ALC NEWS SERVICE E-mail: director@alcnoticias.org
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CONTENT
PERU: Lay?s greatest success has been to position himself as a ?leader of the Evangelicals? said analyst PERU: Surprising success of Evangelical leader in Peruvian elections BRAZIL: Theologian Kart Barth admired Mozart for his invigorating music, affirmed Martim Dreher BRAZIL: Actors and residents from the Rocinha barrio dramatized the Sacred Way
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PERU
Lay?s greatest success has been to position himself as a ?leader of the Evangelicals? said analyst
LIMA, Abr. 13 (ALC). Humberto Lay?s greatest success, the pastor who came sixth in last Sunday?s elections out of a field of 20 has been to place himself on the public scene as a ?leader of the Evangelicals? said historian Juan Fonseca, of the Catholic University.
This gives him the clout to ?maneuver among the different political forces, negotiating the Evangelical votes? while the press and civil society assume that Lay is the new Peruvian Evangelical ´pope? with all the possibilities and dangers this brings,? said the analyst.
Fonseca, a lay person from the Church of God
(Pentecostal) said that the Evangelical votes are now crucial for the parties that will enter the second round. ?In fact, the three big parties have begun to court Lay who seems to have learned to move in the major leagues of politics using dialogue to negotiate power quotas,? he said.
The political participation of Evangelicals in the country began in the 1950s but only recently in 1990 did it constitute a visible force, with 17 congress representative elected on former President Alberto Fujimori?s ticket. Fujimori is currently detained in Chile while Peru seeks extradition on charges of corruption and crimes against humanity.
In the 2001 elections, only the Evangelical congressman Walter Alejos was elected for President Alejandro Toledo?s party. According to the analyst, it was in these years that RN began to gain strength with militancy in neo-Pentecostal or charismatic Lima Churches and then extended to almost all Evangelical communities in the country.
Lay, a leader well known in the Evangelical world for being one of the main spokesmen of hegemonic neo-Pentecostalism gave RN the backing it needed to become ?the political arm of the Evangelicals,? he said.
?The unexpected participation of Lay in key spaces in the State and civil society such as the National Anti-Corruption Initiative and in particular the Truth and Reconciliation commission gave him the support he needed to become the best known Evangelical leader in the country,?
Fonseca affirmed that these fortuitous acts would lead followers of Lay to interpret that ?God was with them, that Lay was the man chosen by God for Peru.?
He said that this messianic and integrating discourse was manifested when at the beginning of the campaign, RN spokesmen called on Evangelicals to vote for the ?candidate of God? and exercised a strong psychological pressure on the Evangelical faithful to vote for this ?divine candidate.?
According to Fonseca, Lay?s greatest weaknesses are his lack of his own political support that goes beyond merely religious leaders, his ambiguous character on the confessional front and his ideological positioning.
?It would appear that National Restoration wants to repeat in Peru the ?successful? recipe of the US Moral Majority, now so happy at Bush?s side,? he underlined.
The presence of Evangelicals in national politics offers interesting perspectives but also challenges, for which they must be more prepared, he said. Fonseca said that Lay?s leadership runs the risk of disappearing if the ?pastor does not learn to live with democracy as a life style and not just a discourse for meetings.?
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PERU
Surprising success of Evangelical leader in Peruvian elections
LIMA, Abr. 10 (ALC). The emergence of a new actor on the political scene, Evangelical Pastor Humberto Lay, who came sixth in Peru?s presidential elections out of a field of 20 presidential candidates, added another surprising element to the intense day experienced by Peruvians.
The number of votes obtained by Lay, leader of the National Restoration (RN for its initials in Spanish) was higher than those garnered by well known politicians like the left-wing Javier Diez Canseco and Susana Villaran and in many places he obtained more votes than the presidential candidate Martha Chavez, political heir to former president Alberto Fujimori.
Virtually unknown, although he was a member of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Lay?s performance attracted the attention of local political commentators. Writer Jaime Bayly and host of the ?Sharpshooters? said that the Evangelical pastor was in realty the ?big winner? in the elections.
According to pollster Apoyo, RN had obtained 4.3% of the vote according to their quick count, surpassing the minimum necessary to obtain seats in Congress. The party is expected to hold three of 120 seats. In the vote for the Andean Parliament, it obtained 5.3%.
Lay surprised political opinion last week when he managed to congregate 50,000 people at his campaign closure in Lima. His proposals include a frontal battle against corruption, recovering Christian values, an economy with a human face and overcoming the meager levels of public education.
?I want to thank God because no matter what the outcome the country won and above all National Restoration, a political party that is now part of the history of the country, thanks to the struggle of many supporters, members, militants, leaders and candidates,? said Gino Romero, the legal representative of RN.
He said that many of the members of RN, from diverse Christian denominations, worked silently and unceasingly. ?We are among the six parties with congressional representative, among the 24 that ran.?
According to Apoyo, another Evangelical who is likely to hold a seat in Congress for Cuzco is Maria Sumire from Ollanta Humala?s Peruvian Nationalist Party, a former army officer who took first place in Sunday?s elections. Sumire is the legal advisor for the Campesino Federation of Cusco, one of 1,000 women proposed for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize and a member of the Methodist Church.
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BRAZIL
Theologian Kart Barth admired Mozart for his invigorating music, affirmed Martim Dreher
SAO LEOPOLDO, April 12 (ALC). While Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was not a very faithful Christian he won the profound admiration of Kart Barth, a famous and influential European Protestant theologian, said Professor Martim Dreher, of the University Valle del Rio dos Sinos (UNISINOS). This year, humanity commemorates 250 years since the birth of Mozart and 120 since the birth of Barth.
The music of Mozart is ?food and drink, music full of comfort and encouragement,? wrote Barth, a Swiss Calvinist Theologian, in a book about the composer that he published in 1956.
Mozart?s work should ?form part of the doctrine of creation and eschatology, although he was not one of the fathers of the Church and according to appearances, was not a very devout Christian,? wrote Barth.
According to Dreher, while Barth never wanted to be a Roman Catholic, he might have agreed to be Pope for 15 days to ?at least to direct the canonization of Mozart.?
Barth was a pastor in Safenwil and a Theology Professor in Bonn, Germany until 1935 when he abandoned the country because he did not agree with the Nazi ideology. He criticized the adhesion of Christians to Nazism and wrote several theological books. The most important was "Die Kirchliche Dogmatik" (The dogmatic of the Church).
In an interview with the Humanitas Institute of UNISINOS, Professor Norberto Dreher carried out an analysis of Mozart?s work under the Barth perspective and compared it with another exponent of sacred music Johannes Sebastian Bach.
Mozart?s music is ?full of joy and freedom. Mozart taught theology to live,? said Dreher. ?When the angels praise God it will be difficult for them to execute Bach?s music but they will surely play Mozart and God will listen with a great deal of attention,? said Dreher.
Bach, a Protestant, wrote sacred music and influenced the world but Mozart, who was not influenced by Catholicism composed profane music. ?In Mozart we have to say that the profane influenced sacred music,? affirmed the UNISINOS professor.
?Bach continued serving me with his sung preaching; Mozart taught me that life can be light, joyful,? said Dreher in his Barth reading.
Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus
(1756-1791) was the last of seven children of Leopold Mozart and Anna María Pertl, who lived in Salzburg. At age five he wrote his first compositions.
He wrote 41 symphonies, 27 piano concertos. The majority of his 600 compositions were for entertainment but he also composed 19 masses, of which the best known is the Requiem.
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BRAZIL
Actors and residents from the Rocinha barrio dramatized the Sacred Way
By Edelberto Behs
RÍO DE JANEIRO, April 12 (ALC). The passion of Christ, based on Bible stories that the people know will be dramatized on Holy Friday on the streets of Rocinha by an amateur theatre group made up of residents from the biggest barrio in Rio de Janiero.
?The Sacred Way of Rocinha showed moments of social demand and criticism. There is no way to separate our Sacred Way from the desire for a more comfortable life and with opportunities for all,? said the director of the Rosa Cazacultura Theatre Company Aurelio Mesquita.
Actors, residents and pedestrians will interact in the three kilometers of the Sacred Way that will travel down the streets and alleys that make up Rocinha. The play will begin with the baptism of Jesus and will conclude with the resurrection.
Jesus will be interpreted by Lucas Valentim, a 19-year-old student and actor. A baker will be John the Baptist and Mary is a university student who is currently unemployed. ?I asked people who wanted to pay whom and the group chose. We do not have any participation from a priest, pastor or theologian and the story is constructed by the group, the way the people know it,? said the director.
Regular people, Catholics, Evangelicals and Umbandistas are those who will carry out the Sacred Way. ?We began with the example of existing groups, like the Landless Workers Movement, that struggle for transformation, following the example, of Jesus,? said the director.
The passion of Christ of Rocinha has a specific script. It has scenes that pay homage to local culture, such as popular Brazilian music, the Samba. When Jesus is seized, six students from the Music School in the barrio will play the flute. At the death of Jesus, Mary weeps for her loss with a poem that speaks of the pain of all mothers who lose their children for different reasons.
The culmination of the Sacred Way is the resurrection of Christ, outside the ?Fundacion.?
?Churches don?t like what we do much? and this satisfies the people in the barrio. Churches can be an excellent instrument of transformation but they do not help the people think,? criticized Mesquita.
The director of the theatre group believes that art can bring about change. The text of the Sacred Way is written by local write Jose Maria Rodriguez and the staging was carried out by Aurelio Mesquita. For the first time in 14 years, the presentation will have cultural support.
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