Beginning with the often overlooked fact that the establishment of one of the largest Pentecostal churches in the world, Brazil's Assembleia de Deus (Assembly of God), was not the result of missionary activity by the U.S.-based Assemblies of God, this paper makes creative use of Southern Baptist missionary sources to examine the first twenty-five years of Pentecostalism in Brazil. Considering not only what the first Pentecostal missionaries did but also what they did not do, it suggests the following reasons for the extraordinary growth of the emergent movement: early Pentecostals had neither the funds nor the theological need to focus on education; their personal class affiliations did not incline them to privilege efforts to evangelise the upper classes; there was no strong female Pentecostal missionary presence; and the Pentecostals were able to “poach” from the Baptists' “flock.” The paper concludes that greater attention needs to be paid to the specific historical circumstances of Pentecostal growth in Brazil, especially during the decade of the 1930s.

https://cdr.lib.unc.edu/downloads/sn009z284

The Holy Rollers Are Invading Our Territory : Southern Baptist Missionaries and the Early Years of Pentecostalism in Brazil

L'article examine la portee politique des activites que deploya, de 1916 a 1930, le Comite interconfessionnel pour la cooperation en Amerique latine, fonde par des dirigeants de la tendance Social Gospel. L'accent porte sur la mission methodiste au Perou qui propagea les principes du Social Gospel et soutint les politiques du Comite. L'introduction du christianisme progressiste au Perou y est analysee dans le contexte des orientations ideologiques en vigueur aux Etats-Unis, notamment celles qui impriment au reformisme un cachet franchement «nord-americain», et en rapport avec la politique etrangere vis-a-vis l'Amerique latine. Les activites missionnaires y sont replacees dans la dynamique de la formation socio-economique peruvienne et des changements ideologiques. L'article discute de l'influence du protestantisme evangelique et des doctrines du Social Gospel sur Victor Raul Haya de la Torre et, a travers lui, sur l'A.P.R.A.

Social Gospel, the Committee on Cooperation in Latin America, and the APRA: The Case of the American Methodist Mission, 1920–1930

The great surprise of modem South America has been the drastic reinvigoration of historic Venezuela. For South Americans generally, it carries more hope than the experiences of Costa Rica and Mexico.

Peter Calvert

Papers

South America Today