wfn.org | "New Generation" in Brazil Promises Changes in Theology, Liturgy

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19-February-1999 
99070 
 
    "New Generation" in Brazil Promises 
    Sweeping Changes in Theology, Liturgy 
 
    by Alexa Smith 
 
CAMPINAS, Brazil - Overturning more than 100 years of orthodoxy, the 
General Assembly of the Independent Presbyterian Church of Brazil (IPIB) 
last week ratified a constitutional change to allow women to be ordained as 
pastors and elders. 
 
    That vote was one of a series of recent actions that are setting the 
denomination apart as a moderate voice among Brazil's historically 
conservative Protestant churches. 
 
    "We're struggling against (a number of) influences," said the Rev. Eber 
Lima, an IPIB theologian and pastor, "and we're trying to show ... what it 
means to be Reformed." 
 
    Lima said Brazilian Protestants are torn between a theology shaped by 
historically conservative northern missionaries and para-church groups and 
the charismatic practices that are sweeping the Latin south. 
 
    "We need to keep our Reformed identity strong," he said. 
 
    For this Assembly, articulating that identity means bringing some 
unheard-of debates to the Assembly, such as one over permitting children to 
take communion, which is not now done, and another over a proposal to stop 
re-baptizing Roman Catholic converts, which is now common practice. The 
first overture was expected to pass, and the latter - if introduced - to 
die on the floor. 
 
    The Assembly took several decisive stands that promise to broaden what 
the denomination's ministers may do and say. For example: 
 
    l Electing the Rev. Leontino Farias dos Santos, a seminary president 
and Reformed theologian from Brazil's desperately poor northeast and a 
long-time advocate of the ordination of women, as the IPIB's first black 
moderator; 
    l Widening of the responsibilities of elders and lay leaders, by, among 
other things, adding a section to IPIB's new constitution on recognizing 
the ministries of the unordained, and commissioning a task force to draft a 
paper on how to develop the calls of lay people; 
    l Ratifying a two-thirds vote by the denomination's 48 presbyteries to 
allow women to be ordained as elders and pastors, church offices now open 
to women in only about half of the Reformed churches in Latin America. 
 
    "This (theological) change really exists," dos Santos told the 
Presbyterian News Service when asked about what seems to be an effort to 
empower more people to do ministry. "And it is part of a process of 
reflection about the necessity to redeem human rights that haven't been 
recognized by the church before. ... It is not a tremendously great change. 
But it is absolutely necessary for the moment we are living in." 
 
    The Assembly's all-male commissioners voted almost unanimously to 
ratify the ordination of women as pastors and elders. Only nine 
commissioners expressed opposition. 
 
    "Some presbyteries are going to take longer than others (to accept the 
change)," said the Rev. Mathias Quintela Souza, the outgoing moderator. 
"But once it is in the constitution, it is law. ... and there's a big 
tendency in the IPIB to obey the constitution." 
 
    After the Jan. 29 vote, about two dozen women walked to the front of 
the Assembly Hall carrying a banner that read: "IPIB women are here in the 
last General Assembly of the century." The Rev. Eriberto Soto - the 
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) liaison to Brazil - then led the Assembly in 
prayer, and the commissioners sang the denomination's official hymn, "Um 
Pendao Real", whose chorus translates as: "With courage, without fear, For 
Christ we are ready to suffer, Let us lift up his banner high, Always firm, 
even unto death." 
 
    The IPIB has permitted the ordination of female deacons since the 
1930s, and evangelists known as "missionaries" - including women - were 
authorized four years ago to perform communion, baptisms and marriages in 
areas not served by ordained clergy. 
 
    Such changes are attributed to a new generation of pastors who are 
slowly assuming leadership - churchmen who are comfortable with less 
hierarchical models of ministry and seem able to strike the kinds of 
compromises that keep the denomination's charismatics, moderates, 
ultra-conservatives and liberals together in one church. 
 
    Four years ago, the IPIB avoided a schism by agreeing that the use of 
charismatic practices - while not typical of Reformed worship - is not 
anti-Presbyterian. At least 30 percent of the IPIB's churches now define 
themselves as charismatic - and most pastors concede that the charismatic 
congregations in the denomination are the fastest-growing. 
 
    The IPIB, formed in 1903 by nationalistic Brazilians seeking autonomy 
from foreign mission boards, split from what is now the largest of Brazil's 
Presbyterian communions, the Presbyterian Church of Brazil (IPB). Although 
it has progressive factions, the IPB is an unabashedly conservative 
million-member denomination, the fruit of the first Protestant missionary 
forays into Brazil more than a century ago. The IPB broke its ties with the 
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in the 1970s; its primary North American 
mission partners are the conservative Presbyterian Church of America (PCA) 
and the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. 
 
    The 80,000-member IPIB is the denomination that sustains dialogue 
between Brazil's three theologically diverse Presbyterian communions that 
grew out of PC(USA) mission; it is less conservative than the IPB and less 
liberal than the small social justice-minded denomination known as United 
Presbyterian Church of Brazil (IPUB). 
 
    How the IPB will react to the IPIB's decision to ordain women is 
unclear. Conversations aimed at bridging the theological gaps that separate 
the three churches have been under way for four years. 
 
    The IPIB's outgoing stated clerk, the Rev. Noidy Barbosa de Souza, told 
the Presbyterian News Service: "We have concern about how some churches 
will assimilate these decisions. We're going to have to see what 
repercussions come ... and work towards (resolving them) pastorally." 
 
    The Rev. Aureo Rodrigues de Oliveira, president of the IPIB's seminary 
in Fortaleza, said the denomination is simultaneously undergoing 
revolutions in culture, theology and liturgy. 
"We are experiences a fast process of transition," he said. "A new 
generation is rising." 

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