Pentecostal Metanoia: Signs of an Educational Spring at the Assembly of God in Brazil

Abstract

The Evangelical Church of the Assembly of God in Brazil is the coutry’s second oldest Pentecostal denomination. Founded in 1911 in Belém do Pará by the Swedish Pentecostal missionaries Gunnar Vingren and Daniel Berg, arrived from the United States of America, this denomination currently has more than 12 million adherents, according to the 2010 census, being therefore the largest evangelical denomination in Brazil. It was forged in the cultural melting pot of Brazilian North/Northeast, among the poorest strata of the population. After the end of the Rubber Cycle, a large contingent of this church believers migrated towards the southeast of the country, which suffering the process of anomie and accommodation in large urban centers. Adding to this the eschatological expectation  of  the  beginning  of the century,  it  can  be  seen why this denomination has nurtured an anti-intellectualist mentality throughout most of its history, rejecting regular theological education and secular higher education. However, already in the first half of the twentieth century, with the arrival of US missionaries who attempted to establish higher level theological education in this denomination, a long and contentious process of change of mentality or metanoia with respect to higher education began. Amidst controversies, throwbacks and advances, some Bible Institutes were founded without the consent of the leadership and without institutional support. Meanwhile, almost a hundred years after the foundation of this Church, in August 2005, the Evangelical Faculty of Technology, Science and Biotechnology (FAECAD), the faculty of the Assembly of God, was inaugurated in the city of Rio de Janeiro. This faculty is inserted in a larger context of other confessional Higher Education Institutions scattered throughout Brazil, of Pentecostal students pursuing a master's and doctoral degree in postgraduate programs of various universities, as well as in the creation of the Latin American Network of Pentecostal Studies (RELEP) and of the Network of Assembleial Studies (REA), groups of Pentecostal studies on the pentecostal phenomenon. To this phenomenon we gave the name of “educational spring” in the Assembly of God in Brazil. This thesis is dedicated to illuminating, investigating and trying to understand such phenomenon.