Table Of ContentCHARIS: Christianity and
Renewal—Interdisciplinary Studies
Wolfgang Vondey and Amos Yong, Editors
Wolfgang Vondey (PhD, Marquette University) is Reader in Contemporary
Christianity and Pentecostal Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK.
He is the author and editor of several books and publications on themes
of the global renewal movements, including aspects of pentecostalism and
pentecostal theology, ecumenical theology, ecclesiology, pneumatology, and
the intersection of theology and science. He is the organizer of the annual
conference in Renewal Theology.
Amos Yong (PhD, Boston University) is professor of Theology and Mission,
and director of the Center for Missiological Research at Fuller Theological
Seminary in Pasadena, California. He is the author and editor of more than
thirty books and has published in diverse fields of study, including widely on
themes related to Christianity and renewal, pentecostalism, hermeneutics,
pneumatology, interfaith dialogue, disability studies, and the intersection of
theology and science. He is coeditor of the Pentecostal Manifestos series and
Studies in Religion, Theology and Disability series.
Christianity and Renewal—Interdisciplinary Studies provides a forum for
scholars from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, various global locations,
and a range of Christian ecumenical and religious traditions to explore issues
at the intersection of the pentecostal, charismatic, and other renewal move-
ments and related phenomena, including:
● the transforming and renewing work of the Holy Spirit in Christian tradi-
tions, cultures, and creation;
● the traditions, beliefs, interpretation of sacred texts, and scholarship of the
renewal movements;
● the religious life, including the spirituality, ethics, history, and liturgical
and other practices, and spirituality of the renewal movements;
● the social, economic, political, transnational, and global implications of
renewal movements;
● methodological, analytical, and theoretical concerns at the intersection of
Christianity and renewal;
● intra-Christian and interreligious comparative studies of renewal and revi-
talization movements; and
● other topics connecting to the theme of Christianity and renewal.
Authors are encouraged to examine the broad scope of religious phenomena
and their interpretation through the methodological, hermeneutical, and
historiographical lens of renewal in contemporary Christianity.
Under the general topic of thoughtful reflection on Christianity and
renewal, the series includes two different kinds of books: (1) monographs
that allow for in-depth pursuit, carefully argued, and meticulously docu-
mented research on a particular topic that explores issues in Christianity and
renewal; and (2) edited collections that allow scholars from a variety of dis-
ciplines to interact under a broad theme related to Christianity and renewal.
In both kinds, the series encourages discussion of traditional pentecostal
and charismatic studies, reexamination of established religious doctrine and
practice, and explorations into new fields of study related to renewal move-
ments. Interdisciplinarity will feature in the series both in terms of two or
more disciplinary approaches deployed in any single volume and in terms of a
wide range of disciplinary perspectives found cumulatively in the series.
PUBLISHED
Wolfgang Vondey (ed.), The Holy Spirit and the Christian Life: Historical,
Interdisciplinary, and Renewal Perspectives (2014).
Nimi Wariboko, The Charismatic City and the Public Resurgence of Religion:
A Pentecostal Social Ethics of Cosmopolitan Urban Life (2014).
Leah Payne, G ender and Pentecostal Revivalism: Making a Female Ministry
in the Early Twentieth Century (2015).
Né s tor Medina and Sammy Alfaro (eds.), P entecostals and Charismatics in
Latin America and Latino Communities (2015).
Pentecostals and
Charismatics in Latin
America and Latino
Communities
Edited by
N é stor Medina and
Sammy Alfaro
PENTECOSTALS AND CHARISMATICS IN LATIN AMERICA AND LATINO COMMUNITIES
Copyright © Néstor Medina and Sammy Alfaro, 2015.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-55059-0
All rights reserved.
First published in 2015 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States— a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-56847-5 ISBN 978-1-137-55060-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137550606
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pentecostals and charismatics in Latin America and Latino
communities / edited by Néstor Medina and Sammy Alfaro.
pages cm.—(Christianity and renewal—interdisciplinary studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Pentecostalism—North America. 2. Pentecostalism—Latin America.
3. Hispanic Americans—Religion. 4. Latin Americans—North America—
Religion. 5. Latin Americans—Religion. I. Medina, Néstor, editor.
BR1644.P463 2015
2789082—dc23 2015014411
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: October 2015
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Introduction Renewal across the Americas:
Contours, Present Challenges, and Future Prospects 1
N é stor Medina and Sammy Alfaro
Part I South American Conversations
1 The Power of the Spirit and the Indigenization
of the Church: A Latin American Perspective 1 7
Juan Esteban Sep ú lveda
2 Christian Renewal and the Pentecostal-Charismatic
Movement in Venezuela 3 5
Jody B. Fleming
3 Toward a Transformative Latin American Pentecostal-
Charismatic Social Ethics: An Argentine Perspective 4 9
Ryan R. Gladwin
Part II Central American Conversations
4 Translating Pentecost into Transformed Communities
in El Salvador: Social Engagement as a New and
Contested Ritual 6 7
Ronald Todd Bueno
5 No More Violence! Renewal Theological Reflections
on Violence in the Context of Honduras and
Its Immigrants to the United States 8 1
Daniel Alvarez
6 Revivalism as Revolutionary, Reactionary, or
Remote? Pentecostal Political Heterogeneity in
Sandinista Nicaragua 9 7
Calvin L. Smith
vi Contents
7 Transnationalism and the Pentecostal Salvadoran Church:
A Case Study of Misi ó n Cristiana Elim 1 11
Robert A. Danielson
Part III North American and the
Caribbean Conversations
8 Between Two Worlds: Hispanic Youth Ministry in the
United States 1 27
Daniel A. Rodr í guez
9 History, Renewal, and El Camino de la Leche 1 41
Neomi DeAnda
10 The Social Impact of the 1916 Pentecostal Revival in
Puerto Rico 1 57
Jenniffer Contreras-Flores
Part IV Cross-Disciplinary Conversations
11 Blessed Are the Prosperous but Woe to the Weak:
The Influence of Socioeconomic Status on Biblical
Hermeneutics 1 69
Esa Autero
12 Latin American Liberation and Renewal Theology:
A Pneumatological Dialogue 1 85
Brandon Kertson
13 A Latina/o Pentecostal Response to the
McDonaldization Process of the Church in the
United States 1 99
Wilmer Estrada-Carrasquillo
14 First Steps toward a Pentecostal Political Theology:
Augustine and the Latin American Context 2 11
Eric Patterson
Conclusion Renewal across the Americas: Thinking
Globally from a Local Context 2 27
N é stor Medina and Sammy Alfaro
List of Contributors 2 37
Index 239
Introduction
Renewal across the Americas
Contours, Present Challenges, and
Future Prospects
N é stor Medina and Sammy Alfaro
T
he Americas 1 are undergoing a process of profound reconfigura-
tion. This collection of essays suggests that religion, especially renewal
movements, plays a crucial role in this rapid process of change. Though
the development of pentecostal-charismatic2 movements in Latin
America “did not become ‘news’ in the academic community outside
of Latin America until around the 1990s,” 3 today, across the Americas,
renewal studies has become an established field of research. 4 Scholars
from many disciplines (sociologists of religion, anthropologists, politi-
cal scientists, etc.) have and will continue to study the heterogeneous
phenomena of renewal movements in the Americas for years to come.
Research in the field of renewal studies was earlier undertaken largely
by outside scholars, but now, there is a shift taking place reflected in
the growing lineup of Latin American and Latina/o scholars who are
studying their own traditions and contributing to this complex field.
This collection of essays embodies this intellectual shift.
Another key shift has also been taking place simultaneously. Early
works such as those by Lalive D’Epinay and Emilio Willens stayed
well within strictly sociological and anthropological frames. 5 Today
scholars are crossing disciplinary boundaries in order to have a better
understanding of the present interwoven reality of renewal movements
in Latin America. Many hope to shed light on and correct earlier mis-
conceptions of the movement. This interdisciplinary methodological
shift has contributed to a rich production of scholarly works exploring
the multifaceted nature of renewal in the Americas.
2 Néstor Medina and Sammy Alfaro
As part of these shifts, a greater understanding of the social, politi-
cal, economic, and cultural factors that contribute to the growth and
expansion of renewal in the Americas is also emerging. For example,
many today find Lalive D’Epinay’s Weberian analysis of Methodist
pentecostalism in Chile problematic; the phenomenon is more com-
plex than the expression of a social escapism and “social strike” by
which the socially disenfranchised withdraw from social engagement
by adopting apolitical attitudes and focus on an utopic eschaton. 6
Similarly, the comparative work of Emilio Willems, which is equally
Weberian, now seems too simplistic. It reduces the then renewal in
Chile and Brazil to a movement attractive to people simply because
it provided some sense of order to those experiencing conditions of
social anomie.7 The reductionist work of these scholars became overly
influential simply because there was so little research available at that
time; “Lalive d’Epinay’s work in particular became for many outside
observers a ‘safe- haven’ paradigm for explaining pentecostalism.” 8
Recent scholarship since the 1990s is much more in tune with
the immediate context and has helped explain some of the complex
dynamics behind the phenomenal growth of renewal movements in
Latin America and the Caribbean and are taking a life of their own
among Latinas/os in the context of the United States. 9 An exhaus-
tive analysis of the voluminous literature goes beyond the scope of
this brief introduction. What follows is a mapping out of the complex
issues and themes that have emerged but that help putting in context
this collection and the broader study of pentecostal-charismatics in
Latin America and among Latinas/os.
The newer research fundamentally challenges the assumption that
renewalists foster political conservatism and political nonengagement.
Contrary to earlier proposals—that pentecostals-charismatics tend to
gravitate to the more conservative views of the political right 10 —the
later ones show that renewal movements embody a wide range of
political expressions. For example, Timothy Steigenga, in his study
on Costa Rica and Guatemala, challenges Amy Sherman’s T he Soul of
Development for presenting entecostals and Protestants as more politi-
cally conservative and quiescent, a view he claims is simply unsus-
tainable.1 1 Even more dramatic is Calvin Smith’s demonstration that
pentecostals in Nicaragua played a central role in shaping the country’s
political landscape during the Sandinista regime. 1 2 In another exam-
ple of political engagement, Virginia Garrard-Burnett, in her work
on Guatemala, reminds us that conversion can go hand-in-hand with
political maneuverings. 1 3 Similarly, argues Kevin O’Neal, in a context
where there is a lack of social services, and where the government’s
Contours, Challenges, and Prospects 3
strategies, however liberal and popular, discharge responsibility for the
present state of affairs upon the people, neo-pentecostals are emerg-
ing as model citizens. 1 4 In fact, he notes that, in Guatemala, neo-
pentecostals represent the most sophisticated efforts in the country at
exemplifying citizenship in the postwar environment. 15
In no place else are the contested spaces of citizenship more polar-
ized than in the context of Cuba. While not often documented,
pentecostals in Cuba are divided between groups that actively sup-
port “Castro’s Revolution” and those who adamantly oppose it. 1 6
Moreover, it has also been argued that, in the United States, some
pentecostal beliefs contribute to immigrant integration (read assimila-
tion) into their newly adopted country. 1 7 All of these examples dem-
onstrate the complex, contested, and at times difficult to decipher
context of pentecostal-charismatic political engagement; they show
that uncritical generalizations concerning renewal political (dis)
engagement are virtually impossible in the context of Latin America
and among Latinas/os.1 8
We are also reminded that traditional stereotypes of renewal
movements as socially withdrawn betray the unique ways in which
these movements directly impact the social landscape. Not too long
ago Donald Miller and Tetsunao Yamamori documented the poly-
morphous expressions of renewal social engagement worldwide. 1 9
According to them, though these various expressions do not follow
traditional patterns of explicit and militant struggle for social justice
and social action, they nevertheless change their social contexts. In
Latin America and Latina/o contexts too, the impact of renewal
movements is evident. For instance, Elizabeth Brusco shows that pen-
tecostalism in Colombia can be understood as a women’s movement
that results in the domestication of males. 2 0 On a different note, Jos é
Leonardo Santos argues, acknowledging an operative hierarchy of the
sexes in the movement, that what takes place among Evangelicals and
pentecostals in El Salvador is in fact a reconfiguration of the male cul-
ture associated with violence, drinking, and promiscuity replaced by a
different understanding of masculinity centered around Jesus as a role
model for the way men ought to conduct themselves in society, church,
and in relation to their families.2 1 What is clear in this long and pains-
taking process of reconfiguration of gender relations, and in contradic-
tion to criticisms of renewal movements as oppressive to women, 22 is
that many women find spaces in renewal movements in Latin America
and among Latinas/os where they can operate and serve in high posi-
tions of leadership.2 3 In fact, women play a central role in renewal
movement leadership despite often encountering strong opposition. 2 4
