October 25, 2004

SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico - While I maintain many of the perspectives and proposals that I expressed in my work a decade ago, I think there is a need for a review because there has been a qualitative leap in the study of Protestantism in Latin America, said Peruvian theologian Samuel Escobar, in a conference given in this city in southern Mexico.

In an intervention in the II Symposium on Evangelical Protestantism in Latin America, Escobar said that this progress has taken place thanks to the work of a new generation of professional historians within the Protestant field, united with historians who observe and interpret the Protestant reality of the continent from outside.

The Symposium held here October 19-22 was convened by the Mexican branch of the Latin American Theological Fraternity (FTL), the Mexican Center for Studies of Protestantism and professors from the National Autonomous University of Mixico.

Escobar noted that a book by Argentine theologian Jose Miguez Bonino, "Rostros del Protestantismo Latinoamericano" (The faces of Latin American Protestantism), addresses the issues as if there was a Latin American Protestantism that is marked by different faces. The book raises the question of whether they are different "faces" because they are different subjects or whether they are the "masks" of a single subject. If that is the case, what is the face hiding behind these masks?

The Peruvian theologian said that personally he is places himself in what he called "Evangelical Protestantism" one of the faces that Miguez describes. This means recognizing that within Latin America there is a historical and current fact called Protestantism which is multifaceted and that my own position is one of those faces, said Escobar.

In his book, Miguez states that there are areas of our history and our way of being Latin American evangelicals that are only recently being explored but which are indispensable for the reflection about our identity. I think this symposium is part of this line of work, dialogue and reflection, said Escobar.

He stated that the XVI Century Reform was a movement with a wide variety of expressions. The subsequent historic reconstruction speaks of major lines of Protestantism: Lutherans, Anglicans, Reformed or Calvinists, Anabaptists, among others.

Protestantism was a confusing movement, rich in variants, sometimes anarchic and marked by the effects of the major transformations that characterized the emergence of the modern world: the breakdown of Latin Christianity, the breakdown of the feudal order, the affirmation of European nationalisms, and the invention of the printing press.

Regarding the understanding of the Protestantism in Latin America, the data that anthropologists and sociologists have gathered can be interpreted in different ways and we are witnessing this conflict. Protestant growth has become a privileged field of observations for historians and social scientists, said Escobar.

It is possible to say that the first global interpretations of Protestantism in Latin America, and which have persisted in different forms could be described as a type of "conspiracy theory," he said.

The contemporary version of the mentioned theory relates to foreign connections in the Protestant world, linked to imperialist plans within the Pax Americana. Up to the middle of the twentieth century, Protestant missionary action and presence was interpreted as part of a Liberal-Masonic-Communist conspiracy. Forty years ago, within the framework of the Cold War, the conspiracy theory linked Protestant penetration to Communism.

Protestant interpretations recognized that the Protestant movement was due to the initial work of foreign missionaries but sustain that "Protestantism in Iber-America is a deeply rooted movement, and which is assuming, with increasing vigor, its own defined character. It no longer depends exclusively on missionaries from North America," said Escobar.

The adequate understanding of these exogenous factors obligate us to process information we have regarding the motivation, strategies and methods of missionary movements. According to Carlos Mondragsn there is a need to pay a great deal of attention to the endogenous factors that contribute to explaining the Protestant presence in Latin America.

The numerical growth of grassroots Churches and the political participation of evangelicals in recent decades have caught the attention of journalists and social scientists. This obligates us to realize that our own Protestant identity is not only defined by our beliefs but also our experience: our place and way of participate in society and interpreting the reality that surrounds us, said the Peruvian theologian.

Regarding Protestant growth among indigenous communities, he emphasizes, there are studies about cultural changes that are full of suggestions for historians of the future. Indigenous communities have offered true laboratory situations where it is possible to more clearly notice and measure the effect of Protestant conversion as a factor of social change and to what point the elements of a Protestant identity are conserved in the experience of faith within other cultures.

ALC News Service/Latin American and Caribbean Communication Agency