the CBCs, and the present growth of Pentecostalism? Only if we are willing to move closer to the “new historical subject” at home and abroad and to those who are struggling to give shape to a new church in their midst. In dialogue with them, we must strive to recover our own heritage as an “ecclesia reformata semper reforman da.” This is something that we can hardly expect any of our mainline denominations to undertake, but we can give priority to the formation of small communities of women and men already being led by the Spirit in this direction.
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