Paul Palma: Grassroots Pentecostalism in Brazil and the United States
Paul J. Palma, Grassroots Pentecostalism in Brazil and the United States: Migrations, Missions, and Mobility (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022) 417 pages, ISBN 9783031133701.
In Grassroots Pentecostalism in Brazil and the United States: Migrations, Missions, and Mobility, Dr. Paul J. Palma presents a history of the major Pentecostal movements in Brazil, beginning with how immigrants to the United States who encountered Pentecost took the full gospel message to Brazil, how the denominations were established and how they grew and adapted over time, and how these movements in Brazil then proceeded to reach out beyond their Latin American borders in reverse missions to North America and Europe.
The book consists of ten chapter comprising two major sections: “Classical Pentecostalism in Transnational Perspective,” and “Classical Pentecostalism and Mobility: Challenges and Prospects.” The first part deals with the history of the founding and expansion of Brazilian Pentecostal groups, while the second part deals with contemporary challenges facing the denominations profiled in this book.
Brazil was not as staunchly Catholic as the former Spanish colonies in Latin America.
The Pentecostal emphasis on direct encounters with the Spirit of God resonated with many rural Brazilians.
Such intense desire to seek for and know God seems to be a recurring theme in the spread of Pentecostal belief and practice around the world.
In the third chapter, Palma discusses the founding and early growth of Pentecostal bodies in Brazil. Initially, Pentecost in Brazil was concentrated among European and U.S. immigrants to the nation. Later migrations of rural Brazilians to the cities for work brought Portuguese speakers into contact with the Pentecostal churches made up primarily of immigrants from other countries. Both groups being “outsiders” often led to solidarity based on the lived experience of migration, whether across or within national borders. Palma notes that “Pentecostalism supplied a ‘common language,’ holding out to the displaced agrarian migrant the promise of solidarity and belonging” (68). In contrast to the missions outreaches of mainline Protestant denominations, which focused on spreading North American versions of Christianity among the lower-middle class of Brazil, the Pentecostal groups “came to be religious-social phenomena by, of, and among the poor, literally a Brazilian religion of the Brazilian migrant poor” (82).
Assimilation: once second and third generations emerge, who are more accustomed to the host country language and culture, it is hard for groups that focus on immigrant populations to maintain their numbers and growth if there is a downturn in immigration numbers from their home countries.
In the fifth chapter, Palma discusses the growth of Brazilian Pentecostalism beyond the urban and rural poor into “reverse missions,” where the country that was once the recipient of missions efforts ends up sending missionaries back to the countries that previously sent them workers. By 2007, Brazil was sending out more foreign missionaries than Britain or Canada (105). Both the Italian-rooted Christian Assemblies and Christian Congregations, and the Brazilian Assembleia de Deus (Assemblies of God, hereafter AD) founded by Swedes Vingren and Berg, now have congregations in the United States, from which their founders left to minister in Brazil. Just as these group started in Brazil by working among Italian and Swedish immigrants to that country, their U.S. branches started out ministering to Brazilians who had migrated to the States for economic reasons. One church in San Jose, California, that traces its roots to the Brazilian AD (but is independent from that organization) has even planted a church in Santa Catarina in Brazil, adding another half-circle to the missions movement that had already gone full-circle (118).
Part II of the book begins with chapter six, which discusses various aspects of church growth in Brazilian Pentecostalism. In the first half of the twentieth century, the Italian-founded Christian Congregations and the Swedish-founded Assemblies of God followed fairly parallel growth trajectories. After that, however, the CC’s growth rate plateaued, while the AD’s growth curve climbed steeply upward (though it is noted that the AD has seen a decline in membership of over two million members between 2010 and 2015). This chapter dives deep into various factors that contributed to these varying growth patterns, and careful readers will be on the lookout for how those issues may impact the growth or decline of their own church bodies. Special attention is given to the role that the move to autochthonous leadership had on church growth, with the groups that more readily handed leadership over to Brazilian nationals experiencing faster growth.
The seventh chapter takes a look at various forms of church polity in Pentecostal groups in both Brazil and in the United States. The Christian Congregations churches have held steadfastly to a model of unpaid, volunteer clergy. “Except for assistance with missionary travel expenses, ministerial office holders and other administrative personnel are expected to sustain themselves fiscally through their own means” (152). This seems very much in line with what I have heard about the early Pentecostal church planters in the United States, who were generally bivocational. The Brazilian Assemblies of God, on the other hand, has a much more episcopal structure, with authority centralized in the office of the pastor-presidente, who at times exercises authority at the level of a “Pentecostal pope” (158). Palma also discusses some of the differences between how Pentecostal groups incorporate ideas from liberation theology in their work with the poor and the presentation of those in classical Roman Catholic liberation thought.
Brazilian movements have lessened the involvement of women in the public worship service over time.
Chapter nine touches on issues of holiness ethic, separatism, and political involvement. Holiness codes tend to be stricter in rural, less affluent areas, while a bit more latitude is shown among the economically prosperous and believers in urban spaces. Politically, while Catholics and mainline Protestants have become less politically involved in Brazil over time, Pentecostals— especially within the AD— have moved in the opposite direction, in contrast to the early apoliticism of Pentecostal groups in the country: one third of the thirty Protestants elected to the national congress in 1994 were members of the AD. Palma foreshadows the involvement of Pentecostals in the country’s 2022 presidential election, a fact that has been borne out in news reports after the publication of this book. Pentecostals were also reportedly involved in the violent protests in the capital, Brasilia, on January 8, 2023, that eerily echoed facets of the January 6, 2021 events in Washington, D.C. (which saw many neo-pentecostals active in rallies in the weeks just before that event).
In his concluding tenth chapter, Palma summarizes how the different ethnic backgrounds of the founders of Pentecostalism in southern (Italian) and northern (Swedish) Brazil impacted the polity, practices, and politics of the groups they established, yet this ethnic factor is often overlooked. However, despite their origins being traced to European-American immigrants, the CA, CC, and AD movements today are all undoubtedly Brazilian in character. Considering the reverse missions from Brazil to North America and Europe, Palma notes that “the story of Brazilian classical Pentecostalism illustrates the vibrant multidirectional character of twenty-first-century Christianity” seen in many parts of the world (235).
Knowing where Pentecostalism has come from is vital for those doing Pentecostal church work today.
Anyone interested in the development of Pentecostal churches around the world will find this book to provide significant insights into the largest Spirit-filled movement within the borders of a single country today. Knowing where Pentecostalism has come from is vital for those doing Pentecostal church work today, as the roots of a movement, while not exhaustively deterministic of its future, do continue to exert influence. In addition, seeing where other groups may have taken missteps that hampered the mission of the church can help contemporary workers to be on guard against similar errors.
Reviewed by Brian Roden
Category: Church History, Spring 2023