NEWS FROM BRAZIL supplied by AGEN (Agencia Ecumenica de Noticias) and Servico Espiritano de Justica e Paz.

The following text is the result of a seminar organized by the National Council of Christian Churches during the month of December,1991. In general, it reflects a panorama of the relationship between the churches and grassroots movements.

How is the relationship between churches and grassroots movements? What are the affinities and the limits of the relationship? Such were the questions raised in 1988 by the then president of the National Council of the Christian Churches in Brazil (CONIC), Pastor Gottfried Brakemeier. Now these questions are beginning to be studied and analyzed more deeply and systematically. Side by side, at the seminar, "Churches and Grassroots Movements" promoted by CONIC,with the support of the World Council of Churches (December 1-6, Rio de Janeiro) the two groups discovered that greater transparency is lacking on both sides.

Church involvement with grassroots movements is a 3 fold experience in Latin America. "At the deepest level,what emerges is the relationship between faith and politics," analyzed Luteran Pastor Rolf Schunemann, remembering it was the ecumenical movement that awakened the churches to this segment of civil society. This relationship, however, has shown itself to be full of conflicts and tensions, with mutual usefulness and abuses. The churches sought out by international, social and political demands to express a public opinion, have not hesitated to point to the social movements as their show cases. On the other hand, the social movements, even though they consider the body ofthe church as a slow reactionary mass, use its political weight and symbol as a support in its causes.

During the opening of the seminar, the president of CONIC, dom Aloisio Sinesio Bohn, bishop of Santa Cruz do Sul,RS admitted that the subject under debate is, "a theme that burns in the hearts and minds of our evangelizers." After giving a history of the social action of Brazilian catholics in this century, Father Bernardo Lestienne, of the Urban Workers Pastoral of the Baixada Fluminense, understands that it is through the social pastorals that the Catholic Church is most really able to come close to the struggles of the grassroots. But the conflict appears, also between the pastorals and the institutions and Lestienne fears the possibility of a regression in the name of subjective spirituality in the Catholic Church in its involvement in the struggle for justice.

Efigenia Maria de Oliveira, representative of the Woman’sCenter in Cabo,PE,emphasized for the seminar that it is a challenge for the churches to take on feminist proposals and struggles because it calls into question its own structures. The churches often restrict the questions brought up by women. "More than 6 million abortions are practiced every year in Brazil and thousands of women die from the consequences of this practice. This is a reality that needs to be analyzed in light of what happens and not discussed only from a moral point of view," said Efigenia. What women expect from the churches is to open up a space for questions. Women, she said,will win their citizenship only if major transformations happen in the present oppressive structures. Former student of the FUNABEM (governmental body entrusted with problems of children in Brazil) Ivanir dos Santos, from the Center for the Articulation of Marginalized Populations (CEAP) underlined in the seminar that the work of CEAP in defense of the lives of children against violence would not have reached the expression it has without the support of the churches. Presently the relationship of the churches to the black movement has advanced, but it is more complicated. The center of the tension is in the afro-ritual, seen by many christians as devil worship. " I don’t know an ecumenical space in which Condomble (Afro-Brazilian religion) is seated equally with other religions," she shot out. From a political point of view, she observed, a tension resides in the role the Catholic Church played during slavery in Brazil. "It made an alliance to protect the Indian but washed its hands on the black question."

Who speaks in the name of today’s Indians in Brazil was the question raised in the seminar by anthropologist Carlos Alberto Ricardo of the Indigenious Peoples Program of the Ecumenical Center of Documentation and Information (CEDI). Presently there are 200 indigenious peoples in the country, totalling around 250 thousand persons - 2% of the national population. These peoples speak 170 different languages. The churches,warned the anthropologist, cannot use the categories from other grassroots movements for the indigenious question, for they are "flour from different sacks" (very different from one another). He estimated that 50-60% of the indigenious people are in contact with some religious mission, one half with the Catholic world and one half with the protestant world. Among the missions there exists those who seek the aculturation of the Indian, passing over his culture, traditions and religion. For this reason, this type of mission is harmful to the indigenious people.

The Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) hopes that the churches help make public the necessity for land reform, for it is not an objective exclusive to the movement. "All the churches have poor people in their ranks," commented Carlos Finckler of MST. The movement, commented a religious in the seminar, had even on some occasions come to the point of saying that in its land takeovers it would resist with arms. Finckler guarenteed that MST does not have as an objective to win land reform through the use of arms and denied that in their camp-ins and settlements the landless are armed, unless it be with hunting arms. "To oppose the sophisticated arms of the police with a light caliber hunting rifle is pure foolishness," he argued. He also said that MST is open to the evaluations of the church in respect to its actions.

To be in solidarity in moments of necessity is what the people most hope for from the churches. "The people are waiting for effective and affective solidarity right now, where they are meeting," emphasized Father Fernando Altemeyer, of the social pastoral in the east zone of Sao Paulo. This moment is decisive for millions of persons whose lives are hanging by a slender thread. It is a street urchin who will be gunned down tomorrow; it is colera which threatens; it is youths who have no meaning in their lives. "For the churches, the hour has come to enter decisively into the struggle to defend life," he defended. Drawing on his 15 years of personal experience, he explained that it is impossible to remain in the movement without prayer. Prayer is the deep spiritual food that the people seek, even though political parties and unions are not in the habit of praying. The church, in the opinion oftheologian, Julio de Santa Ana must be salt and enter into the dough, without, however, transforming the bread into yeast.

Grassroots movements,according to Segio Bonato, one of the directors of the Federation of Resident’s Associations in the state of Rio de Janeiro, have to concentrate very much on specific struggles, forgetting the cultural and anthropological side of their militants. The movement has to go beyond the struggle for the transformation of the society and seek to value persons. The pastoral action of the churches can help in this area through faith formation of the leaders,thereby nourishing the movement, pointed out Bonato. The relationship betweeen the churches and the grassroots movements,according to PastorRolf Schunemann, is that of mutual nourishment.

Professor Regina Novaes, Federal University,Rio de Janeiro, is unable to think of the churches separating faith and life, faith and politics, " they are important aspects,joined together from the beginning of the human race." The churches are always an active part of what is happening in the country, for they are also social players that enjoy great credibility, affirmed sociologist, Herbert de Souza (Betinho) from IBASE. If Brazilian society today is passive, the historical origins of this behavior can be sought in the preaching of the churches in a time when it emphasized passivity and submission to the will of God," he added.

Betinoho mentioned two types of relationships between the churches and grassroots movements throughout Brazilian history. The first, classical, is that of paternalism or "salvationism" which speaks of a society as the object of its truth,light and proposals. In the second type of relationship, the churches define the grassroots movements as subjects of its resistance. In this relationship the churches are submitted to the grassroots and everything that is grassroots ought to be supported.

There exists, according to Betinho, a 3^rd possible relationship, that values the grassroots movement as a key agent of change and that grows out of a political and ethical definition of how you want to build as a society. He developed five guiding criteria for the building of a democratic society: liberty, equality,participation,diversity and solidarity that are able to be realized through action. "With these criteria, compatible with the gospels and offering elements to critique what now exists, the grassroots movements would not be transformed into mere objects nor the churches submitted to the grassroots dogma," underscored the sociologist. "It is up to the churches to decide where to putthe emphasis, on the state or the civil society. They will have to choose the palaces and cathdrals or the city squares and streets," he affirmed

Social transformation will not happen without the cooperation of the churches. They have organized and mobilized the people, through ecclesiastical, cultural and religious motivation grounded in the matrix of values, analyzed Reverend Zwinglio Motta Dias from CEDI. "The churches have to give the light, strenth and courage that comes from prayer and let the people do the rest," completed Pedro de Assis Ribeiro de Oliveira, from ISER. In the vision of Pedro, it is not correct to say that the Catholic Church has made an option for the poor. "It is the poor who have opted for the Church. Entering in the churches, they are transformed. The new thing in this evangelical option is the option for the organized poor," he said.

The greatest contribution that protestantism can give to the grassroots movement is the gospel spirit with its perspective of freedom and the autonomy of the secular, without separating the sacred from the profane, suggested Reverend Jose Bittencourt, CEDI protestant pastoral. In regard to the causes of the grassroots movements, the churches affliated with CONIC are in solidarity, but according to Bittencourt, the classical ecumenical model is on the side of christian action. "It is the Spirit of God knocking on our door through the voice of the other," he underlined. Adding,"we need to discover common ecumenical actions." This is the challenge before the christian churches. The word ofthe moment is crisis and hopelessness. The crisis exists but the discourse of crisis can be paralyzing. "The place for hopeless is not here, among the churches," challenged Professor Regina Novaes, remembering the most important aspect of the christian message, the proclamation ofthe Good News. It is the time to present proposals, she emphasized.

The reflection around the "Churches and Grassroots Movements" will not stop with this seminar. The process continues and the churches need to demonstrate more unity in action. As said by Olavo Ventura Liuz, primate of the Anglican Episcopal Church of Brazil,"Christians scatter their efforts in the grassroots. Our churches are afraid to lose their identity and their people."

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