Discussion 13: Pentecostalism

93. A Radical Brazilian Pentecostal

The “Assemblies of God,” the original Pentecostal churches in Brazil, were founded

by two Swedes from the United States, Daniel Berg and Gunnar Vingren, who had

arrived in Brazil in 1911 and experienced “the baptism of the Spirit” in 1918. Manoel de

Melo (1929-1990), a construction worker from Pernambuco with little formal education,

became the first native Brazilian to found a Pentecostal church. De Melo, previously

pastor at Assembly of God and Foursquare Gospel, founded the “Evangelical Pentecostal

Church Brazil for Christ” in 1955. He estimated the church's rate of growth to be about

80,000 members each year, “the fastest in the world.” Shortly after his death The

Encyclopedia of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity suggested that “Brazil for

Christ” had about five thousand congregations, one million members, and two million

adherents.

A typical weekend service, presided over by de Melo, was observed and described

in the late 1960s by Harding Meyer, a German Lutheran professor of systematic

theology in São Leopoldo (Rio Grande do Sul). According to Meyer's description of the

response of the congregation to the service, how would the congregants define

religion? What would they perceive to be its proper function? What Brazilians might

attend Brazil for Christ?

Religion in Latin America: A Documentary History . Orbis Books. Kindle Edition.

From Pernambuco, where he was active as pastor of the Assembléias de Deus, his

course took him to São Paulo. A few years later, he broke away from the Assembléias there and

put his extraordinary gifts as an evangelist, his famous oratorical talent and his inexhaustible

capacity for work at the service of the Cruzada Nacional de Evangelização. There were gigantic

attendances at his evangelization meetings in tents, in open places and in parks, which often

resulted in astonishing cures of the sick. All he needed for such meetings was an easily

transportable loudspeaker system and a couple of musicians, whose songs first attracted the

attention of the people. It is said that meetings with an audience of 100,000 were by no means

rare and he himself estimated the audience for his morning radio programme at five million.

[…]

I was there when one Thursday he had to bring forward the regular service in his

provisional main church in São Paulo, a former market hall, from its appointed time on Saturday

to Friday evening. Despite this, the church was packed with more than five thousand believers

so that there was not even standing room; people were left outside the doors and even on the

streets. The two-hour service had all the marks of Brazilian Pentecostal services with their

lively, joyful, even hilarious mood: there was vigorous and extremely rhythmical singing

emphasized by hand-claps and accompanied by an ad hoc ‘orchestra’ of violins, flutes, clarinets,

horns, etc.; all five thousand joined in loud spontaneous prayer which went on for minutes and

swelled to a crescendo, suddenly dying away at a sign from the preacher. (Individuals who

seemed to have lapsed into speaking with tongues were silenced with an imploring yet sharp

‘silêncio!’) The sermon—about the parable of the five foolish and five wise virgins—was very

emotional and had a strongly admonitory tone, but it was an extraordinarily clear, concrete and

attractive exposition of the biblical text. The attention of the congregation did not slip for a

moment, and their intensive preoccupation could be seen and heard in movements, laughter,

loud interjections and—above all after certain key expressions—cries of ‘Glória a Deus’,

‘Alleluia’ or ‘Louvada seja o nome do Senhor!’

Without question this temperamental, dark Pernambucan with his squat figure and

harsch voice is one of the most popular figures in Brazil and surely the best-known evangelist in

the country, admired by some, attacked and criticized by others. When he founded his own

movement, a large number of his adherents from the Cruzada Nacional de Evangelizção

followed him. His own estimate of the annual rate of growth is about 80,000. Of course, it is

impossible to confirm that for the moment. Nevertheless, his church may be the fastest

growing in Brazil. His own verdict goes even further: “This work grows faster than any other in

the whole world.”