Pentecostalism, Conversions, and Politics in Brazil

Religion (1995) 25, 135–145

Pentecostalism, Conversions, and Politics in Brazil

R I

The stereotype of all Latin American Pentecostals as political conservatives or apoliticalhas long been abandoned by scholars. But how Pentecostalism figures in the lives ofPentecostals so that some are indeed akin to stereotype and others are active, criticalcitizens involved in radical politics, remains a matter for debate. This paper argues thatvariation in type of citizenship among Brazilian Pentecostals may be understood notonly in terms of variations in religious culture but also in terms of different types ofconversion. It is proposed that reference to types of conversion, as distinguished bysome theologians, helps explain why Pentecostals who share elements of a commonreligious culture nevertheless differ in type of citizenship; and why some Pentecostalsand Catholics of the ‘base communities’, though different in their religious cultures,nonetheless share a common quality of critical citizenship.

IntroductionThere is now a large and growing literature on the politics of Pentecostals in LatinAmerica.1 This paper adopts the broad and inclusive notions, prevalent in thatliterature, of politics and political behaviour; likewise, it includes as Pentecostals thewide range of evangelical protestants usually so designated. But it is narrow in focusin two respects. For the most part, it refers only to Pentecostals in Brazil. And itexcludes detailed consideration of the role of Pentecostal churches in institutionalpolitics in Brazil. Its focus is on Brazilian Pentecostals (crentes, believers, they arecalled in Brazil) as citizens; on investigating the ways in which possibly divergentPentecostal religious cultures, as they are lived and developed by crentes, dispose themas citizens.Many observers of Pentecostals in Latin America have challenged the stereotype of

the uniformly politically conservative evangelical protestant. Phillip Berryman is onlythe latest challenger when he chides the Left for neglecting possible allies amongevangelicals in the struggle against doctrinaire neo-liberalism.2 The challenge has beendiverse, with a range of concessions to stereotype. Some, like Berryman when he pointsto participation by evangelicals in Brazil’s Workers’ Party, have mounted the challengeon the basis of observed behaviour in the formal political arena and local communityassociations.3 At least some Pentecostals in some circumstances, it seems from thesestudies, act out of Pentecostal moral vision to become critical citizens, adept not only atcritique of their political economies but at political action for change. Others haveargued that the pentecostal challenge to the political economic status quo might comenot so much from immediate, overt political behaviour, but over time, in the nurturingof a pentecostal counter-culture and the practices of a distinctive pentecostal way oflife.4 In David Martin’s richly developed argument, Pentecostals may vote conserva-tively, or appear to endorse the status quo by remaining apolitical or refusing to adoptcauses espoused by the Left; but in their world apart they acquire the values,expectations, motivations and disciplines that make them latent carriers of liberal-democratic transformation.On this dimension of difference among challengers I have tended to the latter

perspective, though I have not been surprised by the reports of Pentecostals as actors inradical politics, at least on the local scene. Burdick has taken me to task for failing tonote that Brazilian Pentecostals participate in movements for racial and gender justice as

0048–721X/95/020135 + 11 $08.00/0 ? 1995 Academic Press Limited

well as being, in some localities, stalwarts in Latin America’s largest and most vital partyof the left—the Brazilian Workers’ Party.5 These involvements, which he found amongthe Pentecostals he studied in the State of Rio de Janeiro, do not surprise me; but thePentecostals I studied—in a semi-rural town on the periphery of Greater Recife, andstudied most intensively in the years 1977–88—did not act in the same way as Burdick’s.The difference, I believe, is not a difference between Pentecostals or even betweenobservers, but one of time and place: in semi-rural towns of the north east of Brazil, atthe time, there were neither parties nor movements for radical change for Pentecostalsto join.In early 1993, a brief return to Campo Alegre (the name I give to the town where I

had done my earlier fieldwork), confirms this belief. Campo Alegre had become thecentre of its own municipality, the third municipal elections had just concluded, theWorkers’ Party had fielded candidates for council—and though Pentecostals had beenfar from a solid bloc, a few had been prominent in support of Workers’ Party candidates.Of particular interest to me was that my friend Severino, through whom I have beenexploring the complexities of Pentecostal political orientations since 1977, had, by allaccounts, skilfully mobilized support for a Catholic neighbour whose candidacy hadbeen endorsed by the Workers’ Party. Severino’s own account of his involvement willbe examined below. For the moment it is enough to note that the mere fact ofSeverino’s small involvement in radical politics suggests to me that the differencebetween observers who posit long-term latent radicalism and those who report actualinvolvement of Pentecostals in radical movement or party politics does not involve aserious difference about Pentecostalism and critical citizenship.Other differences are more important and will be pursued in this paper. These include

differences about the extent of variety in the politics of Latin American Pentecostals;differences about how Pentecostal belief and/or practice works to move and motivate atleast some Pentecostals towards critical citizenship; and differences about why somePentecostals remain close to stereotype in their politics while others are critical citizensor display a potential to become so. In the rest of this paper I will outline the positionsof several students of Brazilian Pentecostals and argue my own positions with muchreference to Severino.Emilio Willems in comparison with most more recent observers, minimizes variety in

the politics of Pentecostals.6 All Pentecostals, in the religious communities that theyconstruct, symbolically subvert the traditional social order. Political challenge spills overas an unintended consequence from Pentecostal religious life. In their religious beliefsand practices, the poor come to see themselves as having a status altogether different andhigher than that awarded them in the secular society or in the Catholic Church. Theylearn how to organize themselves without traditional hierarchy and acquire both theskills and the confidence to demand a more egalitarian order in society at large. So,echoing a powerful sociological account of the social origins of revolution, Willemsseems to imply that Pentecostals become critical citizens through their experience ofstatus incongruence: from the incongruence between their status and experience intheir religious world, on the one hand, and in the social, political and economicrelations of everyday life, on the other, arises a critical consciousness and the aspirationto achieve congruence. Insofar as there is variety among Pentecostals as Brazilian citizensit will arise from different strategies drawn from a Pentecostal repertoire as to howcongruence might be achieved. But, in possibly different ways, all Pentecostals will havea potential to contribute to the development of a less authoritarian, more democraticBrazil.

136 R. Ireland

John Burdick acknowledges variety in Pentecostal citizenship in the form ofconcessions to the old stereotype of Pentecostal conservatism and quiescence.7 He finds,nonetheless, a central Pentecostal logic which, political circumstances permitting, willfacilitate Pentecostal participation in social movements and lead individual members ofconservative-leaning collectivities like the Assembly of God, towards involvement inradical left party politics. Yes, the ordinary Pentecostals of Duque de Caxias, focused onthe Kingdom that is not of this world, and acutely aware of corruption, will usually notbother to cast votes; they shy away from the morally dubious wheeling and dealing oflocal politics; they seem disposed to accept poverty, valuing the simple, trusting virtuesof the poor exalted in the Gospels; they value God-ordained order and legitimateauthority and abhor the ‘confusion, violence, disorder’ that normally accompaniesradical struggle in the workplace or residential area in Brazil. But they do not denouncethe world entirely, regarding themselves obliged to strive for ‘improvement’ and‘cleanliness’ in the world; accepting poverty, they feel called to fight against unjust anddegrading immiseration; their ‘sacralization of poverty carries with it a compelling denialof legitimacy of the rich and powerful’.8

Here, then, in ‘the religious logic of pentecostalism’, in what Clifford Geertz wouldrecognize as Pentecostal religious culture, is room for ‘the development of a highlycritical social consciousness’ and for the social movement and party political actionBurdick describes. But these developments from religious culture through critical socialconsciousness to radical political involvement will be conditional on opportunity.Pentecostals, moved to critical consciousness by religious culture, will often stay out ofradical politics because Catholic activists marginalize them or because traditionalpatron–client politics blocks out alternative politics. Conversely, under conditions ofopportunity, Pentecostals will tend to act radically and effectively, unrestrained by theclerical caution or the emphasis on organic social harmony that reins in Catholic layactivists.I think Burdick is arguing that despite all the tensions and inconsistencies of

Pentecostal religious culture, the impulse towards critical citizenship will be experiencedby all Pentecostals, or at least by all Pentecostals of the Assemblies of God whichconstitute the largest single Pentecostal church in Brazil. My own studies of members ofthe Assembly of God in Campo Alegre lead me to disagree. Attempting a Geertzianexploration of Pentecostal religious constructions of past and future, I found not one butat least two Pentecostal logics that nurtured quite divergent political impulses. One ofthese, the religious culture of the sect crente as I called it, was very close to the singlelogic so well reconstructed by Burdick, though, as already noted, through the 1980s Ifound no instance of the sustained radical action in movements or party politics of thekind that Burdick found. The other, the religious culture of the church crente, movesand motivates members of the Assembly of God to eschew political involvement and toendorse conservative, even authoritarian agendas, if only as a consequence of lack ofinterest in developing critique of a rejected secular order.

Severino’s Critical CitizenshipThose Pentecostals I called church crentes are much less disposed than sect crentes likeSeverino to consider any public dimension in the private troubles of everyday life.9

These troubles are trials in which the individual crente is required to remain faithful tothe terms of salvation won for us by Jesus Christ against the powers of darkness. Thatfidelity is found and guaranteed in maximum immersion in the life of the temple, andrisked by political engagement, thought likely to be fruitless anyway, in the world

Pentecostalism and Politics in Brazil 137

beyond it. God’s time and space in the temple must be protected by leaders of thechurch who may enter into alliance with legitimate power to do so. The organizedchurch, for the church crente becomes the unit of citizenship, negotiating the structuresof unequal wealth, power and expertise for the prosperity of the church. In this way,time and space won for God might be maximized and, through that victory, theindividual’s chances of sustained fidelity to the terms of salvation increased. Theindividual church crente, then, is not concerned to exercise critical citizenship howeversharply aware of corruption, sin and injustice in the world at large. The church crente,from deep religious motivation, abdicates citizenship. In turn, church pastors in theCampo Alegre region, exercising a sort of collective citizenship for the victory of theirchurch, have negotiated and made alliances with local elites, and those alliances, ineffect, preserve the political–economic status quo.I have based my account of two Pentecostal religious cultures and the divergent types

of citizenship that emerge from them on individual case studies and observations ofcollective rituals in the Assembly of God in Campo Alegre. Severino has been my starcase of the sect crente. But because of his thoughtfulness, his conversational eloquenceand his prestige among all crentes in Campo Alegre, I have relied on him as a sort ofguide to the whole range of themes and variations in Pentecostal cultures and types ofcitizenship to be found among members of the Assembly of God in Campo Alegre.Until my most recent interviews with him, in December 1992 and January 1993, I hadregarded Severino as having worked out a coherent religious culture, drawing, withdeliberation, from a known repertoire of Pentecostal myth, belief and practice. Ithought of Severino living out of that religious culture, as those of us who have beeninfluenced by Geertz are wont to think of how religion works in everyday life. Hiscritical citizenship emerged from a Pentecostalism that I believed I, and he too, coulddistinguish from the Pentecostalism of those co-religionists who had abdicated theircitizenship. Variety among Pentecostals, on a scale from abdicated citizenship toSeverino’s critical citizenship, could be explained in terms of quite different Pentecostallogics or religious cultures.But reflection on my more recent interviews has led me to question whether I had

not relied too exclusively on clearly and permanently different religious cultures toexplain different types of citizenship. Those interviews, from which extracts arepresented below, led me to conclude:

1 That Severino does indeed continue to articulate a distinctive Pentecostal logic orPentecostal religious culture which accounts for the critical citizenship displayed inhis participation in the 1992 electoral campaign.

2 But over time, Severino’s religious culture develops: he draws on the widerPentecostal, or wider still, evangelical Christian repertoire as he reflects upon andreinterprets the myths, beliefs and religious orientations that inform his citizenship.

3 That it is inconsistent with Severino’s own discourse and incompatible with myknowledge of his biography to speak of his critical citizenship arising simply from hisliving out of a fixed religious culture, acquired once-and-for-all at the time ofconversion.

4 That the quality of Severino’s citizenship is to be accounted for not only by hisreligious culture but by the developmental quality of that culture. In the context ofwhat I have previously learned about Severino, the present interview suggests to methat Severino might be a case of continuing spiritual conversion; a kind of conversionthat several rather diverse Christian theologians may help us appreciate.

138 R. Ireland

5 That the differences between Severino and church crentes in quality of citizenshipmight be explained not only in terms of different Pentecostal religious cultures butalso in terms of different modes of conversion to Pentecostalism. These differentmodes of conversion mediate how Pentecostal convictions, shared across the differentreligious cultures, are expressed in everyday life.

In this paper I wish to elaborate points four and five. But some further details aboutSeverino and his situation, not evident in the interview extracts, must first be recorded.Severino, now approaching sixty years of age, became a crente as a young teenager. Hewas the son of a poor, itinerant share-cropper and rural labourer, and his own accountof his conversion suggests it was bound up with cutting free from many aspects of hisfather’s condition. Against the will of his father, young Severino attended night schoolto learn to read and write. Turning away from his father’s folk Catholicism, he startedattending the meetings which his Pentecostal teacher conducted after classes. Hisconversion, marked first by baptism of water, and later by the experience of baptism inthe Spirit, he describes as a slow process of ‘reading, reading, reading and thinking,thinking, thinking’. That process has continued.10

Severino’s conversion story is very different from most of those I heard from membersof the Assembly of God in Campo Alegre. Most members of the Assembly focus theirwhole religious biography around the story of a once and completed conversion; that ishow religious biography is told even in contexts other than the public testimonies wherewe might expect highly stylized accounts. In the usual telling, after a life of dissipationor feeling lost and directionless, there is an arrival. Conversion is an arrival at the truth,at the rules for good living, at a right relationship with God. It is a turning away fromthe world and a settling down into the world apart, the church, where the corruptingsocial engagements of the material world can be excluded as far as possible. In Severino’stelling of his religious biography, the one conversion figures less prominently and, usingimagery curiously similar to that favoured in primers and hymns of the Catholic basecommunities, he describes that conversion as a setting out on a journey. The conversionhas provided orientations and training for the journey, but the reading and thinkingmust go on: conversion has committed him to analysing a changing world, to talkingabout his changing responsibilities in the world, to working out what God would wanthim to do for the good of his changing neighbourhood. In this sense, Severino’sconversion is a continuing one.That does not mean that he does not share much of the simple, conservative theology

of his co-religionists. He reminds me of this, firmly, in the 1993 interview. I askedquestions which I hoped would prompt him to talk about any religious motivations inhis foray into electoral politics in the 1992 municipal elections. Severino’s first responsesindicate that he sees no connection. As a crente his responsibility in the community is ‘topreach, to counsel, to show that the Gospel is true, that it is salvation for all whobelieve’. Is there any relationship between preaching and the sort of action he has takenin the material world, I ask him. ’No, no’, he replies, ‘these are completely differentthings’.But he agrees that he is completely different from other crentes who would never

engage politically on the left as he has done because they believe that, as crentes theyshould keep out of politics.

Let’s put it this way. Many (crentes) don’t want to enter into political matters becausethey think there’s no need, that it’s not worthwhile. But people who live here can’t get


by without political involvement: I think the group can’t get by without politicalinvolvement because though not all politicians are good and true, there is a sort ofpolitician that we need.

Here Severino appears the mildest of political radicals. But he is beginning to indicatea significant religious difference—a difference with consequences for his politics—withthose many other crentes. He agrees with those others that it is not so good for a crenteto become a politician and that preaching the truth is prior and sufficient. But unlikethem, he feels a responsibility as a crente to know the material needs of his neighbours,to know who can best help in the political struggle to satisfy those needs, and, at least,help that person.The key to knowing and discerning, for Severino, is convivência, living and sharing

experience and talking about experience. Through convivência with all his neighbours,not just with fellow crentes, the crente learns about needs, about what sort of politicalaction is necessary, about legitimate alliances, about what to accept and reject in theworld. When I ask him whether his own political involvement is at odds with his needto withdraw himself from the material world he notes, first, that we (fellow workers andneighbours) have to work together.

I arrive at the conclusion that I’m not going to display myself as a crente, out there inthe world doing everything. But at the same time I can’t stop living with them(conviver), nor lending them my support. We can’t have a crente completely in theworld—I’m not going to go along with it completely, drinking and playing around,defrauding people. But I have to live (conviver) with them. I have to act politically tosucceed on the two sides: managing my journey, and at the same time defending anyperson as he deserves to be defended.

This theme of convivência as the basis for knowing and discerning right conduct is, I havecome to realize, at the heart of Severino’s religiosity. Those things that crentes must dofirst and foremost, seeking salvation and preaching the Gospel, require convivência.Severino, in the years that I have known him, has never spoken of his conversion as anarrival at the fully articulated rules for salvation or the complete message to be preached.It appears much more of a setting out with a responsibility to weigh what the rules meanin given situations and what constitutes witness and effective communication of the faithin everyday life. Salvation and evangelization, for Severino, are slow processes, requiringconstant analysis of the world, sharing life with one’s neighbours, talking with them.Here, in a way of holding and living the revelations of his first conversion, is the basisfor Severino’s religious differences with those co-religionists I have called the churchcrentes. And in those religious differences are the seeds of divergent types of citizenship.So in the first part of the interview, we see Severino affirming Pentecostal constants:

the separation of religion and politics, the primacy of evangelization and the seeking ofindividual salvation in the life of a crente, a respect for established authority in church,state and civil society. But in the rest of the interview we see him reflecting on hisresponsibilities in his community, puzzling about his social identity as he applies broadprinciples of New Testament morality to a complex, changing society. As he reflects,puzzles and analyses, his discourse is very similar to that of Catholic base community(CEB) leaders I have been interviewing in São Paulo and very dissimilar to that of thechurch crentes. And Severino, in the quality of his citizenship is much closer to CEBCatholics than to that large group of his co-religionists.

140 R. Ireland

But those Pentecostal constants are never far away. If the voice of the faith-informedcitizen sounds base-community Catholic, the voice of the man of faith remainsidentifiably Pentecostal. Knowing that Severino is neither carelessly eclectic nor proneto compartmentalize his life into discrete areas of activity, I have been led to considerthat Severino shares a mode of living out of religious faith and myth with the base-community Catholics despite his differences with them on articles of faith and religiousmyth. It is this mode of living faith I call continuing conversion. Cecilia Mariz,reflecting on similarities and differences among Pentecostals and base communityCatholics in Recife, has anticipated this line of thought. She notes the tendency towardspolitical conservatism that is deeply rooted in the constants of Pentecostal religiousculture; and she compares this to the critical citizenship that is nurtured in the religiousculture of the base communities.11 But she finds that there is a similar experience of andemphasis on a particular sort of conversion in both groups, and that this sort ofconversion stimulates critical citizenship because it:

involved a questioning of the world as taken for granted . . . and experiencing thelimits of a conventional commonsense view of life and becoming critical of it.

In the case of the Pentecostals:

the requirement of converting counteracts a fatalistic outlook on life by encouragingpeople to disagree with and rebel against reality as conventionally defined. It disposespeople to believe that their lives can be changed. Even Pentecostalism, with itsotherworldliness and its respect for constituted authority, fosters a critical, non-fatalisticoutlook on life that can work against the movement’s official posture of avoidinginvolvement in ‘worldly’ affairs.12

Types of conversionSocial scientists tend to operate with a notion of conversion that is too simple andundifferentiated to allow appreciation and further investigation of this point. We tend tothink of conversion as an event, a precise turning to a clearly defined set of beliefsand/or practices and/or commitments shared with a group of fellow devotees.Conversion is a problematic discontinuity demarcated by distinctive continuous stateseither side of the conversion happening—the solid-state before and the even moresolid-state after. The discontinuity, the conversion itself, demands explanation in termsof some psychological disposition or set of social circumstances. The consequences ofconversion, in terms of quality of social participation and citizenship will be eitherinclusive—by virtue of conversion the convert is incorporated as an endorsing,non-critical participant into the dominant economic and political projects of the society;or it will be exclusive—the convert, protected by high walls of practice and symbol, willbe excluded by choice and/or rule from active, critical participation.A distinguished North American evangelical Christian, Jim Wallis—a critical citizen

if ever there was one—has described inclusive, born-again Christian conversion, in itscontemporary American form, if only to reject it as the sort of conversion to whichChristians are called by the Gospels. In the evangelization that seeks and readily findsinclusive converts:

The Gospel message has been moulded to suit an increasingly narcissistic culture.Conversion is proclaimed as the road to self-realisation. Whether through evangelicalpiety or liberal therapy, the role of religion is presented as a way to help us uncover ourhuman potential—our potential for personal, social, and business success, that is.13


Those who are converted under this rubric are locked into a hallowed middle-Americanpresent. To Wallis the convert of the Gospels is called to critique of the present, toconcern with the social rather than the self, to historical analysis rather than psycho-analysis. Neither inclusive nor exclusive conversion will do. The biblical convert,turning away from radical inclusion in the world in one moment of conversion, in thenext turns back to transformation of the world. The biblical convert is called on to bean active critical citizen. For Wallis:

The goal of biblical conversion is not to save souls apart from history but to bring thekingdom of God into the world with explosive force; it begins with individuals but isfor the sake of the world.14

Wallis refers us to a similar notion of biblical conversion developed by the Catholictheologian of liberation, Gustavo Gutierrez.15

The Jesuit theologian, the late Bernard Lonergan, helps us put the convert back intothis sort of conversion. Lonergan distinguishes religious, moral, intellectual and affectiveconversion. But he discusses the integration of these in the ideal type of the fullyconverted subject. The subject, through what Lonergan conceives as the healing powerof God’s love, has had what he calls the creative vector in human consciousness released.Converts, whole persons engaged by the Word of God, are freed of the biases ofpsychological injury or hegemonic ideology or cultural conditioning, so that they havethe capacity and will to question the given social, political and economic order. Theirhorizons lifted by virtue of conversion, they will critically assess their society, and theywill be willing and able to imagine how the social arrangements they know might beother and closer to God’s human fullness than they are. And they will act (though Isuspect not so uniformly as the converts prefigured by Wallis and Gutierrez) as activesubjects in the construction of the kingdom-in-becoming. The spiritual or religiousconvert has not only had horizons lifted but has received the energy of love to persist inthe slow boring through thick boards which is active citizenship in modern, complexsocieties.16

Setting the judgements of faith and theology aside, Lonergan’s account of the fullyconverted Christian subject may help social scientists studying the citizenship ofPentecostals appreciate how Pentecostalism works in the lives of some Pentecostals,disposing them towards critical citizenship. I have certainly found it stimulating as I tryto understand Severino as Pentecostal and citizen. Comparing and contrasting Severinoto the ideal type of the fully converted subject suggests to me a way of interpreting thecentral puzzle presented by the 1993 interview. How does Severino’s retention of basicPentecostal beliefs and orientations, which he shares with his co-religionists the churchcrentes, figure in his sect crente religious culture? How do the shared beliefs andorientations, which among church crentes conduce toward abdicated citizenship, inSeverino at least, become compatible with if not conducive towards critical citizenship?Part of the answer, I now think, lies in the dynamic mode in which Severino holds allhis beliefs and orientations. Believing that the Kingdom is not of this world, Severinoalso feels called on to continue discerning good and evil in the world and to build on thegood. Retaining the simple and clear morality to which he turned at conversion,Severino is also drawn to go on working out what that morality requires of him in achanging world. The responsibility to turn away from the world of his father was notcompleted at the time of his teenage conversion: he must keep turning. Fidelity to theinitial conversion requires continuing conversion; and in Severino’s case, that continu-ing conversion seems to be most definitely to that lifting of horizons and freedom

142 R. Ireland

from biases that nurtures the critical citizenship of Lonergan’s fully converted butever-converting Christians.

ConclusionI want to suggest, of course, that Severino’s continuing, socially engaging conversiondoes not make him unique among Pentecostals but helps us understand one way inwhich Pentecostal religious culture works in the lives of many Pentecostals to disposethem towards radical citizenship. I suggest, though I cannot prove it, that Severinoexemplifies and illuminates the type of conversion which Mariz found motivatingPentecostals in Recife towards the radical citizenship of the CEB Catholics. Severino,I claim, is a Pentecostal akin to the radical Pentecostal citizens who speak in JohnBurdick’s publications; and I would suggest that Burdick’s cases of Dalila andMurao, who have advanced further into radical politics than Severino in differentcircumstances, speak the language of continuing, socially engaged converts when theydiscern the Pentecostal Devil in the social system and seek to create the conditions forevangelization in the political struggle against immiseration.But there are at least two other types of conversion which are to be found among

Pentecostals in Brazil. One seems close to the sort of conversion critically dismissedby Jim Wallis as un-biblical. I have not found this type among converts to theAssembly of God in Campo Alegre. But Paul Freston describes Pentecostal groupsand behaviour of some Pentecostals that indicates that type of conversion. Inparticular, the ‘third wave’ of Brazilian Pentecostalism, represented mainly by theUniversal Church of the Kingdom of God, calls for and receives converts totherapeutic healing and individual success in this life. Freston claims that the Church,in contrast to older Pentecostal groups, ‘offers a moralized version of the yuppiegambling ethic, an overnight flight to rapid enrichment’.17 At its upper levels,executives play hard at electoral politics:

the Universal Church shows a frankly pragmatic relation to politics, characteristic of abusiness empire expanding on many fronts.18

It seems likely that there are many members of the Universal Church who have soughtand found a once and complete, socially inclusive conversion of the type Wallis findscommon in the U.S.; and at higher levels in the Church, at any rate, this sort ofconversion is associated with non critical, pragmatic citizenship.The third type of conversion, found among the church crentes I studied in Campo

Alegre, is also once and complete, but socially exclusive. The church crente inconversion, turns away definitively from the world and the dangers of convivialengagement in it. The religious culture acquired or confirmed at conversion is livedout of as a complete and sufficient guide for salvation and for evangelization.Severino’s convivência is not only dangerous in the logic of this sort of convert, butunnecessary for the good crente life. Engagement in the world cannot be avoidedaltogether. But in some areas of life, most notably the political, it can and should bemediated by those entrusted with maintaining the church as the haven of salvation.So the church crente by virtue of a socially exclusive, once and complete conversion,is disposed to abdicated citizenship.The pairing of three types of Pentecostal conversion with three types of political

citizenship found among Brazilian Pentecostals is likely to turn out to be altogether too


neat, and much further research and analysis is needed to prove its worth. It might turnout that the notion of conversion need not be introduced to help us understand howelements of Pentecostal religious culture inform the politics of Pentecostals—that furtherunderstanding of the variety of Pentecostal religious cultures will help us account forvarious qualities of citizenship. At this point, however, I would persist with theinvestigation of the mediating role of types of conversion in Pentecostal citizenship, forseveral reasons.First, of course, there do indeed seem to be different types of conversion or turning

among Pentecostals, and I have found two dimensions of difference: the direction andquality of the turning regarding social relations in the world at large, and the quality ofthe turning itself as either a continuing process or a once and completed event. Second,examining the dynamics of different types of conversion helps explain differences in thequality of citizenship among Pentecostals I know, better than reference to variations inreligious culture alone. In particular, it helps with the problem, underlined recently bySeverino, that the sharing of elements of a basic Pentecostalism between sect and churchcrentes whom I had distinguished previously in terms of different religious cultures,rather weakens the static culture-alone explanation of different qualities of citizenship.The critical citizenship of sect crentes and the abdicated citizenship of the church crentesmay be more fully explained with reference to socially-engaging continuing conversionon the one hand, and socially exclusive once and complete conversion on the other, asmediators of how basic Pentecostal beliefs are lived. Third, consideration of types ofconversion helps explain, along lines suggested by Cecilia Mariz, why some CEBCatholics and some Pentecostals share critical citizenship as they live their still markedlydifferent albeit Christian religious cultures.

Notes1 For an excellent bibliography see Virginia Garrard-Burnett and David Stoll (eds), RethinkingProtestantism in Latin America, Philadelphia, PA, Temple University-Press 1993, pp. 211–224.

2 Phillip Berryman, ‘The coming of age of evangelical protestanism’, NACLA Report on theAmericas 27:6 (1994), pp. 6–10.

3 See Regina C. Novaes, Os Escolhidos de Deus, Rio de Janeiro, Marco Zero 1985; John Burdick,‘Struggling against the devel: Pentecostalism and social movements in Urban Brazil’, in VirginiaGarrard-Burnett and David Stoll (eds), op. cit, pp. 20–44; Cecilia Loreto Mariz, ‘Religion andpoverty in Brazil: a comparison of Catholic and Pentecostal communities’, Sociological Analysis,53:5, pp. 563–570.

4 See Emilio Willems, Followers of the New Faith, Nashville, TN, Vanderbilt University Press1967; David Martin, Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestanism in Latin America, London, BasilBlackwell 1990; Rowan Ireland, Kingdoms Come: Religion and Politics in Brazil, Pittsburgh,University of Pittsburgh Press 1991, chapters 3 and 4.

5 John Burdick, ‘The progressive Catholic Church in Latin America: giving voice or listening tovoices’, Latin American Research Review (1994), pp. 184–196.

6 Emilio Willems, op. cit.7 John Burdick, op. cit.8 ibid., p. 30.9 For a fuller discussion of differences between church and sect crentes see Rowan Ireland op. cit.,pp. 93–102; and ‘The crentes of Campo Alegre and the religious construction of Brazilianpolitics’, in Virginia Garrard-Burnett and David Stoll, op. cit., pp. 45–65.

10 Severino’s conversion story is related in greater detail in Rowan Ireland, 1991, op. cit.,pp. 61–67.

11 Cecilia Loreto Mariz, op. cit., pp. 64–65.12 ibid., p. 65.13 Jim Wallis, The Call to Conversion, Tring, Herts, Lion Publishing 1981, p. 28.14 ibid., p. 14.

144 R. Ireland

15 Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, Maryknoll, NY, Orbis Books 1973, p. 205.16 I am very much a novice in the study of Lonergan, having read only some of the collected

papers and several chapters of the seminal work Insight. My outline here is largely drawn fromsecondary sources, particularly Robert M. Doran, Theology and the Dialectics of History, Toronto,University of Toronto Press 1990, and the essays in W.J. Danaher (ed.), Australian LonerganWorkshop, Boston, University Press of America 1993.

17 Paul Freston, ‘Brother votes for brother: the new politics of Protestanism in Brazil’, in VirginiaGarrard-Burnett and David Stoll op. cit., p. 70.

18 ibid., p. 71.

ROWAN IRELAND, an Australian, is a Reader in Sociology at La Trobe Universityand has just completed a term as Director of La Trobe’s Institute of Latin AmericanStudies. He has spent several years doing fieldwork in Brazil for various projectsconcerned with religion, social movements and politics. His work on religion andpolitics was reported in his book Kingdoms Come: Religion and Politics in Brazil,Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press 1991.

School of Sociology & Anthropology, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria, Australia 3083


Documents

Pentecostalism, Conversions, and Politics in Brazil