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

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

We know that there is a lot of injustice in the world. There are rich people that never work and poor people who work all day long. And there are politicians that do nothing more than rob the people of their money. Why is the world this way?

The respondents generally attributed the current condition to the separation from God. "There is a lot of injustice in the world because there is a people without Christ" said Carlos, a traveling evangelist who has been a Pentecostal for seven years. Carmen, a wife and mother of two children who has been Pentecostal for almost twenty years, said "He [Man] has deviated from His [God's] path and his [man's] heart has grown hard and he has grown indifferent to others. It doesn't matter to him whether others are or are not needy." Alba, a seventeen year old woman asserted that the world is the way it is 'Because men have tried to do it themselves. We should let God govern." Mariela, a twenty-eight year old wife and mother of two, explained exactly what happens when one is separated from God.

I would say that it is because of man's disobedience, because be hasn't wanted to follow God . . . . He has separated from the Way of God. He hasn't listened. So, since the devil goes around looking for who to devour, since he came to destroy and kill, that's what happens. He takes control of these persons that have separated from God and uses them. Then come injustice and sin, then comes robbery, then come all those things. Because if the world followed God, it would change from its wrong path, there wouldn't be injustice and corruption.

The Venezuelan Pentecostal frame, then, contains a theory of the derivation of social problems. This theory, in turn, frames their sense of agency, their sense of how they can change current conditions. I asked each respondent: "What should the Christian do about injustice?" Mireya, a twenty-three-year old woman who has dedicated her life to church work responded as follows.

[Christ] says 'You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot hide, nor does one put a lamp underneath the bed. Rather you put it high so that it lights all those who are in darkness.' With this He wants to say that we should preach the Gospel, that we should preach the Word to beat back (arrebatarle) the Enemy. We preach in order to get people out of the injustice they are in. Because it is a job God has given us.

Fernando, a Pentecostal of eight months, said:

God has given us a powerful weapon to work against injustice, it is the Word of God, preaching the news. We, as knowers of the Word know that these things are happening because of the dominion of the Enemy, because of disobedience to God, because of Sin. . . . We should preach that God does not like the things that they [non-Christians] do, that they are disobedient before GOd. We should take them the message of God, to put them on the right path, which is Jesus Christ.

Such a course of action is, of course, a logical derivative of a religious frame that emphasizes supernatural agency. Insofar as the problems that beset the contemporary world have to do with wrong relations between the unconverted and supernatural agents, the most logical response is to attempt to correct these relations. By "preaching the Word" one can make the unconverted aware of the supernaturally-relevant behavior that is putting them into the hands of "the Enemy" and raising God's ire, and get them to engage in religious action that will place them under the agency of God and thereby extract them from the injustice they are suffering or causing others to suffer.(11)