by Harvey Cox
It is easy to see why many people confuse Pentecostals with fundamentalists. Both movements came to birth in America in the early years of the twentieth century. Both involved protests against the established Protestantism of the time. But there the similarities end. Fundamentalists are text-oriented literalists who insist that the inerrant Bible is the sole authority. Pentecostals, on the other hand, though they accept biblical authority, rely more on a direct experience of the Holy Spirit. Fundamentalists consider themselves sober and rational. Pentecostals welcome demonstrative worship and ecstatic praise, which they call “speaking in tongues” and which they regard as the Spirit praying within them. They sway and dance in the aisles. People once ridiculed them as “holy rollers.” Fundamentalists insist on a hard core of nonnegotiable doctrines one must hold to unquestioningly. Pentecostals generally dislike doctrinal tests and reject what they call “manmade creeds and lifeless rituals.” During the first decades of their histories the two movements often fought each other bitterly. One prominent fundamentalist, C. Campbell Morgan, called Pentecostals “the last vomit of Satan.”2
The year 1940, however, marked a major change in the American religious landscape that further complicated the picture. An influential group of Protestant religious conservatives under the leadership of Reverend Harold Okenga, of Boston’s Park Street Church, formed the National Association of Evangelicals. Its purpose was to draw a sharp line not just between their group and “modernists,” but also between themselves and fundamentalists. These self-styled “evangelicals” held some of the same beliefs as fundamentalists, but there were important differences. Evangelicals firmly believed in the religious and moral authority of the Bible, but did not consider it a dependable source for geology or biology. They also rejected the notion of retreating from the fallen world. They wanted to engage it.
But the organizers of this new evangelical association faced a problem. What should they do about the Pentecostals, who were already growing so rapidly? On the one hand, they used some of the same vocabulary, but the evangelicals—like fundamentalists—were distrustful of the Pentecostals’ emotionality and their claim that the Holy Spirit sometimes spoke to them in dreams and visions, not always mediated through the Bible. Finally, however, the evangelicals invited the Pentecostals to join their new organization. Now, however, the Pentecostals had to decide what to do. In the end, some joined the NAE, and others did not. The relationship has remained touchy ever since.
Are Pentecostals contributing to the shift from belief to faith, or are they among those holding out for a belief-defined Christianity? Are they heralds of the Age of the Spirit? The answer is that there are, after all, 500 million of them, and they vary widely in their theologies and practices. Some Pentecostals, especially white North Americans, have been heavily influenced by fundamentalism. But in the global South, they are more informed by an ethic of following Jesus, and a vision of the Kingdom of God. They have recently become increasingly active in social ministries, but the hostility they sometimes show toward other faiths limits their ability to cooperate.
A few years ago two scholars set out to investigate this new social awakening within worldwide Pentecostalism. Donald Miller, a sociologist who directs the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California, and Tetsunao Yamamori, president emeritus of Food for the Hungry, spent four years traveling around the globe to find out about what they eventually called “progressive Pentecostalism.” Crisscrossing Africa, Asia, and Latin America, they interviewed hundreds of people and observed Pentecostal outreach efforts to drug addicts in Hong Kong, sex workers in Bangkok and Calcutta, babies with AIDS in Africa, and dozens of other programs. What they discovered puts faces and names on what is quickly becoming the major expression of Christianity in many parts of the globe. Take Jackie Pullinger, for example, whose highly effective ministry to heroin addicts in Hong Kong succeeds, she says, by relying on the Holy Spirit. She foregoes modern management methods and a fund-raising staff. Or Pastor Oscar Muriu, whose Nairobi Chapel runs a clinic, a pharmacy, and a sewing school. Or dozens of others the authors visited from Manila to Addis Ababa to Soweto.3
Something highly significant is going on in the Pentecostal movement. Its main focus was once fixed on a strictly otherworldly salvation, but now the example of Jesus’s concern for the impoverished, the sick, and the socially outcast has begun to play a more central role. Miller and Yamamori foresee a possible fusion with some of the insights of liberation theology. They foresee emerging “progressive” Pentecostalism, with its flexible structures, its welcoming of the emotional component in praise, its uncanny capacity to be at home in different cultures, and now its emerging commitment to the Jesus ethic. They even note a lessening of their animus toward other denominations.
My own experience of the impact of this new Pentecostalism has taken place mainly in Brazil, which I have been visiting for three decades. During one of my first trips there twenty-five years ago I met a young Brazilian sociologist from São Paulo who was studying the peasant leagues then springing up in the arid, poverty-stricken northeast. The farmers were organizing these leagues so they could buy seed and equipment and market their products cooperatively. During her research this novice investigator, a serious lay Catholic, discovered that indigenous Brazilian Pentecostals, even though they constituted only about 10 percent of the population then (the percentage is higher now), had done the lion’s share of the work and provided most of the leadership. Eager to uncover the link between their religious faith and their work with the leagues, she interviewed several Pentecostals and asked what the correlation was. They seemed puzzled by the question, she said, and shrugged their shoulders. This in turn puzzled her, but the more she lived among them, the more she began to understand the connection.
Pentecostals, she explained, are practiced list makers. They are used to compiling records of people they intend to invite to church meetings. They knock on doors, then check off who was not at home, who responded favorably, and who slammed the door. Then they return, sometimes again and again. If the door was opened, they learned how to get their message across quickly and clearly. These skills, the sociologist finally noticed, were exactly the ones needed for organizing peasant leagues. No wonder they had set the pace.
The essential qualities of a religious faith can be discerned most clearly in the shape it gives to the institutions it spawns. Pentecostals give birth to voluntary associations, which are vital to any healthy society and the lifeblood of any genuine democracy. They mediate between ordinary people and the larger structures of economy, government, education, and press. They provide alternative patterns of organization and unofficial networks. They school people in the indispensable skills needed to make democracy work.
Despite the misapprehension of many North Americans, the Pentecostals of Brazil have neither remained aloof from politics nor have they imitated the American religious Right. Careful analyses of their political behavior indicate their voting patterns tend toward the “center left.” In the recent Brazilian presidential elections, for example, a large majority voted for Lula and the Workers’ Party. Their political trajectory was captured two years ago when a close observer wrote about the inquierization (the “leftification”) of the Pentecostals.4
Historically, Latin America has not been a continent richly endowed with voluntary associations. In general one belonged to whatever one was born into. Be it state or nation or tribe or church, you find yourself in a collectivity. You do not join it. But to be a crente you have to join something. To borrow a famous distinction from William James, most Latin American collectivities are made up of the “once born.” Virtually the only exceptions to this rule have been labor unions, sports teams, base communities, and Pentecostal or evangelical religious congregations, which are constituted by the “twice born,” people who have made a conscious choice to join something. All this means that the stunning growth of Pentecostals is a critical key to the democratization of the whole
region, especially since they are beginning to participate in political life in an active way, hold public office, and seek to formulate a “social theology” of their own. But the continued growth of Pentecostals and their contribution to democracy are in no way guaranteed. They are often fragile, vulnerable to both pressures from without and threats from within. How much they will strengthen democracy is still an open question.
There is an emerging consensus today on what it takes to make democracy work. First, there need to be contending parties with different political projects and regular, free elections in which the losers turn over power to the winners. This condition, however, is the bare minimum and by itself scarcely produces democracy. Second, democracy requires what Jefferson called “an informed and active populace” that is free to participate in policy deliberations and takes the time to do so. A populace that is informed but not active or active but not informed will not suffice (to say nothing of a populace that is neither). Third, democracy necessitates a society in which the human and civil rights of every person is legally guaranteed and actively enforced.
Some writers have suggested that a fourth requirement for democracy is a market economy, but others doubt it. China has a rampaging capitalist economy, but few of the essential elements of democracy. In parts of Latin America, on the other hand, democracy has been gaining in recent years, often with little reference to economies. Some observers of the recent history of Russia believe that the rapid imposition of market capitalism there has actually undermined the chances for democracy. Polls show most Russians now associate democracy with profiteering, corruption, and criminality. In view of these requirements for democracy, what are Pentecostal congregations in Latin America, with their Jesus and Kingdom ethic, doing to nurture them and thus to influence the shape of the public square?5
Without a doubt, Pentecostals, whether in North America or South America, have always been very public about their faith. They preach in the streets and markets. They make lists and knock on doors. It is difficult to stroll through a favella (shantytown) in Brazil on any given evening without hearing the local congregation broadcasting its music and message on crackling loudspeakers. But this does not yet mean they have a “public theology” for influencing public-policy decisions.
Until recently the contribution of Pentecostals to democracy has been an indirect one. Their role calls to mind the observation of historian Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59) in the early nineteenth century that it was American religion that provided the indispensable fertile soil for democracy. Without the myriad congregations and other voluntary associations he found in America, he wrote, there would not be the “habits of the heart” democracy requires. In the religious congregations he visited, Tocqueville observed, people learned to discuss issues, make corporate decisions, compromise where necessary, link moral principles to current events, and, finally, to accept the results these procedural strategies produced. Having absorbed these skills in the congregations, he wrote, they could then apply them in the public arena. In short, the free churches of America, unhindered by state sponsorship or hierarchical control, built networks of responsibility, trust, and an idea of the common good that made America an ideal venue for democracy.6
There is a difference between becoming a Pentecostal in Latin America today and joining a religious congregation in the United States that Tocqueville visited in the early nineteenth century. In Latin America choosing to become a Pentecostal can exact a high price, evoking the scorn of one’s neighbors and family and, until recently, legal persecution. For Latin Americans this initial choice requires more courage. It is risky. But it instills a “habit of choosing” and hence a feeling of not being trapped forever in one’s station. Becoming a Pentecostal also endows ordinary people with a sense of dignity: they are important to God and to their fellow human beings as bearers of a vital, life-giving message. To borrow a phrase from North American black culture, they can say, “I am…somebody.” Again, once instilled, this sense of self-esteem cannot be easily eradicated.
Here a cautionary note is necessary. The main purpose of Pentecostals, unlike the Catholic base communities, has not been to influence the realm of public policy. They believe they have been called to love and praise God, receive the gifts of the Spirit, and carry the precious message to the farthest corners of the world. Some preachers even exhort their congregations not to become contaminated in “this world,” especially since in any case it may soon pass away with the triumphant return of Jesus. But as their numbers increase and they see that their participation in public life can make a difference, Pentecostals preach less about an imminent return of Jesus and more about how to live in a fallen world and sometimes make it a better place.
One clear and present inner threat to Pentecostals’ capacity to nurture democracy is a tendency to curtail it in their own congregations. Their emphasis on charismatic gifts can make their leadership arbitrary: “If God has put me in this position of power, why should you question my decisions?” Further, dynastic leadership is not unusual. Fathers often hand their pastorates down to their sons. Such leadership leads to a kind of clientelism, as pastors make deals with whatever ruling powers there may be: votes in exchange for patronage. Multiplying rapidly now and full of rich promise for a democratic future, these congregations could, however, falter and shrivel because of their own internal depotism.
But Pentecostals also face threats from without. Ruling regimes in authoritarian countries do not worry so much about the theology of evangelical or Pentecostal congregations. But they do worry about “list makers” who know how to get people together, regionally, nationally, and even internationally. Authoritarian regimes are famously fearful of rival networks of information and organization. The Falun Gong in China are not Pentecostals, but they do form voluntary associations. Still, the Communist government was not much concerned about their somewhat esoteric spirituality until they assembled a hundred thousand people in Tiananmen Square. Then the shocked and fearful powers that be cracked down. In Latin America, during the early stage of Pentecostal growth, these threats from without came from both the Catholic Church and the governments it influenced. But except for a few places, such as the Chiapas province in southern Mexico, this kind of opposition is rare today.
Perhaps the clearest threat to the future of Pentecostals in Latin America is a combination of within and without. It is the danger of their being drawn into what Harvard historian Charles S. Maier terms “the [American] empire of consumption,” facilitated by the mass distribution of American media and consumer culture. This is where the complex inside/outside threat to Pentecostal congregations appears. Unlike their forebears in the years before the inundation of their continent with mass media huckstering, today’s congregations swim in it every day. They are not Amish. They do not withdraw into enclaves. They live, work, go to school, and shop enmeshed in their societies. But supermarket culture always tends to lure people away from citizenship. It transmutes them from voters into shoppers, from citizens into consumers. This means that the political environment in Latin America has begun to resemble North American mass-marketing, an approach that contradicts the highly participatory style Pentecostals engender when they avoid the authoritarian temptation.
But the consumerist style is not just the wolf at the door; it is also a large camel’s nose rather far inside the Pentecostal tent. It finds expression in the “gospel of prosperity,” sometimes called the “name it and claim it” theology, derived in large measure from North American sources. This current has begun to influence large numbers of crente churches, but it has found its major bearer in the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG). It is the fastest-growing denomination in Latin America and has now spread to dozens of other countries. The UCKG promises its adherents that if they contribute generously, they will receive not only salvation and health, but wealth, not just in a world beyond, but in this one. Moreover, the organizational structure of the UCKG, patterned after North American sales campaign
s, is wholly different from the congregational style of most Pentecostal churches. Its adherents are more like customers or clients than members. It makes no bones about expecting a price for its blessings and exorcisms. It markets itself on television and owns the second-largest TV network in Brazil. Nearly all the other crente churches have tried to distance themselves from the UCKG. Many Pentecostal leaders now refer to it as “pseudo-Pentecostal”, but because it continues to grow, some are tempted to emulate it.7
This ugly dispute points to possible destructive fractures in the wider crente community. But it also suggests that we need another precondition for democracy in addition to the ones noted above. A democracy also needs a populace whose basic creaturely needs are met. People scrambling for the next meal for their children or the rudiments of health care do not have the leisure to be participatory citizens. Even though the UCKG panders to people by providing the wrong answer, it has its finger on a real problem.
What comes next? Pentecostals are known everywhere in Latin America for their straightforwardness and honesty. They are sought out for middle-level clerical jobs because employers know they will stay sober, arrive for work on time, and not steal the petty cash. But they still live in societies in which a huge chasm separates the top peak from the vast base. In a sense Pentecostals find themselves caught between the promise of citizenship and the seductive pressures of the empire of consumption. Still, they continue to bring to marginalized and wounded people a message of dignity and hope. At the same time many poor Pentecostals are becoming aware of the painful contradiction between their sense of worth and favored status within the congregation and the humiliations they face every day as castoffs in the larger society. Perhaps the most critical question they face is where this growing contradiction will lead.
There are at least two possibilities. Socially marginalized Pentecostals, especially those infatuated by the spurious promises of the prosperity gospel, could become increasingly bitter and cynical. After you have prayed fervently for a better job, a stove that works, or a warm house and contributed as generously as you could to the church, but no job, stove, or house appears, then what? Some will relapse into fatalism or withdraw into religious ghettos and give up on citizenship and participation. Some, however, will begin to see—as many already have—that to live in a society in which their humanity is respected will require vigorous advocacy of structural change. This is why some observers believe that Pentecostals could become the core of fundamental nonviolent social transformation.