Pentecostal power: conversions in El Salvador

THE TOMB OF Archbishop Oscar Romero is all but hidden in the basement of the national cathedral in San Salvador. Though the memorial was recently beautified to mark the 25th anniversary of the 1980 assassination, no signs point to its location. Of course, San Salvador is not known for being tourist friendly; it has few signs pointing to anything. But as my students and I stood before the tomb, we could not help wondering if Romero, whom many Christians across the world regard as a saint, is an embarrassment to the government and perhaps to the church.

We also wondered why there were no other pilgrims paying homage. Save for a janitor who was mopping the floor, we were alone in the basement. If Romero was indeed murdered for speaking on behalf of El Salvador's poor, where were they? We were about to find out.

We began to hear sounds of music and shouting coming from outside the cathedral, and when we reached the street we were thrust into a massive sea of bodies--later estimated at over 50,000. The crowd was heading to Parque Libertad for a protest rally on behalf of the television evangelist and pastor Edgar Lopez Bertrand.

Better known as Brother Toby, Bertrand is the founder and pastor of an evangelical empire known as Tabernaculo Biblico Bautista "Amigos de Israel Central." Bertrand had been arrested in Houston for passport fraud. He had tried to use a counterfeit birth certificate as proof that 20-year-old Pamela Lopez was his adopted daughter. When confronted, he finally admitted that her original adoption was illegal. Despite a hefty fine, a guilty plea and three-months in jail, Bertrand's flock never questioned his innocence. By the day of the rally his case had become a cause celebre and the whole city was inundated with "Free Toby" bumper stickers, yellow ribbons, billboard ads and television spots.

As we soon discovered, this was more than a protest rally. It was a carefully orchestrated expression of evangelical and Pentecostal strength. It was symbolic that such a crowd would assemble in this park, between the towering shade of the Romanesque cathedral and the liberationist and architecturally modern Ecclesia de Rosario. Politicians, police officers and pastors from numerous fundamentalist and Pentecostal churches were present. It was rumored that President Tony Saca would arrive (he didn't) since he is friendly to evangelicals and had chosen Bertrand to pray at his inauguration.

One by one each speaker declared support for Bertrand. Most of their rhetoric, however, was directed toward spiritual revival in El Salvador. The speakers conjured up a picture of the kingdom of God sweeping over El Salvador miracle by miracle, conversion by conversion, wiping out all that had come before.

What we experienced in the square was not what we expected when we planned our trip to El Salvador. Guided by Christians for Peace in El Salvador (CRISPAZ), my students and I had listened to liberation theologians and parish priests interpret the struggles of the poor in light of their reading of the Gospels. We met with numerous social scientists who helped us understand poverty in El Salvador. We broke bread with members of several base communities, many of whom had been exiles during the guerrilla war of the 1980s, and with people whose relatives had been killed by government death squads or American bombs. We had an extended audience with Archbishop Saenz Lacalle, a member of Opus Dei, and left the visit disturbed by the gulf between the conservative Catholic hierarchy and the dwindling number of priests and nuns who practice the preferential option for the poor.

But in the square we discovered that our conception of Christianity in El Salvador was woefully incomplete without an understanding of the evangelical and Pentecostal revival.

Brother Toby's Tabernacle boasts a membership of 80,000, and it has spawned over 40 smaller churches. Through its massive television ministry Toby's casual and North American brand of fundamentalist dispensationalism has been spread all over Central America.

THE TABERNACLE IS only one of a handful of gigantic evangelical churches in the greater San Salvador area that have sprung up over the past two decades. Mision Elim Internacional in Ilabasco, just outside San Salvador, is the epicenter of the movement. Unlike Tabernaculo Biblico Bautista, Elim is a church of the very poor. It has an active membership of over 150,000 and is widely considered the second largest church in the world.

Elim has an open-air auditorium that seats 8,000, and it offers six consecutive services on Sunday, numerous midweek services and a weekly all-night prayer vigil regularly attended by over 3,000. But it provides far more than a massive Sunday worship experience. It is first and foremost a highly effective social network.

Modeled explicitly after the Yoido Full Gospel Church in South Korea, the Elim community is tightly organized according to districts, sectors, zones and cells that meet every Saturday for Bible study and prayer. Each cell and sector has an appointed leader, and each district has a pastor. The church has some 80 full-time pastors, all trained within the church community.