93. A Radical Brazilian Pentecostal
The “Assemblies of God,” the original Pentecostal churches in Brazil, were founded
by two Swedes from the United States, Daniel Berg and Gunnar Vingren, who had
arrived in Brazil in 1911 and experienced “the baptism of the Spirit” in 1918. Manoel de
Melo (1929-1990), a construction worker from Pernambuco with little formal education,
became the first native Brazilian to found a Pentecostal church. De Melo, previously
pastor at Assembly of God and Foursquare Gospel, founded the “Evangelical Pentecostal
Church Brazil for Christ” in 1955. He estimated the church’s rate of growth to be about
80,000 members each year, “the fastest in the world.” Shortly after his death The
Encyclopedia of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity suggested that “Brazil for
Christ” had about five thousand congregations, one million members, and two million
adherents.
A typical weekend service, presided over by de Melo, was observed and described
in the late 1960s by Harding Meyer, a German Lutheran professor of systematic
theology in São Leopoldo (Rio Grande do Sul). According to Meyer’s description of the
response of the congregation to the service, how would the congregants define
religion? What would they perceive to be its proper function? What Brazilians might
attend Brazil for Christ?
Religion in Latin America: A Documentary History . Orbis Books. Kindle Edition.
From Pernambuco, where he was active as pastor of the Assembléias de Deus, his
course took him to São Paulo. A few years later, he broke away from the Assembléias there and
put his extraordinary gifts as an evangelist, his famous oratorical talent and his inexhaustible
capacity for work at the service of the Cruzada Nacional de Evangelização. There were gigantic
attendances at his evangelization meetings in tents, in open places and in parks, which often
resulted in astonishing cures of the sick. All he needed for such meetings was an easily
transportable loudspeaker system and a couple of musicians, whose songs first attracted the
attention of the people. It is said that meetings with an audience of 100,000 were by no means
rare and he himself estimated the audience for his morning radio programme at five million.
[…]
I was there when one Thursday he had to bring forward the regular service in his
provisional main church in São Paulo, a former market hall, from its appointed time on Saturday
to Friday evening. Despite this, the church was packed with more than five thousand believers
so that there was not even standing room; people were left outside the doors and even on the
streets. The two-hour service had all the marks of Brazilian Pentecostal services with their
lively, joyful, even hilarious mood: there was vigorous and extremely rhythmical singing
emphasized by hand-claps and accompanied by an ad hoc ‘orchestra’ of violins, flutes, clarinets,
horns, etc.; all five thousand joined in loud spontaneous prayer which went on for minutes and
swelled to a crescendo, suddenly dying away at a sign from the preacher. (Individuals who
seemed to have lapsed into speaking with tongues were silenced with an imploring yet sharp
‘silêncio!’) The sermon—about the parable of the five foolish and five wise virgins—was very
emotional and had a strongly admonitory tone, but it was an extraordinarily clear, concrete and
attractive exposition of the biblical text. The attention of the congregation did not slip for a
moment, and their intensive preoccupation could be seen and heard in movements, laughter,
loud interjections and—above all after certain key expressions—cries of ‘Glória a Deus’,
‘Alleluia’ or ‘Louvada seja o nome do Senhor!’
Without question this temperamental, dark Pernambucan with his squat figure and
harsch voice is one of the most popular figures in Brazil and surely the best-known evangelist in
the country, admired by some, attacked and criticized by others. When he founded his own
movement, a large number of his adherents from the Cruzada Nacional de Evangelizção
followed him. His own estimate of the annual rate of growth is about 80,000. Of course, it is
impossible to confirm that for the moment. Nevertheless, his church may be the fastest
growing in Brazil. His own verdict goes even further: “This work grows faster than any other in
the whole world.”
