religious competition in contemporary venezuela

ORGANIZED RELIGION IN THE POLITICAL TRANSFORMATION OF

LATIN AMERICA

Edited by

Satya R. Pattnayak

University Press of America, Inc. Lanham • New York • London

Copyright © 1995 by

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To All Those Who Believe In Social Innovation

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9The paper used in this publication meets the minimum

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Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,

ANSI 239.48-1984

Contents

List of Tables and Figures vii

Preface

Satya R. Pattnayak ix

1

Social Change, Political Competition, and Religious Innovation in Latin

America: An Introduction

Satya R. Pattnayak 1

2

Religious Change, Empowerment and Power: Reflections on Latin

American Experience

Daniel H. Levine 15

3

The Transformation of Catholic Social Thought in Latin America: Christian Democracy, Liberation Theology, and the New Catholic

Right

Paul E. Sigmund 41

v

4

The Chilean Church and the Transition to Democracy

Michael Fleet 65

5

From Theologies of Liberation to Theologies of lnculturation: Aymara

Catechists and the Second Evangelization in Highlands Bolivia Andrew Orta 97

6

Religious Competition in Contemporary Venezuela

Bryan T. Froehle 125

7

Brazil: State Subsidization and the Church Since 1930

Kenneth P. Serbin 153

8

Latin American Politics: Exit the Catholic Church?

Jean Daudelin and W.E. Hewitt 177

9

The Embeddedness of Religion and Politics: An Epilogue Satya R. Pattnayak 195

Appendix

The Institutional Capacity of the Catholic Church: An Evaluation

Satya R. Pattnayak 203

Select Bibliography 219

Contributors 233

Index 235

vi

Tables and Figures

Tables

4.1. Political attitudes 86

6.1. Catholic parishes and evangelical churches in Venezuela: 1970 and 1990 130

6.2. Growth of Caracas vicariates and evangelical centers 135

6.3. Caracas parishes by social strata of parish office location and

parish territory average 136

6.4. Average number of persons per parish and average attendance per

parish by socio-economic rank: Caracas, 1991 137

6.5. Average distribution of priests and worship places per parish: Caracas, 1970-1990 137

6.6. Social locations of religious organizations: Caracas, 1990 139

vii

6.7. A sample of religious activity by social strata: Caracas, 1991 142

A.1. Population in thousands per Catholic priest, 1960-1989 205

A.2. Projected growth (m percentages) of Protestants and total

population, 1980-2000 206

A.3. Trends in Catholic personnel, 1972-1989 207

A.4. Recent trends in Roman Catholic educational activities in Latin

America, 1982-1987 211

A.5. Percent change in Catholic education during 1982-1987, selected

countries 212

A.6. Recent trends in Roman Catholic social welfare activities in Latin

America, 1982-1987 213

A.7. Percent changes in Catholic welfare institutions during 1982-1987,

selected countries 214

Figures

AF.1. Favorability scale 210

viii

Preface

Satya R. Pattnayak

Although the theories of secularization' have long been found wanting,

scholars working on religion often tend to be defensive about their

work, particularly so if the studies focus on its multifaceted links with

politics. The media reports consistently on religious rivalries

manifesting violent forms in Bosnia, the Middle-East, and Africa. But

the implicit message is that these manifestations are aberrations and

may not be properly studied as enduring social phenomena.

The Iranian Revolution still causes disquietude in the West, in large

part because it reverses the sacrosanct doctrine of the "separation of

church and state. " Yet, in North America as well as in our neighboring

countries to the south we observe new faces of organized religion

competing quite effectively in the political arena, either by cultivating

alliances or by capturing parts of the established political party

networks. Some religious denominations have been growing quite

steadily, both in the U.S. and Latin America? How could social

scientists, particularly those who predicted the demise of organized

religion with increased industrializationand modernization, have missed

its potential to rejuvenate itself, often times against the apparent tide of

history?

iY

124 Organized Religwn in the Political Transformation

44. Orta (1994).

45. See Abercrombie (1986:208-227). 46. A related identity is that of a mallku or jilaqata. These Aymara

community authorities serve on an annually rotating basis at the apex of the

hierarchy of community cargo obligations. They typically attend a Mass at the "iglesia matriz" as part of their investiture, and in some areas are expected to

hear Mass and attend cabildo meetings (held inthe parish center) on Sundays

during their tenure. (see below).

47. See, for example, Huanca (1989:62). 48. Literacy is also important here. A common theme inthe histories I have

collected from catechists is their struggle to learn to read and write as a consequence of becoming catechists. This is especially frequent in the narratives of older catechists, named 10 to 15 years ago. As an index of

learning, literacy is often a key distinction between a catechist and his faith group.

49. For their part, catechists often complain that they are marginalized in

community meetings: asked to speak only after other community business has

been discussed. Some catechists are more successful than others at asserting

their authority in these communal fora, and may dominate discussions on a

range of topics. By inviting mallkus to parish meeting, and thereby making the

"business of the catechists" the "business of the mallkus, 11 missionaries give the

catechists a bit more leverage for asserting parish agendas in their

communities.

50. See Abercrombie (1986:126). 51. Orta (1994).

52. The reference is to yatiris ' use of coca leaves to divine fortunes, diit.gnose

illness and communicate with a range of place deities. The Spanish "leer",

sometimes aymaracized as li:yifla, is used to gloss the Aymara term ufljafla (to see/look); a yatiri may be referred,to as a kuka uiijiri (coca seer).

53. See Wachtel (1992).

Chapter 6

Religious Competition in Contemporary Venezuela 1

Bryan T. Froehle

The Latin American bishops' conference of 1992 declared that the

continent needs a "new evangelization." The challenges implicit in such

an "evangelization" may be even greater than that of the historic

Medellin conference. Over the past thirty years, evangelicals have

emerged as a serious competitor with Catholicism and have been

notably successful in their own evangeli7.atfon strategies. For its part,

Catholicism has found that its traditional forms of evangeli7.ation have

not been working well in the urban conglomerations now characteristic

of Latin America. This is clearly home out in Venezuela, and in

Caracas in particular. As the single most important urban area in the

country, developments in Caracas are particularly important and in

many ways representative of wider trends in Venezuela and Latin

America in general.

Clearly, the implementation of any "new" Catholic evangelization

will depend on how it is interpreted.2 Recent Venezuelan experience

provides an example of this. At the beginning of Lent 1990, "to

prepare for the fifth centennial of the evangelization of America," a

catechism was distributed free in every newspaper purchased in the

greater Caracas metropolitan region. This catechism was a reprint of

126 Organized Religion in the Political Transformation

one written by Caracas Archbishop Arias Blanco in the late 1950s. It

is a virtual twin of the Baltimore catechism, and its content is presented

in question-and-answer, true-false fashion.3 There was no observable

impact of this effort, and this particular booklet seems to have lasted

no longer than the editions of the newspapers which accompanied it.

Although widely diffused, it had apparently appealed to no one other

than the conservative business, political and religious groups which

promoted it in the first place. If the bishops interpret "re

evangelization" as "catechization" their impact will be limited. Meanings

and cultural axes have shifted with the transition from a rural plantation

society to an urban service economy. In the new urban environment,

traditional Catholic approaches no longer work, and newer ones have

proved themselves insufficient to prevent the increasing consolidation

of the evangelical movement. The extraordinary deficits of Catholic

personnel and infrastructure relative to the population, coupled with the

rapid and unproblematic expansion of evangelical pastors, pose a far

reaching challenge to the future of Catholicism. This challenge contains both peril and promise. The bishops may use

the term "new evangelization" as a codeword for a heightened

preaching against the "invasion of the sects" and a pretext to purge

"sectarian" elements within Catholicism that do not support the

hierarchy.4 On the other hand, serious commitment to evangelization

could lead to pragmatic compromises at the expense of ideological

commitments, thus reducing polarization within the church. In the new

era of serious evangelical growth and competition, Catholic leaders will

have to extend direct support to whatever pastoral agents are available

for the task of evangelization. Many of these pastoral workers are

"progressives" who have slowly shored up a solid institutional base in

an era less friendly than that in which they emerged. Further, the

articulation of church efforts toward a specifically ecclesial, rather than

social, projection in order to compete with the evangelicals may entail

a reduction in the direct political orientation of some progressives. Yet

it may also bring conservatives to become more open to alternative

grassroots structures and ministries with which the progressives have

experimented as both seek to more effectively compete with

evangelicals.5

Contemporary Latin American Catholicism and Protestantism can be

seen as two giant religious organizations in competition with each

other. Although both have considerable resources, their strategies are


as different as their organizational forms and corporate cultures.

Typical explanations of Catholic decline and evangelical success,

however, are often too simplistic. An example is the argument that the

hierarchical nature of Catholicism has reduced its appeal and led to its

relative decline. Without a doubt Catholicism has some of the most

complex hierarchical structures found within Christianity, but at the

crucial level of everyday experience these differences are not so

obvious. At the level of everyday life, it is an empirical question as to

whether religious experience is more "democratic" or less hierarchical

at an evangelical church. While the source of the evangelical pastor's

authority is no doubt more charismatic than hierocratic in origin, it is

often an even more sweeping and less contested authority.6 In many

ways, members of evangelical churches can be more "dependent" on

their minister than Catholic churches on their priests and sisters.7

Many evangelical pastors run their churches with an iron hand and

exercise enormous power on the lives of their individual members.

Furthermore, such control is not necessarily a hindrance to growth.

Instead, the reverse often seems to be true for many evangelical

groups.8

The shortages of Catholic personnel which have been common since

the large scale immigration of foreign priests ended in the middle 1960s

are often cited as another factor explaining Catholic declines. Unlike

Catholic priests, legitimate evangelical pastors are easily reproducible

and their numbers are accordingly growing rapidly.9 As Christian

Lalive D'Epinay found when he studied pentecostalism in Chile,

literally anyone may call oneself "pastor" and be accepted without

question should he or she behave as commonly expected. By no means

do all denominations have well-developed, institutionalized seminary

systems, and specialized institutional training remains the exception

rather than the rule. 10 Such rapid reproduction of evangelical leaders

is one reason why available data from Latin American countries

commonly show greater absolute numbers of evangelical ministers than

Catholic priests. These greater numbers in tum help explain why

overall attendance at weekly services is now higher for evangelicals

relative to Catholics in many areas of Latin America.11 However, if

the status of women in the Catholic church were more equal to their

male counterparts, as in many evangelical denominations, these

measures would be significantly different. In 1985, Brazil had some

seventeen thousand ordained and thirteen thousand non-ordained full

time protestant ministers, but only thirteen thousand Catholic priests.


There were, however, over thirty-seven thousand female Catholic

religious personnel.12 In practice, Catholic pastoral agents who happen

to be female have long since played active roles in popular

neighborhoods, where the need is especially great and pressures

constraining or limiting their role less pronounced.

Two Decades of Religious Competition in Venezuela

For the past several decades, evangelicals have posed a serious rivalry

to Venezuelan Catholicism. In 1967, the evangelical population was less

than one half of one percent of the total national population, and

probably numbered only some 47,000 active members.13 Nevertheless,

the geographical diffusion reached by that time is striking and has

clearly served as a base for further expansion. Evangelical churches

already outnumbered Catholic places of worship by that time, although

they tended to be much smaller and less permanent than Catholic parish

churches and chapels. Further, the social location of these churches was

quite different. Many areas, particularly affluent ones, may still seem

uniformly Catholic while nearby areas of less exalted social rank have

long since been dominated by evangelical churches and chapels.14

Table 6.115 should be interpreted carefully.16 Although it

summarizes the most reliable information available over the past few

decades, information was actually available on more denominations in

1970 than in later years as the evangelical movement became more

complex and numerous splinter groups emerged. Also, listings for

independent churches unaffiliated with any denomination are only

available for 1970. Nonetheless, it is probably true that the overall

numbers of churches and congregations did not go up nearly as quickly

as net membership increases after 1970. Most estimations of

membership suggest increases on the order of about ten times, to over

half a million, between 1967 and 1979. Unfortunately, no reliable

national level data are available on overall membership increases after

1980, although there is no evidence that growth has peaked. Its rate,

however, surely decreased, given the higher number of evangelicals

already in the population. In general, the data suggest that since 1970

churches have been consolidating, developing their membership base

and mission areas and relatively cautiously investing their resources in

creating new, entirely independent congregations.


The Andean region has the smallest number of persons per parish

and is the only area to have more Catholic parishes than evangelical

churches. Ever since settled and evangelized by the Spanish in the

sixteenth century, the Catholic church has had a strong base in this

region. Evangelization during the colonial period was dominated by the

Augustinians. Unlike their Franciscan, Dominican, Jesuit and other

counterparts, the Augustinians did not use the dogmatic, rote

memorization catechism of the Council of Trent. Instead, they followed

the more direct, biblically based method of St. Augustine. Gospel

phrases were taught to the common people instead of complex doctrinal

statements, and scriptural stories and quotations became much more a

part of popular religion there than elsewhere.17 Such historical factors

combined with the Andean social economy to make the Catholic

identity of the Andean region particularly deep. The traditional

economic base of the Andean region has been the intensive cultivation

of grains. The particular production process of these goods fostered a

concentrated settlement pattern and high levels of communal life. This

way of life remains viable and Andeans commonly experience dramatic

social change only after they migrate to such magnet cities outside the

region as Caracas or Maracaibo. The Andean region itself remains

relatively more isolated from socio-economic change than the major

cities and industrial regions of the country, which are located

elsewhere.

In the plains states, extensive land use patterns based on cattle

grazing make for a distinct cultural setting, resulting in a considerably

higher presence of evangelicals and a dramatically lower presence of

institutional Catholicism. The usual forms of Catholic presence, such

as a parish church located in a town or village, are not successful in

vast areas with a widely dispersed population. Evangelical churches,

smaller, numerous and decentralized, offer accessibility and

community. Apure, the largest and least settled political division of the

Venezuelan plains, is home to a "native" evangelical movement which

emerged during the 1930s and flourished to the point that majorities are

today either evangelical or sympathize with the evangelicals. There,

Catholic places of worship are more overwhelmed by evangelical

chapels and churches than in any other part of the country, and the few

priests in the area find that their services are requested less and less.18

When evangelicals first established themselves in Venezuela at the

beginning of the twentieth century, they often concentrated on the

newly industrialized, western portion of the country. Many areas were

Religious Competition in Contemporary Venezuela 131 131

specifically targeted because they bad North American enclaves that

could serve as a base for evangelical development. These were typically

areas of high petroleum activity, industrial development, or financial

and administrative centers. As the U.S. economic presence deepened,

many cities in the region became important bases of missionary activity

and later supported denominational headquarters or training centers.

Related infrastructural and social factors are also important. The roads of

this region are among the best in the country, and have promoted the

spread of new religious messages and movements among a relatively

mobile population and labor force.

The central region includes Caracas and the surrounding region. This is

by far the most populous area of the country. Not atypical for Latin

America, the capital region contains one third of the population but only

about two percent of total land mass of the country.19 Relative to

population, both the Catholic and evangelical presence is rather weak.

However, due to the urban nature of the population, the diverse churches

and religious movements are perhaps a more visible feature of everyday

life than in other regions. Also, the Catholic institutional presence is

considerably higher than parish based statistics suggest. In Caracas

especially, there are many Catholic chapels and schools independent of

parishes. Due to the large number of priests who live in the capital

region but do not engage in full time parish work, the number of persons

per priest is lower than elsewhere in the country. Vast urbanized areas

such as metropolitan Caracas have been an important impetus behind the

so-called “new evangelization” as older strategies designed for earlier

societies reveal themselves inadequate in a new, massively urbanized

culture. While providing a base for religious development and

experimentation, Caracas also offers an opportunity to understand wider

trends and potential for change as religious competition deepens in the

metropolitan settings increasingly characteristic of Latin America.

The New Catholic Urban Project: Caracas, 1960-1990

During the 1950s and 1960s urban popular sectors in Latin America

began to grow dramatically, and Caracas was no exception. Between

1958-1962 alone its impoverished sectors grew by over 200,000

persons.20 These decades also coincided with the first dramatic "'

0 "' many cities inthe region became important bases o


expansion in evangelical and other non-Catholic religious movements.

In 1967, there were 75 evangelical churches and 233 Catholic places

of worship in Caracas. The total number of Catholic churches or

chapels in Caracas where weekly worship is conducted declined to 217

by 1990. Although population has increased considerably and the

median age of the population is quite low, Catholicism in Caracas

seems to have aged and lacks the youthful vigor that characterized it

during the immediate post-conciliar period. Evangelicals accounted for

as many as 239 sites of weekly worship by 1990, and other non

Catholic sites of Christian worship (such as the Mormons, Jehovah's

Witnesses, Adventists and other groups evangelicals commonly exclude

from their ranks) may be estimated as an additional thirty.

In early efforts to counteract the growing evangelical presence,

Catholic church leaders in Caracas commonly pursued a strategy based

on the Christendom mentality of providing institutional fortresses to

combat "the threat every day more manifest of sectarian infiltration, as

much protestant as communist."21 By the late 1960s, however,

difficulties in erecting sufficient institutional fortresses combined with

new ways of thinking after the Vatican Council and the Medellin

Conference. The archdiocese responded by developing two new forms

of ministry to the neighborhoods of the urban poor: religious vicariates

and evangelization centers.

Religious vicariates have official status in canon law, and are

portions of parishes given over to congregations of religious women.22

Interviews conducted at these vicariates reveal a common pattern of

development. Typically, the sisters struggle to win community

acceptance during their early years and prove themselves through their

work to provide job training courses, child care centers, and religious

training for children about to receive their first communion. Their

activity involves constant daily interaction with the poor who surround

them and come to rely on them as important neighborhood fixtures.

The sisters work to maintain good relations with all, particularly since

even those who are completely uninterested in having anything to do

with their religious or social mission may still be prevailed upon to

send their children to the programs offered by the vicariate or may

offer neighborly assistance or protection. Throughout Latin America,

the most experienced organizers of community services par excellence

are religious women. Many of the women who run such ministries

were trained originally as elementary school teachers for private,

middle class schools conducted by their order or congregation. Most


have found organizing preventive health campaigns, teaching sewing

classes, and visiting families to be a workable, almost natural, shift in

their work as they refocused their ministry towards the popular classes.

Many religious women in the vicariates often maintain their emphasis

on ministry to children through the catechism programs they run and

the youth groups they organize. For reasons including the greater

availability and less religious indifference characteristic of this portion

of the population, the vicariates often focus on children or young adults

to a disproportional extent.

While religious vicariates owe their existence to post Vatican II

changes in canon law which permitted religious congregations of

women to administer portions of parishes, "evangelization centers" are

an invention of the archdiocese. These centers developed from post

Vatican II initiatives of a variety of male religious congregations and

orders which had developed a deep interest in sharing the living

conditions characteristic of the impoverished majority without formally

constituting parishes.23 Evangelization centers, like vicariates, remain

formally affiliated with a mother parish and occasionally may be

dependent on it for sacramental services. Characteristically, however,

both have minimal contact with the parish. Obviously, the priests of the

centers have no need for the religious services of the parish priests.

However, the sisters of the vicariates tend to have sufficient contacts

with other priests that dependence on priests formally assigned to their

parish territory is equally unnecessary.

It is difficult to recruit diocesan priests to serve in the parishes of

poor neighborhoods. Not only are social conditions difficult, but one's

opportunities for ecclesiastical promotion are considerably lower than

in the parishes of wealthier neighborhoods. Adding to the challenge of

working on these parishes compared to wealthier ones, religious

participation is weaker and less regular. Nonetheless, personnel

interested in such work is by no means on the decline. New models of

ministry direct many non-diocesan priests, sisters, brothers and lay

workers precisely to areas where conditions are most difficult. Perhaps

as a sign of things to come, a parish in a poor area which could no

longer he staffed by the archdiocese has since been assigned to a group

of sisters who maintain it as a vicariate.

In many ways, these new forms of local church life are not

particularly different from parishes in popular areas. Although the

vicariates and centers by definition seek to provide a ministry closer to

the community and less institutional than the traditional parish, the


emphasis remains one of organizing youth groups, running catechism

programs, and serving as a community resource. Regardless of the

increasing number of non-parish administrative structures, the parish

remains the basic model of Catholic religious life in Venezuela. Indeed,

whether a local chapel is formally a parish or not, its neighbors are likely

to think of it as a parish and refer to it that way. Whether they like it or

not, the staff of the vicariate or evangelization center will find itself

constrained to offer the "parish" services people expect.

Table 6.2 shows the numbers of vicariates and evangelization centers

present in Caracas for selected years. These new quasi-parish

organizations have enjoyed slow but steady growth, increasing from 8 in

1972 to 24 by 1990.24 Since only 22 of the 104 territorially based

parishes of the Archdiocese of Caracas are located in popular


Table 6.2. Growth of Caracas vicariates

and evangelization centers.

neighborhoods, these pastoral centers are a key part of the Catholic

presence among those social sectors which comprise a majority of the

city's population. These experiments in pastoral ministry have ensured

a continuing Catholic presence in the most rapidly growing sector of

the population. However, by no means have they effectively countered

membership increases in non-Catholic churches. At a minimum, that

would require a considerably more vigorous growth rate than has

occurred thus far.

Divisions between clergy and church structures are not just found in

the distinction between parishes and quasi-parishes. In itself, the mix

of religious order clergy and secular clergy as well as the wide range

of national origins makes for very diverse patterns of parish

management and discourse across the archdiocese. Of all parish pastors

in Caracas in 1990, only 58 percent were diocesan. More were born in

Spain (39 percent) than in Venezuela (33 percent). About 6 percent

originated elsewhere in Latin America, and a similar percentage were

natives of Mediterranean Europe outside of Spain. Another 10 percent

were native to Northern European or North American cultural

environments. Such patterns further divide local clergy and reduce the

effectiveness of the hierarchy.

Parishes may be distinguished not simply for the national or religious

origin of their leadership, but also for the economic strata they represent.

Between 1985 and 1990, a research center in Caracas identified,

categorized, and collected data on every single neighborhood area within

the city. The resulting 639 distinct portions of the city were classified as

fitting into one of ten different socio-economic categories where the first

reflects the most affluent socioeconomic rank and the

Constructed from data in archdiocesan directories.

tenth the least affluent. Using these data, placement of the parishes

within social strata presented some difficulties since parish territory,

unlike the central parish church itself, may easily fall within two or more

areas which may be classified differently. At the same time, the areas

nearest to the parish church is likely to draw the most attenders, while the

generally poorer and more remote portions of parish territory typically

provide fewer attenders. For these reasons, Table 6.3 provides two sets of

data on the socioeconomic strata typical of the parishes. The first assigns

a social rank to each parish based simply on the rank of the area in

which the central parish office is located. The second gives the average

ranking of all parish territory on a per person, per area basis. Although

this method is technically more representative of the rank of each parish

territory, the first statistic probably best represents its committed

members. Given that parish churches tend to be located in

neighborhoods other than the marginal ones at their periphery, the

second statistic shows a greater number of parishes situated in areas of

lower socioeconomic strata.

Regardless of the measure used to determine socio-economic rank of the

parish, the distribution of parishes in the city is certainly not proportional

to population distribution. According to this measure, the upper ten

percent of the neighborhoods have 19 percent of all Catholic parishes.

The lower 36 percent of the neighborhoods contain between 6 and 10

percent of all parishes, depending on what measure of parish

Year

Vicariates

Evangelization

Centers

1972 8

1974 11 1977 9 1 1982 12 6 1985 14 7 1988 13 11 1990 13 11


distribution is used.

Table 6.3. Caracas parishes by social strata of parish office location

and parish territory average.25


Table 6.4. Average number of persons per parish and

average attendance per parish by socio-economic rank:

Caracas, 1991.

Percent of Parishes Per Rank

Note: Calculations based on Fieldwork (Froehle, 1991)

data in CISOR and archdiocesan archives.

Note: Figures in parentheses represent percent of population.

Calculations based on data in CISOR and archdiocesan archives.

During interviews between 1989 and 1990, 53 of the 104 parish

pastors in Caracas felt able to hazard a guess as to the population of

their ecclesiastical jurisdictions. On average, the pastors estimated that

they had over 50,000 persons in their parishes. 26 The sheer size of

their estimations indicates how overwhelmed priests feel by the size

of their parishes. Reviewing population estimations devised by the

national census and applying them to each of the parish territories

suggests that the average population of each parish is probably closer

to 27,619 in Caracas. Population in the 45 parishes within the upper

two socio-economic rankings, however, average under 20,000 per

parish while those in the poorest category average over 40,000 per

parish. Interestingly, attendance in absolute numbers is also

considerably higher for parishes of higher social rank, although they

may have less than half as many “parishioners” as poorer parishes.

Table 6.4 presents this data for each of the four different

socioeconomic levels.

Table 6.5 shows how the parishes have changed over the past twenty

years in personnel and places of worship. Obviously, an average that

is not a whole number does not make sense in this case except as an

abstraction. Nonetheless, such a measure does permit observation of the

changes in these important organizational resources over time.

Socio-economic Rank

Rank

Average Number

of Persons per

Average of Parish Parish Attendance

Highest Quartile 17668 1931

Second Quartile 19891 1619

Third Quartile 27523 1441

Lowest Quartile 42830 872

All Parishes 27619 1436

Social Rank By Office Location By Territory

1 (1)

0

0 2 (4) 7 5

3 (5) 12 14 4 (9) 18 14

5 (17) 27 10

6 (12) 14 15

7 (9) 10 16

8 (8) 7 15

9 (19) 2 9

10 (17) 4 1 Total (101) 101 99


These changes over time suggest that parishes created since 1970

were simply subdivisions of personnel and infrastructure of pre-existing

parishes. In this sense, the Catholic church in Caracas has been living

on the energy and resources present in the immediate post-conciliar

period.

Comparative Evangelical and Catholic Social Dynamics

Catholic institutions tend to be located in middle and upper sectors, and

evangelical organizations are more common within middle and lower

portions of the population.27 Of course, such generalizations need to

be made with some caution, since Catholic and evangelical places of

worship may be commonly attended by persons outside of the area in

which they are located. Nonetheless, given persistent patterns of spatial

and social segregation, such data may well represent the social origins

of the attenders.

Of the three types of religious institutions listed in Table 6.6, the

houses of Catholic religious orders and congregations have the greatest

tendency to be in affluent areas. However, this may be a misleading

indicator of the current orientation of Catholic religious. For example,

members of Catholic religious orders may devote their time to serving

the poor while living in a religious house which happens to be located

in a relatively privileged area. Of course, the very fact of not being

physically located within poor neighborhoods indicates a different,

more removed type of institutional presence than that characteristic of

groups physically located in the area served. Also, some thirty percent

of Catholic religious women are 60 years of age or older--as opposed

to some three percent of females in the population as a whole--and

these women tend to live in the large central houses of their orders,

which are in higher socioeconomic strata.28

Relatively lower formal religious practice and presence found in the

poor neighborhoods may be explained in part by a lower attendance

rate characteristic of lower classes in general. Some analysts argue that

such attendance patterns result from a lack of a "perceived need to put

belief into institutional or liturgical practice" among the lower

classes.29 Certainly in the Venezuelan case, the poorest social groups

have historically been the least touched by institutional religion, and the

most likely to reinterpret institutional religion on their own terms.


Many may maintain devotional altars in their homes, practice household

rituals and strongly identify themselves as Catholic but nevertheless

attend church infrequently.30 On the other hand, the evangelical

presence in such areas may reflect certain affinities underprivileged

classes have been shown to have for salvational, congregational

religion.31 In any case, the data underline the relative difficulties the

Catholic church has had in keeping up with population growth and

evangelical competition, particularly among the rapidly growing popular

classes.

In part, the relatively richer Catholic institutional presence within

privileged social sectors may explain why evangelical newcomers have

concentrated on less privileged areas. Catholic institutional strength in

upper social strata cannot be a simple result of a supposedly stronger

upper class tendency to articulate belief into consistent practice.32 A

richer organizational presence was itself only possible through the

historically greater efforts that the church made to build and maintain

a presence in these areas in terms of churches, schools and personnel.

Evangelicals use similar reasoning to explain their unspectacular growth

in such areas.

In no way can we conclude that God blesses evangelical works in

poorer areas more than in wealthy ones. What we can conclude is

that very probably coordinated and efficient work to gain more souls for Christ has not yet really begun in wealthy areas of the

city.33

Table 6.6. Social locations of religious organizations: Caracas,

1990.34

Social Range Evangelical Catholic Parish Parish of Population Churches Religious Office Territory

Upper 19% 29% 44% 37% 35%

Middle 38% 36% 44% 52% 43%

Bottom 44% 36% 13% 12% 25%

Note: Calculations based on project data found in evangelical

directory, CISOR and archdiocesan archives.


Nonetheless, an organizational perspective alone cannot explain the

dynamics of religious competition. Evangelicals in general, and

pentecostals in particular, have a strong presence in the lower classes

that is not simply dependent upon the application of sufficient

organizational resources. Like Catholics, evangelicals may enjoy an

affinity with some portions of the class structure and less of an affinity

with others. However, the increasing share of the popular religious

market enjoyed by evangelicals should not be identified with the

"uprooted and marginal" members of society, as some theorists

allege.35

Case studies of evangelical churches and interviews of their members

in Caracas indicate that evangelicals are hardly marginal to economic

and political life, and no more "uprooted" than their non-evangelical

neighbors. Evangelical and pentecostal churches are neither exclusively

nor even typically located among the poorest. In the socio-economic

rankings of neighborhoods used above, where 1 represents the most

affluent areas and 10 the least affluent, the locations of the 166

pentecostal evangelical churches average a ranking of 7, and those of

the 73 non-pentecostal evangelical churches a 5. Rather than being

disproportionately concentrated among the poorest, evangelical

organizations tend to be more common in areas relatively better off but

not affluent. To identify either traditional or pentecostal evangelicals

with the desperately poor misses the point.

Religious Competition Within Selected Neighborhoods

In order to better understand the religious activity characteristic of

individuals in relation to their social strata, I collected data on all public

places of regular worship within a stratified random sample of socially

homogeneous neighborhood areas in Caracas. In the sampled areas, 45

percent of all the identified sites of regular, public religious services

are Catholic. Of all those who attend a weekend worship service in

these areas, 68 percent do so in Catholic places of worship, 26 percent

in evangelical ones, and 6 percent go to churches of denominations

traditionally outside the evangelical mainstream such as the Jehovah's

Witnesses or Seventh Day Adventists.

Table 6.7 gives the number of churches, their average founding

dates, and the percentage of total attendance for Catholics or non-


Catholics in each social strata of the sample of neighborhoods. The data

indicate an overwhelmingly strong Catholic presence in the most

affluent portion of the population where it has traditionally been

established. Business, managerial and professional classes have long

been tied to institutional Catholicism through the Catholic schools

system and social tradition. For many in these groups, baptism, first

communion, confirmation and a church wedding continue to serve as

important ritual markers in the life cycle. Some 59 percent of all

Catholic attendance within the sampled areas on any given Sunday

occurs within the upper 19 percent of the population. In contrast, only

14 percent of non-Catholic attendance is found in these strata. However,

within these areas protestantism first established itself in Caracas. The

oldest, most traditional--and slowest growing--evangelical churches are

located here.

The middle range of the neighborhoods sample was found to contain

the highest relative concentration of evangelicals. Within this middle

range, more non-Catholics than Catholics seem to actually be in church

on any given weekend.36 Nevertheless, evangelical activity in these

areas is of a considerably more recent nature than its Catholic

counterpart. On average, most evangelical churches may be dated to the

1970s. The Catholic churches and chapels within these areas typically

trace their roots to the 1950s, when large numbers of young foreign

priests made possible the single largest expansion of the parish system to date.

The poorest neighborhoods in the sample have an equal number of

Catholic and non-Catholic churches, but more persons attend the

former. However, judging by the average founding date for the

churches, the evangelical movement is making its most recent gains in

precisely these neighborhoods. Most evangelical churches in these areas

were founded within the past decade, apparently through resources

provided by churches in less impoverished areas. Most Catholic

churches among the lowest strata were founded in the 1960s, when

Catholic pastoral activity first began to focus on the needs of the

poorest. However, this was also the time when vocations plummeted.

The pool of available recruits to carry on a program of vigorous,

expanding Catholic ministry in difficult environments (often inspired by

Liberation Theology) dramatically decreased at precisely a time when

enormous population increases made needs for new pastoral workers all

the greater. The net effect of shrinking personnel resources slowed

efforts to minister to the popular classes more powerfully than


conservative members of the hierarchy ever could. In general, the

poorest portion of the sample remains the least touched by institutional

religion. Only 13 percent of those who are in any church on any given

Sunday may be found within the kinds of areas where the lower 44

percent of the population lives.

The three most numerous protestant groups within the sampled areas,

with three churches each, happen to be the Assemblies of God, the

Lutherans, and the Jehovah's Witnesses. Data on churches within

Caracas as a whole show that the Assemblies and Witnesses are widely

dispersed throughout the metropolitan area, but that most of the

Lutheran churches in Caracas happen to be located within the sampled

areas. Rather conveniently, these churches happen to represent each of

the three major kinds of Protestant churches found in Venezuela. They

include a traditional evangelical (Lutheran, Missouri Synod), an

evangelical Pentecostal (Assemblies of God) and a non-evangelical

protestant (Jehovah's Witnesses) denomination. It is important to

emphasize the role of the pentecostals, but a focus on them to the

exclusion of their traditional evangelical siblings and non-evangelical

cousins only misleads theoretical analysis.

Table 6.7, A sample of religious activity by social strata: Caracas,

1991.37

Average

Number

Average

Attendance in Each Strata

Social Range of Founding per Religious

of Population Religion Churches Date Group

Upper 19% Catholic 5 1824 59%

Protestant 3 1961 14%

Middle 38% Catholic 16 1952 28%


Lower 44% Catholic 8 1969 13%


Source: Froehle, 1991 survey.


The data on religious presence and practice for sampled

neighborhoods suggest that there are numerous and distinctive religious

alternatives present in contemporary Caracas. Religious groups were

present in virtually every area with any considerable population. Where

not present, religious activity could be found in socially similar

neighboring areas. In 63 percent of the areas that contained religious

organizations, both Catholic and protestant churches could be

located.38 This suggests that the religious market may be sufficiently

segmented as to allow these groups to appeal to different types of

people within the same population. Also suggestive is that in no case

did an area have more than one evangelical group of the same type.

Within two of the sampled areas, there had been for brief periods two

churches of exactly the same denomination, but both sets of churches

had since differentiated their doctrines, changed affiliations and

established different forms of worship and organization.

Only 21 percent of the sampled areas with religious organizations

contained Catholic places of worship. For the most part, these are

small, wealthier areas where the evangelical challenge has historically

been weakest and the Catholic institutional presence greatest. In 17

percent of the sampled areas with religious organizations, evangelicals

alone operated places of regular Sunday worship. Two of these

neighborhoods were in parts of the city where evangelicals have

traditionally been strongest. These areas were heavily urbanized, but

without a Catholic institutional presence, when evangelical churches

first began to expand in the 1950s. They were thus ideal locations for

strong evangelical mission centers. They remain so today, in spite of

the fact that the Catholic church has since strengthened its presence

somewhat in those parts of the city. This may suggest that while the

presence of potential religious competitors may be important at the

beginning, once established the presence of competitors no longer has

an important impact on relative success.

Emerging Frames and Segmented Religious Markets

Although helpful, the social prospects of a religion are grounded not so

much in numbers reflecting current levels of presence and practice, but

rather in the adaptations of religious organization to a changing culture.

Ultimately, the degree to which mediators of religious messages and


structures adapt their product to the exigencies of market demand and

differentiate their product across segmented markets may be even more

important than understanding statistical trends.

Differentiation between competing product lines is important in any

market, since competition between similar religious products can be

costly and yield limited results. In this sense, both Catholics and

protestants can successfully (and economically) appeal within the same

areas precisely because their message is sufficiently differentiated. Both

have the loyalty of a committed following, although both also realize

the key to their future lies in their appeal to the uncommitted. Members

of non-Catholic churches typically find immediate and firm rejection of

their message when they approach regularly practicing Catholics, but not

when they preach to their nominally Catholic family and friends. If

further, significant religious change is to occur, it will have to occur

within this group of nominal or relatively uncommitted Catholics. These

persons do not actively participate in institutional Catholicism but tend

to define themselves as affiliated because their mothers or grandmothers

considered themselves affiliated, or because interest in either taking on a

new religious commitment (or explicitly rejecting one's nominal faith) is

relatively low, or because the social costs of doing so are relatively

high.39 Catholicism for these people is something traditional and

acceptable, but not something which they, at any rate, have to positively

accept. As nominal "risk-adverse" church members, they may request

the sacramental services their dead require or the norms of the living

demand, such as funeral masses or masses for the deceased, practices

which remain closely tied to images of purgatory found in popular

Catholicism. Simply by not abandoning Catholicism, they have not

closed off the opportunity to make a promise to a saint in order to be

healed of some physical or psychological malady, or assist the living in

some other pressing need. Among the privileged, comfortable classes,

Catholicism validates social life through its various institutions and

sacramental cycle-pleasant enough rewards which may be gained by

even the most casual level of commitment. As long as one is not actively

disaffiliated, Catholicism offers opportunities to ceremonialize important

moments in the social life cycle in ways that take on important social

meaning and foster social solidarity.

Like any social movement, religious groups must be able to attract

members, cultivate commitment and reproduce themselves. What

makes religious movements particularly interesting is that in addition


to offering material incentives to their constituents, such as valuable

social networks, schooling, and specific social services, they offer

spiritual incentives by giving transcendental meaning to individuals'

lives. One may seek out religious groups all the more if they happen

to be among the few forms of social associations available, as is

particularly true among the popular classes. One of the most powerfully attractive elements of pentecostalism in

Venezuela is its emphasis on physical healing. Traditionally, both

popular Catholicism and ordinary witchcraft (brujeria) have had a

strong emphasis on solving such immediate crises as those resulting

from poor health or debilitating physical conditions. However, only

pentecostals have placed that dimension in a communal mold and given

it transcendental meaning, and only pentecostals have given attention

to problems of alcohol and drug dependency. Indeed, addicts seem to

be a key market for evangelical religion, and evangelicals possess a

virtual monopoly on drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers in

Venezuela. There is a certain logic in this; one converts from

dependence on the abused substance to dependence on the Lord and the

faith community.40 Those with physical problems are not the only

ones for whom a conversion frame is especially appealing. Religious

seekers in general have a natural interest in groups which claim with

such certainty to know and teach religious truth.

Several different kinds of frames, or sets of meanings, may be

distinguished within the evangelical churches. The traditional

evangelicals organize meaning around sober salvation seeking. Reading

and interpreting scripture becomes their central orientation. Those with

relatively more education and higher incomes, even if officially

pentecostal, are more likely to fit such a frame. On the other hand,

pentecostals, especially those of lower income groups, are likely to find

the ongoing revelation and experiences of the Holy Spirit in an oral,

experienced form no less vital as a source of meaning than recorded

scripture.

However, it is important not to exaggerate distinctions between

protestants and Catholics. Notions of salvation and conversion,

including the role of congregational experience and the indwelling of

the Holy Spirit, are not necessarily monopolized by evangelical

protestants. Catholics today have forms of group life to which they may

"convert" and then go about the business of working out their salvation,

to use Wesley's apt phrase, through a life characterized by moral

rectitude, religious knowledge, and spiritual certainty. These typically


consist of a congregational environment where members can provide

mutual support to each other. The religious vicariates and the

evangelization centers are compelling examples of the changes that have

Notes


occurred. The socially oriented CEBs and the internally focused neo

catechumenate groups are designed to produce indigenous,

democratically organized small groups that reflect in a communitarian

way the role of the scriptures in their lives. Charismatics, originally

a middle class phenomenon, have become increasingly characteristic of

lower class parish life. They attempt to bring in an orientation towards

spontaneous prayer and fervent, animated worship characteristic similar

to the pentecostals, including an emphasis on divine healing and

speaking in tongues.41 However, none of these groups are slavish

imitators of the competition. All three are specifically Catholic ways of

framing issues of congregationalism and spontaneity which emerged in

distinct times and places and have been introduced and mediated by its

personnel and participants.

Implications for the future are suggested by the various frames these

movements have constructed for themselves. First, Catholicism in its

institutional form is hardly likely to disappear. At the same time, it is

not likely to absorb large numbers of inactive, nominal cultural

Catholics into the ranks of its militant minority. Resource and structural

constraints limit its possibilities, and it could lose more than it would

gain from making demands that would threaten the loss of self

affiliation of its uncommitted members.

For its part, the evangelical movement is likely to experience

continuing expansion. As it expands further, however, new and

different issues will emerge. Although the rate of expansion enjoyed by

the evangelical movement over the last thirty years may well be defined

as dramatic,42 its future expansion is not guaranteed. Converts may

make the most ardent church members, but once the initial excitement

of the conversion experience becomes routinized, highly committed

participation does not necessarily continue. Within particular

congregations, patterns of affiliation and participation change as people

enter and leave the conversion stage.43 Religions built on personal

conversion do not automatically reproduce themselves by natural

increase. Each new generation must be made to feel the call. This will

be no small feat in a society which culturally is hardly part of a "Bible

Belt" and where everyday experience of rapid social and cultural

change has taught people that what once made sense in one generation

does not necessarily work for the following generation. 44

1. The author wishes to acknowledge support received from the National

Science Foundation, the Rackham Graduate School of the University of

Michigan, the Center for Research in the Social Sciences (CISOR) in Caracas

and the Catholic University in Caracas.

2. See, for example, ITER 1,1 (Enero-Junio 1990). ITER is a biannual

journal produced by the Instituto de Teologfa para Religiosos. The first issue

was titled La Nueva Evangelización.

3. Rafael Arias Blanco, Catecismo de lniciación Cristiana.

4. See Daniel Levine, "Protestants and Catholics in Latin America: A Family

Portrait" in M. Marty and R. Appleby, Fundamentalisms Compared. Chicago:

University of Chicago Press (1994).

5. In a sense the experience of the Catholic Church in Venezuela and

throughout Latin America is a reversal of the European historical process.

First, Catholicism in Latin America struggled to survive the institutional attrition

resulting from Enlightenment inspired anticlericalism and modern rationalist

disbelief. Now, it faces an increasingly salient Protestant threat to what remains

of its once hegemonic domination of Latin American organized religion.

6. The distinctions between charismatic and hierocratic are drawn from Max Weber, Economy and Society (Berkeley: University of California Press,

1978/1956/1922).

7. See Judith Hoffnagel, 1980, "Pentecostalism: A Revolutionary or

Conservative Movement?" (Pages 111-124 in S. Glazier, Perspectives on

Pentecostalism: Case Studies from the Caribbean and Latin America. Lanham,

Maryland: University Press of America.)

8. See, for example, Christian Lalive D'Epinay's classic work on Chilean

pentecostalism, El refugio de las masas (Santiago, Chile: Editorial del Pacífico,

1968), and more recent works such as Abelino Martfnez, Las Sectas en

Nicaragua (San Jose, Costa Rica: Editorial Departamento Ecumenico de

lnvestigaciones, 1989) and Jaime Valverde, Las Sectas en Costa Rica (San

Jose, Costa Rica: Editorial Departamento Ecumenico de Investigaciones, 1990).

9. Many evangelical pastors, however, are part-time and many others may

become leaders of dependent congregations set up by their own congregation, but never have a church entirely their own.

10. See C. Lalive D'Epinay, El refugio de las masas (1968:20).

11. See John Coleman, "Will Latin America Become Protestant?"

(Commonweal, CXVIII,2:62) or David Stoll, ls Latin America Turning

Protestant? (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).


12. For comparative figures on Catholic priests and protestant ministers, see

David Martin, Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin

America (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990). According to the Annuarium

Statisticum Eclesiae (Rome: Vatican Secretary of State, 1987), there were some

37,378 religious women in Brazil in 1986.

13. See Jacinto Ayerra, Los protestantes en Venezuela (Caracas: Ediciones

Tripode, 1980), page 16.

14. When all places of Catholic worship are taken into consideration,

. Catholicism had a greater absolute number of places of worship in 1970, but

these other places of worship are not independent units and often are only the

site of irregular, monthly masses. Almost every evangelical chapel, on the

other hand, commonly has services every day, or every other day, of the week.

Almost all have heavily attended mid-week prayer meetings. Typically, there

are morning and evening services on Sunday, and many (even most) members

regularly attend both services. A culture of high attendance is promoted and

actively enforced. Many churches use an attendance card system and/or a weekly tithing card system. Such cards are signed by church personnel during the course of the service and are necessary to remain a member in good

standing.

15. The divisions of the Venezuelan states and territories into these six

categories are based on a schema that appears in Daniel Levine, Religion and

Politics in Latin America: The Catholic Church in Venezuela and Colombia

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981, page 102), with the exception

that a separate category for Guayana is added. Bolivar state is taken from the

11East11 category, and the new states of Delta Amacuro and Amazonas (not in

Levine's schema) are placed in the Guayana category. The specific

categorization is Andes: Táchira, Merida, Trujillo; Central: Carabobo, Aragua,

Federal District, Miranda; Plains: Barinas, Apure, Gúarico; East: Anzoátegui,

Monagas, Sucre, Nueva Esparta; West; Zulia, Falc6n, Lara, Yaracuy;

Guayana: Bolivar, Amazonas, Delta Amacuro.

16. The 1990 data are based on information gathered from the Biblical

Society of Venezuela. It consists of the complete addresses of all existing

churches for each denomination which submitted their directories to the

society. Note that due to the difficulty in identifying all evangelical churches

as either traditional or pentecostal, the column listing the total number of

evangelical churches is not the same as the traditional and pentecostal columns

combined.

17. See Fernando Campo del Pozo, Los Agustinos en la Evangelización de

Venezuela (Caracas: Universidad Cat6lica Andres Bello, 1979, page 116). I am

indebted to Hermann Gonzalez, S.J., the leading Venezuelan church historian,

for bringing this to my attention.

18. See Ayerra, 1980: 109-115. Interviews with Ignacio Castellot, SJ. and

fieldwork in the area during 1990 provided further substantiation.


19. Venezuela has some 906,372 thousand square kilometers of land mass,

but the central region only occupies 21,624 of that space.

20. Kenneth Kartz, Murray Schwartz, Audrey Schwartz, The Evolution of

Law in the Barrios of Caracas (Los Angeles: UCLA, 1973).

21. Rafael Arias Blanco, "Arzobispo Coadjutor de Caracas al Senor Director

de Urbanismo." This is a letter dated April 27, 1954 which I found in the

archdiocesan archives.

22. See page 128 of Maria Ruiz Quijano, lnserción de Minoria Activa:

Proposición de una Estrategia Eclesial a Partir de los lntentos de Renovación

de la Vida Religiosa y de la Evaluación Psico-Social de Un Caso (Caracas:

Universidad Cat6lica Andres Bello, Escuela de Ciencias Sociales; unpublished

thesis, 1984).

23. This information was provided by Fr. Hector Maldonado, Chancellor of

the Archdiocese of Caracas (September 1990).

24. ADSUM: Directorio de la Arquidiócesis de Caracas. (Caracas;

Archdiocese of Caracas, 1972, 1990). According to the pamphlet Vicarias en

Accion: Bolenri lnformativo (which I located in the archives of CISOR) the

vicarias were established by 1970. However, the first archdiocesan directory

mentioning them was dated 1972.

25. This table was based on a laborious process of collecting data on the

boundaries of all parishes – no easy task in itself —and comparing the written

boundaries to those on a large map of the city indicating the exact locations of

the 639 different socially homogenous areas that CISOR has identified. Each

of these 639 areas is assigned a rank of 1-10 (I being the most affluent),

following databases containing available social and demographic data. The

"number of cases” are the 639 areas, containing a total estimated population of

3,115,041. The total number of territorially based parishes in 1991 was 102.

26. The average parish size reported by the pastors was 52,053.

27. If data were available for evangelical celulas ("cells" or small,

neighborhood based groups of members of larger churches) and campos

blancos (target church planting areas that include a chapel or some other

worship site, such as a member’s home, literally "whitened fields," as in

Matthew 9:38) the presence of evangelicals relative to Catholics in lower social

strata would be greater.

28. For data on the age distribution of religious, I used SECORVE, Los

Religiosos en Venezuela:Informe Descriptivo de Respuestas a la Encuesta a los

Religiosos y Religiosas de Venezuela (Caracas: Secretariado Coajunto de

Religiosos y Religiosas de Venezuela (SECORVE), 1978) and SECORVE, Los

Religiosos en Venezuela: Levantamiento Socwgrafico (Caracas: SECORVE,

1984). Unfortunately, no data are available on the average ages of the residents

of religious communities, and thus age bias present in this data cannot easily be

controlled. For data on the Venezuelan population as a whole I used Oficina

Central de Estadfstica e Informaci6n, "Nueve Anos de Cambios Demográficos”

150 Organized Religion in the Political Transfonnation

in Tiempo de Resultados, Febrero 1991, 1,1:4 (Caracas: OCEI). For actual

locations of religious I used a 1988 survey by SECORVE of all the religious

houses in Venezuela.

29. See G. Davie, "Believing without Belonging: Is this the Future of

Religion in Britain?" Social Compass, 37,4(1990):463.

30. This is supported by data in CISOR's archival collection of hundreds of

interviews with Catholic parish priests in the Archdiocese of Caracas between

1967-1977. The complete collection includes interviews, surveys, and

documentation from virtually every parish in Venezuela during this period.


relatively high due to the high rise apartment buildings it contains. Once

eliminated from the sample, only 40 percent of all Catholic attenders sampled

are shown to originate in middle strata.

37. The sampled areas were not perfectly proportional to the percentage of

the population identified with each strata of area homogenea. However, the

areas were selected on as much a random basis as possible within each of the

ten strata, and the goal was not to be representative of population so much as the

kinds of areas within the city. Further, this is a sample of all churches, and thus

some churches are included in the "protestant" category which are not

evangelical, such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Adventists, or Mormons. As

indicated above, the percentage of overall attendance which occurs at such

churches is low.

31. See pages 366-367 in Max Weber, Econ6mia y Sodedad: Tomo I

(Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1974).

32. See G.. Davie, "Believing without Belonging: Is this the Future of

Religion in Britain?" Social Compass, 37,4(1990):465.

33. See page 73 of Adoniran Diaz, Analísis, Diagn6stico y Perspectivas de

Ta Obra Evangelica en Caracas, Venezuela (1900-2010) (Caracas: Consejo

Evangelico de Venezuela, 1986).

34. Data on the 239 evangelical religious organizations which independently

conducted weekly worship in Caracas in 1990 comes from three volumes of

raw census data and notes on the evangelical churches of metropoltian Caracas

collected in preparation of the second edition of the Directorio Cristiano

Evangelico (1990). Data on the 244 communities of religious surveyed in 1988

come from CISOR's archives and consist of the Survey of Religious Institutes

in Venezuela, conducted for SECORVE (Secretariado Conjunto de Religiosos

y Religiosas de Venezuela) by CISOR. Data on the 102 territorial parishes

established in the Archdiocese of Caracas by mid-1990 come from ADSUM:

Directorio de Ta Arquidwcesis de Caracas (Caracas, 1990). The areas

homogeneas were grouped together as follows: ranks 1-4 for the upper levels

(19% of the population according to the data on the areas compiled by CISOR),

5-7 for the middle levels (38% of the population), and 8-10 for the poorest

strata (44% of the totsl urban population). As a result of rounding, the columns

do not add to 100.

35. For example, John Coleman, S.J., "Will Latin America Become

Protestant?" in Commonweal, CXVIIl,2 (1991): pp. 59-63, especially p. 62

and Bryan Roberts, "Protestant Groups and Coping with Urban Life in

Guatemala City," in American Journal of Sociology, 73 (1972): 753-67. The

classic work from this point of view remains Christian Lalive D'Epinay) El

Refugio de las Masas (1968).

36. One of the areas which fell within the sample of neighborhoods happened

to be the portion of the historic downtown area which contains more Catholic

churches than any other part of the city. This approximately five by five block

area contains 28 percent of all Catholic attendance within the areas sampled.

When left out of the calculations, Catholicism only has 66 percent of total

church attendance within all sampled areas. The social rank of that area is

38. In all, 46 areas were sampled; 24 contained either Catholic or evangelical

places of regular worship and 15 contained both.

39. See Alberto Gruson, Religiosidad popular e iglesia como institucwn

(Caracas: CISOR, 1970).

40. See Jacinto Ayerra, Los Protestantes en Venezuelo (1980). One of the many

examples of favorable newpaper coverage evangelical substance abuse

centers is an article by E. Ramirez Araos in El Nuevo Pais, 4 June 1991.

This may be as much a "natural" issue for evangelicals as human rights

issues are for the Catholic church. Substance abuse demands individual

action to solve an individual's problem-"conversion" is the way to

"salvation." On the other band, human rights violations need a powerful

institutional voice to speak on behalf of the moral community. Providing a

"voice for the voiceless" is an act of social justice calling for "liberation. 11

41. This is supported by Angelina Pollak-Eliz. See her 1978 article

"Pentecostalism in Venezuela II in Anthropos: International Review of

Entlmology and Linguistics, 73:462-482 (1978).

42. See David Martin, Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in

Latin America (1990). Much has been made of a statement attributed to

Boaventura Kloppenburg, a Brazilian bishop, who claims, with considerable

justification, that the increase in evangelical Christianity in Latin American

today is faster than during any time anywhere, including the Reformation. Such

claims are made frequently today, often reflecting little exaggeration. See J.

Landrey, "Spiritual Surge: Latin America's Openness to the Gospel Calls for

Increased Christian Outreach" (Latin American Evangelist, Miami, April-June

1991:4) and David Stoll, ls Latin America Turning Protestant? The Politics of

Evangelical Growth (1990).

43. An example of this phenomenon is the earlier cited statistic which

suggests that perhaps some 17% of those who define themselves as evangelical

do not regularly practice their religion.


44. For example, in the U.S. experience, Catholicism shifted from a traditional communitarian emphasis to a more individualist, evangelistic emphasis complete with revivals and testimonials. For a discussion of this phenomenon, see Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1992). These changes occurred thanks in part to the social transformation the "people in the pews” were experiencing and could not be easily contained or directed by church leadership. Such models suggest 1hat 1he relationship between religion and social change is hardly clear cut. A useful discussion of this relationship is in John Burdick, Looking For God in Brazil (City University of New York, Ph.D. dissertation, 1990), Chapter 9.

Chapter 7

Brazil: State Subsidization and the Church Since 19301

Kenneth P. Serbin

Observers of the contemporary Roman Catholic Church in Latin

America rarely analyze one of the fundamental characteristics of its

institutional life: the acquisition of resources needed to carry out

religious, social, and political objectives.2 For instance, most of the

recent bibliography on the Brazilian Church--the world's largest and the

focus of this chapter--concentrates on its profound political

transformation since World War II, including its clash with an

authoritarian state in the 1970s and 1980s on important issues such as

human rights, economic development, democracy, and the formation

of politically active grass-roots Christian communities.3 Th.is profound

change jarred a Church long tied to the elite and in need of

revitalization. However, like all large, bureaucratic organizations, the

Church over its 2,000-year history has not lived by ideas alone but also

by the money that flows along its networks of programs and personnel.

The Vatican itself, the Church's world headquarters, received a harsh

reminder of economic reality as it recently suffered what one historian

called its "worst institutional and financial crisis in this century, if not

in its entire modem history. "4 While the link between polity and

religious competition in contemporary venezuela

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