Pentecostal progress for the long run

WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 (UPI) -- The progress of Pentecostalism in the Third World and among Latinos in the United States is there for the long haul, a top student of this development declared Tuesday.

"This is not something fleeting," David Martin, a British sociologist of religion, told United Press International. He said in an interview that even in the Roman Catholic Church charismatic theology has become "hugely more important" than left-wing liberation theology.

Furthermore, a "softer charismatic version of evangelicalism involving vast new middle classes" was emerging in the Southern Hemisphere from Brazil to Africa and Singapore.

Martin is author of "Pentecostalism: The World -- Their Parish" (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001; 216 pages, $62.95) Following are excerpts of the UPI interview:

Q: According to the latest survey of the George Barna Group, only 53 percent of the Hispanics in the United States are still Roman Catholics. What makes Latinos switch to Pentecostalism?

A: Basically, they walk out of a culture they feel doesn't help them to get on. This is about moral reform. They are changing their way of life. The culture they are leaving behind did not give them a chance to do that -- it did not give them the supportive community they needed for this step.

Q: Your Boston colleague Peter L. Berger once quipped, "Max Weber is alive and well and living in the outskirts of Guatemala City." He was referring to Weber's discovery that the Protestant ethic produces prosperity. Is Berger's assumption correct that Latino evangelicals are proving Weber right?

A: There is something to this. In the last 15 years, the main focus of my work has been Latin America. Two points: First, your economic situation improves if you are disciplined and honest. That helps economically. It means that people are happier to employ you.

Second, if you don't spend your time on women on the weekend and on alcohol throughout the week, and if you don't smoke, your family is likely to benefit.

Q: So religious conversion changes the Latinos' social behavior and this translates into greater prosperity?

A: Just think of the role of the bar in Latin American society; think of the alcoholized society of Chile. If you give up alcohol, you are increasing your income very substantially at a stroke.

Or consider the very serious problem of single mothers bringing up children. Insert into that situation a new kind of male who isn't promiscuous, isn't violent and sticks with his woman. This restores the discipline in the family, which in turn benefits education and the economy.

Q: How does the evangelical community differ from the ordinary Latino community?

A: In the ordinary community, you may be part of an extended family. But in the Pentecostal group, people are spiritual brothers and sisters -- that's another kind of family. Its members feel empowered to express themselves joyfully or cry if they need to or exercise discipline.

Q: In Japan, where Pentecostalism is the only form of Christianity gaining ground, religious leaders told us of their fears that this might prove a kind of straw fire. Do you share their concern that this fire may die down in the second generation?

A: This may be so in Japan. In Latin America and Africa, it doesn't look like a straw fire. We have got a fire that's moving across the Christian South and may even be moving into China and the Chinese diaspora.

Evangelical Christianity's is an individualizing experience. It gives people a sense of personalized empowerment. This influences the next generation -- and the next.

Q: Will this not lead to the classic dilemma of mainline Protestantism, where the next generation may possess the Protestant ethic but no longer the faith?

A: This happens in some cases.

Q: In how many cases?

A: A lot drop out, perhaps one-third or even half.

Q: How does that happen?

A: Either when an Evangelical marries a Catholic, or when a male reaches adolescence. That's the most dangerous time for the next generation because that's when the street bar calls. Then the macho personality of Africans and Latin Americans pits itself against the nuclear family evangelicalism promotes.

Q: Is this irreversible?

A: No. Many reverse again (to evangelicalism) when they realize that they will not survive otherwise. The women certainly will not survive. For women, evangelicalism is a haven of safety against the depredation of macho men. They have a huge interest in keeping this going.

Q: Are the sexes equally represented in this movement?

A: No, at least 60, probably even 70 percent are women. This is true everywhere.

Q: Would you say that despite the dropouts the movement is still growing?

A: Indeed, it is. There is a second wave of it lapping all around us. It undermines the older and more stable mainstream Christianity that had been around for generations and made it into the NGOs (non-governmental organizations) that are running a large part of post-colonial Africa.

Q: Is Pentecostal Evangelicalism the faith of the uneducated and the poor, then?

A: No, not exclusively. Anywhere from Brazil to Nigeria and Singapore, a fast new Evangelical middle class is emerging. They are professionals and business people. Theirs is a softer version of charismatic Christianity, which unites these people across national boundaries.

It is pretty powerful but has a relative modesty about it. In Singapore, somebody told me that this is the church where executives may cry.

Q: Where did this movement originate?

A: From German pietism of the 17th century via Methodism and the 19th-century holiness movement in America.

Q: Since it originated in Europe and America, is it now returning from Latin America, Africa and Asia to its places of origin? Are those who were once colonized now evangelizing the former colonizers?

A: Yes, they are infecting the West.

Q: How does the Roman Catholic Church react to this? In Venezuela Catholic theologians told us that it was their predecessors' fault. They had grown fat and idle and not catechized people properly. Is this true?

A: The Vatican realizes that there had been an inadequate teaching and a kind of relaxed attitude toward a syncretistic folk Christianity, without any kind of induction into Catholic norms. Ironically, this (the spread of Pentecostalism) is bringing the Catholic Church closer to its own teaching.

Q: So what does the Catholic Church do in countries where Pentecostalism is spreading like a wildfire?

A: An internal pluralism has emerged within the church. Now you have a charismatic Roman Catholic Christianity, which is much more powerful than liberation theology.

Liberation theology may be of interest to Western intellectuals. But charismatic Catholicism is hugely more important.

Q: Do you see Pentecostalism as an antidote to the postmodern relativism and profusion of homemade "truths"?

A: Curiously, it picks up the expressive evolution of the 1960s. But then it combines this with something that is absolutely essential in the Third World.

The Third World simply cannot afford what's going on in the advanced world -- the moral laxity, the relativism, the "anything goes" mentality. Third World people can't afford to spend half their lives trying to discover what they are all about.

In the Third World they must strap themselves together to a kind of raft that is hard to sink. That's what Evangelicals Evangelicalism do.

Q: Harvard theologian Harvey Cox once estimated that there are 500 million Pentecostals around the world. Is this figure correct?

A: I find this figure too high. I would say a quarter of a billion is more realistic. But this is still a quarter of a billion.

Q: How does this movement compare to the growth of Islam?

A: Christian revivalism parallels it, but it does not have its militancy. Unlike a certain kind of Islam, Pentecostal Evangelicals do not try to mobilize the whole world.