Megachurches and the Problem of Leadership: an Analysis of the Encounter between the Evangelical World and Politics in Argentina

Abstract

Researchers usually address the political aspect of Evangelical groups by highlighting their involvement in party politics: their ability to create new organisations or form alliances with existing ones, introducing into the electoral field the assumption of a more or less homogeneous or easily influenced ‘Christian vote’. However, historical experience in Argentina shows that launching into politics is full of obstacles. Some of the most important innovations introduced by Neo-Pentecostalism – as the fastest-growing expression of the Evangelical world – are linked to the consolidation of megachurches in middle- and high-class neighbourhoods and the training of Evangelical leaders on a large scale. Both these innovations develop in correlation with a shift of the Gospel towards the ‘world’ and the need for social change; that is, a Christian call to transform the environment. This article aims to explore the political implications of Evangelical leadership in megachurches located in Buenos Aires, Argentina. This work is based on original materials, compiled for a research project using ethnographic techniques such as participant observation, in-depth interviews and documentation review.

Notes

According to the latest national survey conducted in 2008 by the Department of Society, Culture and Religion at CONICET, Evangelicals today are 9 per cent of the population, in a cultural context in which Catholics predominate (76.5 per cent) and a significant number of people are indifferent to religion (11.3 per cent). Evangelicals are thus the largest religious minority in the country. This is a relatively new phenomenon and raises questions about the relationship of Evangelicals with politics. CONICET (Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Técnicas) is the main public institution for the promotion of science and technology in Argentina.

The main purpose of this study was an analysis of Evangelical views on politics, focusing primarily on the forms of religious orientation towards society developed by Neo-Pentecostalism and the spheres of social participation offered by megachurches located in middle- and upper-class sectors in the city of Buenos Aires. The project was financed by a doctoral grant from CONICET. The project was awarded another scholarship by the University of Santa Barbara, through the Fulbright Program, for the completion of specialised seminars in ‘religious pluralism’. The main conclusions of this study were published in 2010 in the book Política y religión en los márgenes: nuevas formas de participación social de las mega-iglesias evangélicas en la Argentina (Politics and Religion in the Margins: New Forms of Social Participation of Evangelical Megachurches in Argentina) (Algranti, 2010b).

The information was gathered in the following years: about services and cell meetings in 2006; about the ministries and their activities in 2007; about occasional events in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008.

In The Comparative Study of Religions, Joachim Wach (1967, pp. 135–50) recognises three modes of expression of religious experience: ‘thought’, ‘action’ and ‘community’. He characterises the former, intellectual thinking, through the analysis of myth – which he takes from Ernest Cassirer – and the study of doctrine. The latter can be divided into three different functions: the explanation and articulation of beliefs, the normative regulation of worship and the defence of the beliefs and their relationship with other bodies of knowledge. Among megachurches these three functions of the intellectual expression of religious experience are carried out in cell meetings by the leaders and the Timoteos.

A recent and suggestive example of the forms that the institutional periphery adopts in religious identities is by the sociologist Damián Setton (2011). His work explores from the perspective of microsociology the spheres of formation of identity projects among the non-affiliates involved in the revitalisation of Jewish orthodoxy at Chabad Lubavitch.

Cynthia Hotton entered the Congress a few years ago as a member of a right-wing oriented political group, Republican Proposal (PRO). There she created Values for My Country as her own organisation directed especially towards young Christian leaders wanting to involve themselves in politics. Although this group has only a weak presence in the Congress is one of main reference-points for Evangelicals with an interest in politics.

The comparative study carried out by Paul Freston on the political presence of Evangelicals in 27 countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America concludes with a warning about the danger of extrapolating individual cases and turning them into ‘essences’ or development patterns for the various regions (Freston, 2001, pp. 283–84). His approach aims to maintain critical reserve about two types of theory: the theory of conspiracy and the theory of cultural potential. The first of these theories sees the presence of the USA's right wing in every aspect of expansion of the Evangelicals in Latin America. This connection does indeed exist in many cases, but this theory assumes it as a dominant explanatory factor, leaving out the autonomous appropriations of local evangelism. The second theory resorts to culture in order to explore the scope of the ability of Protestant religions to transform the social environment according to the development patterns that marked their way in Northern Europe and the USA. Both theories turn historical experiences into abstractions that are generalisable in different contexts. In the specific case of Argentina, the formal networks of Neo-Pentecostalism to which King of Kings belongs, along with other megachurches, find at the moment their strategy of political participation in the discourse of unity of the Evangelical movement and in the growing figure of the leader as a subject committed to social change.

For a wider discussion of this topic see Algranti (2010a).

Concerning Argentinean Catholic history it is hard to make formal use of the concept of ‘religious field’ proposed by Bourdieu (1971). The assumption of a modern secular society, with specialised institutions and complex division of self-governing social microcosms, is bound to overlook the specific logic of religion in Latin America, where constant affinities, splits and overlaps with politics, the economy and public spaces go beyond the institutional limits.