Tag Archives: Catholicism

Brazil, Brazil, Brazil……..

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The pope and I were both in Brazil last week.   I left Rio de Janeiro a few days before he arrived, so we didn’t get the chance to touch base.  Should I try to friend him on Facebook?  I’m just not sure how social etiquette works in this new digital age.

We both seem to have developed an interest in Brazil, though.  Brazil is interesting for a lot of reasons:  soccer, its rising economic power, the 2016 Olympics, piranhas, massive street protests, cool music about beautiful people on beaches, Mardi Gras, flip-flops.  Those sorts of things.

The pope attracted huge crowds in Rio de Janeiro…..

The pope and I, however, are interested in Brazil for other reasons.  You know why the pope was there.  I was in Rio, Brasilia and the Amazon with two dozen American and Brazilian evangelical scholars under a program sponsored by the Council for Christian College and Universities and the Nagel Institute.  Our group was studying the role of evangelicalism in Brazil.  This seems to be a topic on the pope’s radar as well.   If you have been following the news of the pope’s visit, you will know that the Catholicism in Brazil has been losing large numbers of followers in the last few decades to evangelicals, particularly Pentecostals.  Protestants made up 2.6% of the population in 1940.  They are now up to 21%.  This makes Brazil both the world’s largest Catholic country and the world’s largest Pentecostal country.  This is a very interesting situation.

….our group….not so much.

(For those of you who wish the United States were number one in these sorts of things, you might take comfort in the fact that the U.S. leads the world in Methodists, Jehovah Witnesses, Mormons, Baptists, Jews, Churches of Christ, Scientologists, Amish, Nazarenes, and Unarians — who believe that we can communicate with extra-terrestrials by using fourth dimensional physics.  This is also a very interesting situation.  But that’s a topic for a different blog.)

Why, though, has evangelicalism been growing so much in Brazil, particularly among the poor?  A little historical background:

In 1968, in the wake of Vatican II, Catholic bishops from Latin America met in Medellin, Colombia to reexamine the church’s relationship to Latin American society.  They declared that the mission of the Catholic Church was to enact “a preferential option for the poor.”  A number of movements sprung from this action, including the development of liberation theology and the formation of something called Base Ecclesial Communities, which sought to address economic inequities and mobilize the poor for social reform movements.  And indeed, the pope’s message in Rio on Sunday sounded these themes as well.

This is a Christian program that ought to gain traction in Brazil.  For centuries, small groups of elites have controlled political power, owned almost all of the land, directed the economy toward their interests and dictated social norms in society.  Most ordinary people have had little opportunity for advancement and social mobility.  As a result, some of the greatest economic, political and social inequities in the world can be found in Latin America, including Brazil.

But here is where things get a bit puzzling.  As one scholar has noted, the Catholic Church implemented a “preferential option for the poor,” but the poor expressed a preferential option for Pentecostalism.  Why?

There have been many explanations for this, but I haven’t found any of them fully convincing.  In reporting on the pope this week, NPR explained that Pentecostals are much better at advertising and marketing their product.  OK, this may help attract people to church, it doesn’t explain why they stay.

Some people argue that Pentecostal churches preach a prosperity gospel message, promising the poor that God will bless them with wealth if they just commit themselves to the faith.   But this message is not preached by many Pentecostals, and this theology seems to be most prominent among the middle class or those that are already on their way up the social ladder.

Some have pointed out that Pentecostalism is very democratized in its structure, vaulting poor and uneducated members into positions of leadership and influence.  This is true, but Pentecostalism also produces hierarchical churches where charismatic leaders hold authoritarian sway over their congregations.

And why has Pentecostalism succeeded so well in Brazil, Guatemala and Chile, but it has had very little success in Colombia, Bolivia and Venezuela?

There are other explanations for these things, which require book-length studies to explain.  It’s complicated.  And there are still a lot of questions for which we don’t have a complete and satisfying answers.

But given the size of Brazil, religiously, politically and economically, it is bound to exercise increasing influence in the Americas in the decades to come.

So pay attention.

The Pope, The New York Times, and the Painful Reality of Being Outnumbered

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Back in 2005, just after Pope Benedict XVI took over leadership of the Catholic Church, my local newspaper came out with the following headline:

“Centuries of Catholicism and Still No American Pope”

From a historical perspective, this is a rather curious headline.  What, the Catholic Church has slighted Americans for more than two millennia now?   I guess that back in the 7th  or 11th or 15th centuries, if the Catholic Church had just tried hard enough, it could have figured out how to make a Navajo or a Cherokee or a Shawnee a pope.  Instead, those cardinals just kept picking some Italian guy.

The non-American Pope Benedict XVI

OK, that curious headline could just be the result of a local editor who was in a hurry and wasn’t thinking clearly.  But it reflects a very real way of thinking:  many Americans, whether they are Catholic or not, assume that the Catholic Church really ought to put a priority on listening to American Catholics.

Really?  Why should Americans be top dog in this fight?  Why should we think that the Catholic Church ought to choose an American as pope in the first place?  Consider this:  American Catholics make up 6% of the Catholics in the world.  Brazil, Mexico and the Philippines have more Catholics in their nation than the United States does.  If anyone deserves to make an argument based on national identity it would be one of these other nations.  (Actually, it is problematic to try to define Catholicism, or any branch of Christianity for that matter, by national identity, but that’s a discussion for another time).

I don’t know who will be the next pope.  (I am intrigued that a Nigerian, Francis Arinze, has been discussed as a candidate.  That would be an interesting selection.)  And I don’t know what the conclave thinks about these issues of national identity.  As a Protestant, I will leave that for the Catholics to work out among themselves.  (I’m sure the Vatican is relieved).  However, it is worth pointing out how our identity as Americans can sometimes lead us to take a rather self-centered view of things.

For instance, one might think that The New York Times, a cosmopolitan paper of some sophistication, with very good international news coverage, would take a global view of the Catholic Church.  But one would be wrong.  With the upcoming selection of a new pope on

All the News that Is Fit for Americans to Print

its mind, The New York Times released the results of a poll on Wednesday morning of this week.  The Times polled American Catholics, asking what they thought of the Church and the pope.  The tenor of the story was that many American Catholics want a younger pope who is more open to what the Times calls “modern” ideas – and that the church hierarchy today is out of touch with the people.  Being good journalists, the Times story included quotes from ordinary Catholics in ordinary places like Des Moines, Iowa.  They quoted a Catholic woman from Fort Wayne, Indiana who said the cardinals are not in touch with their lives.  “I don’t think they are in the trenches with the people,” she said.

Now, this is a helpful article and poll, in some ways.  We learn what American Catholics think.  We have a problem, though:  the article never mentioned Catholics outside of the U.S.  The Times never mentioned that American Catholics only make up 6% of the global Catholic population.  The underlying assumption of the article?   The Catholic Church ought to listen to Americans.

If we really wanted to know what ordinary Catholics believe, we don’t go to Fort Wayne and Des Moines.  We go to Sao Paulo and Manila and Nairobi.  And what do the Catholics in Brazil and the Philippines and Kenya want?  Do they agree with American Catholics, or do they want something else?  Do these people agree that they want a younger, more modern pope?  Do they think that cardinals are out of touch with the people in the trenches?  Maybe, maybe not.  What do they want in a new pope?   We don’t know.   I wish we did.

The New York Times doesn’t get it. (It gets some things, but religion is usually not one of them).  Assuming that American Catholics ought to have top priority in shaping the Catholic Church is like assuming that the state of Georgia ought to have top priority in shaping the policies of the federal government in Washington D.C.

We need to recognize that world Christianity challenges Americans and Europeans just by its very existence.  We misread the world if we continue to assume that Christianity is primarily a western religion.  Africa now has more Christians (380 million) than the United States has people (300 million).  Asia has 320 million Christians and Latin America has 480 million.  The center of gravity of Christianity, ladies and gentlemen, has shifted from North America and Europe to Africa, Latin America and Asia.

You know what that means for American Christians?  We are outnumbered. We are a minority in our own faith.

Quite frankly, this is a painful reality for us to digest.  We Americans, especially if we are white, are not used to thinking about being outnumbered.  We tend to view the world through the political, economic and cultural power of the United States.  Sometimes we think that the whole world revolves around us.  Yes, the Christian virtue of humility is a really, really difficult thing to attain.  I have a very difficult time with humility, personally.  (Hmm.  Perhaps my snarkiness in this very blog is evidence of this.)  America, as a culture, has a very difficult time with humility, as well.  It will take quite a bit to get us to shed these forms of self-centeredness.

My litmus test:  we will have made a huge step forward when my local newspaper comes out with a headline that says, “Centuries of Catholicism and Still No Filipino pope.”