Apartado Postal 1024
Cuernavaca, Mor., Mexico

November 25, 1973

Dear Friend:

One of José Míquez-Bonino's emphases has always been the Christian's
responsibility in the Latin American situation of injustice and institu-
tionalized violence. In the attached paper he gives a brief discussion
of three Protestant attitudes towards society: the supposedly apolitical
or neutral stance; support for the Liberal-Modernization project; and
commitment to revolutionary change.

He believes that the basic problem facing the Protestant church in
Latin America is the need for a "conversion to the world" and he con-
stantly calls the church to theological reflection on the meaning of
life, development, crisis, change, revolution, justice, freedom, peace,
man, and society. This reflection, he says, is Protestantism's first
theological duty.

For him, the church cannot remain in some sort of other-worldly
reality outside the Latin American struggle:

Actually, there is no such reality. An area free of political and
ideological commitment is a false paradise which does not exist.
Certainly we are now conscious of the fact that the church always
plays a role in society; it has always done so, in favor of one
group or another; it has always thrown its weight on one side of the
struggle or on the other side. Perhaps for the first time we can
now bring this fact into the open, see clearly what the alternatives
are, and try to shape our choices according to the gospel. We can
now see that we will either support the continuation of oppression
or the struggle for liberation. We will support one or the other by
the way we teach, worship, preach, use our money, speak, or remain
silent. There is no third possibility. Perhaps our fathers will be
excused at the Judgment because they did not see this clearly. But
we will have to give an account for our decision. ("The Present
Crisis in Mission," New World Outlook, April, 1972, p. 8).

Many of the ideas presented in the accompanying article were devel-
oped more fully in a study which Míquez-Bonino gave at a consultation
last year at El Escorial, Spain. If you read Spanish you may wish to
consult it: "Visión del cambio social y sus tareas desde las iglesias
cristianas no católicas," in Fe Cristiana y Cambio Social (Salamanca,
Ediciones Sígueme, 1973), pp. 179-202.

THE POLITICAL ATTITUDE OF PROTESTANTS IN LATIN AMERICA

by José Míquez-Bonino

For Protestants reflection on this theme is both necessary and pain-
ful. It is necessary because of the identity crisis that affects all
Latin American Christianity today, and Protestantism in particular, for
reasons that we shall examine. It is painful because as soon as Protes-
tants begin to examine history they discover that the role their church
has played in Latin America is not as clear and positive as they had sup-
posed. The material presented here is not the detailed in-depth study
which is needed but some historical notes and a brief programmatic
conclusion.

The Historical Models of the Reformation

The problem of "change" was inherent in the very genesis of Protes-
tantism. Protestantism has to do with "reform," a verb that covers a
wide range, from slight accommodation on the one hand, to the most radical
doctrinal and institutional restructuring on the other. For the Reformers
it was a question of reforming the church (and to some degree the world
also) according to the Word of God. This undertaking, however, was
understood in different ways.

(1) For Luther, the Word of God was first and foremost the gospel, the announcement of God's merciful grace which liberates mankind. This is the realm of faith and Christian freedom: here the word of forgiveness reigns supreme. In his freedom the Christian dedicates himself through love to serve his neighbor. This service takes place in the realm of secular existence. However, the structures of that kingdom are not dictated by the Word of God but by another law--rational, natural, and empirical (Luther is not very clear in this respect)--which implies the use of coercion, a law not in keeping with the gospel although not foreign to God's ultimate purpose. The consequence of the imprecision about the content of that order, which seems to be an autonomous

*Translated from "La Actitud Política de los Protestantes en América Latina," Noticiero de la Fe (Buenos Aires), Year XXXVII, No. 9 (July, 1972), pp. 4-9.

José Míquez-Bonino is an ordained Methodist minister serving as
Director of Post-Graduate Studies at the Evangelical Institute of Higher
Theological Studies (Instituto Superior Evangélico de Estudios Teoló-
gicos--I.S.E.D.E.T.), Camacá 282, Buenos Aires 6, Argentina.

principle freed from the gospel (although Luther himself was repeatedly concerned with it), left Lutheranism ill equipped to resist conformity with the existing order. A distorted interpretation of that doctrine led sometimes to a consideration of the secular order as wholly autonomous and to the transformation of the church into a patient and domesticated accompaniment of the prevailing order.

(2) Calvin, on the other hand, understood the Word of God as both the announcement of forgiveness and the law (of the Old and New Testaments). To serve in a secular society, therefore, the Christian has the law's concrete indications. Thus Calvinism is politically more active and dynamic. The risk lies in the identification of the "law of God" with some particular political program resulting from its interpretation. This leads to two other serious risks: the tendency toward theocacy and the making of faith an ideology.

(3) The "Radical" or "Anabaptist" groups read the Bible, specially the teachings of Jesus, as an indication of how man and society should live. Love, equality, and mutual service were their norms of behavior. Some were dedicated to building up communities of the faithful where this ethic might be put into practice (these are the so-called sects). The communities looked upon the secular world as a negative and demonic sphere with which the believer must have the least possible relation. Others tried to impose new conditions of life; they were the revolutionary radicals--Muntzer is the best known example--who were violently suppressed by the other religious groups, whether Catholic, Lutheran, or Calvinist.

## Protestantism in Latin America

England was principally "reformed" according to models 2 and 3, in a mediating way and with the continuity of many elements of Catholicism. Of special interest to us are the "dissident" churches (Calvinist, Baptist, Congregationalist and, later, Methodist) that more directly inherited Calvinist and Anabaptist traditions. These are the churches that when transferred to the United States engendered in the specific conditions of that country (including the conquest of the West, the Civil War, etc.) the particular form of North American Protestantism which, with some English and European contributions, constituted the historical background of Latin American Protestantism.

It was this Protestantism--anticlerical (the sectarian heritage), puritan (the Calvinist heritage), liberal-capitalist (the American historical heritage)--which came to our countries in the second half of the last century with Baptist, Methodist, and other missions. The other Protestant presence arrived with immigration from Germany, Holland and other countries, and only now is it emerging from its language and cultural enclaves.

Regarding Latin American Protestantism we want to develop a simple
historical thesis: At the moment when our countries were slowly emerging
from their colonial past and were seeking to integrate into the modern
world, Protestantism constituted for them a call to change and transfor-
mation, centered in the religious sphere but with an effect on the total-
ity of life and society. Some observations may clarify this thesis.

(a) The prime emphasis of the Protestant proclamation in our midst was a call to conversion, to a personal experience of religious quickening, characterized by a sense of communion with Jesus Christ, the assurance of pardon, and a moral transformation--the abandonment of vice and the living of an honest, sober, responsible, and industrious life. The expressions "a new man," "a new life," "another person," and "a different person," appear constantly in the testimonies of the first Protestants.

(b) Along with this emphasis there was an attack, at times virulent, against Roman Catholicism, using all the arguments of the most polemical epoch of Europe and North America. Catholicism was considered to be superstition, idolatry, and magic. With this denunciation came negative judgments against all religion which was transmitted as a cultural heritage or as a series of rites mediated by a sacramental, hierarchical, priestly institution. Faith should be understood as spontaneity, immediacy, and personal participation. Conversion meant a liberation from the religious-social structure. Conversion frequently coincided with migration--from a European country to Latin America, from the countryside to the city--or with some other form of uprooting which required breaking ties with a social order that had been supposedly unchangeable.

(c) In this sense, the Protestant attitude was part of a broader re-
bellion against the traditional order, an order that we may call "seignor-
ial," based on extensive holdings of rural property and the rigid social
stratification that predominated in Latin America. At that time in
almost all Latin American countries there was unleashed a struggle be-
tween traditional society and the pioneers of "modernization" who
stressed public education, representative democracy, economic liberalism,
and entrance into the orbit of North Atlantic power (represented first by
England and later by the United States). While the Roman Catholic Church
was considered one of the basic obstacles to progress toward moderniza-
tion, Protestantism was seen as conducive to that end; it was the re-
ligion of the societies which were taken as models of modernity and was
intrinsically a religion of liberty, individuality, free analysis, and
education. Although these ideas are a caricature, they predominate in
the image of Protestantism that was often held by the higher classes in
our countries.

(d) In other words, Protestantism was incorporated into the "liberal-modernist" movement represented by names such as Sarmiento, Rivadavia, Lastarria, Bilbao, etc., with their anti-clerical battle against the

traditional pre-modern ethos. It is significant that, without becoming Protestant Christians, the leaders of this movement were favorable to the coming of Protestantism, both as immigration and mission. This inevitably linked Protestantism to the neocolonial-imperialist expansion of the largely Protestant countries into Latin America. The external link is historically evident. The internal tie is less clear but relates to ideas of liberty, progress, and individuality, and has both an ethical, personalizing liberating aspect as well as a political, economic aspect that binds it to imperialist capitalism.

## Towards a Positive Identity of Protestantism

The circumstances of its origin have led to Protestantism's paradoxical position in our countries. On the one hand, Protestant Christians participated in a necessary subversion of traditional society by introducing new norms, values, and institutions contrary to the existing ones. On the other hand, many Protestants today perceive the Liberal-Modernization project with which their churches were linked, to be highly ambiguous, with negative consequences (imperialism and domination), and with no real future. That Protestant participation in this negative situation has been primarily unconscious and even involuntary does not solve the problem of its ambiguity. We find ourselves participating in the creation of an order whose inhumanity and perversion are more evident every day.

In the face of this crisis Latin American Protestants adopt a variety of positions. By way of a rapid and preliminary typology we may speak of three options which we shall characterize and comment upon summarily.

I. A significant number of Protestants refuse to take any responsibility for social processes. Religion is reduced to the individual and interior ambit, to "personal salvation" and to the "relation of the soul to God." The belief prevails that converted man will by his industriousness and honesty make a positive contribution to society. But every intent to relate faith and Christian doctrine to the public sphere is considered an "intrusion" which violates both the "lay" character of the public sphere (remember the anticlerical heritage) and the "spiritual" purity of the faith. At times this attitude of withdrawal is applied to all spheres of culture united under the global and pejorative term, "the world." It should be noted, however, that when some Protestants move up in society and abandon their "cultural" asceticism they usually hold on to their political asceticism. This is part of what a sociologist has labelled Latin American Protestantism's "withdrawal from society."*

*The reference is to *la huelga social* as used by the Swiss sociologist Christian Lalive d'Epinay in his study of Chilean Protestantism

This Protestant attitude has a long history. We must not disregard
the importance of insistence on inner renewal and suspicion of every
effort to make an ideology of faith. But political renunciation is an
unsustainable attitude.

(1) The argument that inner and individual transformation "automatically" leads to changes in society is ingenuous. History repeatedly shows how mystical piety has gone hand-in-hand with the most inhuman social attitudes. The classic example of the pious English sea captain composing sentimental hymns about Jesus on the deck of the ship in whose hold he packed the cargo of slaves that he was transporting to America is an extreme but by no means unique instance. Furthermore, we know that all individual behaviour is inserted into a social structure. If this structure is unjust and deforming it may well, and does, occur that the responsibility, efficiency, and honesty of Christians only serve to lend greater efficiency to that anti-Christian structure and assure its continuation.

(2) What we said in the previous paragraph derives from the fact that personal and social dimensions of human behaviour are indissolubly related. Whether one is active or inactive in the political sphere his life has political influence. The Bible never justifies separation of the personal from the social (remember the Prophets, for example, or the persistent theme of the Kingdom of God); the believer is responsible to God for the totality of his behaviour and he is involved in responsibility for the society where God has placed him.

(3) The consequence of this attitude is serious. The believer, thinking he has stayed "neutral," is in fact backing the existing unjust order. In practice it often happens that these believers, confused by growing polarization, end up backing conservative political positions inspired by the interests of their social group or class rather than by the gospel.

II. A second group of Protestants insists on supporting the liberal project. They defend institutional democracy, classic freedoms, and developmentalism within the framework of western capitalism. This is clearly a political option and therefore presents a different attitude from that of the first group. It is an attitude which occurs more frequently in churches of longer historical tradition and of the upper social strata. For them the Christian value that is at stake is freedom

El Refugio de las Masas (Santiago, Chile: Editorial del Pacífico, S.A., 1968), Chap. 6, "Significado y Consecuencias de la Huelga Social del Pentecostalismo." The English translation of this study has been published for the World Council of Churches under the title Haven of the Masses (London: Lutterworth Press, 1969). (Translators' note)

as it is analyzed in the categories of liberal thought and translated
into the common liberties of elections, press, commerce, etc. The im-
portance of freedom must by no means be underestimated or minimized.
This is a value which we Protestants must constantly uphold in our crit-
icism of society. Nevertheless, for me this socio-political option is
also insufficient.

(1) It seems not to take the realities of society into account. In effect, with the existing conditions in Latin American society, the formal concept of "freedom" is merely a game with rules that favor those who possess power--it is freedom for those who have and those who command--to enable them to add to their power. As statistics show, this "freedom" strengthens and intensifies differences in social stratification. On the other hand, given the conditions of economic power--and with it political and military power--the developmentalist approach has failed in its announced purpose to achieve the "take-off" for accelerated progress in our countries. The complete failures of the Alliance for Progress, the two "decades of development" proclaimed by the United Nations, and the UNCTAD meetings, clearly indicate that progress by this means is impossible.

(2) The Christian does not have the right to close his eyes to
reality in the name of abstract values such as freedom, democracy, or
legality. In the Christian ethic, not abstract norms, but man, concrete
man in the totality of his existence, is of the highest value. Conse-
quently, the Christian's political responsibility includes an obligation
to look for the way that effectively offers to the majority in society
the possibility of a fuller life in all aspects of individuality and
relationships. It is curious and significant to note that those who
adopt the attitude under discussion here, when faced with its failure to
produce the desired results in society, are pushed toward more reaction-
ary positions and finally come to accept systematic repression, torture,
dictatorship, and the margination of vast sectors of the population, as
the only possible "defense" of democracy. In doing so they have, in
effect, renounced their own ideal and postponed it for a utopian future.

III. A third group of Christians are carried to a position we might
call "revolutionary" that leads to active participation in the process of
radical change of the social, economic, and political structures of our
continent. It is not possible here to elaborate this thesis--to which I
personally subscribe--nor to describe the possible variants within it
(specific economic and political options, the revolutionary process,
etc.). Because I feel identified with this position, however, it seems
to me necessary to delineate what would be required of a Latin American
Protestantism which would assume this option.

(1) Protestantism can overcome its crisis of identity and mission
only if it can recapture the "subversive" role it once played, but doing
so from within the radically different situation in which we find

ourselves today. That means it would work to overcome the very histor-
ical movement in which it previously participated. To do this it must
intensify, interpret, and articulate anew the basic evangelical concepts
of newness, repentance, transformation, new life, and the new man. This
reinterpretation must be based on the whole dimension of biblical wit-
ness, be articulated in relation to existing conditions in our countries,
and emphasize the necessity of internal and external liberation.

(2) Such reflection is urgent because the church's function in so-
ciety is primarily exercised in the definition, criticism, and purifica-
tion of values, and only secondarily, and in a limited way, in the codi-
fication of laws or creation of political institutions. Definition,
criticism, and purification of values are important, not only descrip-
tively but also normatively, in order to avoid the intromission of any
theocratic adventure, a risk which is unlikely, to be sure, since Protes-
tantism is such a small minority in our countries. The Protestant
church must concentrate on understanding, preaching, and clarifying the
total liberation of man and society, which the gospel teaches, and the
concrete consequences.

(3) To move the discussion from an abstract realm, I would say that the churches must try to understand the different types of commitment that correspond to different levels of society--national institutions, local groups of thought and action, and individuals. With such discernment it is then necessary to achieve the highest commitment compatible with each level, and to assure the greatest freedom of choice in an approach to strategies for action.

(4) Protestantism, a minority group, can make its contribution to society at the institutional level through critical but positive collaboration with other religious and secular forces, and at the personal and group level through association with existing organizations and movements.

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(Translated by
James and Margaret Goff
Apartado Postal 1024
Cuernavaca, Mor., Mexico)