TONGUES OF FIRE
The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America
David Martin
Cambridge, Mass.: Basil Blackwell, 1990
352 pp., $39.95
According to my friend who visited Germany several months ago, selling the Berlin Wall is quite a profitable venture, and to him it seemed as though there were as many entrepreneurs on the eastern side of the Wall as on the western. Hawking pieces of liberty, these unlikely capitalists embody the connection between the breakdown of political control and the emergence of economic initiative. Worldwide attention has focused on the fundamental political shift in the "global correlation of forces": the "democratic revolution," perhaps best symbolized by the tearing down of the Wall. But other types of walls - those erected against the free market in the name of socialist development - are falling down under the influence of the key global economic trends: the "capitalist revolution."
In the most unlikely places, including former socialist holdouts in Latin America and Africa, political leaders are imposing economic reforms dismantling the elaborate structures of centralized economic control. Statism, thoroughly discredited east of the Elbe, is being abandoned in many less developed countries (LDCs), including most notably Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina in this hemisphere. Though socialist ideals may still resonate in some parts of the Third World, the general trend is toward a freeing up of domestic economic life and international trade. But the capitalist revolution in most LDCs has been largely from the top down. This makes it little different, in method, from the grandiose effort of earlier, state-led development schemes. In short, so far the capitalist revolution has not been as participatory as the democratic revolution, and one may wonder whether it will prove viable.
Weber's thesis revisited
A largely unrecognized but powerful potential source of energy for the capitalist revolution is the religious revival sweeping the underdeveloped world and creating millions of conservative Protestants. This "evangelical revolution" is not top down, but a grassroots explosion stirring the hopes and participation of millions of poor people. For many, their conversion from various Indian and spiritist religions, folk Catholicism, or agnosticism, to conservative evangelical religion will bring significant attitudinal and behavioral changes. These may complement the economic reforms being imposed from above, if Max Weber's old argument linking the Protestant work ethic to the "spirit of capitalism" holds water in the Third World context.
David Martin's book Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America revisits and breathes life into the Weberian hypothesis, though Martin is careful to note that any relationship between evangelical revival and the prospects for capitalist development is contingent - not necessary. Nonetheless, he concludes that "evangelical religion and economic advancement do often go together, and when they do so appear mutually to support and reinforce one another."
Martin, a renowned sociologist of religion, locates his examination of the "Protestant explosion" in
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