Faith in the Barrios: The Pentecostal Poor in Bogota. - book review

Sociology of Religion, Spring, 2002 by Milagros Pena

Faith in the Barrios: The Pentecostal Poor in Bogota, by REBECCA PIERCE BOMANN. Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1999, 162 pp. $37.00 (cloth) and Pentecostalism and the Future of the Christian Churches: Promises, Limitations, Challenges, by RICHARD SHAULL AND W ALDO CESAR. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000, 236 pp. $25.00 (paper).

Ever since David Stoll's book Is Latin America Turning Protestant: The Politics of Evangelical Growth brought attention to the question, a number of publications have followed on the subject. Few, however, examined questions of theological import or looked at the religion from the perspective of its followers. The two books I review here on Pentecostalism in Latin America take two different yet complementary approaches to understanding the faith and practice of its followers. Richard Shaull and Waldo Cesar propose a sociological-theological analysis on the role Pentecostal faith communities play in Brazil as a basis for understanding its broader role within Christianity. Adding to the discussion, Rebecca Pierce Bomann focuses her discussion on one barrio community in the outskirts of Bogota, Colombia. Unlike Shaull and Cesar, Pierce Bomann is a practicing member of Pentecostalism. To add to this mix of perspectives, Richard Shaull is a theologian and Waldo Cesar is a social scientist, both outsiders to the P entecostal community. It is these differing perspectives that make their books rich in data and analyses.

I begin discussion of the books with a look at Shaull's and Cesar's work and then go to Pierce Bomann's, because the former provides a broader theological/sociological framework with implications for cross-cultural comparisons that complements the Bogota case study. Pentecostalism and the Future of the Christian Churches begins with Waldo Cesar's careful evaluation of the origin of the Pentecostal movement in Brazil. From humble beginnings the movement has grown to have a measurable impact on Brazilian society and culture, particularly on its politics. "Today's Brazil, considered the largest Protestant community in the world after the United States, has a contingent of around fifteen million Evangelical voters" (p.10). Cesar pursues the question, how did they do it? Yet, the significance of the book lays not so much just in that question but in the authors' interest in Brazil's Pentecostal followers - the country's poor. What does Pentecostalism offer Brazil's poor, given the religion's success among them? A ccording to Cesar and Shaull, something is going on with the Pentecostal movement that begs the question: "What is the response, or responses, of Pentecostalism to the suffering of the poor?" that attracts them to this faith. What makes Pentecostalism so attractive that neither Liberation Theology nor Christian base communities within Catholicism were enough to offer alternatives to the growing number of Pentecostal converts in Brazil? According to Waldo, Pentecostalism "reaches out to the street, to the transformation of those passing by, whoever they may be, into new creatures" (p.18). In other words, as interviews for this project revealed, it is a faith experience that reaches to the heart or the spirituality of poor people's existence, not just to the material condition. So what did the Christian base communities miss? According to Waldo, "while Pentecostalism cultivates emotion, the Christian base communities emphasize the education of their members, giving priority to political issues and to human righ ts. This dimension, undoubtedly of great social import, seems to limit or hide a spiritual strength latent in popular religiosity" that Pentecostalism taps (pp. 87-88). It is that dimension of the Pentecostal faith that Rebecca Pierce Bomann, in Faith in the Barrios: The Pentecostal Poor in Bogota, uncovers in a barrio in Bogota, Colombia. And, in furthering the issue of the challenge that Pentecostalism poses to other faith communities, Richard Shaull addresses four major challenges that Pentecostalism poses. These are Pentecostalism's objectives: to accompany the movement of the Spirit in a church of the poor; to discern new dimensions of the nature of God's redemptive action in the world; to explore the meaning of salvation as a new experience of liberation for the poor; and to recapture the power of the Spirit for the reconstruction of the life here and now (p. 123). Shaull's contribution to the study of Pentecostalism in this work is his exploration of these themes and their implication for understanding what we can learn from the growth of Pentecostalism in Brazil and Latin America in general as other faith communities look to make inroads among the region's poor. Rebecca Pierce Bomann provides the in-depth view as it is seen and lived in one community.

As a participant observer, Pierce Bomann lived for months among barrio residents in the outskirts of Bogota, Colombia. She lived and worked in a community that forms part of the 60 to 80 million (13 to 17 percent of Latin Americans) non-Catholic Christians of which 75 to 80 percent are Pentecostals (p. 4). In this rich case study, the author unravels the history of the day- to-day lived experiences of Pentecostals. Each one of her chapters is structured around understanding the Pentecostal community and the family-like atmosphere they create for their believers. Not unlike other communities of faith, "to share their faith, believers seek to maintain exemplary lives of strict moral conduct in home and work, showing love, forgiveness and self- restraint, so that family members, friends, and neighbors will be convinced and converted by the sincerity of their faith" (p. 56). Each chapter is structured to take the reader through the steps of conversion and immersion into the community. In doing so, the book deliv ers on its promise to take outsiders into the spiritual world of Pentecostalism.