The Explosive Growth of Evangelical Christianity

[0:00] Our Father, we thank you this morning for your grace extended to us and our lives in this community and this city. We pray now that we look at the growth of the faith in Black Nuts of America. We will be with us to help us to ask good questions of the Chair we're looking at how we can serve your camp and what has been happening in Latin and South America. We ask that you can do with the broad vision of what you're doing in the world today. We ask this in the name of your Son, our Savior. Amen.

[0:43] We Brazilians, nations of the poor, shall bring the Gospel to the world. That is the sense of call upon Brazilian Protestants. You may not appreciate it, but Brazil now sends out probably between 5,000 and 6,000 cross-cultural missionaries around the world. These are Brazilian Protestants, not Brazilian Catholics. About half the number of the United States sends out. The United States sends out about 11,000 cross-cultural Protestants a year. When I talked to you about Korea last time, I mentioned that there were about 10,500 Korean missionaries.

[1:26] Well, there are about between 5,000 and 6,000 Portuguese-speaking Brazilian almost all Pentecostals who are working cross-culturally outside of Brazil. Brazil has become one of the major Protestant missionary sending the world. A nation that, until recently, everybody thought I was solidly Roman Catholic.

[1:51] I'm taking a lecture that I usually give in a class that Rachel is in. Rachel is in this class I'm teaching on the global expansion of Christianity in the 20th century. The outline I've given you is one that I have used before.

[2:07] And what I will probably do is use the outline but also move away from it in order to give you a bit of background that I can't assume that everybody has in the history of Latin and South America.

[2:24] But to put Latin and South America in the global picture, the estimates today are that there are roughly 6 billion people in the world. 6 billion. About a third of that number self-identify as Christians. So roughly one-third of the world today is Christians in some sense.

[2:49] Of that 2 billion Christians, 1.1 billion are Roman Catholic. So roughly 50% of the world's Christians are Roman Catholic. The remainder are either Protestants, some wide description, probably upwards of 800,000 Protestants or non-Catholics, about 200 million associated with Eastern Orthodox churches. So between Christianity has about 2.1 to 2.1 to 2.2 billion believers. Islam, which is the next largest religion in the world, has about a billion. And then of course Judaism is very small. I think about 30 million. Although Judaism is in a sense the mother of both Christianity and Islam, the Abrahamic religion has been classified these three world religions together.

[3:48] have the normal loyalty of probably over half the world's population. So very, very big picture. Christianity is the preferred religion of about a third of the world's population. And about half of the world's Christians are framed by the Roman Catholic Church.

[4:10] Let me just give you some broader statistics here. One of the very interesting things that has happened is that in the 20th century, the West, that is defined as Europe, North America, Russia, constituted about a third of the world's population.

[4:33] What happened in the 20th century is that that percentage dropped from about 32% down to about 18%. So the population of Western Europe and North America, in percentage terms, not in absolute terms, but in percentage terms, the world population has significantly dropped.

[4:54] Does that logically one would expect that Christianity would have significantly dropped? That is what a lot of people expected would happen. Especially after World War II, when Western imperial nations, Britain, Portugal, Spain, and sometimes the United States, which had its own empire in the far east of the Philippines, had its commercial empire in the far east of the Philippines, had its commercial empire in the far east of the Philippines, as those nations have withdrawn their colonial presence from Africa and Asia. It was the assumption in the 1950s that Christianity would collapse with it. This was the religion of the conquerors. It was only flourished in Asia and Latin America because of the presence of Western imperial power and soldiers.

[5:46] And therefore, after World War II, you would see, you would see, in the 1950s, rapid shrinking of Christianity outside the West. On top of that, of course, in the West, you've had a significant, you've had several significant things happen. One is a remarkable decline in the birth rate in Western Europe and North America. Western Europe, if current trends continue unchallenged, could well become Muslim.

[6:11] especially by the birth rate, because the revenge of the cradle. Europeans, France in particular, but other European countries as well, are facing massive depopulation, simply because the Europeans are not having children. They're not having enough children to replace the distant population. And they have significant influence of immigrants, particularly from the Muslim world, who are having far more children. And it is predicted by the demograges that some cities in Europe will have the majority of Muslim population by 2050. So this, while here in Vancouver, we're not aware of these huge changes, if you live in Europe, as Gary has, in Paris, you'll realize that large, when you look at the age 20 cohort, you have a very high percentage of that cohort who are in the of the Muslim family. Along with that, you have the numerical decline of the birth rate of Christians. You know, the immigration flow in, but you've also had a massive collapse of Christian allegiance in Europe.

[7:25] And a whole slew of Britain, in the last 10-15 years, on the death of Christian Britain, for instance. Very interesting studies done.

[7:38] Talon Brown, a Scottish historian, who's done a very interesting study, in which he argues that the death of Christian Britain really began in the 1960s, and the key factor in the death of Christian Britain was the withdrawal of women of Christian churches.

[7:57] Women have been the backbone of Christian churches, but also other churches, throughout the 19th and right up to the end of World War II.

[8:08] 1950s, particularly the 1960s, really became very acute. And you saw it here in North America, especially in British Columbia. The withdrawal of women's participation meant not only did they withdraw, but they stopped sending their children to Sunday school.

[8:24] I mean, if you go and talk to people who live in Dunbar, St. Philip's Dunbar used to have children lined up from, you know, it was two blocks in from Dunbar, but children lined up all the way from St. Philip's Dunbar to Dunbar itself, waiting to get in the Sunday school.

[8:39] What happened in the 1960s in Europe also happened here in BC. It happened in Eastern Canada much later. But you had this withdrawal of women's participation in churches, and consequently their children were not taken or sent to Sunday school.

[8:54] And so now, in the early 21st century in BC, as in Europe, you have a whole generation of women in their childbearing years who have no memory themselves of ever having gone to Sunday school with children.

[9:08] And of course, they're not going to send their children to Sunday school. So, the West, Europe, and parts of North America, particularly Canada, not the United States, but particularly Canada and particularly British Columbia, you've seen the same sort of pattern of secularization and withdrawal from church involvement that you see in Europe.

[9:26] Now, having said just that, most scholars in the 1950s assume that what you would see by the end of the century is a massive decline in Christianity.

[9:40] Well, what's happened is both good news and bad news. Bad news is that Christianity has declined in the West, in Western Europe, and certainly in Canada.

[9:54] Not in the U.S., but Canada and Europe and Australia and New Zealand. It's interesting that British pattern fits Britain, Scotland, Ireland, England, Wales, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, but it doesn't fit the U.S.

[10:13] The U.S. is a greater section, and so you'll see all these kind of trickle with them, well, why are the American soldiers? Religious! Well, there are certain parts of America that are very religious. There are parts of America which are, to follow much more, the European trend in decristianization.

[10:28] But one very important change that's happened in the 20th century is, although the Western population has brought very significantly, in terms of the full population of the world, and Christianity has suffered a massive decline, even amongst those in the West who have traditional problems as Christians.

[10:53] One has seen, in the 20th century, a massive increase in Christianity outside of the West. Christianity in 1900, over 80% of the Christians in the world were Caucasian.

[11:11] About 81% of the Christians in the world were Caucasian. Today, 40% of the world's Christians are Caucasian. So, the proportion has shifted very, very significantly.

[11:23] The global center of Christianity now is no longer in Britain, Europe, and North America, and South America, but rather in the global south, or the non-Western world.

[11:35] You see a spectacular growth of the Christian church, particularly in Africa, but also in parts of Asia, and especially China, but also the Philippines, and other areas of South Asia.

[11:49] So, this is why I think it's so important to get this global view of what's happening here in Christianity. This pattern of Christian decline and growth has been there since the first century, which is, again, one of these long historical perspectives here.

[12:11] Christianity began as a Jewish religion, while people speak Hebrew and Aramaic. But even in the first century, the Gospels were recorded in Greek, rather than in Aramaic and Hebrew.

[12:24] So, you saw a cultural transition happen, even while the New Testament was in the UK, in the very lifetime of the Apostles. You then have another shift from, so you have a shift from the Hebrew-speaking world to the Greek-speaking world, of Eastern and Eastern Mediterranean, as the Gospels come to Hobart, the Roman Testament comes to us in Greek.

[12:49] But then in the fourth century, you saw a shift to the Western Mediterranean, and Christianity became Latin, very much the Latin-speak faith, the faith of the Roman Empire, the East and West.

[13:00] And then, from about 500 to 1500, you saw the remarkable shift from the old Roman Empire, as it collapsed, and since the torch was handed to the West, to the Northern European barbarian tribe, our ancestors, for the most part, those wild, Celtic barbarians.

[13:20] My father's originally from Wales, and my mother was born in Scotland, so my heritage is a Welsh barbarian tribe, the Celtic barbarian tribe, the Celts.

[13:32] And my wife's family has a Scandinavian thrown in from the Norse invasions of Northern Britain, that's why my children are all either redheads or blondes.

[13:42] But these northern barbarian tribes convert pretty well en masse as a people group to Christianity over about five centuries.

[13:54] And then, in the 16th century, you begin to see, again, the shift of Christianity, not only abroad, but particularly because of the expansion of Western Empire, through the Spanish and Portuguese Empire.

[14:09] Here you see the numerical rise of the South in terms of the percentage of Latin and South, sorry, Africa and Latin America's share of the global population.

[14:22] 1900, about 20%. About 27% is projected, about 28%, 29% by 2050. Again, this is related to a number of factors, much better health improvement in sanitation, longer lifespan of people.

[14:46] But the South is really displacing the West, so Africa and Latin America are displacing Europe and North America population-wise.

[14:56] Another very, very significant thing, I appreciate this is a bit multi-layered, but the other thing that's happening in the 21st century, and one of the reasons why it makes what we're looking at today so important, is for the first time in world history, you have massive relocations of people.

[15:20] You have now global diasporas. When we think of diaspora, we tend to think of a Jewish diaspora kind of Christ. Jews were spread all over the Roman Empire.

[15:30] Very often, deliberately, either for economic reasons, or sometimes deliberately expelled from Palestine by the Romans, but you think traditionally of the Jewish diaspora, people who spread all over the Mediterranean.

[15:44] That diaspora was actually crucial for the early expansion of Christianity. Probably the single most, from a human point of view, the single most important reason for the rise of Christianity in the first century was that you had Jewish, God-fearing Jews, spread throughout the Roman Empire.

[16:04] So you had little pockets of people who knew the Old Testament, they knew the Torah, they knew the law, they knew the full tradition of Abraham, and those little synagogues, throughout the central of the Empire, became the seedbed of the growth of the church.

[16:19] Wherever Paul went, he would go first to the synagogue, whether it was in Rome, or in the Greek colonies of the Roman Empire, wherever. You had this, in a sense, field killed already from the expansion of Christianity.

[16:33] In the 21st century, we have a similar phenomenon. We certainly appreciate it here in Vancouver, because we have large immigrants from Hong Kong, more recently from China, and Korea.

[16:53] When I was in England in July, I was really surprised that almost every building site, the language I heard spoken was not English, but Polish.

[17:08] And in the last two years, since Poland joined the common market, there's free access of Polish workers to Britain, and so you have a lot of labouring jobs now in Britain done by Poles, who could earn five times the amount of money in England than they could take a few hundred miles away in Poland.

[17:26] So what you are seeing are these remarkable reactions going. we have a huge Portuguese diaspora, that's the still in the ability to get an example of the state of the United States.

[17:39] The Portuguese at one point had a worldwide empire, scattered throughout Asia and Africa, and these are the places that the Portuguese-speaking missionaries of the world are going to.

[17:51] We have a huge Chinese diaspora. You can go to Chinese restaurants in India, in West Africa, virtually anywhere in the world, you will find largely economic migrants from China.

[18:10] But of course, these communities, also you will find Chinese churches. The same thing with Koreans, the Koreans are being inter-global. We've had a number of Koreans that we would from Argentina, they speak Spanish, and Korean, and English, and they come to study of regions.

[18:27] Well, again, this is an example of these racial or ethnic diaphores around the world, and if the whole country, in the case of Korea, there's a much higher percentage of active Christians in Korea than you do in Canada, and you have Korean churches all over the world.

[18:46] It's quite amazing. You have Chinese Christian churches all over the world. You have Portuguese-speaking churches in various global cities. So these diaphores of the 21st century are changing the face of local Christianity.

[19:02] And again, we tend not to see it because the ethnic churches tend to speak their own language in worship, and very often in the first generation they're crucial to providing the ethnic glue that holds the immigrant community together.

[19:14] So the Christianity today is predominantly non-Western, and it is probably now the most popular religion in the world outside of the West.

[19:33] There are probably more Christians in the world now outside of the West than there are Muslims outside of the West. So that's, again, we tend to think, you know, Christianity locked into North America, South America, and Europe.

[19:48] In fact, outside of the traditional West, the majority of religious believers and the great plurality of religious believers would be Christian even rather than Muslim. So Christianity has changed very significantly.

[20:04] Another thing that you don't see is the North in 1900 compared to the South in the middle of the total population.

[20:17] It's a significant reversal in that by the year 2000, and then by 2050 again, even more decline in the North compared to the total global population.

[20:31] Now, talk about the largest Christian nations in the world. In terms of nations, probably the United States, these are statistics for 2000, forget it, or 25, 2025, and 2050.

[20:51] The number of nominal Christians in the United States appear to be growing in total numbers. The next is Brazil and then Mexico to Philippines and Nigeria.

[21:09] And then the other large and you see what the market would expect. Zaire growth from about 32 million to 70 million to it's a projected 120 million.

[21:29] Ethiopia, Russia in decline, China, I think the China figures are low. I would put that first one probably at about 70 million, about 50 million.

[21:42] It's clear, actually, one thing that struck me in this reading recently, on any Sunday there are far more Christians worshipping in China than there are in World Europe.

[21:53] Wow. I mean, to be a Christian in China is not something to be likely. I think, and it's very difficult to estimate the number of Christians, but the best experts I've talked would say, well, probably about 70 million, which would mean about 3 to 5 million more members of the Christian churches, or even participants of the Christian churches, than members of the Communist Party.

[22:20] 6 to 7 million party members into China, probably more Christians, which I might tell you the Chinese government is aware of, and making them very nervous about any allegiance that strong that actually outmembers the party.

[22:38] But, for those of you who've been to China, some of the Christian worship services there, you can appreciate how much it costs in China to prepare yourself with the Christians.

[22:53] One other thing that doesn't come out in the statistics is that, let me just talk a little bit about this. What has happened regarding Roman Catholicism in the last four years is quite significant, in that the growth of Christianity globally in the last four years has largely been the growth of Protestantism and not Roman Catholicism.

[23:18] Roman Catholicism has seen major losses to the faith in Latin and South America, which has traditionally been one of its three-part lines, massive losses in terms of church attendance in Europe, and even in China, the spectacular growth of the church in China has been disproportionately Protestant growth rather than Roman Catholic growth.

[23:43] growth. So the percentage of Roman Catholic growth is much slower than Protestant growth in the last four years. Another very interesting statistic because these statistics regarding how many Roman Catholics there are, how many Protestants are, is a very crude way of measuring what actually has happened.

[24:06] The Roman Catholic Church claims that I think 55% of the Roman Catholic made into Roman Catholic. Well, Roman Catholic actually attendance and involvement is very, very low.

[24:20] One of the interesting statistics is that there are about 2.3 million, 2,300,000 Christian communities, worshipping communities, developmental, wilder communities in the world today.

[24:36] In 1997, one study showed that 79% of those meeting places were Protestant. At least 21% were Roman Catholic.

[24:50] So, I mean, the strength of Catholicism was difficult to measure, but a better measurement may well be the number of churches there are and some would feel that this doesn't go as well for Catholic retention in the 21st century.

[25:05] here you have a map of Latin and South America. Let me just give you a little bit of a history lesson.

[25:18] In the late 1400s, Spain finally accomplished what Christian would be wanting to do for many centuries and that was to expel all non-Christians from Spain.

[25:33] They had finally conquered the Muslims, pushed the Muslims out of Spain in 1492, between Isabella and 149, said to the Jews living in Spain, you have two options.

[25:46] You can leave, you have six months to leave Spain, or you can convert to Catholicism. You have the purging of Spain of all non-Caplic elements.

[26:00] This comes back to the idea of Christendom, that a certain political area has to be uniformly Christian. It was most extreme really in Spain. Most of the rest of Europe, Jews were tolerated in ghettos with their distinctive dress and were allowed to live really as second-class citizens of Christian Europe.

[26:20] The idea behind this is really coming out of the way the tribes in Northern Europe were converted in the preceding centuries. In those tribes, religious plurality was unthinkable.

[26:33] The idea that you would have more than one religion in your tribe meant that you faced the possibility of civil war and these tribes in Northern Europe were actually converted, in the first census, en masse, by the decision of their military elites.

[26:48] They decide that Christianity would be a better religion than the old religion at all, and therefore you have these mass conversions to Christianity. Now the church goes in and tries to disciple people and teach them the truth to build it up, but this idea that the king has a responsibility to get rid of idolatry, heresy, and enforce religious conformity, it comes out of that mentality of the tribe of Northern Europe forged in the furnace of the conflict of Islam.

[27:23] For several centuries, Western Europe has been a light and death struggle with Islam. Muslims have invaded, raided to the heart of France in 732, and then over the next eight centuries, they're pushed out of Western Europe, even as they keep on pushing on Western Europe.

[27:41] But the mentality of Christendom, of the idea of a Christian ruler who has to protect and enforce Christianity by the sword within their own domains, is heightened in this concept of Islam.

[27:57] In a sense, the Spanish and the Portuguese who are right up against this law, use this ideology of a crusading form of Christianity to enforce Christianity within their foreign country.

[28:12] In the late 1400s, the Portuguese who are the most adept at sailing and really a maritime nation, begin to explore the west coast of Africa and then go right around the Cape of the Hope into the Indian Ocean and begin to plant Portuguese communities in Asia.

[28:38] The Spanish, who really are going to take a major lead in the biggest empire, are going to look west to Latinas of America. There will be some rivalry between the Catholic powers of Portugal and Spain.

[28:55] And in the late 1400s, the matter of who can go where is brought to the Pope and the Pope takes them out of the world at any points.

[29:07] This place in the North Atlantic says everything west of here will be Spanish, everything east of here will be Portuguese. Well, the linemen drew it down, came right down here, Brazil became Portuguese territory, the rest of Latin and America became Spanish territory.

[29:28] There was some split in the Caribbean Institute who would go where. And then North America was left to the French, hence French colonization of Quebec, etc.

[29:41] But today, Brazil has flexi-carity, which is a false decision made in the late 1400s. So this is Portuguese speaking, the rest of South America is Spanish speaking.

[29:55] The Portuguese were given from here over to as far east as Macau as opposed to China. So Macau today has a Portuguese speaking heritage. And then the Spanish took out from there going east.

[30:09] So the Spanish were given the Philippines, named after Philip of Spain, King of Spain. So the Philippines is Spanish speaking, and right over here, here west of the Philippines, the Spanish territory, from Brazil to Macau is Portuguese territory.

[30:30] The Spanish were much more interested in the Portuguese and actually creating in Latin America a unified, top-down Catholic society.

[30:42] And the methods they used to bring about evangelization are the same methods that we used in the Crusades. You offer Christianity to the people, they accept it, great.

[30:53] They don't accept it, you slight it, you force them to become Christians. This again comes out of this mentality of the Northern European tribe that we can only have one religion.

[31:05] In this case, the religion is going to be important to all people. So what you, the whole approach here to Christianization is going to be very, very different from the way in which Christianity is going to be offered in the 19th century by the missionary movement.

[31:27] The missionary movement comes in as it expansion in North America and Europe seeks to command Christianity not to force Christianity. Not to coerce people, but to convince people that they should become Christian.

[31:41] They're very, very different basis in which you try to spread the Christian message. The form of Catholicism that's going to be imposed on Latin and South America is coming out of two things.

[32:00] One, out of this mentality of the tribes of Europe that everybody has to have the same religion and the king's responsibility to enforce that religion. The other hugely significant factor in Latin American is the Reformation because this is where the Reformation did not happen.

[32:21] Reformation begins about 20, roughly 20 years after Spanish troops arrived in South America in 1492 and Columbus goes on this mission to South America both to bring Spanish business but also to Latin and South America.

[32:48] So you get this former pathology is very much in reaction against Protestant Luther begins his discussions early with Wittenberg in 1517 and then of course by the 15th 20th 1530 you get Europe divided.

[33:13] Latin America never experiences that. Latin America is there is virtually no Protestants in Latin America until the 19th century. So you have here a it is in the level playing field it's the whole game is the Roman Church.

[33:30] There's no other options around religiously speaking. Another important difference when thinking of Latin South America from other areas of the world is a very significant influx of slaves from Africa.

[33:52] We tend to think of slaves in the United States. In fact, there are millions of slaves brought into Brazil by the Catholic powers so Brazil today has really quite a wide ethnic mix from Caucasian to European backgrounds to Native peoples the Aboriginal peoples were there Spanish settlers Portuguese settlers but also large numbers of black people originally a black slave population which is important to Latin America which makes Latin America and South America particularly South America and particularly Brazil quite different ethnically and religiously because the African presence means you're going to have the whole tradition of African religion is very concerned about issues of power and issues of plenty in a sense blessing you can see how this is going to fit in well with the contemporary doctrine and plenty centric like this so the model that's used here is a crusading model and there's no experience in Latin and South

[35:10] America of the Reformation how then does Pentecostalism ever become a dominant expression of Protestantism of Latin America that's certainly what has happened well one of the amazing things and I've got some statistics on your outline here estimating the numbers of Pentecostals in Latin America in 1960 there were about just over one million Pentecostals in Latin America by the year 2000 there were about 20 times that so between 1960 and the year 2000 phenomenal growth of Pentecostals the numbers may be as high as 30 to 35 million that would mean very difficult to measure because the movement is so fragmented among so many different competing hospitals in our nation there would seem to be roughly 45 million

[36:10] Protestants in Latin and South America out of the total population of the area of 450 million so it's roughly about 10 percent of Latin and South Americans are Protestant whereas 100 years ago it was about 0.1 percent so very very rapid growth two-thirds of the Protestants in Latin and South America are Pentecostal so even Protestantism in Latin and South America is far more Pentecostal than you would see in Europe or North America some very significant areas of Pentecostal strength Brazil in particular about 15 percent of Brazil now would be Protestant about two-thirds of the about 10% would be Pentecostal Chile here Chile has between 15 and 20% of Protestant the great majority of them being

[37:12] Pentecostal other areas in Latin America Costa Rica El Salvador Nicaragua gained between 15 and 20% profitable these statistics are incredible I grew up in the 1950s with a child hearing about Latin and South America and virtually we had friends who were parents in Argentina but the stories were always very very hard place like any different monolithic Catholic culture reminded me very much where I grew up which was French Canada I grew up in East Japan back to the family the whole area was 90 95 Catholic strong anti-provisive feelings no hope really for headway of growth in French Canada it's very interesting to compare what's happened in

[38:15] French Canada with what's happened in Latin America and Latin America we've seen the growth of Pentecostalism and you've seen some growth in Quebec especially since 1976 very significant that the year that the PQ comes to power in Quebec is the year for the beginning of Pentecostalism in Canada somewhat delayed from what happened in Latin America Guatemala in just right on the border there of Mexico approximately 30% of Guatemala is Protestant and again most of those would be Pentecostal Mexico much much less 6-7% of Mexico and Bolivia 11% two areas where Pentecostalism find it most difficult are

[39:17] Uruguay down here right beside Argentina and in Venezuela in these areas the Catholic Church tends to have a much more traditional role in society and it's much more difficult for Pentecostalism why does Pentecostalism grow so quickly well there are of course spiritual factors very strong empowerment of the Holy Spirit and the life of people we look at them with theological factors but some of the other factors that historians point to the fact that Pentecostalism is able to engage the poor with the gospel able to empower the poor and see the gospel as good news for them really interesting the Roman

[40:18] Catholic Church since the 1960s has a lot of effort and time into what is called ecclesial based communities trying to form base communities that would be of the people private people and for the people as one historian put it the church chose the base communities the poor chose the Pentecostals Pentecostalism has become the religious option for the poor of Latin America and especially for Latin American women Pentecostalism gives a great expression to speaking personal testimony to singing very strong emphasis upon supernatural God providing for the poor hearing the cry of the poor upon healing a number of scholars have looked at the congruence between how the because Pentecostalism is a religion from below of the people he comes up with his own indigenous expression of the

[41:19] Christianity they're not top down they're not being told by the priest how to live they're drawing that from scripture as they read scripture themselves really the first couple of Protestants and Latin and Southern America came in the 19th century as the Bible Society the British and Foreign Bible Society tried to make the Bible available in the language of people in Latin and Southern America a huge I think a very huge factor in the growth of Pentecostalism and Protestantism in general was Vatican II Vatican II actually encouraged the laity to read the Bible in their own language and that it used to be I know in the Gideons in Quebec couldn't even give away the Bible in the students they were never allowed to do the Catholic school certainly give away the Bible after 1967 after the Vatican II the Gideons began to be welcomed in Quebec into Roman Catholic schools to give the Bible out the same thing happened in Latin and South America the church began to encourage the laity to take scripture seriously to read it to study it and what the

[42:29] Pentecostals have done is taken that and created a grassroots movement of poor people on the margins of society blacks women and they have come to own the gospel for themselves creating expressions of the faith that picked out traditional things like the fiesta in Latin American culture and spiritual either bringing it into celebrations within the church that empower the poor and allow them to give expression the church certainly they like well Pentecostals are very strong in providing social support to people within their own communities churches doing the barrios the slums of Latin America and what you will find are these indigenous Pentecostal churches led by lay people with often very little theological education but they connect at a very deep level with the people and they bring about significant social change particularly in the treatment of women a number of studies have looked at the way in which

[43:44] Pentecostalism goes about changing men's attitude towards themselves the whole machismo cult of the male in Latin American society is challenged directly by Pentecostalism to say that men have a responsibility person for to their family and to their children and they tend to change the way men think of themselves very interesting one study looked at poor families who began to get any money what did they spend their money on well the very significant difference between the Pentecostal family poor families and the average poor family the average poor family would spend the money on the radio for television Pentecostal families would spend the money on buying a family diamond cable really Pentecostal was very family focused trying to rein in the what they believe and scripturally they're right the image of the male in Latin

[44:49] American society is the family un-Christian one and trying to read the Christian take on family responsibility and domesticate the Latin American male David Martin the British sociologist who actually is an anti-minister and he's one of the world's leading sociologists shows it's drawn the parallel between early Methodism in the 18th century and Latin American Pentecostalism how that Methodism brought a discipline to people at a working class level helped them become sober frugal hardworking generous introduce really gospel disciplines that people want but at the same time empower the poor and train them now one very significant difference with Methodism is that Wesley was a dictator very top down and built this amazing organizational structure you don't

[45:55] I think see that same sort of thing in Latin American Pentecostals to the same extent the influences on the development I mentioned the Bible Society agents in the 19th century who are concerned to translate and circulate the Bible in the language of the people some sub-American governments as they emerged in the 19th century were quite liberal in their attitude voices of the Bible Society agents and very often wanted to use the potential of Roman Protestants to counter the weight of the Roman Catholic Church more recently there have been some differences from the United States things but pentecostalism itself pentecostalism in the movement is often thought of starting in 1906 in this rather unpretentious building in Los Angeles This was a building that had been used as a warehouse.

[46:58] It was eventually turned into a meeting place for people who pick up on ideas that had been around for several years.

[47:12] In the late 19th century, there was a great deal of expectation in Protestant circles of an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. In 1900, at a Bible college in Kansas, there had been instances of people speaking in tongue, and many people would actually go back to 1900 to speak in Kansas and say that at the beginning.

[47:33] But the movement really goes international in a sense. In 1906, at this Azusa Street congregational meeting in Azusa, well, Azusa Street in Los Angeles.

[47:47] What is really insignificant about this is that the leader of this church was this man by the name of William Seymour.

[48:00] He was the son of a slave. He was blind in one eye. He had actually been at these meetings at this Bible college in 1900 in Topeka, Kansas.

[48:12] But in 1906, in this church in this storefront in Los Angeles, a revival breaks out that begins to attract international attention.

[48:27] Now there had been, in the two preceding years, similar revivals in Wales, in North India, in China.

[48:40] And all over the world, there seems to be this popcorn effect of these different revivals. But the Azusa Street revival will become the best known of these because it is seen as, in a sense, the birthplace of global Pentecostalism.

[48:51] So, push this back a little further. Pentecostalism in many ways had been around for centuries.

[49:02] I mean, the emphasis on speaking in tongues is something new in the church. It goes back to the early church fathers often will speak of this experience. But Pentecostalism came up with a theology which, for most Pentecostals, they linked the idea of speaking in tongues with this expectation of a second work of grace in a Christian's life, known as the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

[49:23] And the classical Pentecostals argued that, in order to be baptized in the Holy Spirit, you had to exercise this gift, this sign gift, that they would call us speaking in tongues.

[49:34] Now, not all Pentecostals were going to accept this, but many of them did. This movement, in this little, here you see the leadership here, it's very interesting.

[49:51] The leadership of this is from, in a sense, the underside of American culture. A black giving leadership to this movement which is going to have appealed to white. I always see Azusa Street in a sense of a black form of Christian expression coming over to the white community, the white community think they invented this.

[50:10] If you go back to the 1780s with the work of the American missionaries in the West Indies, you have very similar descriptions of meetings, similar in early Pentecostalism.

[50:21] And there is clearly the influence of, in a sense, African tribal religious heritage being brought into a Christian expression that draws on some of the themes of African, what we're just like, specifically the emphasis upon power and empowerment by the spirit.

[50:40] But Azusa Street attracts international attention. And from, people come to Azusa Street from all over the world, and then go back out from Azusa Street to Latin and South America.

[50:51] This is where the first Pentecostals make their way from here to Chile. After two or two years, the same thing has been happening in Brazil.

[51:03] So you begin to see this, in a sense, the fire of Pentecostal thinking and experience being exported from Los Angeles.

[51:14] But again, it's a form of Christianity that is very unlike the traditional forms of Protestant, mainstream Protestant Christianity. A number of scholars have talked about how missionary Christianity is very much influenced by the assumptions of the Enlightenment.

[51:30] We have to find education and decorum and reason. Well, Pentecostalism is going to be very much a felt religion, not so much interested in the mind, the way the missionaries are.

[51:42] So you're going to have a fairly ambiguous relationship between the missionaries of the present experience and the Methodist and the Anglicanist growing Pentecostalism movement in the non-Western world very often.

[51:54] And then, in a sense, to what missionaries have done in providing the Bible and the vernacular, catechetical material for teaching. There will be an appreciation, but wanting to take things in the direction of the missionaries and I think we've ever talked about.

[52:13] Some internal factors in the spread of this form of Christianity in Latin America. Certainly, this movement is remarkably indigenous.

[52:25] It is very much a religion of the people, by the people and for the people. In a sense, one of the great problems of the Roman Catholic Church in Latin and South America is that from the 1500s right to the present, the Roman Catholic Church is very European.

[52:47] I remember having a talk with, actually, Merv Hanson, oh, kind of 12 years ago, with an ancient bishop from Peru, who would be here at St. John.

[53:00] And I was asking him about Peruvian Catholicism. And he said, well, there are 70 Roman Catholic bishops in Peru. Half of them are Peruvian citizens and half of them are foreign.

[53:14] I didn't. And after 500 years, half of the bishops in the Peruvian church are foreign. Well, actually, no. There are actually only one of the 70 bishops are Peruvian born, a Peruvian.

[53:27] 35 of the 36 Peruvian national taxes, Europeans, who have taken Peruvian citizenship. So 69 of the 70 bishops in the country were Europeans after five years, sorry, five centuries of Catholic presence in Latin America.

[53:45] Now, what's remarkable of Peruvian Catholicism is that it is indigenous. In fact, its links to North America are very often, it serves the interest both of scholars in the university and Roman Catholic hierarchy.

[54:03] The picture repeatedly in the press, and you see this all the time in West Virginia, of course, Latin American and in Austin, they'll keep on trying to say this is an American import. This is all because the CIA is trying to use Christianity in Latin America and South America to push the agenda of the American State Department.

[54:20] Well, studies that have been done, church growth in Brazil, have shown that the more connection the Brazilians have with North America, the slower the churches grow.

[54:36] The more indigenous and the less they have to do with North American evangelicals, the faster they grow. So, if this was a CIA plot, it is remarkably, remarkably unsuccessful in the, it serves the interest, particularly the Catholic hierarchy, but also secular scholars in the Latin American academy, to try to argue that these petty apostles really are sort of a fourth column or fifth column of American imperialism.

[55:06] And it is just, on the back of the ground, it's just not the case. But, what you see here is a religion which is very popular with the poor because it is a religion of the poor.

[55:23] It reads the Bible differently than the way most North American Christians do. It takes the power and spirit very seriously and it proves to be remarkably popular with the poor.

[55:36] Also, remarkably popular with the indigenous people of Latin America. The aboriginal peoples of the religious regions of Western and South America have responded very warmly to Pentecostalism in the last 20 to 30 years.

[55:58] What you do see, and this is one of the challenges, I think, in a number of parts of the world, you do see quite a significant dropout rate.

[56:09] People come into Pentecostal churches for a time and then lead to the back door. That's what I think is true in every Christian idolatry church. People come in, they go out, there is quite a turnover rate, but overall there is quite a significant proportion of people who do stay.

[56:29] In terms of the impact upon Catholicism, this has been very significant in terms of causing the Roman Catholic Church to ask questions of itself. And seek to respond, by this appeal, to basically the communities.

[56:46] But an appeal which I don't think has been very successful because the poor have often been to the Pentecostal. What they see to be really a middle class sort of condescension to them and not really empowering the way they cope.

[57:01] I think it's a good question. I think it's a good question. Bill? I did it. Well, I'm finished. I've got about three more hours of material here. Question time. Question time. Yes? Bill?

[57:12] Traditionally, the Roman Catholic Church has used people in religious borders as missionaries and still do. I mean, they never did accept the priesthood of all the legals, right? So, you have to be trained to go out and go out into all the world.

[57:26] And Pentecostals apparently don't subscribe to this. So, they've got potential missionaries sitting in every congregation. Is that making a difference? Is that something for some of this growth? Yeah. Well, there are two things there. I think one of the greatest weaknesses of Roman Catholic missions is the fact that the people who are not in the world are in the world.

[57:41] And Pentecostals apparently don't subscribe to this. So, they've got potential missionaries sitting in every congregation. Is that making a difference? Is that something for some of this growth? Yeah.

[57:52] Well, there are two things there. I think one of the greatest weaknesses of Roman Catholic missions is the fact that Roman Catholic missions for a thousand and really fifty-three-three years have used religious orders all exclusively.

[58:10] The problem, and religious orders are great in some situations, particularly where you are working with the people, where you need to be living with the people for twenty-three years to learn their language, and a certain really power brokers are, especially in private work.

[58:25] The difficulty is, and I think this is one of the things that is handicapped Catholic missions, is that by using religious orders, don't model Christian family life.

[58:37] And that is, to me, a key to the success of Pentecostal in Latin America. Because every Christian is regarded as a minister, and your ideal, and this was certainly true in the Middle Ages, the ideal, you know, the superior way of being a Christian is to be a Solomon monk or religious.

[59:00] The problem with that in this missionary situation is you don't model Christian family. And if you don't model Christian family, it's very hard to make a Christian family. So, I think that culturally, one of the biggest problems for Catholic missions is the failure to, very often, the failure to indigenous is because the Christian family is not the model, and every member of ministry is the model.

[59:26] Yes, Shane? And it's interesting that the same is that it's been applied to the American people. Do they switch to the Catholicism? Or is it treating them about the American people?

[59:38] Often they have, yeah. And this is true throughout history. Societies that are animistic, that is, they worship the spirit, they have shaming to which they were going to be, those cultures have been, theologically, they're much closer to Christianity than, say, Hinduism or Islam.

[59:56] And therefore, the great majority of here is Christianity in the last 2,000 years that come from animistic religion. It often takes time, it might take a generation or two, but very often you see that switch made.

[60:11] Theology is often very strongly dualistic. There is awareness of the power of evil, the power of good, and the missionary community enable the naming of God. Often, missionaries pick up the naming of God in the culture than appropriated it for Christian purposes.

[60:29] Jack? I'm under the impression, maybe it's not true, universally in South America that the Roman Catholic Church adopted a lot of the animistic traditions and appropriated women and in fact become more deviant than one more think.

[60:51] Yeah, I think that's something. There has been a great deal of syncopism in Latin American Catholicism. And that's one of the problems with what the Roman Church is always been struggling against.

[61:06] To what extent you force people to become Christian, they simply keep the old religion and rename the old gods and not really believe in what they met before.

[61:17] So there's that, and Pentecostals are very, very critical in Latin America of Catholicism for that reason. Catholicism actually among the, certainly the academy in Latin America is very unpopular.

[61:30] And even at a popular level, we tend to think of Catholicism in Latin American being very popular. Well, it isn't. In fact, on the street, it is often a very little resentment towards the church.

[61:44] And certainly on the part of a lot of people who have become Pentecostals with resentment of them not having heard the gospel from Catholic sources in the past. There's often a very, but even among secular people, there's often a very anti-Catholic animus.

[61:58] And you see the same thing in French Canada, actually. A great deal of resentment of, at a cultural level even, that the Catholic Church held us back, not allow us to encourage us to go into the sciences or the business, to serve the traffic, those areas for English products and culture to dominate French Canada.

[62:16] And so there's a, you can see some of those, those same things here in French Canada as well as you see them on the American place. The Moranos, the Spanish and Portuguese Jews, how many of them ended up in Belknife?

[62:32] I don't think any of them, any to speak of did. Many of them went actually to the East Mediterranean. They were welcomed by the Ottoman Empire. Or they went to other parts of Europe.

[62:46] But, the Jewish presence in the Ottoman Empire is significantly increased in the 16th century, because the Muslims welcomed the Jews as minorities, the second minorities within the Ottoman Empire for economic reasons.

[63:02] But I don't, they certainly wouldn't have felt welcomed in Latin America. There were some clearly made it there, but overall, it's very difficult to do.

[63:14] This is, it's held up by the Catholic Church, it's the place, just as New England is held up by the Protestants as being a New England. This is supposed to be a new Spain, a new Portugal, a cleanse of all Protestant, or non-Catholic, uh, places.

[63:31] And, uh, what kind of organization is there among the Pentecostals? Are there within the countries, far across these countries? How do they prevent or deal with synchronicism, certainly men, and, uh, various heresies and so on that would be growing up with, it seems to me, uh, in a bottom-up organization with ill-of-theological training?

[63:52] Yeah. How does this seem to remain anything identified with Pentecostal or even Christian in the law class? Uh, it depends a lot on the denomination that's associated with it. And one of the big problems for Latin American Pentecostalism is that it fragments and fragments and fragments.

[64:07] So you get, along with the entrepreneurial start-up and empowerment of the individual believer, you also get the fragmentation of these churches.

[64:18] So you get, uh, you get some, and in some ways the God is quite strong in Brazil, but there are several other large, very helpful denominations. They largely are turned into them themselves, or if they're looking outward, it's in terms of cross-cultural mission, or mission to the poor.

[64:33] So that is a real problem, that theological education versus Latin American Pentecostalism is, uh, pretty basic, mostly at Bible college level, and, uh, quite weak, theologically.

[64:46] Um, that is one of the biggest challenges, uh, in Latin and South America. And there's not a, there is not a huge amount of material, uh, published in Spanish and Portuguese.

[64:58] Increasingly there is, but historically there's been, uh, also put a high degree of reliance on, uh, part of the, one area of foreign influence, the strongest of the area of publishing, uh, certainly in academic books or theological works.

[65:14] A lot of the stuff translated from English and Spanish and Portuguese from the US. Uh, I didn't mention it, but the Pentecostalism in Latin America, a very effective use of media.

[65:27] There are television stations in Latin, in Brazil, radio stations, whole networks of, uh, of, uh, radio stations, uh, that is used. And they're very media, uh, savvy.

[65:40] And also quite, quite involved politically. Paul Frexton, who was a, a regional student in the early eighties, uh, from Brazil, is actually English, in Brazil, uh, used doctoral pieces on the influence of Pentecostalism in the National Assembly of Brazil.

[65:55] Uh, depends on the structure of the government as to whether or not the Pentecostals have a voice, but because of the proportional representation in, uh, the civilian system, they do have a voice, whereas in Chile, where they're actually much stronger in America, they have virtually no voice political, because it's the first class of the code system in Chile, and so the Pentecostalism really being the act of how they live in Brazil.

[66:20] And when they do get into politics in Brazil, then what sort of incentives? What are they, what are they standing for, pushing it differently than everybody else? Uh, I would think the biggest difference would be in terms of family values.

[66:32] So, yeah, the act of an, uh, anti-abortion, or, uh, uh, uh, different marriage laws and divorce laws, and so on?

[66:43] Yeah, that's one of the things. They're very much different. Now, Paul's really expert on this, but he's got a new book called, um, even though there's an impulsiveness in Asia-likes America and Africa, and she looks at the differences and the issues that they picked up on.

[67:03] And they're not interested in liberation theology at all? Oh, no. They regard liberation theology as, as not empowering at all. They, uh, uh, and in, in Chile, in fact, the Pentecostalism, I mean, very right-wing, in reaction against Marxism.

[67:18] Um, very strong, strong, in woes to the, uh, the L.M. government. Do Anglicans appeal to the poor, are they dealing with, um, um, the educator to lead, or where do we stand here?

[67:34] With Anglican? Yeah, Anglicanism in Latin and South America is probably much more elitist in terms of the field. I may be wrong on that, but that's my impression.

[67:45] I mean, it's in his head. One of the big problems in, say, in Brazil, uh, sorry, in Argentina, is the Falcons War between Britain and Argentina. That, I remember talking to the, is Anglican, even Jocko, Bishop in Argentina, but he's, he's British Bishop in Argentina.

[68:01] And he was Bishop during the Falcons War, so it made things very difficult. Uh, but it, it tends to be more, I think, more expatriate, um, field. Uh, field, field.

[68:13] Yeah. The Uruguayan Bishop of the Anglican Church is Cuban. Sorry, the? The Uruguayan Bishop of the Anglican Church is Cuban. Oh, really? Yes.

[68:24] How long has he been Bishop? Sorry? How long has he been Bishop? Very shortly. Oh, really? Just a short time? Two years. By the way, they're asking for a volunteer for about two years, urgently needed, or even a book.

[68:37] Or Uruguay. Oh, neat. And they really need a lot of support. And, uh, and the Anglican Church in their field is also tremendous. Yeah.

[68:47] They, they are just, what you're talking about, the geological, diapers, I call it, of Latin American thoughtlessness is really big here.

[68:59] It's a big deal. And it had short legs. That is probably the greatest weakness is theological education. Oh, yes. Huge problem. And there are problems with, huge problems with so many other churches with very strong prosperity of the gospel.

[69:10] Really, very uncritical. But again, you can, these churches give hope to the poor. Yeah. And therefore, the poor, not just the poor, some areas of, let's say, particularly Guatemala, you have quite a remarkable appeal to fairly wealthy people.

[69:32] They tend to be the nouveau riche, not the old money families. But the new entrepreneurs, the people in computers and sort of things, made a lot of money and often are very supportive of the churches.

[69:44] The old land-only families tend to be sort of the bastion of Catholic identity in those areas. Thank you, John. Thank you. Thank you, John. Thank you. Thank you, John.