Impacto del neopentecostalismo en la identidad de los bautistas de Cali, Colombia
Authors:   , Moreno Palacios Pablo 
Published: December 2023

This research has analyzed the process of formation of Baptist identity in Colombia and its variations in the course of its history.

In the first part, a review was made of the most notable research on Baptist identity among Baptists in other parts of the world, emphasizing the starting points that these studies have taken.

Our emphasize that Baptist identity is a permanent process of construction, renewal and new construction. Some of the authors who have followed this point of view are: Steven Harmon, Curtis Freeman, James McClendon Jr., Paul Fiddes and Bill Leonard. From a more historiographical perspective, the authors who have served us are: Jean Pierre Bastian, José Míguez Bonino and Heinrich Schäfer.

In the second part, we describe and analyze some aspects of the history of Baptists in Colombia. In each case we mention significant aspects of the formation of the Colombian Baptist identity, from ethnic, political, religious and generational factors, among others.

In the third part, our focus has been the analysis of the construction of the Baptist identity in Colombia with a particular look at the case of the city of Cali, Colombia. We have differentiated between endogenous and exogenous factors in the formation of Baptist identity, describing each one while analyzing their impact and results in the Colombian way of being Baptist. We have mentioned the means used for this identity formation as well as the product itself: the resulting Baptist identity.

In the fourth part, we focus on the Baptists of Cali and on the period 1990-2010, because there the Baptists began to experience several changes that at the same time contributed to the formation of a new Baptist identity. We have affirmed that at least three factors were important in the development of a new stage of Baptist identity formation: generational, organizational, and theological.

The fifth part describes, exposes, and analyzes the neo-Pentecostal boom and its relationship with the Baptists, since at least two of the most important churches of this current emerged among the Baptists, either because of the origin of their leaders or because of their ecclesial origin, which before the Baptist division had already separated from the denomination.

In the sixth part, a more reflective and prospective proposal is presented that Baptist churches should follow to compile the inherited Baptist identity with the constructions that have been elaborated in the Colombian Baptist history and in the churches of Cali.

In the conclusions there are a series of observations, since we emphasize that the Baptist identity has not been something static and finished, but that it is constantly being constructed. That in the impact of Neo-Pentecostalism we do not see a single fact but the accumulation of several factors that over time were configured to favor a new construction of Baptist identity. That Neo-Pentecostalism did not affect exclusively Baptists but has been a generalized fact at the transnational and interdenominational level, producing new forms of church organization and promoting new roles of participation in society.