Daniel Bruno: Methodism in Latin America in Times of Neoliberalism: Some Themes

Today's post is by Rev. Lic. Daniel A. Bruno. Rev. Bruno is a pastor of the Argentina Methodist Church and Professor of Church History. It originally appeared (in Spanish) on the website of the Evangelical Methodist Church of Argentina (IEMA) and appears here in translation with the author's permission. It is the second of a two-part translation of the original piece.

In an earlier post, I described the context of neoliberalism in Latin America and its effect on the churches there, including Methodism. In this post, I will point out briefly some aspects that deserve to be debated to glimpse a new horizon and a possible future for our Methodist churches.

The challenge of community evangelization in context

For decades we have been concerned, and continue to be, with the question of the numerical growth of our churches. And that's okay; it is a genuine concern. The problem has been linking the concern for numerical growth with the concept of “evangelization,” which is much broader and more challenging. Today commercial marketing uses the word "evangelize" as a method to sell a product and generate customer loyalty. Without a doubt, we have done something wrong if it has learned this from the churches that speak of “evangelizing.”

The model of evangelization that came to us through the missions was effectively a client model. They had to grow in number in order to not close the mission post. Thus, the terms began to melt together: growth and evangelization. Added to this is the subjectivist and individualistic character that was imprinted on the evangelistic action.

Wesley's practice was very different. His phrase "spread the good news of salvation and reform the nation" demonstrates his broad concept of the task that the witnesses of the good news have in the society in which they live. Wesley created what we might today call a community network of evangelism. The space in charge of spreading the good news was given, not to an individual, but to community spaces, such as the societies, classes and bands that, as a connective network, nourished the believers in all their needs and also gave them a horizon of testimony. Wesley was never concerned with "growing", but rather with giving witness to the love of God in the lives of people. The enormous growth of the Methodist movement was a consequence of working in networks and witnessing in society.

Growth arises as a consequence of a committed mission, not as an end in itself. This is reflected in the book of Acts 2: 46-47, when the first Christians lived the gospel and as a consequence of that testimony: "The Lord added every day to those who were going to be saved." The testimony comes first; growth accompanies a good testimony. When we ask ourselves why we are not growing, we should ask ourselves what witness we are bearing to the Good News.

The challenge of a mission that troubles

This leads us to revise our mission. One of the most dangerous concepts that neoliberalism has managed to implant in our societies is that of "common sense," that is, the uncritical acceptance of what is given or of what is "politically correct" since it is accepted as true by many. It is the way of accepting what is established, without accepting other transgressive alternatives.

The concept has penetrated our churches and without a doubt, applying it to mission is a contradiction. If Wesley would have based himself on "common sense," he would never have gone to Bristol to preach in the open air. If Jesus would have based his ministry on "common sense," he would not have left Joseph's carpenter's shop. The gospel demands a mission that troubles.

The challenge of a “two-way” mission

During the 19th century, Protestantism used the term "mission" disconnected from the task of the witness of churches in their places of origin. It continued to use it as an expression of a special action of missionary expansion (accompanied many times, it must be said, by colonialist military expeditions) to reach regions where the gospel was not known, establishing a "mission" there.

Today it is necessary to strip the concept of mission of the idea of "going and bringing," and change it to that of "meeting and dialoguing." Latin American Methodism must necessarily seek its mission outside of common sense or sometimes against it. Mission in Latin America, a land shaped by so many and varied cultures, must know how to open spaces for dialogue, letting the Spirit act and in many cases allowing oneself to be evangelized by “others,” as Jesus did with the Syrophoenician woman. And in that encounter, claim all the faces and excluded or subaltern groups such as: indigenous peoples, women in their fight for gender equality and against violence against women, creation as a mistreated common home, etc.

The challenge of returning to being a movement

If Wesley had something very clear, it is that he never wanted to be a church institution. That was what the Anglican Church was for. He always perceived Methodism as a movement. Does this mean the absence of organization? Certainly not; Wesley was quite strict with habits and discipline. But he was very clear that the entire organization and structure had to be at the service of and be functional for mission.

The missions that organized Methodism in Latin America had a different vision. For them, mission consisted of marking territory, through the construction of large and beautiful churches, by endowing the mission with an institutional structure copied from the Methodist Episcopal Church, which, by the way, the autonomy processes tried to modify, but without a doubt it was not enough.

This heritage, which by the way we must value and which at some point was necessary for external visibility and internal organization, today in many cases has become a burden. In many cases the institutional structure stifles the mission. The roles were reversed.

And that must necessarily be revised. The Latin American Methodism of the not-so-distant future will have to be wise to reorganize itself in its context. It must transform itself with an embodied spirituality and a renewed liturgy, which maintains all its historical richness but appeals to the new generations. May it build communities of abundant life in times of institutional disbelief and exacerbated individualism.

The challenge of a broad ecumenism

Large historical Methodist churches of our continent are retreating from a pioneering path of ecumenical leadership to close themselves in an atmosphere of self-pleasure intolerant of difference. Undoubtedly, this is part of the "climate of the times" in which we live, a conservative, intolerant wave that affects all areas of life – social, cultural, economic and, of course, religious – in our region.

The strange thing for Methodism is that, having a rich history that since its origins points to a path of openness of view and mind, today it tries to twist the obvious with conservative and orthodox positions with which Wesley would never have agreed. In a large number of sermons and tracts, Wesley refers to "thinking and letting think" as applied to various aspects of the Christian life. Sermon 39, “The Catholic Spirit,” which could well be translated as “The Ecumenical Spirit,” also reveals his fight against intolerance.

This invites us to think about the forms and attitudes that, as people and as a church, we adopt in the face of differences. We must recognize that, at the beginning of the 20th century, almost all Latin American Methodisms did not have this sermon in mind at all when they made the controversy against Catholicism a battle for ideas, for membership, and for territory.

Neither do certain Methodisms have it in mind today when they abandon ecumenism and deny both thinking, as a free and critical action of reason, and letting think, as an action of tolerance in the face of difference. Without a doubt, Wesley's tremendous phrase " God has given no right to any of the children of men thus to lord it over the conscience of his brethren," should be a guide that helps to revise our affirmations, our judgments, and our prejudices.

The challenge of speaking clearly and loudly

The prophetic task of the church has been a characteristic of Methodism. What we know today as public theology, for Wesley was part of the works of mercy. His concept of good news, deep and radical, led him to fight against the "execrable villainy of slavery," to dabble in economics, in health, in medicine, and to criticize those who transformed these tools given by God for the well-being of God’s children into matters of personal profit. Latin American Methodism also knew how to speak clearly and loudly at different hard times in the history of its peoples.

In this current context, the prophetic attitude is dissipating. Why? Why, right at a time with so much injustice, inequality, violence, and hunger, does it seems that we are returning to "winter quarters"? Why do we close ourselves in the churches and transform public theology into private theology? Perhaps it is because of what we said before, have we put the institutional structure before the mission? Have we given in to the temptation to elaborate a mission from “common sense”?

These are some of the challenges we face as Latin American Methodists. it is time to start working on them. We invite you to follow our posts for the month of August on the Evangelical Methodist Church Argentina’s website, where these aspects will be deepened by additional authors.

Recommended Readings: Methodist Church in Britain on Agriculture in Zimbabwe

This blog has been running an occasional system of posts on mission and food throughout this year. In that vein, several recent blog posts from the Methodist Church in Britain's Global Relationships team on agricultural project in Zimbabwe. Andrew Ashdown, MCB's Partnership Coordinator for Africa, has been visiting Africa and the Methodist Church in Zimbabwe (an autonomous church from the British tradition). Part of the joint work between the MCB and the MCZ has involved agricultural projects. Ashdown has written about such projects in the following posts:

Mission through Education, Agriculture and Development. Waddilove Schools and Farm. Zimbabwe

Income generation for Education and Church growth. Moleli Goat-rearing Project

The hardships of rural ministry in Africa. Mbembesi Chicken Rearing project. Matabeleland, Zimbabwe

Recommended Reading: Soundings Towards an Intercultural Identity for The United Methodist Church

The journal Methodist Review recently published another article that may be of interest to UM & Global's readers. It draws on history and theology to comment on the intercultural nature of The United Methodist Church. Hendrik R. Pieterse and David W. Scott wrote "Soundings Towards an Intercultural Identity for The United Methodist Church: Some Historical and Theological Resources." The piece can be found for free, with registration, on Methodist Review's website. A full abstract for the piece is below.

 

Hendrik R. Pieterse and David W. Scott, "Soundings Towards an Intercultural Identity for The United Methodist Church: Some Historical and Theological Resources"

The United Methodist Church today is in an identity crisis rooted in the role of culture, power, and agency in the negotiation of denominational identity. To confront these challenges, the UMC must recognize the extent to which white American understandings of Methodism have functioned as normative in debates over Methodist identity. To illustrate the intercultural dynamics at stake, we analyze the history of Italian and Japanese immigrants’ struggle to find a place within American Methodism in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These case studies show that Methodism flourished when there was room for intercultural conversation about its nature. Thus, United Methodists need an alternative understanding of our collective identity that evolves out of intercultural conversations that remain alert to the role of culture, power, and agency in identity formation. We suggest that one promising resource in this task is the Methodist practice of conferencing or dialogue.

Daniel Bruno: The Challenges for Methodism in Latin America in Times of Neoliberalism

Today's post is by Rev. Lic. Daniel A. Bruno. Rev. Bruno is a pastor of the Argentina Methodist Church and Professor of Church History. It originally appeared (in Spanish) on the website of the Evangelical Methodist Church of Argentina (IEMA) and appears here in translation with the author's permission.

The context
About fifty years ago, it was decided by the centers of world economic power that Latin America should not continue down the path of economic growth and development, of expanding the middle class and industrialization. It was necessary to implement a plan to redirect the wealth. Instead of benefiting the majority and achieving equitable development, the "think tanks" of the new economic model called neoliberalism began to outline plans so that this wealth would drain away and accumulate in a few hands. The first tests of this plan were through the coups d'état that added up in Latin America starting in 1971.

All these violent democratic interruptions had a single purpose: to implement economic models that would allow a redirection of resources and money from the majority to the Latin American elites and their international partners and to repress popular resistance. That model of coups d'état exhausted itself in the mid-1980s. They generated a lot of resistance and, in the long run, were rejected by the population.

The plan was adjusted and now the model is much more subtle.

Economic power acquired the principal mass media of the continent; great economic emporiums now model the subjectivity of the population; and in this way, coups d'état are no longer necessary to discipline the population by force of arms. Media manipulation of subjectivities achieves this effect without generating resistance.

In this way today, in all the countries of the continent, the real power, which goes beyond the shifting governments, is mechanized through three specialized spheres: the economic-financial power, the concentrated mass media, and the judicial powers. This three-pronged pincer is the one that for approximately twenty years has been executing synchronously on the continent a model of exclusion, poverty, deindustrialization, and accumulation of wealth in a few hands that increasingly deteriorates the quality of life of the population. Judicial powers, meanwhile, imprison opponents, and population is deceived by the media, generating false disputes and dividing the peoples to achieve their objectives.

This situation is increasingly cruel, neoliberalism or neocolonialism, is destroying the expectations of life, of the future, and of the development of millions of Latin Americans. And the possibilities of resistance are becoming ever more difficult to implement and more stigmatized by the media.

This oppression and manipulation of subjectivities operates on consciences, managing to dilute the capacity of resistance of the masses. This is one of the most dangerous facets of neoliberalism since it affects the self-awareness of human beings, deceives about their options, and permeates deeper into false beliefs, preventing the possibility of visualizing the real causes that cause their postponement.

A recurring phrase of the Argentine economist Bernardo Kliksberg helps us to understand the consequences of this model. He says: "Latin America is not the poorest continent, but it is the most inequitable." A continent rich in natural resources, it has almost forty percent of its population below the poverty line. How is it possible? This is the result of a model of accumulation for the elites and the active contributing role of the hegemonic media and the judiciary that favor this situation. Now, to this phrase by Kliksberg, we can add… but Latin America is the most Christian continent. How can we understand this?

And the church?
At this point we must recognize that religion has also been co-opted to join this model of new post-modern oppression. Certain evangelical groups have been the most receptive and functional. Due to Latin America’s Christian layers, neoliberalism needed Christian language and symbology to penetrate the population. Indeed, this neocolonial siren song has formatted the theological profile of various evangelical expressions. How? Perhaps one of the best-known examples is that of the prosperity gospel, a theological version of neoliberal capitalism, where the one who “invests” more with money, receives more blessings from “God.”

However, this theological neoliberal culture has managed to impact not only these extravagant phenomena, but also historical Protestant expressions with a wide presence of testimony on the continent.

Anti-ecumenism, for example, has penetrated Protestant traditions that until quite recently had a fruitful dialogue with other traditions. This attitude of reactionary withdrawal is explained by the penetration of conservative fundamentalist currents that have been eroding the more liberal and progressive positions of the historical churches. Already in 1973, the well-known Rockefeller report advised and suggested to the government of Richard Nixon that, in order to curb the most protesting and progressive expressions of the Latin American churches, both Catholic and Protestant, money and programs should be invested to foment the penetration of individualistic theologies, of personal salvation, with contempt for the historical-social views and that fed conservative positions. Undoubtedly, these programs have been successful and the result is in sight.

Today, the vast majority of the Protestant camp has been transformed into a conservative force both theologically and politically, offering its votes to right-wing parties and coalitions in exchange for perks and favors, also acting as a shock force against any attempt at progressive change in Latin American societies.

Methodism in Latin America is not exempt from these temptations
Methodism, as part of the Protestant field in Latin America, has been and is seduced by this model. There are currently many attempts by conservative sectors of North American Methodism to finance projects of this type. A great temptation for churches with meager budgets such as the Latin American Methodists! The imminent breakup of the United Methodist Church in the United States frees some economically powerful groups that seek to finance and co-opt Latin American Methodist churches, in order to turn them into conservative forces in their countries.

This would be a sad end to a Methodism that was at the forefront of the struggle for secular laws and individual liberties at the end of the 19th century; a pioneer in the ecumenical movement in the mid-20th century; creators, along with other denominations, of movements such as FALJE (Federación Argentina de Ligas Juveniles Evangélicas – Argentine Federation of Evangelical Youth), and its later version of ULAJE (Unión Latinoamericana de Juventudes Ecuménicas – Latin American Union of Ecumenical Youth), mobilizing Protestant youth to a deep commitment to unite the good news of the gospel with the historical demands of the Latin American peoples; participation in ISAL (Iglesia y Sociedad en América Latina – Church and Society in Latin America); the fight against dictatorships and the defense of human rights in the 70s, 80s; etc.

We trust that this will not be the case and that Methodism in Latin America will know how to preserve these values. We trust that we are not going to sell our birthright, that is, our fidelity to the gospel embodied in the history of our peoples, for a plate of lentils poisoned with coins from Caesar. For this, it is essential to revisit the origins of our movement with Latin American eyes. To look critically at the cultural clothing with which that tradition came to us in the 19th century, after passing through the religious-cultural atmosphere present in the United States.

We appreciate those missions that made our presence here possible, but today more than ever, it is necessary that the autonomies declared in the 1930s and 60s finish taking root to free the evangelical power of a movement that changed a nation and now, in our context, must change ours.

During August, the Evangelical Methodist Church Argentina through its Methodist Center of Wesleyan Studies is going deeper into these issues through a series of posts. For my part, I will point out briefly in a next post some aspects that deserve to be debated to glimpse a new horizon and a possible future for our Methodist churches.

Recommended Reading: Ulrike Schuler Farewell Lecture on Connectionalism

Dr. Ulrike Schuler retired as Professor of Church History, Methodism and Ecumenical Studies at Reutlingen School of Theology at the end of July. Reutlingen is the seminary for German (and sometimes other European) United Methodists. As is the tradition in German academia, Schuler concluded her service with a farewell lecture. The title of her address was, in English, "Staying connected: a Methodist model of life and church." The lecture touched on several themes of interest to this blog: connectionalism, mission, the nature of Methodism, and current reform efforts in The United Methodist Church. The EmK website published a summary of Schuler's address (here in the original German and here in a Google translation into English), and video of the lecture (in German) is available as well.

Recommended Readings: On Evangelism as the Heart of Mission

The journal Methodist Review recently published an article and a response that may be of interest to UM & Global's readers. Both concern the relationship between evangelism and mission. Mark Teasdale wrote "Extending the Metaphor: Evangelism as the Heart of Mission Twenty-Five Years Later," in which he commented on Dana L. Robert's 1997 essay, "Evangelism as the Heart of Mission." Dana Robert then wrote a response to Teasdale's essay. Both pieces can be found for free, with registration, on Methodist Review's website. Full abstracts for both pieces are below.

Mark Teasdale, "Extending the Metaphor: Evangelism as the Heart of Mission Twenty-Five Years Later"

In 1997, Dana Robert published “Evangelism as the Heart of Mission” to provide a conceptual framework to resolve the theological debate within The United Methodist Church about the relationship of evangelism to mission. She did this by using a heart-and-body metaphor that demonstrated that each was distinct from yet interdependent with the other, appealing to the example of John Wesley’s holistic ministry. Drawing on developments in the field of evangelism and in scholarship related to Wesley’s understanding of inspiration that have taken place in the twenty-five years since Robert’s work was published, her metaphor can be clarified and extended in ways that will allow it to remain a helpful missiological framework for Methodists to think about both their evangelistic outreach and their life together as a community of believers in Jesus Christ.

 

Dana L. Robert, Response to Mark Teasdale

In a recent issue of Methodist Review, Mark Teasdale revisited Dana L. Robert’s image of “evangelism as the heart of mission.” In this response, Robert reflects on the historical setting in which she proposed the idea, focusing on events within The United Methodist Church and academic associations of professors of evangelism and mission. She then interacts appreciatively with aspects of Teasdale’s reframing, specifically his rejection of narrowing evangelism to a practice of the church, and his call to focus more strongly on the Holy Spirit. She concludes by exploring Methodist D. T. Niles’s reflections on the Spirit in mission.

Bishops Etchegoyen and Nacpil on Autonomy and Connectionalism

Given current separations from the denomination and questions about the future for those who stay, The United Methodist Church is in a time of reconsidering what it means to be connected as a church. Therefore, past reflections by two former Methodist Bishops - Aldo Etchegoyen of the Evangelical Methodist Church Argentina and Emerito Nacpil of the UMC in the Philippines - on the relationship between connectionalism and autonomy struck me (David) as once again relevant, especially for the question of how remaining United Methodists should relate across national and continental boundaries.

Bishop Etchegoyen, writing in 1997 in "Connectionality and Autonomy" in The Ecumenical Implications of the Discussions of "The Global Nature of The United Methodist Church" rooted the concept of connectionalism not in Methodist history but in theological principles: "We believe in a connectional God who has moved outside himself to create all things. God's creation is a connectional phenomenon in which earth, sun and water serve the plants, the flowers and the fruits, as also the animals and humanity." "The opposite of connectionalism," he continued, "is separation." (p. 163)

Therefore, Etchegoyen wrote, "We cannot speak of connectionality and autonomy in the same breath. Each of these terms excludes the other. I believe this contradiction has done us much harm." (p. 164)

In contrast, he proposed, "I am defending a connectionality with responsibility in which each church may take account of its own identity, may be able to perform its own government but at the same time may show clearly its historical, theological and ecclesial unity, which we already have. On the opposite side of this conception is the dangerous possibility of falling into an irresponsible autonomy of which we have several examples. ...

"We must come to a moment when we will not be autonomous churches seeking to express our connectionality, but connectional churches on an equal footing. This, by no means signifies a leap backward into the past, but rather a leap forward in search of a new situation in which we can truly express our genuine connectionality in service of life, in maturity and in coherence with the Gospel. A connectionality that surges up from our national roots and is enriched by the diversity of world Methodism in the setting of the great ecumenical family." (p. 165)

Bishop Nacpil, in a 1994 Episcopal Address entitled "Developing a Truly Global Church," contained in The Secularity of the Word, Vol. III of A Spirituality that Secularizes, took up similar themes:

"The vision of a global church relates or links autonomy and connectionality organically and essentially. In a global church one cannot have the one without the other. They mutually entail each other in a global vision." (p. 440)

Speaking in the context of Filipino debates over voting to become autonomous, he continued:

"Connectionalism connects the local and the global. Connectionalism does not stop connecting one local church with another church within a nation which is what a purely autonomous structure will do! It goes on connecting with all the local churches of the one global United Methodist Church which is what globalization seeks to do. Moreover, it does not only connect one local church to another local church, but the local to the global and the global to the local. That is to say: between parts and whole and between the whole and its parts! Connectionalism entails globalization. And there cannot be globalization without some form of connectionalism which is expressed locally with autonomy. But autonomy alone restricted by national boundary cannot and can never be global and connectional!" (p. 450)

After commenting on a then-current plan for restructuring the UMC along lines similar to those proposed in the present-day Christmas Covenant, he concludes, "One can see that connectionality starts from the charge conference and moves vertically and horizontally through annual, regional, and general conference levels. Autonomy also is exercised from the local, annual, regional, and general levels within the framework of global connectionality."

While the two use the term autonomy differently, what both bishops argue for is an understanding of Methodism that entails local and national decision-making alongside international connection. One is making that argument from within the UMC and one from outside its formal structures, but both believe such a balance of local freedom and international connection is essential to Methodism.

Such a vision is relevant both as The United Methodist Church considers how to structure itself going forward and as it considers how to relate to historically-connected churches, such as those Methodist churches in Latin America and parts of Asia.