The pastor wanted to show us the Cementerio de los Disidentes – the Dissidents’ Cemetery. High up on the hills overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Valparaíso, Chile, the Cementerio de los Disidentes was the only place in all of Chile where a non-Roman Catholic person could legally be buried before 1883.
Though Protestants have enjoyed the privilege of being buried in any cemetery in Chile for over a century now, the underlying suspicion against non-Catholics continues in Chile and throughout most of Latin America. The pastor had started our tour of Chile at the cemetery because he wanted to give us context for how Chilean culture viewed non-Catholics.
Though the Protestant church has grown since the 1800s, it remains a cultural minority that has seldom, if ever, enjoyed the benefits that come with being the majority religion – benefits like strong finances, robust educational institutions, government favor, and societal acceptance. As a relative newcomer to the Latin world, Protestantism has stood in the shadow of the Roman Catholic Church, suffering suspicion, skepticism, ridicule, exclusion, and persecution.
Against that backdrop, the church continues to go about the mission that Jesus has set before her. Of course, the church in Latin America is not monolithic. In the statistical analyses many sects and heresies get confused with Christianity. But the best of the Latin church is worth emulating in several ways.
At this particular moment in history when historic Christianity no longer holds the place of favor it once had within American society, we can look to our brothers and sisters to the south to learn about trusting God and being a faithful witness as a cultural minority.
When we look to the Latin church, we find real-life examples of some of the tools available to us. Among those are robust community, intentional evangelism, and comfort from the Scriptures.
Robust Community
“Americans leave so quickly after church,” one of my children commented on the way home from church shortly after we moved to the U.S. in 2015. When we lived in Mexico, we were often still at church talking with friends and church members more than 90 minutes after the service had ended. And then we would probably have lunch with someone. On one occasion, our after-church lunch guests were still with us when I had to return to the church to teach a 7:00 p.m. class. And our Thursday night Bible studies often felt like Thursday night sleepovers.
Minority communities are often described as “tight-knit,” and this is true of much of the church in Latin America. As a group that does not get affirmation or support in society at large, those resources have to come from within. People rely on one another, helping each other get employment, praying for one another, and opening their wallets when others are in need. We saw examples time and again of people willing to “bear one another’s burdens” (Galatians 6:2).
Though I would never suggest that there is no community in the American church, there is lots of room for growth. Coffee fellowship and fellowship meals are great, and yet we can find more ways to spend life together. The Latin community is always looking for more opportunities to be together and to support one another.
How can we creatively find more ways to know one another? The upcoming generation is one that particularly wants to be known. They want people to show interest, be curious, and share life with them. How can we follow Jesus in what it means to be his community?
Intentional Evangelism
I attended a number of funerals while growing up in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Invariably, the minister would comment on how the deceased “really loved the Lord.” I was in a city where absolutely everyone really loved the Lord! Or at least that’s how it seemed. It was easy to think that we didn’t really need to share the gospel – everybody already had it.
A 2021 study found that while 69% of Americans consider themselves to be Christians, only 6% of Americans hold to a Christian worldview. What does it mean to evangelize these populations? You don’t necessarily have to convince them that Jesus is important, and yet they desperately need to know that being a disciple entails following Jesus in all aspects of life. They need to hear the good news of the Savior who gave his life – the just for the unjust – so that we who were once his enemies can live forever with him.
In many ways, these tensions resemble what I see in Latin America, where everyone has heard the name of Jesus. People know about the crucifixion. They have some familiarity with Bible stories. Yet, very few of them have heard and understood the gospel. Most people have assurance by attending Mass a few times a year and giving a few pesos for the poor.
Within the Protestant church in Latin America, believers are constantly aware of the spiritual needs of those around them. Christians know that there is a spiritual veneer that must be removed to get to true issues of gospel conversion. And so the Latin American Protestant church has more familiarity with evangelism. Sometimes the efforts have been effective and sometimes quite clumsy, but we see lots of evidence of how the Lord has blessed those efforts.
We can look to the Latin church to learn how to see the needs around us, understand where people are really coming from, and clearly articulate the claims of the gospel.
Comfort from the Scriptures
“Even if I never see you again on earth, I know that I will see you again one day. Because we have the same inheritance – we are both daughters of the King.” A materially poor woman spoke these words to my wife. Her husband was an addict and abusive, and everything about her culture said that she was inferior to the educated, white American woman standing before her.
But the gospel had transformed her perspective. She understood that she had the same worth and dignity as anyone else because the Lord had made her his own! I think she may have understood this truth better than we did.
Being in the minority can help in biblical interpretation – especially in seeing the comfort that the Lord offers. In the Old Testament, the patriarchs were nomads, and the Israelites were slaves in Egypt. After the exodus, they were a people continually threatened by outside forces. Once in the Promised Land, the Israelites were often at war, and after the exile, God’s people were always under someone else’s power.
In the New Testament, we find Christians under Roman rule – a rule that was often harsh and unjust. Significant portions of Scripture were written by and to people living in vulnerability, and good biblical interpretation will take this context into account. Yet, people who have never experienced that sort of vulnerability often struggle to understand this perspective.
The relative prosperity and security of the evangelical church in the U.S. can prevent us from appreciating the depth of some passages. We tend to think of the Sabbath as a burden rather than as a gift, forgetting that the Israelite slaves probably never had days off until the Lord rescued them and then gave them a full day off each week!
We read Psalms speaking of the threats of enemies and may not fully comprehend what that means. Or we read the Sermon on the Mount and fail to see Jesus’ call to radical living because we are surrounded by comfort.
As some of the cultural comforts erode, Christians in the U.S. have the opportunity to grasp God’s promises more firmly. Promises of his love. Promises of his salvation. And perhaps most importantly, promises of his presence with us.
These promises surely have had meaning to us all along. But perhaps the Lord is allowing us to experience neediness at a more personal level, something that our Latin brothers and sisters have great experience with. Those who are powerless are quicker to look to the Lord in Scripture and in prayer. We can learn a lot from Latin believers in this regard.
From the beginning Latin American Christians have learned from Western churches as missionaries came (and still need to come) primarily from the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Canada. Now our churches in the west can be learning from the Church in the south.
God is building up his body in Latin America in spite of the evangelical church’s relatively low social standing. We can receive from them the confidence that we can still trust and follow the Lord, even as our social standing in the U.S. decreases.
Whatever our standing, we can have full confidence that our Lord is reigning. He lived, died, rose, and ascended on high where he sits at the right hand of our Father. King Jesus reigns. Let us live as his disciples in robust community, telling others about him, and enjoying the comfort that he is with us “to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20).
Steve Robertson serves as International Director of the Americas for Mission to the World. He has been living in and serving Latin America for 25 years.