"Letting God govern": supernatural agency in the Venezuelan Pentecostal approach to social change

Sociology of Religion, Fall, 1998 by David A. Smilde

Recent research on the growth of Pentecostalism(1) in Latin America criticizes the common view of this religious movement as an "opiate of the masses" that provides refuge for the "alienated." Authors concede that Pentecostals do not participate as readily in what is normally considered "politics." But they argue that Pentecostalism is political insofar as it creates new cultural expectations, social spaces, and forms of community (Levine 1995; Smith 1994); creates new priorities and statuses (Martin 1990; see also Lancaster 1986), promotes group awareness (Stoll 1990) and a sense of rights and citizenship (Burdick 1993), and foments the development of "social capital" and trust (Levine and Stoll 1997). These new identities, expectations, and social formations are distanced from overt political action, argue these authors, not because of some inherent incompatibility, but because of Pentecostals' social marginalization (Burdick 1993), the practical impossibility of success (Ireland 1993; Levine and Stoll 1997), and the danger of political action in Latin America (Stoll 1990; Martin 1990).

But do Latin American Pentecostals themselves think about the larger social(2) world and their role in social change? Several authors argue that Pentecostals are indeed interested but seek to change society by changing individuals. "When enough people get saved, it is thought, a new morality will emerge that will eventually infiltrate the institutions of society and induce needed reforms" (Smith 1994:129; see also Levine and Stoll 1997; Coleman et al. 1993). However, the lack of ground-level, empirical research leaves important questions unanswered. For example, while it is easy to understand how Pentecostals might try to effect change on the personal or family level through adherence to a conventional, individualistic morality (Brusco 1995; Burdick 1993; Willems 1967), how, in their vision, can such a morality "induce needed reforms" at the social level?

In this article, I conceptualize Pentecostalism as a religious "frame" and explore it using data from qualitative interviews with Venezuelan Pentecostals. This frame, I argue, provides an interpretation of social problems and an orientation for social change, in which the importance of "the supernatural" is accentuated. Social problems are seen as the result of human behavior that does not conform to "Christian" morality and thereby permits or provokes supernatural beings to sow havoc in this world. Effective social engagement, then, comes only through action that seeks to order relations between humans and the supernatural, and thereby stimulate the positive agency of God while blocking the negative agency of Satan. In the conclusion, I discuss the implications of this conceptualization and these findings for interpreting Latin American Pentecostals' current approach to social change and their future political relevance.

PENTECOSTALISM IN THE VENEZUELAN CONTEXT

This study treats Pentecostals from a country not traditionally a leader in Pentecostal growth. Indeed, Venezuela has generally been considered an exception to both the social problems characteristic of other Latin American countries in the post-War period (Levine 1994), and the concomitant Pentecostal growth (Martin 1990). However, since the early-mid 1980s, Venezuelan exceptionalism has been challenged on both points. Low oil prices since the early-1980s have resulted in a balance of payments crisis and several attempts to implement neoliberal reforms. This has struck hard at the foundations of an oil-fed populist state whose very stability has been described as a class compromise based on state managers' ability to satisfy both the profit demands of elites, and the consumption demands of the popular sectors (Neuhouser 1992; Crisp et al. 1995). Poverty levels have doubled as the average person's buying power has been reduced to one fifth of what it was at the end of the 1970s (El National, 1 July 1996; Morley 1992; Lander 1995). And crime has become endemic, frequently being cited as citizens' number one concern (Ugalde et al. 1994; Chicago Tribune, 6 July 1995; Navarro and Perez Perdomo 1991).

At the popular level, the social decay is felt not only in its concrete material effects, but as a challenge to received meanings and patterns of social behavior. Inflation and the decline in living standards, strikes and demonstrations, and reports of high-level corruption and low-level street crime, are the objects of everyday discourse. Pentecostalism is one of a variety of meaning systems and participatory associations that compete to provide Venezuelans with a narrative reconstruction of contemporary life and a new basis for social relationships. It does not provide an escape from problems, as is often asserted, but rather provides a means of reflecting upon, resignifying, and reformulating devitalized social configurations.

Venezuelan Pentecostals believe in spirit possession, faith healing, perfectionism, and pre-millenialism. They do not dislike the term Pentecostal, and frequently use it in the names of their churches, but identify themselves as Evangelicos, denoting their professed(3) prioritization of the Evangelio ("Gospel," in English, referring to the first four books of the New Testament telling the story of Jesus), or Cristianos, denoting their "Christocentrism" (and implicitly delegitimizing the identification of Catholics as Christians).