Review: Christian Politics in the Third World
Second Quarter 2002
by Alaine Gherardi
The Center for Public Justice is pleased to announce that Dr. Paul Freston will deliver the 2002 Kuyper Lecture in Washington, D.C. on November 1. Freston is Lecturer in Sociology at the Federal University of Sao Carlos, Brazil and a leading expert on Christian political engagement throughout the world, particularly in Brazil and Latin America. His Kuyper Lecture will focus on the challenge of organized Christian political engagement today.—Ed.
In Evangelicals and Politics in Asia, Africa, and Latin America (Cambridge University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-521-80041-2), Paul Freston presents the findings of his groundbreaking study of contemporary evangelical political engagement. The author undertakes a truly Herculean task, examining developments in 27 countries spanning three continents. As he puts it, the book "represents a pioneer cross-cultural comparative study of the political dimensions of the new mass Protestantism of sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia."
While the study is extensive and thorough, Freston emphasizes its limitations and unevenness as a first step only, an initial submersion in the unique and varied political experiences of a diverse range of Protestant movements. Attentive to sociological theory, Freston points continually to the need for further research in this field in order to understand its implications, both positive and negative, for democracy, nationalism, economic development, and the growth of civil society.
The author's account offers a privileged insider's view of each country, some better understood than others. With the help of a network of contacts in other countries and by means of his own fieldwork, documentary study, and interviews with religious leaders and activists, Freston offers keen insights into the intricacies, weaknesses, strengths, and struggles of indigenous Christians who are seeking to attain a secure place for themselves and their witness in rapidly changing countries.
"The ideal choice of countries," Freston writes, "would be based on a balance of three criteria: objective political importance, size of the evangelical community, and actual evangelical impact on politics. In practice, the choice has also been constrained by availability of materials. Of the countries effectively undersold here, the most important from the evangelical standpoint is probably Indonesia."
The first and the most complete survey in the book is that of Brazil about which Freston knows the most and knows it intimately. Of the countries studied, Brazil is the most evangelically mature, with the "second largest evangelical community in the world." Many of these Protestants are vocal and politically organized and benefit from the country's favorable media, cultural, and political climate. In Brazil all new church denominations are nationalized and receive support from the federal government. Although Freston says that Brazil's Pentecostal, church-enhancing political movements are unique, he effectively uses the initial indepth study of his own country as the base for comparing and contrasting developments in other countries.
In his conclusion, Freston summarizes numerous extrapolated trends and common denominators of Third World evangelical politics. The author tries to guard against both optimism and pessimism, pointing both to obstacles and to opportunities that lie ahead. His hope is that many of the evangelical movements may be able to help define a new relationship between religion and the state, a relationship that could pave the way to greater pluralism and equal treatment of people in countries throughout the world.
Freston's hope in this regard is not unlike that of another expert on Third World Christianity, David Martin, who anticipates that the most potent contribution of evangelicals "will be the creation of voluntary associations and the multiplication of social and political actors in the public arena. Other things being equal (which of course they rarely are), the cultural characteristics of Evangelicals— participation, pragmatism, competition, and personal discipline—ought in the long run to foster democracy" (from an article in The Desecularization of the World, edited by Peter L. Berger).
According to Freston, however, the idea of a pluralist, non-confessional state is problematic for many evangelicals. So while they should be encouraged to defend pluralism, "they need to go beyond a secular utilitarian defense of the non-confessional state."
—Ms. Gherardi is Assistant Director of the Civitas Program in Faith and Public Affairs
Excerpts from Evangelicals and Politics in Asia, Africa, and Latin America
There is one tendency [among several evangelical political tendencies] we have termed "triumphalism." This is the Third World futurist equivalent of nostalgia for "Christian Europe" or "Protestant America," but goes beyond. It is predicated on a reading of the bible rare now in traditionally Protestant countries which have been through wars of religion and the Enlightenment. Old and New Testaments are fused, in a transference of Israel's promised heritage to modern-day evangelicals, granting them a divine right to rule. The utopia of a "Christian Zambia" or an "evangelical Guatemala," is alive and well, whatever the remoteness of its implementation due to Protestantism's disunity. This is usually combined with the ritualistic and mystical approach to social blessing characteristic of newer concepts of macro-level spiritual warfare.
#####In burgeoning Third World evangelicalism [there is a] range of postures towards the state ... as in the history of worldwide Protestantism. One such posture is the rejection of political participation which characterized most Anabaptists of the sixteenth century. The second posture is the ideal of the "Christian nation," adopted by Calvin in continuity with the Middle Ages. The church is at the center of society, furnishing its official creed. The pious ruler should promote true religion and morals by political and judicial means. Today, the "Christian nation" ideal has fragmented into a range of positions, from reconstructionists who defend a theocracy based on Mosaic law, to the liberalism of European territorial churches which asks only for Christian values to retain a certain privilege. In its severe form, it implies merely discrimination in civil religion, often allied with open support for democracy and human rights. The third posture flourished initially among some early Baptists and the Levellers of the English Civil War, and later spread to other groups, including the Neo-Calvinists who governed Holland for much of the period from the 1890s to the 1940s. This is principled pluralism, of religious freedom in a non-confessional state.
#####Given the variety of political uses to which Christianity and the bible have been put historically, it is not surprising that variety prevails in today's global evangelicalism. However, it is important, in an increasingly globalized world, that evangelicals in the developed West learn from the social reality and political concerns of fellow-evangelicals elsewhere. Within the Third World, awareness of variety can promote suspicion regarding anyone's claim to have uncovered a definitive "biblical politics"; but it can also help local politicians see that sometimes they defend positions which would be politically or economically disastrous for their fellow-believers in other parts of the world.
The lack of theorization about political engagement contrasts with other important Christian currents in the modern world, such as Christian Democracy, Dutch Neo-Calvinism, Liberation Theology or even the New Christian Right. There are obvious constraints on such theorizing. Third World countries have limited educational resources, and the evangelical community is often educationally deprived even by local standards. The religious market, with its pressures to be numerically successful and dispute scarce resources, does not encourage deep thinking, ethical teaching or self-denying politics. International church contacts are often non-existent, limiting access to the history of Christian political reflection. And, of course, there are the constraints of the local political systems, with their dominant religion-state models and their often pervasive corruption.
