The spirit moves: why Pentecostals thrive in Latin America.

Twenty-six years ago, a young Jesuit missionary, Jeffrey Klaiber, wrote of "the Pentecostal breakthrough" in Latin America. He described how Pentecostals were growing at an impressive rate, replacing historical Protestants, and even absorbing numbers of Roman Catholics. Since then, Pentecostal churches have attracted some 40 million Latin Americans. Worldwide, Pentecostals and their charismatic cousins number almost a half-billion, with Pentecostalism taking over as the fastest-growing Christian religion of the twentieth century. Nowhere has it been more successful than in Latin America.

Last year a well-attended conference on the globalization of Pentecostalism was held in San Jose, Costa Rica. It brought together scores of scholars from around the world, most of them Pentecostal, who addressed such stereotypes and allegations as: Pentecostal growth in Latin America is the re-suit of a religious invasion from North America; Latin American Pentecostals are pawns of the Religious Right; they are otherworldly, uninterested in social progress, and antifeminist; their members are most likely to be drawn from the poorest of the poor; and they oppose genuine theological inquiry.

Fifteen years of study and interaction have convinced me that Pentecostals have much to teach Catholics, not only about how to recruit and how to organize, but more fundamentally about the "cost of discipleship." Pentecostalism is a demanding faith with a vision of this world as well as the next.

But this does not imply that Pentecostalism is a monolithic faith. Latin American Pentecostals are quite different from their North American cousins. The Brazilian Assemblies of God have different polities, styles, and customs from their counterparts in, say, Springfield, Missouri. They also have four times as many members and think of themselves as the standard-bearers of the movement. Latin American Pentecostals are the most independent, self-initiated, and self-sustained popular movement in Latin America today.

Each creyente (believer) is expected to recruit new adherents through person-to-person invitations. The groups that are formed are highly decentralized, fragment easily to constitute new communities, and proliferate at an astonishing rate - a church a day in some cities. But the groups, while autonomous, are interconnected by similar if not identical beliefs, and they cooperate readily on projects with other Pentecostal groups on local and even national levels. Since Pentecostals have often failed to link their social-welfare activities with political parties or other national movements (there are exceptions, such as in Guatemala), outside observers have sometimes mistakenly labeled them apolitical.

Why do people become Pentecostal? Because the doors of the small, stone-front churches open to an exuberant but imperfect family in which everyone remembers your name and greets you as a hermano or hermana. Pentecostal churches are places where newcomers are encouraged to express their personal problems before a responsive community. And these small communities need their members' help. Participation is not only expected but demanded, and there seems to be something for everyone to do.

Pentecostalism is in the perfectionist school of religion. It is buoyant but skeptical of human intentions. Pentecostals take for granted that all their members, lay or clergy, have the same call to holiness, and, in contrast to many Roman Catholics, they are quite comfortable talking about holiness. They place no limits on members' efforts to achieve holiness and expect each of them to expend great efforts to live the moral life.

While tomada del Espiritu, being taken over by God, is the foundational experience, it is only the beginning. The rest of the journey involves a personal moral reformation. The guide here is a strict moral code. Relapses can lead to humility, the aim being progress if not perfection. Andrew Wallis, the famed mission scholar, has said to me that all religions were perfectionist at the start, but time and history record a gradual dilution of expectations, except for an elite. Pentecostals have tended to reinforce the elitist strain: converts prove themselves. Pastors and core members, more concerned with the rectitude of their communities than with adding numbers, regularly discipline members who do not measure up.

Furthermore, Pentecostalism is a sacrificial religion. Ordinary people give extraordinary amounts of money, some 10 percent or more from their often meager incomes. By abstaining from alcohol, many Pentecostals find they have more money to spend on their families and on church. One man told me that after he gave up alcohol for a year he was able to add two rooms to his house. The assets of Pentecostal churches in Latin America run into hundreds of millions of dollars, raised largely from within the countries themselves. This stands in contrast to the Catholic and historical Protestant churches in Latin America, where a paternalistic state or rich patron was expected to provide.

Pentecostals also sacrifice energy and time, throwing themselves into frequent prayer meetings and commmunity affairs. In Brazil, the home of half of Latin America's Pentecostals, employers have discovered a reliable pool of workers. Whereas employers once shunned creyentes, they now prefer them because they can be counted on to show up and to work hard. They are known for desiring promotion and greater pay.

A second asset is Pentecostalism's exuberance. Pentecostals believe in celebrating, and some of them do it extravagantly. A general sense of buoyancy radiates from the Pentecostals I have met. They are enthusiastic and project a heightened sense of hope. They seem drawn toward a better future and are propelled by a sense of having contact with God and his power. Their profound feelings are based on what they have experienced.

Another strength, paradoxically, is their skepticism. Pentecostals believe that creation is good but they are suspicious of human intentions and institutions. Their communities take a contra mundum stance, one eschewed by large numbers of postconciliar Catholics. While many Catholics appear to have lost a sense of sin, Pentecostals have not and emphasize the avoidance of those persons, places, and things that might lead one to fail.

Some sociologists have portrayed Pentecostals as other-worldly and given to mysticism. But Everett Wilson, a Pentecostal scholar, assures me that most are anything but mystical. They are too pragmatic, he says, and are intensely concerned about surviving, morally and economically, in a hostile environment.

Pentecostalism faces two serious problems in Latin America: the growing number of nonattenders and the challenge of consumerism, brought on by the adoption of free-market capitalism. A recent Chilean survey indicates that less than half of Pentecostals attend church every week. The health-and-wealth gospel of TV evangelism hit Latin America like a tidal wave. In Brazil, Bishop Edir Macedo's Universal Church of the Reign of God has attracted some 3.5 million members, has exported missionaries to eighty countries, has amassed large amounts of money, and owns the second largest TV network in Brazil. In Guatemala and other parts of Central America, the health-and-prosperity message of neo-Pentecostals attracts proportionately similar numbers. But the promise of economic gain as a sign of God's favor is deeply troubling to the classic Pentecostals.

Despite these concerns, the effect of the Pentecostal movement on Latin America is now a matter of historical record. It has even affected the Roman Catholic church, where millions of lay people have assumed roles of responsibility within the church, and as a Brazilian Franciscan told me, "Jesus is much better known by Catholics than he ever was before." Catholics and Pentecostals have both set off on paths of spiritual renewal in Latin America. Will those paths join? That is a major issue of the next century.

Edward L. Cleary, O.P., is professor of political science and Latin American studies at Providence College, Providence, Rhode Island.