RESPONSE TO READING QUESTIONNAIRE

Allen Johnson

November 10, 1993

1. Bibliographical data:

Tongues of Fire by David Martin; Blackwell, Cambridge, Ma. 1990

2. Summary

In the forward to this book, noted sociologist Peter Berger, surveying the contemporary religious scene, states "... there are two truly global movements of enormous vitality. One is conservative Islam, the other conservative Protestantism" (p.xii). Yet while fundamentalist Islam receives considerable press, the explosion in numerical growth and resultant societal impact of evangelical Christianity is scarcely considered. David Martin's detailed sociological analysis of Protestantism in Latin America addresses this phenomenon, particularly in its Pentecostal form that is proving highly adaptable to reproduce itself within indigenous cultures. Throughout his study David Martin keeps focus on three significant questions: (1) What are the distinguishing characteristics of Protestantism in its various forms? (2) What social/cultural conditions facilitate the taking up of Protestantism? (3) What are the implications and effects of Protestantism upon a larger society?

3. Comment from a personal, critical perspective:

In a time when much of Western traditional Christianity, both Catholicism as well as mainline Protestantism, seems stagnant or even in decline, the emergence of vigorous expressions of Christianity deserves the attention of all Christians. While earlier growth waves of North American Protestantism, notably Puritan and later Methodist, were unable to successfully cross the cultural barrier to Latin America in reproducible, indigenous form, a third wave, Pentecostalism, has jumped the border with major, growing impact.

Pentecostalism is most successful in countries and regions where the Catholic Church

"... has been drastically weakened and yet the culture has remained pervasively religious" (p. 59).

In general, the people most receptive to Pentecostalism are those who are displaced from traditional lifestyles and settings, such as in the mass migrations from rural areas to urban settings, and who have some potential for modest economic upward mobility. For people eager and receptive toward new life beginnings, Pentecostalism offers new community, purpose, social support, as well as a discipline engendering thrift, family stability, temperance, and cathartic emotional release.

Those specifically engaged in mission strategy and church planting would do well to consider their target populations. Success is most likely to occur with forms that can be understood, assimilated, and culturally metamorphosed by people who are in social transition.

4. Two Quotes:

Why is social/political structural change in Latin America, particularly that connected with liberation theology, associated primarily with the Catholic Church, while the Protestant churches remain comparatively apolitical? "Protestantism initiates the era of the individual in his (or her) specifically religious incarnation, and the obverse of that is a view of society not easily amenable to holistic and structural understandings. A primary experience of unique personhood ... engenders an apolitical stance because it is affronted by all the large-scale social mechanisms [including liberation movements] ... which resist individual moral actions" (p. 266, emphasis mine).

Cultural and social transformation through Protestant influence is not by design, but rather as a consequence of "... a revolution within the self: an ecstasis, a breaking beyond the static ... It 'fills' and 'fulfils' personalities deeply infected in their physical and psychic being with dis-ease and unease ... dramatically symbolizing dissolution of the past in catalytic and cataclysmic recoveries of wholeness" (pp. 202-203). Thus, individuals are infused with life-transforming hope that cumulatively invigorates society.