People openly disliked us. But not any longer. We have left our underprivileged status behind us. Today we count soccer players, artists, business people, politicians, and high-society people among our ranks. Sophisticated convention centers and five-star hotels serve as our meeting centers.
Weekly magazines cover the evangelical presence in society.
Much of this has come through the sheer numbers we have attracted into our churches in the last two decades, though precise numbers are difficult to come by. Some figures say evangelicals make up 20 percent of Brazil's population of 160 million people. A 1996 census, however, put the evangelical figure at 10.95 percent. What worries him is the growth of Pentecostalism, which has begun to threaten the hegemony of the Catholic church here. Though the evangelical presence is strong throughout most of Latin America, pockets of large immigrant communities remain mostly untouched.