A Growing Church in the Midst of Violence and Fear
From The Forum Magazine, Winter 2015 - view the full issue here
Present Context
As a result of wrong decisions and corrupt administrations in Mexico over the last 14 years, 80,000 people have been murdered and disappeared. People live in fear, and life has changed for the common citizen in significant ways. For us in the north it is hard to imagine what it means for people to face such a reality in their everyday lives. The people of Mexico are no longer able to distinguish between criminal organizations and their own government (43 students disappeared three months ago in Ayotzinapa by local authorities), and they do not have many alternatives to turn to.
Church Growth
Nevertheless, Mexican churches are growing, thriving, and keeping their faith and hope under such circumstances. Expressions of love and solidarity by churches (including Catholic, evangelical and other Protestant denominations) are tangible, and the Gospel can still be good news for people who need it urgently.
The religious composition has changed in significant ways over the last decades. Catholicism has been decreasing, and people have changed their affiliation to evangelical and Protestant churches, as well as to other beliefs. The number of people who declare themselves agnostic or atheist is also growing.
Protestants and evangelicals make up 7.6 percent of the population, other religions make up 2.5 percent, and 4.6 percent have no religion. Reformed/ Presbyterian churches have a total membership of 437,690.
Most Presbyterians are located in the southeast part of Mexico, in the states of Chiapas, Tabasco, Veracruz, and Yucatan.
Challenges
While the churches are growing in Mexico or people are changing their religious affiliation (from Roman Catholic to evangelical), it is important to take a closer look into such growth and consider it closely.
Prosperity Gospel
Large numbers of converts to the evangelical faith follow closely the dominant paradigm of most megachurches and independent churches, the so-called prosperity gospel. The belief that by becoming Christian you will eventually become rich is popular, and many people have come to believe that it is the Gospel of Jesus. This poses significant questions in terms of the seriousness and depth of such faith and the permanent membership in the church. There is a significant floating population in such churches, and people move from one to the other and frequently out of them.
Strong Proselytizing, but Weak Discipleship
If there is a permanent mark of Latin American evangelicals, it is the strong sense of duty toward converting people to faith in Jesus. That is something clear and firm, and it is very much in their DNA. The belief that we in the north need to go and evangelize in Latin America belongs to the colonial times. It would be much more accurate to think in terms of what we can learn from Latinos/as about how to evangelize our neighbors. The zeal for and commitment to evangelism has been present in Mexican churches since their establishment in the late 19th century, and their extraordinary growth in the last decades is a demonstration of their vitality.
What is needed is the deepening and broadening of the faith of new converts in order to build them up and establish their belief in God and the Bible. Some churches do this well, but most do not.
Growth of Dark Religious Alternatives
During the last two decades, two cults have grown significantly in Mexico. One of them, the worship of the Santa Muerte (Holy Death), has become very popular, and some scholars believe that it has close to 10 million devotees. Many of them worship Death without leaving their Roman Catholic faith, since such worship does not have exclusivist claims. It is a worship that mixes ancient indigenous beliefs in Mictecacihuatl (the goddess of the infraworld) with Roman Catholic rituals. One of the reasons for the popularity of this recent cult is that in a country where more than 80,000 people have been murdered or disappeared in recent decades, it seems that Death is really powerful and that people need to be on good terms with her.
Living and Articulating our Faith in the Context where we Live
A faith that is only for the religious life but that does not speak to everyday realities is a dead faith (James 2). In light of the growing poverty in the nation, violent criminal organizations that have created a situation of fear and deep suffering, a lack of opportunities that forces people to look in the north for a better way of life (leaving behind desolated towns and families), and the growth of other dark religious alternatives, it is urgent to present the Good News of the Kingdom with clarity and compassion to a suffering country. Let us pray for Christians in Mexico!
(Mariano Avila, Professor of New Testament, emeritus)
