Political Participation of Pentecostal Minorities in Chile,1937–1989

Active Pentecostal Denominations

In the 1930s, which saw the politicization of various grassroots groups, the Pentecostals were affected by the political climate. The Wesleyan National Church (Ossa, 1990) not only participated in the Socialist Party but was its founder in various cities. The Evangelical Army of Chile, founded by Genaro Ríos Campos, a member of the Methodist Pentecostal Church, on August 11, 1933, showed political and social commitment from its inception in both symbolic and political protest (Tennekes, 1985 [1973]; Willems, 1967). In the presidential campaign of 1938 Ríos ran as a pro-socialist independent candidate, part of a Pentecostal minority that asserted itself as “an alternative that defends other norms and social systems” (Barriga, 1996: 16). He had promoted a plan to provide “free roof, clothing, bread, housing, heat, and electricity to all inhabi-tants without imposing new taxes” (Zig Zag, June 24, 1938, 41). With regard to the social, he intended to “care for all the sick people of the country, giving them everything necessary for their healing, and provide food, warmth, clothing, and a sound roof to all those suffering the scourge of despair.” He wanted to “immediately free all prisoners in Chile so that they might repent their errors and not repeat them but be honest and respectful of the law.” Pastor Ríos was known for accusing his opponents of being inexperienced with poverty: “Men who emerged from their mothers’ wombs into an elegant crib [and] . . . who speak of human suffering in theory rather than having experienced it firsthand will never understand the poor” (El Tiempo Es Cumplido, 1938, 1). As Moscovici (1996: 28) has put it, “instead of looking at society from the point of view of the dominant, one has to see it from the point of view of the dominated.” Pastor Ríos argued that, historically, poverty had been looked at from power, and therefore the political majority could “never sympathize with those who hunger and thirst for justice” (El Tiempo Es Cumplido, 1938, 2). He continued:

I have experienced firsthand the cruel pain that is the scourge of my Chilean brothers of the lower classes, whose pain will disappear if, with the help of God, who will guide the hearts of both the poor and the rich and bend them in favor of his justice, I win this year. . . . Human politics has not been capable of eliminating the defenselessness, hunger, and desperation of those who suffer the scourge of poverty. Because of this, my politics is based on the solid fundamentals of the divine laws of the Gospel.

But Pastor Ríos’s candidacy did not prosper. Many poor people supported him, but many of them did not vote. His proposal was ignored by the Socialist Party and the politicians and dismissed as “not simply another viewpoint but a vacuum, a nonopinion, anomic” (Moscovici, 1996: 35). When Pedro Aguirre Cerda promised to do everything in his power to combat hunger and defenselessness (El Tiempo Es Cumplido, 1938, 3), “immediately Mr. Ríos sent a telegram to notify all Evangelicals and sympathizers asking them to vote for Mr. Cerda” (El Tiempo Es Cumplido, 1938, 4). Soon the Evangelical Army of Chile, through its official publication, was congratulating the new Popular Front president: “The Poor Front is happy. There has been great rejoicing in the country for the triumph of Don Pedro Aguirre Cerda. Who are the happiest with his triumph? The poor who live in misery” (El Tiempo Es Cumplido, 1938, 1). We do not know whether Aguirre, elected in 1938, named any Pentecostals to positions of responsibility in his government. Politicians, priests, and writers tended to admire the Pentecostals’ work among the poor but to reject Pentecostals themselves (Hurtado, 1995 [1941]). However, during the government of Gabriel González Videla, Mamerto Mancilla Tapia, a pastor of the Methodist Pentecostal Church of Chile, was named governor of Pitrufquén in 1946 (Ministry of the Interior, Decree 4789).

Similarly, Chile Cristiano (1941, 3) stated, “During the three years of the presidency of Mr. Aguirre Cerda, the nation enjoyed internal peace and freedom, religious freedom, and widespread tolerance of the spreading of Christ’s Gospel.” El Tiempo Es Cumplido (1938, 2) suggested that Aguirre “realized that the sincere Evangelical mass of the country helped bring his candidacy to triumph.” Although Pentecostals identified with the new Popular Front (1936–1941), the Popular Front did not identify with Pentecostals, because “members of a minority tend to be judged as less competent, less just, and less desirable” (Moscovici, 1996: 251). Such attitudes toward Pentecostalism continue today, when they are called conservatives and politically apathetic and their pastors are considered caciques or caudillos or even poor and illiterate.

The National Wesleyan Mission, initiated in 1928 in the coal-mining city of Lota, had a strong social and political commitment from the beginning. Pastor Víctor Mora had been one of the founders of the Socialist Party in the mining region (Ossa, 1990: 49), and many of his disciples participated in party or union political issues. He showed his faithful the necessity to organize and take responsibility for union work. The signs of poverty around him motivated him to enter the political arena and be elected councilman for the community of Coronel in the 1940s, and, with it, his church was transformed from a “church of the poor to a worker’s church” (Hobsbawm, 2003 [1959]: 180). Pastor Mora is said to have had a commitment to the Gospel with workers to such an extreme that he said, “I will never permit a worker to be in a church and belong to the Conservative Party, because he would be out of his class” (Palma, 1988: 95). He fought to make his workers recognize their situation and reflect on its causes and possible solutions. “Despite the fact that his reign was not of this world, . . . he defended the workers for the simple reason that his church was totally identified with the workers” (Hobsbawm, 2003 [1959]: 180). When he was asked how he reconciled Marxism and religion, he said, “I think religion with the heart and I think Marxism with the stomach, because in practicing and adoring God I am thinking with my heart and mind, and struggling for children to have more bread in their homes is a struggle that Marxism has to wage” (Palma, 1988: 95). For Pastor Mora, religious Pentecostal ideology and Marxist political ideology complemented each other but also were and ought to be socially coherent. This stance was considered a “state of deviance . . . an uncomfortable situation with entirely negative consequences” (Moscovici, 1996: 69) by the religious and political sectors that expected passivity and control of the workers by the Pentecostal pastors.

Pastor Mora, consistent with his religious-political discourse, formed small cooperatives for housing. In this way the Wesleyan Church established the strong link between Pentecostalism and the workers observed by others, for example, in England in the nineteenth century (Hobsbawm, 2003 [1959]; Pope, 1942). The pastor was also concerned with developing union and political leaders, among them Pastor Henrique Pereira, a coal miner sent to the concentration camp in Pisagua in the context of the Defense of Democracy Law in 1958, Baltazar Rodríguez, leader of a union of 7,000 workers in Curanilahue and subdelegate of the Popular Unity government for that city, and José Meza, president of the maritime union, councilman, and mayor in Penco (Ossa, 1990: 187).

Active Pentecostal Leaders

The Methodist Pentecostal Church of Chile was outstanding for the visibility of its leaders and later for the construction of the Evangelical Cathedral, inaugurated in 1974, and the emergence of the Te Deum Evangelicals. In the first half of the twentieth century this church featured leaders such as Pastors Enrique Chávez and Manuel Umaña, and in 1947 Chávez created a new denomination, the Pentecostal Church of Chile, with a strong social and political commitment. Pastor Umaña was the pastor of the Jotabeche Church, predecessor of the Evangelical Cathedral. Pastor Chávez, on the thirty-second anniversary of the Methodist Pentecostal Church of Chile, said, “Our church forms free, cultured, and useful citizens in the service of God, country, and one’s fellows; we thank God because the civil authorities, through their highest dignitaries, have recognized the supreme importance of the moral development of the citizenry” (Chile Cristiano, 1941, 4).

The Methodist Pentecostal Church maintained a rather partisan political line with the Radical Party (Willems, 1967; 1985) that brought it many problems with the press (Kessler, 1967). These leaders did not struggle for social benefits for the poor or the workers but competed for denominational privileges. Whereas candidates used to go to taverns to seek votes (Fernández, 2006; Gentelini, 1920), now they went to Evangelical, mainly Pentecostal, churches. A Methodist Pentecostal prayer said, “We should thank the Lord because we have had governors in our country that have shown themselves to be lovers of freedom, tolerance, and protection for any religious idea” (Chile Cristiano, 1941, 4). During the González Videla administration, Miguel Guerrero Mendez, a member of the Methodist Pentecostal Church, was elected independent councilor for 1948–1950 (Tribuna Cristiano, 2003: 2). Pentecostal churches held pastoral and secular congresses in cities that established contact with the political authorities of those cities. For example, in 1957 the mayor of Illapel, Ramón Serey Rojas, greeted and had lunch with the conference attendees (Fuego de Pentecostés, 1957, 3). The Pentecostal minority’s influence was due to “the consistency of its behavior, the confidence that subjects had in it because of its conduct, and the security that the subjects attributed to it for that consistent behavior” (Moscovici, 1996: 238).

During the administration of Juan Antonio Ríos (1942–1946), Pentecostals and other Evangelicals confronted the Muñoz Cornejo Law, which would have required public employees to take Catholic religion classes, with “a great march that convinced the Chamber of Deputies that the law should not be approved” (Canales, 2000: 61). This public protest was an early display of Pentecostals’ ability to mobilize against external threats. In the 1960s Pentecostal political participation was notorious (Kamsteeg, 1998; J. Sepúlveda, 1999; Willems, 1967). In the final years of his life, Pastor Umaña said of the Methodist Pentecostal Church, “All its citizen members who have participated in political parties of which only insensitivity is remembered are very cautious about performing civic acts” (Chile Pentecostal, 1961, 3). The pastor encouraged its members to be active citizens, especially through voting (Chile Pentecostal, 1961, 3, 6):

Our God has granted, through the mandate of the law, the freedom to worship and the right to voice and vote, a great blessing, and we should use it with gratitude to God because we see in the Bible that when God’s people lost this right, they suffered and were destroyed. . . . The right to vote is the peaceful weapon that God gives us to be able to defend ourselves from man’s injustice. Not using this weapon reveals a son of God who does not understand God’s will . . . that has prophesied that Chile will be for Christ.

He saw no contradiction between Pentecostalism and political-partisan commitment: the benefits were to the glory of God. The Radical Party recognized this support: “We know that we should thank Evangelical brothers both for their prayers and also for the help of their votes that have allowed the election of Radical Party candidates” (Willems, 1967: 227). In his last days of life Pastor Umaña was accused of supporting a political campaign in exchange for perks, and a Communist publication made public a document in which he made his support for a center-right candidate explicit (El Vistazo, 1963: 5). The biography of Pastor Umaña that appeared in Chile Pentecostal (1961: 2) highlighted his links to President Arturo Alessandri Palma:

Toward 1920, the eminent republican had solicited the electoral support of our church, which was given to him. Mr. Arturo Alessandri, when taking office, began to protect evangelical work in general, and in particular the Pentecostal, which allowed its volunteers to preach in the streets.The 1925 constitution that proclaimed the freedom of worship was his work, and since that time growth can be seen in our churches.

The statistical growth of Evangelicals in Chile was due to the secular state’s tolerance, pluralism, and religious competition, but these achievements were the result of Pentecostals’ becoming active minorities.

Chile Pentecostal (1961, 2) published a special edition to promote Pentecostal political candidates subtitled “The Fruit of Civic Maturity: Candidate Profiles” in which it highlighted three candidates. Antileo was described as “the most Chilean of all of them since he is clearly Mapuche . . . a lawyer, graduated from Universidad de Chile in 1959, born in Lumaco on September 7, 1936. His parents were Pastor Luis Antileo and Juana Reiman, and they were in charge of the Quitralahue congregation, near Luma.” In this discourse active religious minority and active ethnic minority are linked. Orlando Baettig was said to have been an “active member of the Methodist Church since 1952” and to have “stood out since our struggle against the Muñoz Cornejo project, which intended to make the Catholic religion obligatory” (5). Finally, Manuel Fuentes Vergara, candidate for deputy for the Cautin Province, member preacher of the Temuco Church, had been “asked to run for Congress by a powerful political sector for his moral loyalty and his well-earned moral prestige” (8). This “powerful sector” was the Radical Party.

In 1966, Juan Guerrero, then director of the Consolidated School of Experimentation in San Carlos, was the main speaker in Constitution Plaza when a second march of national importance took place, this time for secular education. More than 30,000 persons marched from the Plaza Italia to the Moneda demanding an end to obligatory religion classes in educational establishments (Tribuna Cristiana, August 2003, 3). The time of the Eduardo Frei Montalva government (1964–1970) was convulsive and challenging for the Pentecostal churches because “churches in the rural areas were suffering losses. The quiet peasants were full of political enthusiasm because of the passage in January 1967 by the National Congress of agrarian reform that brought the hope of owning land to many families that for years had only been tenants” (La Voz del Sión, 2009, 15).

During these years Pentecostal leaders realized that the alliance between Pentecostals and political parties benefited not Pentecostalism or Evangelicals in general but the individuals involved. Pentecostal pastors linked to socialism opted to continue fighting from the political. Pastor Edgardo Toro, a candidate for mayor of La Granja (Santiago) in 1966, described himself as an independent Evangelical commander and a representative of the Socialist Party (Evangelio y Sociedad, 1991, 24). Toro later joined the Christian Group for Socialism. At the same time, some pastors, disillusioned with politics, ended up supporting the military government after 1973.

Active Pentecostal Organizations (1973–1989)

While the Pentecostals’ Pastors’ Council supported the military government, believers rejected their pastors’ advice and voted for Allende (Cox, 1996: 170–171). There may have been reasons to characterize Pentecostal pastors, as Bastian does (1994: 294), as caciques, caudillos, and landowners, but that does not mean that believers were submissive and thoughtlessly obedient. To consider Pentecostals “stupid people in the service of reactionary groups” (López, 2000: 10) is to give excessive power to leaders and insufficient credit to the subjects for reflexivity, creativity, and capacity for resistance. Furthermore, little is said about the existence of Pentecostal sectors that did not support the military government. As Fediakova (2004: 261) suggests, it seems that “the widely shared myth about Pentecostals as conservatives, anti-Catholics, and anti-Marxists has won.” Pentecostals, together with Evangelicals and Catholics, maintained their distance from the military government and expressed solidarity with those being persecuted for political reasons and later, especially during the 1980s, strong criticism of the dictatorship. They were also part of the Pro-Peace Committee, which was made up of Catholic, Evangelical, Lutheran, Evangelical Methodist, Orthodox, and Pentecostal churches and the Chilean Jewish community (Brinkmann, 1999; Lagos, 1978a). Pentecostalism is a paradoxical religion (Cox, 1996; Droogers, 1991)—multifaceted, schismatic, and dynamic and focused on the individual—and includes individuals and groups that resist collective pressure (Moscovici, 1996: 36).

Some writers (Cleary and Sepúlveda, 1998; Kamsteeg, 1998; Ossa, 1999; J. Sepúlveda, 2003) highlight that there were various religious groups, among them Pentecostals, that opposed the dictatorship—creating religious organizations, supporting those who were politically persecuted and the families of those detained and disappeared, and conducting discussions promoting a return to democracy. The stereotype that Pentecostals supported the dictatorship had been established, however, and was difficult to erase. The Association of Evangelical Churches had a refugee program that is reported to have helped 4,442 people leave the country (Lagos, 1978b: Annex No. 5, Doc. 4). While both the Pastors’ Council and the Association of Evangelical Churches claimed to represent the majority of Evangelical churches, the media supported the council’s claim and rejected the association’s.

The Association of Evangelical Churches achieved the de-authorization of the organization of an Evangelical thanksgiving service by a group of pastors to which the national authorities were invited, arguing that “the broad sector of Evangelical churches that we represent has not received any information in this regard. . . . We have not authorized any group of pastors to assume our representation” (Lagos, 1978b: Annex No. 5, Doc. 8). Pastor Edgardo Toro said that neither the Pastors’ Council nor the Association of Evangelical Churches represented all Evangelicals (Palma, 1988: 103). The military government acceded not because it respected Pentecostals but because the Association of Evangelical Churches was made up of churches with an international character, such as the Methodists, the Salvation Army, and the Presbyterians, that had strong political ties with the outside world, and the government did not want to damage its image further. This is how “these churches achieved . . . total independence with regard to the state. . . . However, they did not oppose the military government but confined themselves to resisting the aggressions of the Pastors’ Council and defending religious freedom” (Ossa, 1999: 21). This was an active passivity in that, while they opposed the council, they did not directly oppose the military government. There were churches that quietly withdrew from it, such as the Pentecostal Evangelical Church (Salinas, 1987: 277). This has been considered “understandable, though not justifiable, if one takes into account that having status under the law, every Evangelical corporation was exposed to the arbitrariness of authority” (Ossa, 1999: 31). But in a context of dictatorship “nonconformity is still considered as a protest, a rupture of relations” (Moscovici, 1996: 36).

Despite the fact that the Evangelical churches and especially the Pentecostal ones were suspected or accused of being traitors to the nation (that is, Marxists or communists), the Evangelical Service for Development, the Foundation for Social Assistance of Christian Churches, and the Urban and Rural Mission, among others, were all made up of Evangelical Protestant and Pentecostal churches. The Pentecostals assumed the leadership of these organizations and, while adopting a passive stance, experimented with social and political activity. In 1985 the Christian Fellowship of Churches was founded out of an assembly of eight denominations, five of which were Pentecostal (Ossa, 1999: 43). Because “dissent exposes individuals to harsh experiences of insult, ostracism, or even persecution for defending their beliefs” (Moscovici, 1996: 70), its critical position led to repression that “enveloped the institutions and church organizations committed to the poorest. One, the Evangelical Service for Development, was raided” (Ossa, 1999: 68). The idea that Evangelicals were in favor of action independent of the Catholic Church was offered to “correct the false impression that the whole movement favored military domination” (Ossa, 1999: 70). A committee was appointed made up of Gabriel Almanzán, Edgardo Toro, Juana Albornoz, and Juan Sepúlveda. In this connection, Manuel Ossa (1999: 73) emphasizes that one of the most important moments was an open letter of August 29, 1986, to General Pinochet pointing to repression and a climate of fear. Then, on May 16, 1988, the Christian Fellowship of Churches released a statement to Evangelicals and public opinion asking them to abandon their fear of the regime and struggle for democracy. Later it asked Sergio Molina, head of the No Campaign, to be an observer, and Molina agreed to help protect the plebiscite, together with the Catholic Church and the Masons (Ossa, 1999: 109).

While the activity of the Christian Fellowship of Churches contrasted with the passivity of the minority, the silence of the latter “was not always voluntary: many of them had children and family members who were detained and needed to negotiate with authorities of the time for their lives and freedom, for which they paid with silence and conformism” (Fediakova, 2004: 261). Evangelicals were also affected by torture and murder. A paradigmatic case occurred between October 6 and 10, 1973, in the southern Andean town of Chihuio, 120 kilometers from Valdivia, where a military convoy murdered and quartered a group of workers from the timber factory Panguipulli, members of a union called “The Workers’ Hope” and mostly Pentecostals (Evangelio y Sociedad, 1991, 3). One of the victims’ relatives said that the formation of the union had had nothing to do with political affiliation (communist or socialist) but was seen as the only way to achieve fairer treatment (Evangelio y Sociedad, 1991, 3). Anyone complaining of economic and political oppression would have been accused of being a communist. At the same time, the creation of a union implied all kinds of prejudice and stigmas—charges of laziness, demanding more rights and fewer duties, and communist infiltration—because “generally behind any actual social movement or any individual transgression, we tend to see the hidden hand, not God’s hand but a powerful secret that controls them” (Moscovici, 1996: 104). These workers had organized the union against the wishes of the company and their churches. “The punishment for this union commitment came from the bosses, who without asking many questions submitted their names to be executed, as a lesson” (Evangelio y Sociedad, 1991, 3). This is very clear evidence that the pastors did not have much influence on their congregations, because the decision depended on individuals, who in the last analysis made the decision.

There also other cases that stand out. Sara Calzadillas of the Pentecostal Church of Coastal Chile in Concepción reported that one of her brothers was killed (Evangelio y Sociedad, 1991, 4), and 30-year-old Wagner Herid Salina Muñoz, a Socialist Party activist, was killed on October 5, 1973 (Comisión Nacional de Verdad y Reconciliación, 1996: 121–122). He was a member of the Assembly of God Church of Chile, but together with Pastor Jaime Espinoza of Talca he had left the church some years before to form an independent Pentecostal community and at the time of his death was a member of the Grupo de Amigos Personales (Allende’s bodyguard).

Final Thoughts

Pastor Edgardo Toro of the Wesleyan Church had been a union leader for many years and was highly critical of the violence during the military dictatorship, an era in which simply giving an interview was enough to put one in danger. In this regard he said, “Not much is gained by bringing the military out into the street. On the contrary, when people see them they immediately get scared, but within that fear is rebellion, contained anger” (Evangelio y Sociedad, 1991, 4). With regard to oppressed groups, what silence and passivity mean is not approval but fear, and when this fear is mixed with misery and poverty it is transformed into hatred and rebellion.