Fernando Arancón and David Gómez explain in The World Order of Julia in the wave a topic that is going quite unnoticed, but which has not stopped being talked about for a few days on social networks: the rise of evangelical Christianity in Spain. And a few days ago the Metropolitan stadium in Madrid was filled with faithful to pray with pastors among whom was Dani Alves.
The former soccer player, who was convicted of sexual assault and later acquitted, became a pastor throughout this process, and the number of people who attended this event is striking. What meaning does it have? The World Order explains that this is a macro evangelical event, something typical in the US and Latin America: “They are not just any type of evangelical Christians, they are a very particular current, which is the one that is growing the most: the neo-Pentecostals. This is important because we cannot make an undue generalization because we run the risk of putting everyone in the same bag and, above all, of losing focus of the phenomenon we are facing.”
What are neo-Pentecostals?
Evangelical Christianity is within Protestantism, which is one of the three branches of the Christian religion (along with Catholicism and the Orthodox Church). Pentecostals emerged at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century in a context of religious awakening in the new American cities. There is no single Pentecostal or neo-Pentecostal church, but they share a number of characteristics. The main one is that they believe that the Holy Spirit acts independently and they believe in the profusion of miracles.
It is a current that privileges the senses and experience over the intellectual. It has the ability to articulate different projects in the same social group and the same geographical area. That is, we can find different neo-Pentecostal churches in a neighborhood. In any case, we are now seeing this in Spain, but it is something that comes from afar and that has had a lot of impact in Latin America.
In fact, in The World Order we have been following them because they have become social groups that have a lot of electoral weight in countries like Brazil, where they are on their way to surpassing Catholics in number, and in others in Central America.
The jump to Latin America occurred because these pastors were financed from the US to fight against liberation theology. And when the Catholic Church retreated, these neo-Pentecostal churches filled that void. From liberation theology to prosperity theology. At this time the Pentecostal and later neo-Pentecostal churches already had a marked fundamentalist character.
A movement that serves the right and has great electoral weight in leftist profiles
This emerged in the 60s-70s in the US. Republicans saw that these churches were an electoral goldmine. That is when we talk about neo-Pentecoslism: when they adopt a more moralistic and politicized tone. They have no qualms about getting into politics and getting closer to power.
Not only are we talking about a movement that serves the right, but its electoral weight is so great that even left-wing profiles approach some of these pastors. Another example is that of Dilma Rousseff, who attended the inauguration of the Temple of Solomon in 2014, a macro church of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God in Sao Paulo.
Another aspect that has favored its expansion for almost a century is the way of carrying out its rituals and its adaptability. Worship is less formal and more emotionally expressive than that of other Christian traditions. In many of the videos that have circulated on social networks it is seen that they are very skilled in using modern forms of communication to transmit their ideas.
In fact, that has been one of its greatest successes since the beginning. Pentecostal pastors in the US were the pioneers in transmitting the word of the Lord on the radio. From there they jumped to television, where they made the figure of televangelists fashionable, like Billt Graham, one of the most iconic. These pastors have also adapted to new ways of communicating and now we have them on social networks and setting up music groups.
Why should we pay attention to this?
Because the neo-Pentecostal current is a branch of evangelical Christianity that, apart from adapting very well and communicating like no other, has a quite fundamentalist character. In these churches, the most famous pastors and those who ultimately financially support all of this have a fairly clear political vision: they believe they are waging a cultural war against satanic forces that they normally associate with gender ideology or the woke movement.
Some churches uphold the 7 mountains mandate, which we also see in other churches around the world. According to them, the church is not achieving enough influence in the public sphere and has to “conquer” the different mountains that make up our societies. These seven mountains are education, religion, family, business, government/military, entertainment, and media.
“The union between this movement and Trumpism”
By controlling these spheres (or mountains) they believe they can establish a pure and true form of society governed by divine commands that adheres to biblical ideas. And this is where we see the union between this movement and Trumpism. In the end they fit very well with the vision that the conservative Republican movement and MAGA have of reality.
That is, we are not talking about an isolated movement, but rather it is the result of a network that has been expanding an ideology and that has managed, in many countries, to become a very strong electoral force. But here we must insist on something. From what we have learned from what has happened in Latin America, the solution is not to ridicule them or single out all evangelicals. We must build bridges with other non-Pentecostal evangelical churches that have a more democratic and open vision of the world.
Because if not, the faithful will end up feeling marginalized and singled out and will end up in the networks of these more fundamentalist currents, because radical movements are always willing to welcome a new soul to join their struggle.
