TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/012191/0121610.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 8.5 KB | 178 lines

                                                                                RELIGION, Page 68

The Battle for Latin America's Soul


Guatemala's decisive presidential election points up the big
gains Protestantism is making all across the region at the
expense of Roman Catholicism

By RICHARD N. OSTLING -- Reported by John Maier Jr./Rio de
Janeiro and Scott Norvell/Guatemala City


    "We are not alone. God is with us. He'll help us move
ahead." With those words, engineer-educator Jorge Serrano
Elias, 45, piously hailed his smashing victory last week in
Guatemala's presidential elections. As Serrano's comments
underlined, religious issues had played a significant role in
the campaign. Serrano is a Protestant who, in a predominantly
Roman Catholic country, converted from Catholicism to fervent
Pentecostalism at age 28. Backers of his Catholic opponent made
open appeals against the prospect of a Protestant President.
Serrano promised he would not use presidential powers to favor
his faith, and his impressive 68% win indicated that the
electorate believed him.

    Serrano personifies a religious shift that is steadily
gaining momentum, not only in Guatemala but also across
traditionally Catholic Latin America. Evangelical Protestantism
now claims as much as 30% of the Guatemalan population.
Throughout the region, Evangelicals, as Protestants of all
types are called, have increased from 15 million to at least 40
million since the late 1960s. Catholicism, says the Rev. Paulo
Romeiro, Protestant director of an interdenominational
research institute in Sao Paulo, is facing "a serious crisis.
As the Evangelical movement grows stronger by the day, the
Catholic Church is getting weaker and weaker."

    Two recent U.S. books describe this dramatic trend. Is Latin
America Turning Protestant? is the provocative title of a
volume by Stanford graduate student David Stoll, who argues
that Evangelicalism's spiritual appeal "calls into question the
claims made for its great rival," the Marxist-tinged liberation
theology that was the hope of the Catholic left. By all
appearances, says Stoll, "born-again religion has the upper
hand." In Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in
Latin America, David Martin of the London School of Economics
asserts that the growth of conservative Protestantism in Latin
America, Asia and Africa is as significant as the rise of
revolutionary Islam.

    As both books underscore, the Protestant Gospel offers Latin
Americans new hope and spiritual solace within close-knit local
churches, amid the dispiriting realities of everyday life.
Speaking for millions of fellow believers, Nilza Costa, a
Pentecostal chambermaid in Rio de Janeiro, says, "I am happiest
when I am in church, praying, singing, surrounded by the love
of Jesus." Says Ricardo Araujo, a Sao Paulo construction worker
who has joined the Baptists, "Without Jesus, I was nobody, but
I have found myself through him."

    Catholic prelates, long passive in the face of creeping
Protestantism, are increasingly jittery about the threat.
Brazil's bishops have debated plans to halt the worrisome
defections. Guatemala's Archbishop Prospero Penados del Barrio
issued a harsh letter charging that the U.S. government is
boosting Evangelicalism to "help consolidate its economic and
political power." Pope John Paul II believes the inroads of
unnamed "sects" could become "disastrous." During last year's
tour of Mexico, designed in part to counter Evangelicalism,
the Pontiff directed clergy to abandon "timidity and
diffidence" in combatting their rivals.

    The Vatican is especially concerned about Brazil, supposedly
the world's No. 1 Roman Catholic nation, with 126 million on
church rolls. Barely a tenth of those registered Catholics are
regular churchgoers. This means that, astonishingly, there are
almost certainly more Brazilian Protestants in church on
Sundays than Catholics. Protestants boast a minimum of 20
million churchgoers and are expanding twice as fast as the
overall population.

    In Peru the Evangelicals claim a mere 5% of the population,
but they were as controversial a factor in last year's
elections as they became in Guatemala. The presidential winner,
Alberto Fujimori, ran on a ticket with Second Vice President
Carlos Garcia, the Baptist president of the National
Evangelical Council of Peru. Though Fujimori is a practicing
Catholic and his opponent was an agnostic, anti-Catholic tracts
prompted Lima Archbishop Augusto Vargas Alzamora to charge that
Evangelicals "do not answer to the Christian tradition," and
were waging an "insidious campaign." Peru's bishops organized
a special pre-election procession of a venerated crucifix,
usually reserved for times of calamity. The country's Catholics
fear that Protestant inroads will jeopardize their church's
favored position in taxation and religious instruction in
schools.

    Most of the Protestant resurgence is taking place among
fervent Fundamentalists and Evangelicals (in the North American
sense of those who urge personal commitments to Jesus and
strict adherence to the Bible). The spectacular Protestant
growth since the 1960s has occurred largely in Pentecostal
groups that combine biblical orthodoxy with an innovative stress
on emotionalism and miracles. Another worrisome challenge to
Catholicism comes from African-rooted spirit cults, which are
strong in Brazil and are spreading into Argentina. Since the
1960s, Catholicism has tolerated observance of these popular
non-Christian rites by masses of nominal Catholics, while
Evangelical converts (many of them baptized Catholics)
militantly oppose spirit cults and the intermingling of faiths.

    Combative hostility toward competing faiths characterizes
Brazil's fastest-growing Pentecostal group, the Universal
Church of the Kingdom of God. Its authoritarian bishop, Edir
Macedo de Bezerra, 45, began preaching in 1977 to a dozen
curiosity seekers in a rented room above a funeral parlor;
today his flock is 2 million strong. The movement filled a
150,000-seat Rio stadium twice last year, opens one new church
a week, and has added a $45 million Sao Paulo TV channel to its
14 radio stations.

    Macedo, a former Catholic and spirit cultist, says Catholics
"cause all the suffering and misery in the country" and accuses
the spirit cults of devil worship and the sacrifice of children
and animals. Striking back, the national body of Afro-Brazilian
cults filed criminal charges in 1988 against the Universal
Church for fraud and slander of other faiths. Police in four
states are investigating the church. Macedo laughs off the
inquiries: "If I'm really making them poor and am bad for them,
why do the people keep giving and coming back?"

    Why the Evangelical upwelling? Like Guatemala's Archbishop,
secular leftists point to North American money and influence
as causes, but Protestant churches are largely independent and
self-supporting. The most obvious explanation for the
movement's success is its palpable spiritual dynamism. The
Protestants do have built-in advantages. Their clergy face
neither the celibacy rule nor the lengthy training required of
Catholic priests. Members identify strongly with their local
congregations and often pick their own pastors.

    Javier Ariz, a Catholic auxiliary bishop in Peru, says
Protestants make their gains by invading "areas where the
people are naturally very religious and the Catholic Church has
been chronically short of priests." Protestants, for example,
provide the only community leadership in many parts of Peru
that have been overrun by Shining Path terrorists. In Guatemala
too, Evangelical pastors have saturated rural areas, greatly
outnumbering Catholic priests. At the same time, they have been
charged with interfering in traditional Indian ways of life.

    While there is much talk about their political meddling and
impact, most Evangelicals appear to succeed because they
usually preach a purely spiritual message. Henrique Mafra
Caldeira de Andrada, head of the Protestant program at Rio's
Institute of Religious Studies, thinks Catholic advocates of
the social gospel failed to realize that "these people were
hungry for more than just food. The Evangelicals met the
peoples' emotional and spiritual needs better." Or, as Brazil's
top Baptist, the Rev. Nilson Fanini, puts the paradox, "The
Catholic Church opted for the poor, but the poor opted for the
Evangelicals." As in Guatemala last week, the effects of that
choice will continue to be felt.