Brasil 2004: Leaving Cubatão In an Hour and a Half

Anyone who sees the best of the Brazilian people will never forget their friendliness.

Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2004 10:35:33 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Glen Labah"
Subject: Leaving Cubatão In an Hour and a Half

Brazilians have a penchant for joyfulness. The spirit of carnival, not merely as exercised in the world-famous bacchanalia of Rio de Janeiro but also in the popular street celebrations of cities like Salvador and Olinda, sets a universal standard for exuberance. Brazilian fans at the quadrennial World Cup soccer championships always bring with them a contagious enthusiasm that proves irresistible to spectators from other countries. According to Jo“ozinho Trinta, the creative genius who revolutionized Rioís carnival extravaganze, ìIf you consider the planet as a living entity, Brazil is its heart; thus, Brazilís function is to bring happiness to this earth."

If you receive this message, it means that I am now preparing to leave the house, and there will be no more messages from me from here in Cubatão. The .forward file that I had placed on my home e-mail address (address removed due to spam) has now been removed, and e-mail sent to that address will no longer be sent to this yahoo address. This yahoo address will be checked again from time to time, but not as regularly as it once was.

This message does not exactly cover any area of my time here. That came from the previous message for the most part. What I am going to cover here has to do with the nature of ministry here in Brazil, and some things that may happen in the future. As such, the quote above is somewhat appropriate, I think.

I don't exactly know what Joseph Page's religious sentiments are, but from statements that he makes in his books he does not have an insiderís view of evangelical Christianity. On the other hand, he does seem to write with a considerable amount of accurate external observations regarding how evangelical Christianity appeals to Brazilians. Thought provoking, if not entirely accurate from an insiderís perspective, commentary should probably be somewhat expected from someone who is a professor of law whose past traveling companions to Brasil included Ralph Nader. These are not stupid people who write these things. They are just eccentric academics, and many times what they write should not be ignored.

There is probably a lot to be learned from some of the statements about how allowing a few very large corporations and media empires to control nearly everything in Brazil caused severe problems in the past. There is a quote in the book from an official that states ìWe are your future.î In the USA, we have a lack of a a real solution to the rising costs of health care in the USA, many problems in education, and wages among the top few corporate executives are increasing many times faster than the average working wage is increasing. I donít think it is so very far fetched to think of a time in the very near future when our own situation in the USA may resemble what happened here in Brazil during the years when the wealthiest 10 percent of the population earned over 53 percent of the national income. Without a significant middle class to actually purchase goods and otherwise act as an economic engine, there can be little economic activity. Such a collapse will probably happen in our own country if we are not careful about what happens with our own balance of economic power.

There is, of course, no way I can possibly hope to write about all of those issues. Instead, I will focus on something else in the book: even though this is a secular examination of Brazilian culture published almost 10 years ago, the fact is that evangelical Christianity, and its impact on Brazilian culture, is being noticed. When I have visited the OMS affiliated churches in and around Londrina, it is amazing how many Brazilians seem to be called to the mission field or to be pastors, or to otherwise serve in Church leadership, once they become Christians. Brazil isnít just a nation for receiving missionaries any more, because there are many serving in other countries now.

There are some reasons why Brazil would make an ideal nation for creating missionaries:

• The people in Brazil look beyond what they can see. The people have an amazing sense of the spiritual world. Possibly this comes from the voodoo and spiritist heritage of such a large portion of the population.

• The Brazilian people can probably identify better than Americans with people in many parts of the world that have a spiritist and voodoo heritage. This culture is not unknown in the USA, but it is far more common in Brazil. It is one thing to tell someone in Africa that you have some familiarity with the native religion, and yet another to tell them that half of your family back home participates in voodoo religious ceremonies of some sort or another.
  
  Two young friends of mine pause for a moment of reflection in a chapel inside one of the public parks in Cubatão. Christianity of some form or another is pretty much part of Brazilian culture, but so are various voodoo influences.

• Many Christians in Brazil have a strong faith because at times that is the only thing that holds them together due to some of the difficulties of living here.

• Brazil has no real political enemies, and therefore Brazilians can get into certain cultures and countries far easier than Americans, English, Canadians, or Australians or other traditional sending nations.

• Brazilian culture reaches to many corners of the globe. For example, Rede Globo exports telenovelas (Literally this means ìTele-novelî. This is commonly translated to mean ìsoap operasî in English, but in Brazil these shows actually have a distinct beginning, plot line and end after perhaps at most one year, unlike an American soap opera that can easily run for years without any significant plot or sign of ending. "Telenovel" isnít such a bad interpretation. The problem is that American TV networks donít have this type of program.) to some 128 countries.