wfn.org | ALC Noticias Aug 13 2005 Argentina Brazil Chile

[Worldwide Faith News <wfn@igc.org>]

ALC NEWS SERVICE
E-mail: director@alcnoticias.org

--------------
CONTENT

ARGENTINA: Are Pastors ready to be involved in politics?
ARGENTINA: Waldensian Pastor says that sexo-phobia does not correspond to
Biblical text
BRAZIL: The IECLB needs to grow and change if it wants a future: Gottfried
Brakemeier
CHILE: Evangelical religion classes must be available as of 2006, said Mayor
BRAZIL: Methodists create ministry for afro-descendents

---------------
ARGENTINA:
Are Pastors ready to be involved in politics?

BUENOS AIRES, August 12 (alc).The growth of the non Catholic Christian
Church in Argentina seems to be encouraging its leaders to consider
participating in politics. According to an article published in the daily
La Nacion, there are signs that this trend is resurging.

Data gathered by journalist Sergio Sotelo shows that while the figures
related to the growth of Christian Churches can vary, the national Worship
Secretariat has 3,000 Churches registered, the majority Evangelical.

Other sources calculate that at least 7 million people attend
EvangelicalChurches or around 20 percent of the total population which
means the figure has quadrupled in the past 20 years.

According to Norberto Saracco, author of a doctoral thesis about the
history of Pentecostalism, the trend in Argentina has also taken place in
other Latin American nations.

Saracco maintains that the growth of Evangelicals dates back to the
1950s-1970s in the past century due to the "crisis of populism" and the
"catalysation" of energy, previously absorbed by politics, on the part of
religious groups. In the poorest sectors in particular people have found
new meaning in their lives.

Can we think of the Evangelical vote as a movement that will have an impact
on Argentine politics," the writer asks.  He said the most visible and
"disastrous" attempt was led by the Independent Christian Movement with
meager results in elections for the 1994 Constituent.

The former president of the Pastoral Council of Santa Fe, Jose Faienza, who
was a candidate in the recent municipal elections in this city said that
"no one turns on a light to put it under a table," after opposing the
involvement of pastors in politics for many years.

"God has asked us to make a call to construct a more just life for
everyone," said the 5-year-old pastor who added that Evangelicals will be
willing to "give a response that others do not give."

According to La Nacion, there are signs of change in the vision of
Evangelicals such as the position of Arturo Hotton, candidate for the
"Recreate Movement" as vice governor in Buenos Aires in the last election
and president of the Promise foundation. Hotton maintains that believers
have a "majority awareness" about the need to become involved.

The legitimacy reached by the Evangelical Church in the social arena is
another sign of its growth. According to Pedro Antonin, former director of
Caritas Argentina, Evangelical Churches are currently considered a "second
social actor" after the Catholic social aid body.

Another sign underscored by the analyst is the integration process that has
been taking place in Evangelical Churches in the past 10
years,demonstrating by the joint participation of the three federations in
the National Christian Evangelical Council (CNCE).

According to Humberto Shikiya, director of the Ecumenical Advice and
Service Center (CREAS) thanks to this integration the Evangelicals have
achieved the "benefit of legitimacy."

This legitimacy has been strengthened by its social, prophetic and
Evangelical commitment in the poorest sectors after the
institutional-financial crisis that took place toward the end of 2001. At
the same time, by the promotion of hopeful citizenship as a fruit of their
profound faith and spirituality, said Shikiya.

Here, said Sotelo, it is important to recall the analysis of  Fortunato
Mallimacci about the transcendence of this irruption of religious movements
of a new type, like the Evangelical.

"What is different today," said the sociologist of religion from the
University of Buenos Aires (UBA) "is that the popular space is no longer
controlled by partisan religious groups but by religious groups that enjoy
a legitimacy that means they are consulted by governments to ask their
opinion about social, cultural and employment plans they decide to introduce."

--------
BRAZIL
The IECLB needs to grow and change if it wants a future: Gottfried Brakemeier

SAN LEOPOLDO, August 11 (alc). In order to be viable, the Evangelical of
the Lutheran Confession in Brazil (IECLB) needs to grow and for this it
needs to change as under its current conditions it does not have a future,
said Dr. Gottfried Brakemeier, former president of the Church and former
president of the Lutheran World Federation.

According to Brakemeier, the "feared division of the IECLB is in process,"
due to different currents within the Church and he warned that if it closes
its doors it will be sorely missed in the Brazilian ecumenical movement.
For this, he said, it is worth investing in its continuity, which implies
eliminating internal barriers that are impeding its growth, controlling its
centrifuge forces and joining together in a common Project.

The forces he was referring to are several "Churches" that exist in the
same structure: Lutheran Grassroots Pastoral, the Encontrao Movement, the
Christian Union Evangelical Mission, the Martin Luther Communion, and
Charismatic Renewal. He emphasized, however, that the differences are not
harmful as long as the sectors remain integrated and all heading in the
same direction.

"This is not the case in the IECLB," said Brakemeier at a retreat in the
Theological School at the end of July. He said that the Church has three
Theology faculties, formation centers with different bibliographic
references and theological orientation and the movements (Churches within
the Church) have their own devotionals, song books, publishing houses and
administrative apparatus, as well as their own reflection events.

Brakemeier emphasized that the major victims of the discrepancies in the
Church are the communities and the parishes. "If they had opted in favor of
one of the 'lines' in the IECLB, the rupture would have taken place long ago."

The Lutheran leader referred to a study by the former secretary general of
the Church, Pastor Gerd Uwe Kliewer who compiled and evaluated statistical
data provided by parishes from 1998 to 2002. The study showed that the
Church has 715,000 members, less than 0.5% of Brazil estimated population
of 180 million.

According to Kliewer's study, from 1997 to 2002 the IECLB barely grew 0.3
percent. Lutheran Evangelical families have fewer children in the past. The
absolute number, however, did not decrease because people are living longer
and the members are, on average, older. The Church has not accompanied the
growth rhythm of the Brazilian population.

Timid in the past, without having developed a mission project because it
limited itself to offering pastoral support to German immigrants, the IECLB
must urgently define its identity in "rigorously confessional terms," he
said. The mere force of tradition will not ensure members.

The Lutheran leader said that the IECLB is still far from being a
missionary Church. A Church that seeks to do mission cannot remain hidden,
he said and recommended the use of the media in the Evangelizing task.
Without trying to imitate them the former LWF president suggested the
Lutherans learn the use of the media demonstrated by Catholics and
Pentecostals.

He did not recommend, however, copying others styles. "If we want to
imitate the Pentecostals we know they will do it better," he said. He did
not deny, nevertheless, the Lutheran Church's need for "ecumenical learning."

The IECLB must become energetically aware of its talent. The problem in the
era of Luther and the reformers, similar to today, was not the lack of
religiosity. "Rather it was an 'ignorant' religiosity, naive, even stupid,
disoriented. The same is true today: faith and religion are not synonyms
although there are affinities," he said. If religiosity is currently alive,
faith is in a profound crisis, he said.

Brakemeier invited people to rediscover the delight of the Lutheran faith.
"Its delight is not limited to some dogmas of faith. It is a way of
being."The Lutheran confession invites people to faith without prohibiting
critical reasoning, he added. "It wants 'thinking believers,' people who
known how to judge things," he said. "To subdivide the world into good guys
and bad guys,
into losers and winners, into the credulous and the incredulous, into the
just and the sinners, is a construction carried out by hypocrites and the
naïve. It is something stupid that the wisdom of the Gospel opposes," he said.

---------------
ARGENTINA
Waldensian Pastor says that sexo-phobia does not correspond to Biblical text

BUENOS AIRES, August 11(alc). There is nothing wrong or perverse about
sexual pleasure, however, there is a religious opposition that stigmatizes
it based on old cultural traditions that do not correspond to Biblical
texts, said Margarita Lais Tourn, pastor of the Waldensian Church of the
River Plate.

"Sexophobia responds to a "system of exclusion" that continues today in
different guises such as maintaining that the sexual act is sinful, that
women induce sin, the virginity is a synonym of goodness and even
restricting the priesthood to men," said Pastor Lais Tourn.

She said that this cosmovision does not have any foundation in Biblical
texts, whose Old Testament accepts material and sensual life and sees
nothing wrong with enjoying all the pleasures: it celebrates eroticism and
sexual love.

She questioned that salvation is limited to what is spiritual "as if Jesus'
proposal was not integral, reaching bodies, minds, souls, which is to say
the entire human person. There are many Biblical stories in which Jesus
restores the physical health of the body and also re-establishes the
integration of people excluded from the social body," she said.

"You have been called to liberty," she told more than 350 participants at
the Interdisciplinary Colloquium "Education, sexualities and gender
relations" held August 4-6 in the Philosophy Faculty at the University of
Buenos Aires.

Lais Tourn was one of the speakers at the event which, from the area of
educational sciences brought together representatives from diverse disciplines.

"The Christian focus to address the issue of sexual education must have as
central points: the positive cosmovisions and the indivisibility of the
body and soul as well as freedom and Christian responsibility," she said.

Tourn is responsible for the youth pastoral of the Waldensian Church in
Argentina and in Uruguay, she has specialization in gender issues and is
coordinator of the Women's Forum of the Latin American Council of Churches
(CLAI) in Argentina.

In her intervention she said that for many Christians it is difficult to
associate their beliefs with freedom because their experiences with
Christian morals "have been signed by the repression of a legalist and
authoritarian doctrine" However, she warned that Jesus did not leave a list
of what is permitted and what is prohibited. "Therefore I cannot in the
field of ethics deduce a prescriptive moral from the Bible," she said.

"Christianity invites us to carry out a much more complex and fertile
exercise," she said.

She affirmed that being concerned about human sexuality confronts a central
problem of life. "It is not a marginal question but a constitutive question
of our being" she said, warning that the discourse about sexuality is also
"not immutable, but rather always subject to change."

The pastor affirmed that the Protestant tradition has considered sexuality
in the liberty-responsibility dimension of every believer and considers
that making precisions "at any cost" on a terrain as debatable as human
sexuality is to tyrannize consciences."

"More than rules there is a need to walk just paths that do not lead to
impositions or exclusions. This search for freedom must maintain our
critical capacity in the midst of our individualist, violent, consumerist,
patriarchal society that distorts human beings and therefore sexuality,"
she maintained.

---------
CHILE
Evangelical religion classes must be available as of 2006, said Mayor

COYHAIQUE, August 11 (alc). Hesitation on the part of some municipal
authorities to implement Evangelical teaching to students who profess this
faith were responded by Mayor David Sandoval from Coyhaique, capital of the
XI Region who said that the "the norms are not subject to agreement, they
must be applied."

Sandoval told the daily Diario de Aysen that there are no limitations that
impede Evangelical children in the city from having religion classes as of
2006 with the only requirement that parents clearly express their
children's religious confession when they are enrolled. In Chile it is
estimated that 16 percent of the population is a member of an Evangelical
Church.

As of next year, schools in the jurisdiction must offer Evangelical
religious education on a par with Catholic religion, according to a norm
from the Regional Secretariat of the Ministry of Education. Public schools,
in their majority, operate under municipal administration.

"Children who profess an Evangelical religion have the same rights to
receive religion classes in our faith as children who profess Catholic
religion," said Pastor Javier Gallegos, of the Autonomous Assemblies of God
Church of Coyhaique and a representative of the National Evangelical
Education Committee (CONAEV).

In the regional capital only one municipal establishment offers Evangelical
religion classes. The reasons given by authorities is that there are no
resources to contract teachers, although Evangelical leaders sustain that
mayors closely tied to the Catholic Church have not shown an interest in
applying the measures.

The mayor of Coyhaique rejected versions that allude to problems related to
economic reasons. "This is not an issue of resources or a lack of wills,
but is fundamentally an issue of coverage, basically of ordering (.) it is
a practical issue," he said.

The Regional ministerial secretary for Education Nelson Maldonado said that
Chilean legislation favors diversity and freedom of worship although he
admitted that for reasons of custom, the majority of schools impart classes
about Catholicism.  "I think that the issue of dictating or not classes of
Evangelical religion is related to an issue of will," he said after
proposing some strategies that do not involve greater costs, such as
bringing together students from several grades.

He announced that a census would be taken among students in schools in the
region to implement strategies that better favor fulfillment of the law.

--------
BRAZIL
Methodists create ministry for afro-descendents

SAO PAULO, August 9 (alc). The Third Ecclesiastic Region of the Methodist
Church of Brazil created a Ministry of Affirmative Action for
Afro-Descendents and its installation took place August 5 in a celebration
presided by Bishop Adriel de Souza Maia in the Vila Mariana Church in this
capital.

"Our Churches do not perceive the wealth of the African culture," said
Bishop Souza Maia while the Evangelical Black Movement supported the
Methodist initiative and said "this is a great step so that the other
demands be addressed."

The ministry, recently established by the Third Ecclesiastic Region, that
covers the city of Sao Paulo, the Santo Andre region, Sao Bernardo do Campo
and Sao Caetano and other zones in this state, seeks to raise awareness and
increase social inclusion through systematic encounters and emphasize the
presence of Black people in the Church and in official celebrations.

"Another focus will be on women, who are historically discriminated in
society and who for being black face even more discriminated," said Souza Maia.

The Methodist Bishop and president of the National Council of Christian
Churches of Brazil (CONIC) defined the creation of a new ministry as a
project to "struggle for life and social inclusion" and demanded a greater
participation of Black people in representative positions in the Church.
The Methodist Church is the only one among evangelical Brazilian denominations
that has a pastoral to combat racism.

The creation of the new ministry was considered a "positive reference by
MNE so that other Churches can also render accounts with history." Racism
has "negatively marked our Churches," it affirmed.

The MNE has an agenda of demands that go beyond the creation of ministries
and pastorals to combat racism. It demands the inclusion of a course on
African history, AfroBrazilian, an a Black theological hermeneutic in the
curriculum in theological seminaries, greater space in leadership positions
in Churches, a quota policy for Black people in seminaries and universities
belonging to Churches and to combat intolerance regarding religiosity with
an African matrix.
-----------------------------------------
Latin American and Caribbean Communication Agency (ALC)
P.O. box 14-225 Lima 14 Peru
E-mail: director@alcnoticias.org
http://www.alcpress.org

-