Brazil___________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Not Protestant Yet
In Brazil, the first rigorous survey of changing religious affiliations reveals that the
growth of Evangelical Protestant groups has been grossly exaggerated.

By Alejandro Bermudez

During the late 1980s and the early 1990s, the questions that preoccupied Catholic leaders in Brazil were summed up in the title of a book by a North American sociologist, David Stoll: Is Latin America Turning Protestant?

In Brazil—as in other Latin American countries such as Guatemala, Ecuador, and Chile—the sudden proliferation of Evangelical Protestant groups, and their marked success in appealing to Catholics, had become crucial social phenomena. With the growth of the Evangelical movement in many traditionally Catholic countries, concern spread quickly across the continent. Many gloomy pastoral analyses predicted that by the opening of the third Christian millennium the Catholic Church would have lost her dominant status in Latin America. No one ever suggested that Catholicism would cease to be the largest single religious group in Latin America, but some analysts believed that within a few more decades Catholics could be a minority group, and the Church could be—as it already is in the United States—simply the largest among a host of Christian denominations.

Naturally, then, the challenge posed by Evangelical missionaries has been a top priority for Catholic pastors. Bishops looked for ways to stem the outward flow of the Catholic faithful into the Protestant churches. Loyal Catholic families organized their own resistance, and signs that read, “This is a Catholic home, please do not disturb,” began to appear on doorways in many Latin American cities.

Nevertheless, figures recently released in Brazil indicate that the growth of Evangelical Protestant groups may not be nearly as impressive as most people had come to believe. Paradoxically, the first concrete evidence that the claims about conversions of Catholics by Evangelical sects might be exaggerated came from within the Evangelical movement.

Inflated figures

Early in October, at the request of a group of Evangelical churches in Brazil, a Protestant agency known as Service for the Evangelization of Latin America (SEPAL) published the results of the first thorough investigation into the numerical growth of Protestantism in the country.

SEPAL had been asked to study the figures in order to settle some remarkable discrepancies in the statistics reported by the Evangelical denominations themselves. Until the SEPAL report was released, the figures on conversions reported by various Evangelical groups had suggested that at least 200,000 people every year, and perhaps as many as 500,000, were leaving the Catholic Church to join Evangelical denominations. Such figures were repeatedly cited by Evangelical spokesmen, and frequently cited by the secular media. By general consensus, it was agreed that Protestantism was growing more rapidly in Brazil than in any other Latin American country, with the single exception of Guatemala.

SEPAL’s report uncovered a quite different story. “At this point, we can say that the true number of Evangelicals in Brazil is no more than 19.6 million,” said SEPAL’s director, Lourenco Kraft. That is to say, Evangelicals are 14 percent of Brazil’s total population—just half of the most conservative figure usually cited in the Brazilian media.

The SEPAL report had an immediate impact in the secular media. The influential Brazilian daily Folha de Sao Paulo carried a front-page story on the report, under the eloquently cynical headline: “Evang-elastic figures.” Mincing no words about the results of the SEPAL investigation, the newspaper reported that the figures traditionally cited by Evangelical groups had been simply false.

SEPAL reached its conclusion after comparing the official national statistics provided by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) with the figures that the most important Evangelical denominations had reported to their headquarters in their official documents. SEPAL noticed that, according to IBGE figures, in 1998 only 19,575,727 of the 160 million people of Brazil identified themselves as Protestants.

Systematic exaggeration

SEPAL then tried to determine how some Evangelical groups had produced figures which were ten times as large as the official census figures. The problem, according to Kraft, was essentially one of methodology. He explained:

There are some denominations that count among their followers even those who have gone just once to visit one of their churches, thus inflating the total number, which they report to their headquarters as “confirmed.”

Other groups, Kraft believes, even count the people who have been visited by Evangelical missionaries in their homes, and have shown a relatively open attitude to the Fundamentalist message. “Of course, this can hardly be considered honest,” he adds.

It is no wonder, then, that Evangelical churches have produced grossly inflated membership figures. The book World Intercession, which purports to trace the growth of the Evangelical movement in Latin America, says that the Assemblies of God have 14 million followers in Brazil. The IBGE figures—the result of a national census only one year ago—show that just 2.4 million Brazilians claim to be members of that denomination. (The Assemblies of God became popular in Brazil through the work of American televangelist Jimmy Swaggert.) A dissident sect born out of the Assemblies of God, now known as the God Is Love movement, claims to have 2.7 million followers. SEPAL, again citing census figures, puts the number at 270,000—just 10 percent of the group’s claim.

Perhaps the most surprising figures reported by SEPAL involved the controversial Universal Church of God’s Kingdom—known locally as IURD. This denomination, founded by Edir Macedo, a former follower of an African-Brazilian cult, is by far the most powerful Protestant organization in the country; the group controls Brazil’s third-largest television network, and has 17 members sitting in the Brazilian parliament. Macedo has claimed to have more than four million followers, and few observers have disputed that claim. But the IBGE figures and the SEPAL investigation put the actual number of permanent IURD members at just over 300,000.

SEPAL’s Lourenco Kraft says that on the basis of his investigation, he now “strongly questions” the Evangelical claim that Protestantism is growing at a 5.2 percent annual rate in Brazil. He finds it even more difficult to believe that the Assemblies of God are growing at the 4 percent annual rate which they report. Statisticians questioned by Folha de Sao Paulo after the release of the SEPAL report said that it is very difficult accurately to chart the true growth rates of Evangelical Protestantism in Brazil. But on the available evidence they concluded that it would be “technically impossible” for the Evangelical movement to meet its goal of converting half of the Brazilian population by the year 2037.

The challenge remains

“It would be just stupid to think that Evangelicals no longer pose a pastoral challenge, just because they seem to be much less that what they claim,” said Bishop Karl Josef Rommer, an auxiliary in Rio de Janeiro, after the release of the SEPAL report. “But these new, realistic figures help put things in a better perspective for us and our pastoral mission.”

Bishop Rommer, along with many other Latin American bishops, has been arguing that the growth of the Protestant denominations is the consequence of a void left by the Catholic Church—due primarily to the shortage of priests and catechists, but also to inefficient, inadequate pastoral strategies.

For years, Catholic leaders in Latin America were in denial about the growth of Evangelical influence in the region. They blamed the trend on the massive infusions of money from North American Protestants, and the “dirty tricks” allegedly employed by US intelligence agents. But gradually the Latin American bishops recognized that the situation was more complex than such conspiracy theories suggested.

In October 1992, during a general assembly of the Latin American episcopate in the Dominican Republic, the bishops admitted that—while they still did see evidence of a US-inspired plan to change the Catholic face of Latin America—the existence of a new generation of native Evangelical ministers, with no connection to US-based religious organizations, made it evident that other factors were involved. In the final text of that assembly, know as the Santo Domingo Document, the Latin American bishops explicitly admitted that the Evangelical success was primarily a consequence of the fact that many lay Catholics had been abandoned. Far too many Catholics, the bishops acknowledged, had never received adequate instruction in the faith, and had been poorly attended by the available priests. This problem was evident throughout Latin America, they continued—in rural areas as well as metropolitan areas. The Santo Domingo Document also included an implicit criticism of liberation theology for focusing attention on social and ideological issues, while abandoning the direct pastoral care for Catholics, many of whom now looked to the Evangelical churches for spiritual nourishment.

Filling the void

In the eyes of Bishop Rommer, SEPAL’s debunking of the claims about skyrocketing Evangelical influence should not be taken as a sign that Catholics can put aside their concerns on that issue. He continues:

When I say that these figures put things in perspective I mean that they allow us to understand that the true problem is not the growth of the Evangelicals, but the remaining weak presence of the Catholic Church on a continent that claims to be Catholic. If the Evangelicals have not been as efficient in recruiting Catholics as they say, that should not be a reason to feel relief—or, even worse, joy. The void is still there, and the Catholic presence—not only in terms of geographical areas, but also in terms of the cultural environment—is still far from nurturing and strengthening the faith of baptized Catholics.

Bishop Fernando Antonio Figueiredo, Bishop of Santo Amaro (Brazil) argues that Rommer’s logic can be easily applied beyond the borders of Brazil. “With more or less intensity, Evangelicals have been posing the same challenge in other countries in the region, and with more or less exaggeration, they have been overstating their numbers in each country,” he says.

In fact, while the impact of Evangelism varies—from countries like Guatemala, where according to official figures they could account for 30 percent of the total population, to Argentina, where they are a nearly invisible 3 percent—Catholic leaders are aware that the public perception of Protestantism has undergone a dramatic change. Not long ago Protestants were viewed in Latin America as exotic foreigners; within the past two decades they have become a recognized influence on society in most Latin countries.

Like Bishop Rommer, Bishop Figueiredo believes that the problem posed by the Evangelical churches is “not so much their own presence by itself, but what this presence means.” He explains that “their presence around the region just makes it evident that our continent is not as ‘Catholic’ as we thought it was.”

Bishop Figueiredo says that the divorce between nominal Catholic faith and daily life is far from new to Latin America. On the contrary, he observes, that region’s rampant social injustice and public corruption testify to the fact that Catholics have not been carrying out their religious duties. Still, he believes, many lapsed Catholics recognized that they were straying from the faith, and “at least the ideal of one day becoming a ‘good Catholic’ was always there.” But when Catholics leave the Church to join a Protestant sect, the bishop reasons, it “means that Catholicism, as a personal and cultural project, is not appealing any more—and that is the true problem for us as bishops.”

Secularism: the true enemy

In his first public interview after being installed as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Mario Bergoglio approached that same problem with even more candor. A journalist had begun to frame a question by saying that Archbishop Bergoglio would become the Catholic leader in a city with a large Catholic majority. But the new archbishop interrupted the questioner, asking for “one moment” for a clarification:

You must mean a city with a nominal majority of Catholics, because culturally, Catholics are a minority. We are a minority in the country; we are a minority on the continent. Otherwise, how is it, in countries with a majority of Catholics, that laws opposed to the Catholic sense of morality and justice can be approved? So you really should ask me what I am planning to do in a city in which Catholics are a cultural minority.

Archbishop Bergoglio has made a concerted effort to spread the idea that Catholics are a cultural minority—that although Catholic faith is still part of the Latin American cultural tradition, it is almost totally absent from the public arena. Archbishop Stanislao Karlic of Parana, the president of the Argentine bishops’ conference, recently offered a similar analysis in speaking about Catholics who have joined Evangelical denominations:

Probably we never really lost them—because we never really had them. The fact is, a true Catholic needs the means and the disposition to live the consequences of his baptism. But in the middle of a secular society and in a Church with a poor outreach, a baptized Catholic can turn into almost anything—and of course turning into a Protestant is not the worst thing that can happen.

Bishop Rommer agrees. In fact he suspects that many nominal Catholics might also be claimed as members by several different Protestant groups at the same time, because they bounce from one denomination to another in search of the most rewarding spiritual experience. Some of these people eventually return to the Catholic Church, he reports, while others join exotic cults (which are beginning to multiply in Brazil), and still others become agnostics.

The SEPAL report, Bishop Rommer believes, will be a benefit to the Catholic Church if it helps to reduce the tendency of Catholic leaders to focus on “the Protestant issue,” and therefore leaves them free to focus on the most important challenge facing the Church. “If we want to prevent the Latin American Catholic culture from vanishing, the issue that we have to address is secularization and not Protestantism,” he says.

Alejandro Bermudez writes for the news agency ACI-Prensa, based in Lima, Peru.

Back to Catholic Information Center on Internet's Main Periodical Page

Back to Catholic World Report - November 1999 - Table of Contents