A Reader in Latina Feminist Theology: Religion and Justice

Chapter 5. PERCEPTION MATTERS: PENTECOSTAL LATINAS IN ALLENTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA

PERCEPTION MAT TERS PENTECOSTAL LATINAS IN ALLENTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA The phenomenal growth of Pentecostalism in Latin America has had a significant effect on Latin American societies in recent decades. Edward Cleary notes in his introduction to Power, Politics, and Pentecostals in Latin America: “Without this understanding [of Pentecostalism ] one has an incomplete view of Latin American culture and will enter ill-prepared upon any analysis of contemporary Latin American politics.”1 Recent scholarship on Pentecostals reexamines two areas of conventional wisdom regarding them: their political involvement and the status of Pentecostal women. The traditional view on Pentecostals’ political involvement held that they did not participate in so-called worldly matters and that this nonparticipation gave tacit conservative support to the political status quo. For example, in 1980, Anthony La Ruffa observed that Pentecostals in Puerto Rico upheld the commonwealth status or saw statehood as the only alternative. Independence , they believed, would inevitably lead to another communist Cuba.2 Pentecostalism’s continued growth, however, has led to newer scholarship that challenges this assumption. John Burdick, Rowan Ireland, Kathleen Harder, and Paul Freston have shown that to varying degrees Pentecostals have indeed become involved in some sort of political activity. Pentecostals in C H A P T E R 5 anna adams Brazil, according to Freston, changed a slogan in 1986 from “Believers don’t mess with politics” to “Brother votes for brother.” In 1993, seventeen Brazilian Pentecostals were federal deputies and senators.3 The growth of Pentecostalism has also prompted scholarly examination of women and the status and influence they hold in this very patriarchal church whose doctrine holds that women are naturally inferior to men. In Pentecostalism’s divinely conceived hierarchy, power and authority rest with men and God, and church doctrine imposes strictures on the behavior and appearance of women. And yet, studies have shown that Pentecostal women find liberation in their religion. They claim to be better off than non-Pentecostal women or than they were before their conversion. As early as 1975, Cornelia Butler Flora’s study of women Pentecostals in Colombia concluded that a gain in the individual status for women can be seen as a result of the Pentecostal movement.4 More recently, the works of Elizabeth Brusco, Cecilia Mariz, and Carol Ann Drogas on Pentecostal women in Latin America also point to an increased status for women, at least within the context of family and church.5 Elizabeth Brusco’s study of male/female relationships in Colombian Pentecostal families indicates that women enjoy more equality and higher status in Pentecostal families. She has found that the aspirations of men and women seem to coincide more when life centers on church and family. Pentecostal men spend their free time at home instead of in bars. For many women, their husband’s conversion can mean literally the difference between life and death: the men stop drinking, stop beating them, and bring home a paycheck that puts food on the table. These changes improve women’s status within the family and also the entire family’s economic status. Carol Ann Drogas likewise attributes improved status for women in Latin American Pentecostal families to men’s participation in the private sphere of the home and their forsaking of the public sphere of potential vices and temptations. She has found that improved status comes not from women sharing equally in the public world of men, but from men sharing in the private world of women. As Pentecostalism becomes more mainstream and as a second generation of Pentecostals comes of age, the churches have become less removed from society, more active in the civic and political lives of their communities. Pentecostalism is no longer exclusively a religion of the poor and marginalized. In 1980, Anthony LaRuffa wrote of Pentecostals in Puerto Rico: PERCEPTION MATTERS 99 One of the most striking aspects of Pentecostalism is its accommodating propensity-adaptability to changing socio-cultural conditions. Although beginning as a religion of the poor and oppressed, it can readily adjust itself to more affluent conditions. Some Pentecostal churches in Puerto Rico, for example, have a constituency which is part professional and fits into the middle and upper middle class.”6 ALLENTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA This work grows out of earlier research (1994–1995) in which I used Allentown, Pennsylvania, as a case study to compare Pentecostalism in a U.S. Latino/a context with Latin American Pentecostalism.7 Allentown is one...