PneumaReview.com: Will you please introduce us to your newest book?

Paul Palma: This book offers an historical and comparative profile of classical Pentecostal movements in Brazil and the United States in view of their migratory beginnings and transnational expansion. Pentecostalism’s inception in the early twentieth century, particularly in its global South permutations, was defined by its grassroots character. In contrast to the top-down, hierarchical structure typical of Western forms of Christianity, the emergence of Latin American Pentecostalism embodied stability from the bottom up―among the common people. While the rise to prominence of the Assemblies of God in Brazil, the Western hemisphere’s largest (non-Catholic) denomination, demanded structure akin to mainline contexts, classical Pentecostals such as the Christian Congregation movement cling to their grassroots identity. Comparing the migratory and missional flow of movements with similar European and US roots, in this book, I consider the prospects for Brazilian Pentecostals with an eye on the problems of church growth and polity, gender, politics, and ethnic identity.

PneumaReview.com: What is the significance of the word “grassroots” in the title?

PneumaReview.com: In the book you refer to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Chicago in 1907-08. Please tell our readers a little bit about the history of that move of God.

PneumaReview.com: Some key missionaries went out from Chicago to Brazil, who were they?

Paul Palma: Two Chicagoan missionary teams were integral in the founding of Brazilian Pentecostalism. The first was a group of Italian migrants and onetime Presbyterians. Luigi Francescon, accompanied by Lucia Menna and Giacomo Lombardi, arrived in South America in 1909. The Italians helped found the Brazilian Christian Assembly (CA) and Christian Congregation (CC) movements. The second was a duo of Baptist Swedes, Daniel Berg and Gunnar Vingren. The former Baptists Berg and Vingren arrived in Brazil in 1910 on their way to founding the Brazilian Assemblies of God (AD).

PneumaReview.com: What factors contributed to making their ministries so fruitful?

PneumaReview.com: As you have pointed out in the book their work is still evident today in the ongoing ministry of three denominations. Please tell us briefly about each.

Paul Palma: Despite challenges, each of the denominations are bearing fruit today. The CC is now a decidedly international movement with congregations throughout Latin America, North America, Italy, and beyond. The AD remains the largest Western (non-Catholic) denomination with a membership of about 21 million, but its expansion has tapered over the last decade due to structural and political shifts. The CA endures throughout Latin (and North) America but has splintered into several different denominations, including the Pentecostal Christian Church, the Bible Christian Church, the Villa Devoto CA, and the CA God is Love.

PneumaReview.com: You highlight the fact that two of the denominations trace their roots back to Luigi Francescon. What issues caused the movement he started to divide into two groups?

Paul J. Palma, Grassroots Pentecostalism in Brazil and the United States: Migrations, Missions, and Mobility (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022).

Paul Palma: The chief difference between the Francescon-founded CC and CA is a regional one. Francescon pioneered the CC on Brazilian soil. A year before his 1910 arrival in Brazil, he founded the CA in Buenos Aires, Argentina. CA churches slowly made their way into Brazil and recently reunited through inter-ecclesial efforts that harken to their Chicagoan heritage. While Francescon concentrated on the CC in Brazil (based in São Paulo), another cohort of missionaries from Chicago filled the need for workers in Argentina, and the movement there developed peculiarities of its own. For instance, while the CC readily expanded among the native Portuguese population, the CA remained ethnically Italian and insulated from other churches well into the twentieth century.

PneumaReview.com: Do the Pentecostal churches in Brazil have different practices or priorities than most non-Brazilian Pentecostal churches in the United States?

Paul Palma: Besides the prevalence of Portuguese-speaking members, there are subtle cultural differences. The CC churches are distinguished from most other Pentecostal churches by their insistence that women wear head coverings (the “veil”) during public worship. You will also find less urgency for seminary training for ministers among the Brazilian churches. While Brazilian Pentecostals now encourage seminary training, they lacked the resources for educational institutes for many years. For the AD, because of reasons tied to its Swedish roots, even when educational resources were available, it favored a short-term Bible School training model over formal seminaries.

PneumaReview.com: At different points in the text, you mention “reverse mission,” for those who may be unfamiliar with that term please explain what it means.

PR

Additional Resources

Read the review of Grassroots Pentecostalism in Brazil and the United States by Brian Roden

Watch the book launch introduction by Paul Palma

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.

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).

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.

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).

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

Hadje Cresencio Sadje, a Filipino scholar doing Ph. D. studies at the University of Vienna, contributes to global contextual methodologies through his monograph, Grassroots Asian Theologies: Doing Pentecostal Theology in the Philippine Context. Sadje attempts to integrate Liberation theology and Pentecostal theology in the Philippine context (10), noting that both recognize grounded realities and contextual experiences as loci for theologizing. He agrees with Asian Pentecostal theologian Simon Chan, whose seminal book, Grassroots Asian Theology, argued for the ecclesial experience in theologizing (12). Whereas Chan offered a Pan-Asian approach, Sadje particularizes his study within the Filipino context. He does this by analyzing Filipino theologies, both Pentecostal and Liberationists, to draw out an alternate theological method for developing a holistic grassroots Filipino theology.

In the book, Sadje constructs his alternate theological method by offering an exposition that spans four chapters. In chapter one, he discusses Chan’s methodological propositions for developing Asian grassroots theology. He notes Chan’s critique of elite theologies vis-à-vis Pentecostal grassroots theologies (11). As Sadje points out, Chan argues for replacing elite theologies (not grounded on the grassroots lived realities) with the ecclesial experience (derived from the lived realities of both theologians and laity).

In chapter three, Sadje reviews Filipino Liberation theology, especially Eleazar Fernandez’s magnum opus Towards a Theology of Struggle, which offers a theological reading of the Philippines considering its colonial past and socio-political challenges (64-65). As in the previous chapter, Sadje compares Chan’s ecclesial experience with Fernandez’s hermeneutic of the underside (67-69). Interestingly, Chan and Fernandez agree that “theologizing is a community affair” (67). Fernandez, however, specifies the interlocuters of theologizing as “the poor, marginalized, and oppressed Filipino people” (69).

Finally, in chapter four, Sadje converges ideas deduced from previous chapters to offer “alternative guidelines for doing grassroots Asian theologies” (75). After explaining the challenges in doing Filipino theology, he then adopts the Critical Asian Principle (CAP) espoused by the Associate for Theological Education in Southeast Asia (ATESEA) (78). Despite criticisms against the CAP, Sadje affirms its continuing relevance in developing holistic grassroots theologies. Moreover, he offers four considerations in developing Filipino grassroots theology: the necessity of contextualization, political and economic engagement, ecological/environmental response, and ecumenical-interreligious engagement (90).

In the final analysis, Sadje points to the overlap between Liberation and Pentecostal theology, commenting that both lean toward grassroots theologizing to develop a living theology. Indeed, local theologies today generally lean towards theologizing with grounded realities in mind. For Sadje, Chan’s ecclesial experience, Ma’s Pentecostal method, Fernandez’ theology of struggle, and ATESEA’s Critical Asian Principle, when cumulatively considered, may lead to deeper theological insights in the Filipino context (90-91).

Sadje’s expositions are insightful. He does a fair job of promoting the move toward contextualization and proposing a framework for constructing theologies in the Filipino context. As a way forward, I encourage sufficient consideration of Pentecostal distinctives in his guidelines. To be considered a successful integration of Liberationist and Pentecostal systems, the inclusion of Pentecostalism’s trialectic (Spirit-Scripture-Community) in biblical interpretation can be added into the loci theologici. Sadje can delve deeper into this oft-discussed framework as he attempts to integrate both systems into a holistic grassroots method.

Despite the above notations, Sadje’s work contributes significantly to developing methodologies for Filipino theologizing. His monograph helps to fill theological lacuna in Asia and urges Filipino Pentecostals to be much more involved in public theology.

Reviewed by Lora Angeline E. Timenia