Reason to Believe: Cultural Agency in Latin American Evangelicalism / Edition 1

by David Smilde

Overview

Evangelical Protestantism has arguably become the fastest-growing religion in South America, if not the world. For converts, it emphasizes self-discipline and provides a network of communal support, which together have helped many overcome substance abuse, avoid crime and violence, and resolve relationship problems. But can people simply decide to believe in a religion because of the benefits it reportedly delivers? Based on extensive fieldwork among Pentecostal men in Caracas, Venezuela, this rich urban ethnography seeks an explanation for the explosion of Evangelical Protestantism, unraveling the cultural and personal dynamics of Evangelical conversion to show how and why these men make the choice to convert, and how they come to have faith in a new system of beliefs and practices.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520249431
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	07/02/2007
Series:	The Anthropology of Christianity , #3
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	277
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

David Smilde is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Georgia. He is co-author, with Margarita López Maya and Keta Stephany, of Protesta y cultura en Venezuela: Los Marcos de acción colectiva en 1999.

Read an Excerpt

Reason to Believe

Cultural Agency in Latin American Evangelicalism

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By David Smilde

University of California Press

Copyright © 2007 The Regents of the University of California
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-520-24943-1

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Chapter One

Making Sense of Cultural Agency

CAN PEOPLE DECIDE TO BELIEVE?

Jorge was born in the Afro-Venezuelan coastal region of Barlovento and as a child moved with his family to Petare, the massive group of barrios at the eastern end of Caracas. At fourteen he dropped out of school to work and help his mother support eleven brothers and sisters. During Jorge's formative years, Petare evolved from a slum with grinding poverty into a slum with grinding poverty, drugs, and violence-a process Jorge's family experienced in concrete and tragic terms. When Jorge was in his late teens a feud between some of his brothers and other malandros (delinquents) led the latter to invade Jorge's family home to seek revenge. They beat, kicked, and stomped his brother to death on the kitchen floor at Jorge's mother's and sisters' feet. In a not unreasonable panic, his mother quickly sold the house and the family dispersed, moving in with kin or friends in various parts of Barlovento and Caracas. With an older brother, Jorge lived for several years in and out of the homes of kin, in flophouses, and occasionally in the street. They worked oddjobs, occasionally stole, and always partied heavily. Jorge eventually fell in love, and he and his partner lived together.

Jorge started to work stably and had three children with his partner, along with her child from a previous union. However, after a few years of routine, he began to use drugs again. His marriage grew increasingly conflictive as his drug use depleted scarce household resources. To make up the difference, he started robbing people in the street-using his handgun not only to steal people's money but also their jewelry, clothes, and shoes for later resale. He used the money to buy food for his house full of children-as well as drugs for himself. He got to the point of pulling out his gun instead of his billfold at the cash registers of neighborhood abastos (small mom-and-pop grocery stores). After narrowly surviving an ambush in which the brothers of a man whose shoes he stole tried to kill him and after listening to a cassette that a friend's Evangelical sister had given him, Jorge decided he wanted to change. He went with his friend to the sister's church where they both "accepted the Lord." When he told his wife about it and said he wanted her to come to the church, she asked him if he was serious. Jorge answered, "I sure am. I want to change this life I'm leading." In my first interview with Jorge, about a year after his conversion, he explained, "I was against the wall. I was cornered and I didn't know what to do." When I followed up five years later he was still attending the same church and was leader of its youth group. Jorge and his wife eke out a living for their family of seven selling cleaning products door-to-door, and Jorge occasionally works on government maintenance crews.

Jorge is typical of converts to Evangelical Protestantism in Latin America insofar as his conversion was undertaken as a solution to persistent life problems-what Andrew Chesnut (1997) has aptly called states of "dis-ease." Evangelicalism has grown by leaps and bounds in Latin America since the mid-twentieth century but especially in the past twenty-five years. According to recent estimates, one-tenth of the population of traditionally Catholic Latin America-some fifty million people-belong to a Protestant denomination (Jenkins 2002). While initial analyses of this boom amounted to shrill accusations of cultural imperialism or laments over a shift toward otherworldly escapism, empirically grounded research revealed Evangelicalism is a means by which poor Latin Americans address the challenges they are confronted with. In other words, it serves as a form of cultural agency through which they can gain control over aspects of their personal and social contexts. Probably the best-known challenge is substance abuse. Researchers have argued that whereas alcohol traditionally facilitates peasant norms of reciprocity in rural areas, in the context of urban poverty it frequently reaches debilitating levels and can fade into drug use. This, in turn, can exacerbate poverty and family conflict. Numerous researchers (Annis 1987; Brusco 1995; Chesnut 1997; Flora 1976; Mariz 1994; Martin 1990; Stoll 1990) have argued that Evangelicalism provides a solution to problem drinking. It prohibits drinking-as well as drugs, tobacco, and gambling-and provides an alternative social network not based on alcohol consumption. This network also supports individuals trying to overcome addiction and monitors their progress. Backsliding can result in church discipline and the disapprobation of fellow members.

According to researchers, individuals also convert to address conjugal conflict. The challenges of impoverished urban life often lead patriarchal ideals to transform into a male prestige complex referred to as machismo (Brown 1991; Brusco 1995; Smilde 1994). The machista male frequently consumes in the street resources that should be directed to the home. And his search for female conquests produces conflict with a wife no longer willing to tolerate the patriarchal double standard. Women suffer not only from machista men but also from a lack of culturally legitimate opportunities to participate in extrahousehold organizations. Fieldwork has shown that participation in Evangelicalism leads men to focus on the domestic sphere (Brusco 1995; Burdick 1993; Flora 1976), confirms male headship while providing a new basis for female autonomy (Brusco 1995; Burdick 1993; Smilde 1997), and provides women with a form of participation that is relatively nonthreatening to the men who aspire to control them (Brusco 1995; Flora 1976; Smilde 1994). Most of this scholarship has been based on fieldwork carried out with women; inferences are made primarily on the basis of data on women's perspectives. In chapter 4 I address these issues, among others, using data collected among men.

Another reason for conversion to Evangelicalism is violence. In the context of dictatorship, war, and other forms of political conflict Evangelicalism can function as an effective means for withdrawal from situations of violence. By becoming Evangelical, the individual is effectively extracted from extended violent interaction: he or she is no longer considered a threat or an opportunity by either side (Annis 1987; Martin 1990; Stoll 1990, 1993). Research in urban contexts shows a similar phenomenon in the case of urban violence: conversion to Evangelicalism provides men with a way to step out of conflict-ridden situations (Brusco 1995; Burdick 1993). The crime wave in Latin American societies in the 1990s has only increased the importance of this issue for Latin America's poor, as well as for Evangelicals. I want to mention one final finding of research on Latin American Evangelicalism: religious participation can provide networks of support for rural-to-urban migrants (Roberts 1968). These networks provide information on employment, recommendations, small loans, and other forms of assistance and are therefore key to socioeconomic survival and advancement among the popular sectors (Lomnitz 1977). Without such networks individuals face reduced life chances. In addition to an environment of solidarity, the rigorous norms for personal behavior in Evangelicalism serve as credentials for honesty and hard work in an unstable environment in which work is often day-to-day and one never knows when social support will be necessary (Annis 1987; Mariz 1994; Martin 1993; Roberts 1968).

These portrayals of Evangelical conversion and participation as a form of cultural agency have gone far toward undermining simplistic criticisms of this movement as an "opiate of the masses." However, these portrayals are "instrumentalist" insofar as they explain the adoption of a religious meaning system and form of practice as a means of obtaining nonreligious rewards. Some of the literature speaks openly in these terms. Elizabeth Brusco (1995: 146 ff., 222) sees Evangelicalism as "a form of female collective action" in that it is "an intensely pragmatic movement aimed at reforming those aspects of society which most affect [women's] lives." Cecilia Mariz (1994: 121) speaks of conversion as "a cultural strategy in poor people's attempts to improve their lives." When taken by themselves, statements such as these make one wonder why religion is involved at all.

I originally took up this study because although I could understand positive this-worldly effects of religious belief, I could not understand positive this-worldly effects as reasons for religious beliefs. Many of the authors I was reading seemed to feel the same tension and concluded their work with disclaimers moderating the instrumentalist tone of their arguments. Thus Mariz (1994: 59) writes that the "cultural strategies" she found might actually be "unintended consequences." Sheldon Annis (1987: 141) concludes his book on conversion as a form economic maximization thus: "Yet one need only attend prayer in any village church ... to know that Protestantism means far more than just rationalizing economic gain." And David Martin (1991: 82-83), in an article on Evangelicalism and entrepreneurship, argues, "People don't convert for economic gains. But when they come they are happy to thank the Lord for his blessings" (see also Berger 1990: ix).

I entered the field with the idea that religious conversion was undertaken for religious reasons, not for the nonreligious rewards resulting from belief and practice. Nevertheless, from my first days in the field it became clear that my respondents did not support this assumption. My first field trip was to Colombia. During my first week in Bogotá, I interviewed the pastor of a large Evangelical church on the city's north side. As I waiting for the pastor I struck up a conversation with his secretary about her becoming an Evangelical. She said that she and her family left the Catholic Church for Evangelicalism when they moved from a small town in the Amazon to Bogotá. When I asked why, she left me speechless by saying they had arrived with little money and without family or friends and decided that "the economic and spiritual fruits [of Evangelicalism] were better." As my fieldwork continued, such anomalies accumulated: time and again people unabashedly said they had converted because of the perceived economic, social, and personal gains. Jorge, for example, openly communicated his conversion history in terms of an intentional project of self or family reform. He unapologetically spoke of conversion as a way to address pressing life problems. He presented it that way to his wife. He presented it that way to me, the interviewer.

Of course, it is hardly news that people intentionally change aspects of their lives in order to address the challenges they face: they get married or divorced, return to or drop out of school, move or stay put, apologize or take stands. But adopting a set of beliefs in order to address the pressing challenges of everyday life is different. Can people really decide to believe in a religion because it is in their interest to do so? This explanation for adopting religion raises a number of thorny issues that must be addressed if we are to understand the growth of Latin American Evangelicalism and any number of other cultural phenomena in contemporary social life. One need only conduct a quick internet search on the phrase "you gotta believe!" to find a wide range of inspirational books, tapes, music, and speeches that urge people to "believe" in order to overcome addiction, win the big game, increase sales, or defeat injustice. In each case there is the suggestion not only that it is important to believe you can succeed but also that you can decide to adopt that belief. There is a complex relationship between intention and belief here that is poorly understood.

WHY DOESN'T EVERYONE DECIDE TO BELIEVE?

Aurelio is forty years old but could easily pass for fifty-five. He lives with his mother and sister in the same rancho where he grew up and has a permanent grumbly, beleaguered demeanor. During our two-hour interview, he readily told me about a decade of defeats, his collection of regrets, and the serious problems he still confronts. Two years before our interview he had organized residents to close off their sector of the barrio with locked gates to which only the residents would have keys. This is one of a number of ways that residents of Caracas's barrios have found to reduce crime and violence. However, the prospect of gates often causes conflict with those who benefit from disorganization through involvement with the drug economy; and neighborhood organizers are frequently the targets of violence. Indeed, in Aurelio's barrio just one year before his initiative, a neighborhood activist had been brutally murdered in the middle of the night by hooded gunmen. With this in mind, Aurelio was reluctant about his leadership role in this tense process. He expressed resentment at his neighbors for what happened when drug-dealing neighbors opposed to the gate brought in a malandro to rough him up. None of the neighbors who supported installing the gate defended him. Instead, he says, "everyone ran into their houses to hide and watch the fight."

At about the same time Aurelio learned that his partner of six years was pregnant with her lover's child. They separated as a result, but he has not seen another woman since. They still have occasional sexual encounters, though she is living with the child's father. The combination of neighborhood conflict and relationship breakdown hit him hard. In his terms, he got "skinny, skinny, skinny." In the Venezuelan ethnophysiology of suffering, being gordo (fat) means health and success while being flaco (skinny) means hardship and affliction.

One of the issues that brought his relationship to an end was gambling. For many years Aurelio was the president of a sports club he founded. The members had created and painted a volleyball court in the parking lot of a hospital just down the street from their neighborhood. However, when neighborhood malandros started using the parking lot to do drugs, the hospital closed it off. This was just the last of several setbacks for a sports club in a city with virtually no green space. Aurelio disbanded it and soon thereafter started betting on horses. This pastime rapidly became an obsession that consumed all his resources. He told me that he got to the point that he would have to leave cash at work, or he would lose it all playing the horses. On the few occasions when he made money gambling he generally used the windfall to buy a crate of beer to drink with neighbors and candy for the neighborhood kids. The financial drain caused conflict with his partner. It also prevented any significant accumulation. Aurelio said his whole family has "vices" and pointed to the decrepit state of their rancho as evidence. Nobody in the family works together, he complained, everyone pulls in their own direction. But he is no exception. "I can find money for vices, even if it means a loan," he said in self-deprecation. "But for my mother, my pockets are empty."

One of Aurelio's good friends is an Evangelical with whom he likes to talk about the Gospel. This friend helped Aurelio through the breakup of his relationship and the conflict over the gate. Aurelio reads the Bible on his own but does not think he could become an Evangelical like his friend. He explained, "I like the Gospel, but I'm not going to tell you that I'm prepared to become an Evangelical because I like women a lot, I like booze. I'm not going to lie to anybody." Why has Aurelio not become an Evangelical? His case seems overdetermined: he has experienced acute danger and personal conflict, is beleaguered by money-consuming vices, suffers enduring poverty, and is dismayed with his neighbors, his family, and himself. Yet he has not become Evangelical. When I followed up five years later he was still living in largely the same way. If Aurelio, like Jorge, could simply decide to believe, he could overcome his gambling problem, save money, contribute to his household, overcome his fear of violence, and very likely find a new partner.

(Continues...)

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Table of Contents

A Note on Translations and Names
Acknowledgments

PART ONE: BEGINNINGS
1. Making Sense of Cultural Agency
2. The Venezuelan Context: Confronting La Crisis

PART TWO: IMAGINATIVE RATIONALITY
3. Imagining Social Life I: Confronting Akrasia, Crime, and Violence
4. Imagining Social Life II: Addressing Personal and Social Issues
5. Imagining Evangelical Practice

PART THREE: RELATIONAL IMAGINATION
6. The Social Structure of Conversion
7. Two Lives, Five Years Later
8. Toward a Relational Pragmatic Theory of Cultural Agency

Epilogue
Appendix A: Status of Evangelical Respondents after Five Years
Appendix B: Methods and Methodology
Appendix C: Quantitative Analysis of Networks and Conversion
Glossary of Spanish Terms
References
Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Within the context of a continuous social crisis, I consider Smilde's book a most valuable and helpful contribution in this field."—Missiology

Editorial Reviews

Within the context of a continuous social crisis, I consider Smilde’s book a most valuable and helpful contribution in this field.

Missiology