Pentecostal Church Lures Latin Americans Away From Catholicism (2)
0 Comments Published by LeBlues on Monday, March 5, 2007 at 7:19 AM.
Rap-metal rhythms resound from a church hall with a corrugated iron roof in the barrio Villa Reconciliación, an impoverished district in the Nicaraguan capital of Managua. A young man is standing at the keyboards, rapping staccato about his brother's death. A long-sleeved shirt hides his tattoos.
Geovany Rodríguez's body is a mass of martial tattoos and scars from knife wounds. The head of a drooling dog on the 29-year-old's bicep testifies to his membership in Los Perros. "The Dogs" -- some 60 teens and young men -- have established a reign of terror in the slums of the Nicaraguan capital. Until six years ago, Geovany was one of the gang's leaders.
He smoked marijuana and snorted cocaine, financing his drug habit and weapons arsenal by robbing buses and stores. He was arrested four times and spent several years in prison. His brother was shot dead by a rival gang, allegedly to avenge the murder of one of its members.
Geovany says he has never killed anyone, but he avoids eye contact as he says it. He's uncomfortable talking about his past. "My life was at a dead end," he says. "I felt empty inside." A preacher from the Pentecostal community Luz del Mundo ("Light of the World") approached the young gangster on the street, took him to a church service and let him sing at the keyboards. Geovany says he sensed a "supernatural power" at that moment.
Now he is a church regular. The preachers have taken him under their wing, employing him to do odd jobs and helping him to develop his musical ability. He has kicked drugs and booze.
During the service, he plays religious rap music. The lyrics describe his conversion to a creyente, as the born-again Christians are called. One day he hopes to become a professional musician.
Like all Pentecostal communities, Luz del Mundo exercises strict control over its members. Six times a week, Pastor Wilmer Espinosa calls the youths to church for services. Whoever doesn't show up gets hunted down at home. "The community exerts more pressure on the individual than the Catholic Church does," says Novaes. People going through personal crises can count on the support system in their congregations.
Luz del Mundo is one of Latin America's largest Pentecostal communities. It is headquartered in Venezuela, but has branches across the entire region. Its leader, Jaime Banks Puertas, a former officer in Venezuela's armed forces, operates radio stations and produces TV shows. He also deploys the Internet as a missionizing tool.
The days of US-led Latin American Pentecostal churches are gone; the influence of fundamentalist born-again Christians has waned. Today's missionaries hail from Brazil, Venezuela and Puerto Rico.
The Brazilians, in particular, currently dominate the Pentecostal market. The Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus ("Universal Church of the Kingdom of God") under the controversial "Bishop" Edir Macedo, and the evangelical poor people's church Assembléia de Deus ("Community of God") maintain branches in Lisbon, London, Berlin and Moscow. In Latin America, Africa and eastern Europe, tens of thousands flock to church services held by Brazilian preachers. Edir Macedo effortlessly filled the Maracanã soccer stadium in Rio de Janeiro with 200,000 followers.
Macedo is locked in a bitter struggle with his arch-rival, Assembléia de Deus, Brazil's largest Pentecostal community. Both churches live off the dízimo, or tithe system, in which pastors twist arms after each culto, pressuring parishioners to cough up cash.
The pastor of Assembléia de Deus brandishes the collection plate during the service in Botafogo, a district of Rio: "If you're able, give 50 reals (€19)!" Helpers rove through the pews, gathering donations. "If you don't have 50 reals, give 20 or 30, or 10 or five!" Nobody wants to look stingy; even the most destitute chip in a real or two.
After the service, Macedo races to his car and on to the next branch. A pastor's job pays well: A recent want ad offered 3,500 reals (€1,300) per month, plus a "company" car. In Brazil, churches are granted special tax exemptions -- raising the incentive for prospective preachers.
Once a lottery ticket salesman in Rio, Macedo is now a multimillionaire with assets including villas in the United States, a yacht and a private plane. His gargantuan churches seat tens of thousands of believers, and their gaudy mishmash of marble and glass has come to dominate the architectural landscape of suburban Brazil.
The faithful don't object to the cupidity of their leaders: wealth in itself is not considered sinful, but rather desirable. "In the Pentecostal communities, anyone can become a pastor," says Novaes. "For most people, a nice car is a status symbol."
In the late 1980s, a highly publicized study by US anthropologist Sheldon Annis concluded that Protestant communities are commercially more successful than their Catholic counterparts. Annis had compared the productivity of the weaving operations in two Indio villages in Guatemala. His findings demonstrated that, compared to the Catholics, the Pentecostals adopted modern production techniques more quickly, were more efficient and more concerned with getting ahead.
"Despite their frequent right-wing political identification today," Annis wrote, "in at least one sense the early Protestant missionaries were grassroots revolutionaries. ... In their eyes, the Church, alcohol, and debt were the instruments of enslavement -- and they, the missionaries, were the liberators."
Pentecostal communities are therefore perceived as churches for social climbers. Instead of promising a better life in paradise, they preach about wealth in the here and now. And offer practical assistance in the battle against alcohol and drugs.
Small wonder, then, that they have been magnets for the poor. The favela Vigário Geral is one of the most dangerous slums in Rio, but boasts 14 Pentecostal communities - and only one Catholic Church. In the city's overcrowded prisons, which are largely controlled by the drug rings, Protestant preachers have turned thousands of criminals into born-again Christians. Numerous gangster bosses and hit men have become men of God. In Rio's favelas, Pentecostal churches and the cocaine mafia co-exist in a state of cozy symbiosis.
It's Friday evening in São João de Meriti, a poor suburb of Rio. A few hundred faithful, among them former drug lords, murderers and thieves, have gathered in the Pentecostal church, Assembléia de Deus dos Últimos Dias. The men are wearing suits and ties; all the women have donned skirts; Pastor Marcos Pereira does not allow them to wear slacks to the service.
Pereira, a beefy man in his mid-40s with a penetrating gaze, is the best-known and most controversial soul-saver in Rio. And he is considered a legend in the favelas: "I have rescued hundreds of boys from torture and death," he boasts. Residents often call him to mediate in disputes between rival drug gangs. Even the toughest fall into line whenever the pastor shows up.
Pereira's services are true spectacles, mega-events showcasing miraculous acts of healing and exorcism. One after another, the members of his flock fall into a trance. The pastor looks his subjects briefly in the eyes, presses his hand to their forehead, and the "possessed" then sink to the floor. "Vanish, demon!" Pereira roars as he prances around the wincing, moaning victims like a whirling dervish. Snapping his fingers, he brings them out of their trance after a few minutes. Even strangers' legs turn to jelly when Pereira gives them his look. The man has hypnotic powers.
Before the pastor discovered his "spiritual vocation," he waited tables in Copacabana. "I drank and went whoring," Pereira says. "My life was a mess." His "spiritual enlightenment" occurred on a bus; shortly afterward he joined an evangelical church. Word of his talents as a hypnotist soon spread. Today his services attract even politicians and celebrities.
Pereira's efforts have earned him countless "donations," and he has amassed a huge fortune. Now the miracle minister is looking to expand abroad. He recently traveled to Europe and has also made inroads in the United States. "A lot of work awaits me in the First World," he says with a rather un-Christian wink. "After all, there are demons everywhere."
Geovany Rodríguez's body is a mass of martial tattoos and scars from knife wounds. The head of a drooling dog on the 29-year-old's bicep testifies to his membership in Los Perros. "The Dogs" -- some 60 teens and young men -- have established a reign of terror in the slums of the Nicaraguan capital. Until six years ago, Geovany was one of the gang's leaders.
He smoked marijuana and snorted cocaine, financing his drug habit and weapons arsenal by robbing buses and stores. He was arrested four times and spent several years in prison. His brother was shot dead by a rival gang, allegedly to avenge the murder of one of its members.
Geovany says he has never killed anyone, but he avoids eye contact as he says it. He's uncomfortable talking about his past. "My life was at a dead end," he says. "I felt empty inside." A preacher from the Pentecostal community Luz del Mundo ("Light of the World") approached the young gangster on the street, took him to a church service and let him sing at the keyboards. Geovany says he sensed a "supernatural power" at that moment.
Now he is a church regular. The preachers have taken him under their wing, employing him to do odd jobs and helping him to develop his musical ability. He has kicked drugs and booze.
During the service, he plays religious rap music. The lyrics describe his conversion to a creyente, as the born-again Christians are called. One day he hopes to become a professional musician.
Like all Pentecostal communities, Luz del Mundo exercises strict control over its members. Six times a week, Pastor Wilmer Espinosa calls the youths to church for services. Whoever doesn't show up gets hunted down at home. "The community exerts more pressure on the individual than the Catholic Church does," says Novaes. People going through personal crises can count on the support system in their congregations.
Luz del Mundo is one of Latin America's largest Pentecostal communities. It is headquartered in Venezuela, but has branches across the entire region. Its leader, Jaime Banks Puertas, a former officer in Venezuela's armed forces, operates radio stations and produces TV shows. He also deploys the Internet as a missionizing tool.
The days of US-led Latin American Pentecostal churches are gone; the influence of fundamentalist born-again Christians has waned. Today's missionaries hail from Brazil, Venezuela and Puerto Rico.
The Brazilians, in particular, currently dominate the Pentecostal market. The Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus ("Universal Church of the Kingdom of God") under the controversial "Bishop" Edir Macedo, and the evangelical poor people's church Assembléia de Deus ("Community of God") maintain branches in Lisbon, London, Berlin and Moscow. In Latin America, Africa and eastern Europe, tens of thousands flock to church services held by Brazilian preachers. Edir Macedo effortlessly filled the Maracanã soccer stadium in Rio de Janeiro with 200,000 followers.
Macedo is locked in a bitter struggle with his arch-rival, Assembléia de Deus, Brazil's largest Pentecostal community. Both churches live off the dízimo, or tithe system, in which pastors twist arms after each culto, pressuring parishioners to cough up cash.
The pastor of Assembléia de Deus brandishes the collection plate during the service in Botafogo, a district of Rio: "If you're able, give 50 reals (€19)!" Helpers rove through the pews, gathering donations. "If you don't have 50 reals, give 20 or 30, or 10 or five!" Nobody wants to look stingy; even the most destitute chip in a real or two.
After the service, Macedo races to his car and on to the next branch. A pastor's job pays well: A recent want ad offered 3,500 reals (€1,300) per month, plus a "company" car. In Brazil, churches are granted special tax exemptions -- raising the incentive for prospective preachers.
Once a lottery ticket salesman in Rio, Macedo is now a multimillionaire with assets including villas in the United States, a yacht and a private plane. His gargantuan churches seat tens of thousands of believers, and their gaudy mishmash of marble and glass has come to dominate the architectural landscape of suburban Brazil.
The faithful don't object to the cupidity of their leaders: wealth in itself is not considered sinful, but rather desirable. "In the Pentecostal communities, anyone can become a pastor," says Novaes. "For most people, a nice car is a status symbol."
In the late 1980s, a highly publicized study by US anthropologist Sheldon Annis concluded that Protestant communities are commercially more successful than their Catholic counterparts. Annis had compared the productivity of the weaving operations in two Indio villages in Guatemala. His findings demonstrated that, compared to the Catholics, the Pentecostals adopted modern production techniques more quickly, were more efficient and more concerned with getting ahead.
"Despite their frequent right-wing political identification today," Annis wrote, "in at least one sense the early Protestant missionaries were grassroots revolutionaries. ... In their eyes, the Church, alcohol, and debt were the instruments of enslavement -- and they, the missionaries, were the liberators."
Pentecostal communities are therefore perceived as churches for social climbers. Instead of promising a better life in paradise, they preach about wealth in the here and now. And offer practical assistance in the battle against alcohol and drugs.
Small wonder, then, that they have been magnets for the poor. The favela Vigário Geral is one of the most dangerous slums in Rio, but boasts 14 Pentecostal communities - and only one Catholic Church. In the city's overcrowded prisons, which are largely controlled by the drug rings, Protestant preachers have turned thousands of criminals into born-again Christians. Numerous gangster bosses and hit men have become men of God. In Rio's favelas, Pentecostal churches and the cocaine mafia co-exist in a state of cozy symbiosis.
It's Friday evening in São João de Meriti, a poor suburb of Rio. A few hundred faithful, among them former drug lords, murderers and thieves, have gathered in the Pentecostal church, Assembléia de Deus dos Últimos Dias. The men are wearing suits and ties; all the women have donned skirts; Pastor Marcos Pereira does not allow them to wear slacks to the service.
Pereira, a beefy man in his mid-40s with a penetrating gaze, is the best-known and most controversial soul-saver in Rio. And he is considered a legend in the favelas: "I have rescued hundreds of boys from torture and death," he boasts. Residents often call him to mediate in disputes between rival drug gangs. Even the toughest fall into line whenever the pastor shows up.
Pereira's services are true spectacles, mega-events showcasing miraculous acts of healing and exorcism. One after another, the members of his flock fall into a trance. The pastor looks his subjects briefly in the eyes, presses his hand to their forehead, and the "possessed" then sink to the floor. "Vanish, demon!" Pereira roars as he prances around the wincing, moaning victims like a whirling dervish. Snapping his fingers, he brings them out of their trance after a few minutes. Even strangers' legs turn to jelly when Pereira gives them his look. The man has hypnotic powers.
Before the pastor discovered his "spiritual vocation," he waited tables in Copacabana. "I drank and went whoring," Pereira says. "My life was a mess." His "spiritual enlightenment" occurred on a bus; shortly afterward he joined an evangelical church. Word of his talents as a hypnotist soon spread. Today his services attract even politicians and celebrities.
Pereira's efforts have earned him countless "donations," and he has amassed a huge fortune. Now the miracle minister is looking to expand abroad. He recently traveled to Europe and has also made inroads in the United States. "A lot of work awaits me in the First World," he says with a rather un-Christian wink. "After all, there are demons everywhere."
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